Joe Rogan is not an idiot. One of my personal heroes who runs in his circle once said that it isn’t obvious that Joe Rogan is not the smartest person in most rooms. I think that his intelligence is really built on a singular character trait that anyone who has ever sat for four hours (on Spotify you can crank it up to 3x the speed) and listened to him talk to comics or scientists or journalists or sociologists recognizes immediately. He is deeply, irrevocably curious.
This quality, and that other deeply important trait that most comics seem to have in spades, the ability to see and develop the absurd, make him the most popular interviewer who ever lived, much to the chagrin of many who object to his politics, whatever they are. It is almost alarming to think that he may well be the voice that people hear the most in their lives. At his average-ish rate of three hours three times a week, even split among guests, he is quite literally the most heard voice in America. How many of us hear our mother talk for more than an hour a week? Our spouses? There is a difference in sitting and watching a show next to a woman who speaks every commercial, and sitting a listening to one man have three conversations for nine hours a week.
I, personally, would recognize his voice before I would recognize my pastor’s.
And it is an interesting thing, too, that such a thing would be the case. An indictment on my devotion to my church, for sure. But for a lot of Christians, especially those in the 18-29 year old (I’m holding on another year) male (I’m holding on forever) demographic, this is the case.
From personal experience, and from the statistical reality that the millions of listeners who listen to Joe Rogan includes millions of Christians, it is obvious that Rogan has grasped something that resonates deeply with us.
In recent episodes, he has talked of his wrestling with Christianity, or at least some sort of faith in recent months. Perhaps it’s Texas. Or his listeners. Or it’s the rash of people in his circle of friends and intellectual peers and podcasts guests that have recently grappled with Christ and his teaching, at least at the limits of his impact on the world.
Michael Shellenberger. Ayan Hirsi Ali. The ever wrestling Jordan Peterson. Even Tucker Carlson. To name a few.
On a recent episode with Michelle Dowd, a survivor of an apocalyptic cult adjacent to Christianity, both he and the guest opined on the way Christianity often behaves as a cult, and it’s belief system certainly comes across as deeply mystic and supernatural.
They got some things wrong in their conversation, and that makes sense. Dowd recounts some rough bible passages, and seems to take them as allegorical affirmations of her beliefs and denials of the way she grew up. A dangerous way to interpret scripture. Rogan boils down the scriptures to his favorite and often cited theory that they trace to psychedelic experience and metaphorical meaning. Maybe so. He boils down the faith to a good way, even a noble way, for people to pursue meaning.
There are several points to be made. Rogan’s understanding of Christian theology as it relates to the Bible is flawed, and the whole business of psychedelic ritual and a translation of “Christ” as “a mushroom covered in God’s semen” is, well, not how words work. Dowd brings a bit of new age philosophy to her own ideas. The allegorical interpretation of the biblical text is often incomplete.
Except, even here, Rogan, and his guest by proxy, grasp something inherent in the Christian idea. The bible is a narrative meant to tell us something symbolic. The Christian also believes that it happens to be literally true. Christ is all and is in all. He is the marriage of the symbolic and the literal. The word made flesh.
And Christianity does often operate like a cult. What with our signs and emotions and smiles and budgets. And we also happen to be correct. Even that statement sounds “culty” when I write it. I came to Christ on a preponderance of evidence, while others were raised in houses of belief without consideration of any other ideas. Am I in danger of moving out to a town in West Texas to horde rifles and wives?
And don’t get me started on the things we believe. It was the apostle Paul who first acknowledged it. If Christ really has not resurrected, we are most to be pitied.
So, I get it. The Bible stories are ridiculous, even if they are true. I find that the intersection of the ridiculous miracle and the unflinchingly true seems like the most obvious place to find God. If he can be found at all.
This begs the question, then. Why do Christians listen to Rogan? He does not understand us or our beliefs. He has mocked us, albeit gently, before. And he calls us a cult. Like every point in this essay, the truth results in a paradox.
The truth is that he understands the essence of what we should be far more than most of us do. He understands the Christian ethos in its practicality. We should be men and women who seek the truth, ask questions, evaluate our beliefs, defend our families and home, trust not in political leaders, eat well, love fiercely, laugh often. He misses the faith and belief, but nails the outgrowth of a life well lived. He is made in the image of God, after all.
Our listening, I think, is aspirational. Though we should not be conformed to the image of Joe Rogan, we find in him a shadow of the Christ, as we should in every person we admire. Should we run to Christ instead? Of course. But he doesn’t have a podcast, and if he did, we’d probably cancel him.
Perhaps there is a more important question. What does Joe Rogan find in us, in our community, that resonates with him? Why does he wrestle with us, with our God? Could it be that we are finally doing our job, being salt and light to a lost world? Or is the world so dark and twisted at present that the truths of the ancients, powered by mushrooms or not, manifest as worth seeking?
Whatever it is, the relationship is symbiotic. The mistrust Rogan has for the organized religiosity of Christianity, his labelling it a cult, is a mirror to the reason why Christians are seeking him out. We are distrusting, too. He wrestles with our God because he seeks a better world, and classically, our God has experience with making all things new.
Rogan wrestling with faith, and the untangling of the mysteries therein, is part of why we listen. Christians pray for unbelievers to come to realize truth. But the irony is, if Rogan ever stopped wrestling, I am not sure we would continue to tune in. We know what it means to wrestle with God, because we have done it before. Maybe we need to keep wrestling for ourselves. Maybe the reason we tune in to another’s wrestling is because we long to put ourselves, and our God, to the test again.
Very, very well done, Harmon. You nailed it. Perfectly done.
‘The truth is that he understands the essence of what we should be far more than most of us do. He understands the Christian ethos in its practicality. We should be men and women who seek the truth, ask questions, evaluate our beliefs, defend our families and home, trust not in political leaders, eat well, love fiercely, laugh often. He misses the faith and belief, but nails the outgrowth of a life well lived. He is made in the image of God, after all.’