Lee Camp
[00:00:00] I'm Lee C Camp and this is No Small Endeavor, exploring what it means to live a good life.
Rainn Wilson
I think that most of Hollywood, especially comedic Hollywood and comedians in Hollywood, talking about God is the uncoolest thing you can ever possibly do.
Lee Camp
That's Rainn Wilson, a comedy actor you may know as paper salesman, beet farmer Dwight Schrute on NBC's The Office.
But what you may not know is that Rainn is also a deeply spiritual man. Deeply committed to his Baha'i Faith, and the author of the recent book, Soul Boom: Why We Need a Spiritual Revolution.
Rainn Wilson
People are like, that's so weird, that Dwight guy just talking to Oprah about God, how bizarre. But spiritual ideas helped transform my life and made my life better, and the stakes have never been higher.
Lee Camp
Our conversation on religion, spirituality, and Hollywood all coming right up.[00:01:00]
I am Lee C. Camp. This is No Small Endeavor, exploring what it means to live a good life.
Bears, beets, Battlestar Galactica. If you know that phrase, then you know my guest today, Rainn Wilson, who played the misfit paper salesman Dwight Schrute in the American version of the TV show The Office. But Rainn Wilson is not just a comedic actor. He happens to be a different type of a misfit, for Hollywood perhaps at least, and increasingly for the entire western world.
That kind of misfit - someone who openly goes by the label, 'a religious person.' Rainn was raised in the Baha'i Faith, the faith he still practices. He thinks that religious practice is a part of what helps one lead a good life. He's quite sympathetic to anyone questioning their faith or rightly deconstructing it, but he says, with a [00:02:00] rejection of religion comes a danger.
Rainn Wilson
We've thrown the spiritual baby out with the religious bathwater, collectively rejecting religion and getting our spirituality sometimes in quite superficial ways.
Lee Camp
So today our conversation with Rainn Wilson, discussing his book, Soul Boom: Why We Need a Spiritual Revolution.
Rainn Wilson, thanks for having me here.
Rainn Wilson
Lee, thanks for camping out with us.
Lee Camp
[Laughs]
It's a delightful-- delightful to be here on this beautiful southern California day, here in the greater Los Angeles area, getting to see you.
Rainn Wilson
Yes, I-- thanks for coming all the way out from Nashville.
Lee Camp
It's a delight. Delight to be here.
I'm wondering how you have gotten yourself in this mess.
I mean, here you are, a celebrated television celebrity, and now you've devolved into conversations with theologians.
Rainn Wilson
Ah. It's, it's a long way down.
Lee Camp
It's a long journey down.
Rainn Wilson
Lee Camp
Rainn Wilson
Lee Camp
I would, [00:03:00] I would kinda like to talk about, about that, about a little bit of how you've gone from being beet farmer, paper salesman Dwight Schrute, to writing a book that's calling for spiritual transformation of human history.
And in this book, you at least indicate that some of the seeds of that, some of the roots of that, go back to your childhood.
Rainn Wilson
Lee Camp
And even having, kind of, like, interfaith gatherings in your home.
Rainn Wilson
Yep. Yep. So I grew up a member of the Baha'i Faith, and I think that that planted the seeds for this book, ultimately.
I mean, certainly a lot of the sections of the book are greatly inspired by Baha'i teachings and writings and way of thinking, although I've kind of put it all through my own particular and peculiar lens, but, If one knows anything about the Baha'i Faith, it is very interfaith in its very DNA.
So we would read Buddhist quotes, and from the Bhagavad Gita, and from the Bible, and we had bookshelves filled with writings from many different faith [00:04:00] traditions. Uh, when born again Christians would knock on our door my dad would invite them in and cook them pancakes [Lee laughs] and talk to them about the Bible or the book of Revelations.
So I grew up in this world where we were really looking at world peace and looking at spiritual solutions to the world's problems, singing together, gathering with folks of all different religious backgrounds. It was very open and loving in that way, so that had to be in my kind of groundwater.
I left the Baha'i faith for a long time. Like so many folks, I moved to the big city in my twenties, and I then wanted nothing to do with religion or God or morality, and I kind of crashed and burned in a lot of ways, and out of the ashes of that I went on a pretty intense spiritual quest. And the mental health crises that I suffered during [00:05:00] that phase of my life also have informed the writing of the book.
Lee Camp
Yeah.
When you left your faith, was that a sort of conscious rejection of some of the tenets of it, or was it just a sort of unfolding of life taking you a different direction, or what was-- what did that particularly look like?
Rainn Wilson
Well, I'd love to say that there was a really mature, wise thought process having to do with it, but I was a pretty immature, reactive 20 and 21-year-old, and it was a bunch of different things.
It's like, I was having sex with my girlfriend and the Baha'i Faith has moral laws around sex during marriage, like many other faith traditions do. I didn't want to feel guilty about that. Uh, my parents bugged me and were annoying to me.
Lee Camp
Rainn Wilson
I started to see some hypocrisies in the Baha'is and the Baha'i communities that were bothering me, and it was just kind of a knee jerk, adolescent kind of "screw [00:06:00] that." It wasn't really well thought out.
And then, you know, cut to 3, 4, 5 years later. I'm working as an actor, which is beyond my wildest dreams, coming from suburban Seattle, and, you know, I've got an agent and was doing theater and working with some really interesting directors.
But I was really miserable and I suffered from great anxiety attacks, some depression, addiction issues, and it was out of that, those dark years and despair, I kind of thought - and I think this had to do with my Baha'i upbringing - I was like, well, I better, I better reinvestigate all of this religious stuff because, as I say in the book, maybe I threw the spiritual baby out with the religious bathwater.
Lee Camp
Rainn Wilson
And I think a lot of people do that. I think culturally we've done that. I'm sure we're gonna be getting to that towards the end of the discussion. But, culturally, we've so rejected religion, but we've also kind of [00:07:00] out of hand rejected a lot of spiritual concepts and faith-based wisdom that could really help us culturally.
Lee Camp
Yeah.
You tell one story in your earlier book about having an episode in which you, I think you described it as seeing the face of God...
Rainn Wilson
Lee Camp
...when you, like, as a turning point for you.
Rainn Wilson
Lee Camp
Rainn Wilson
Do you wanna know what the face of God looks like?
Lee Camp
Rainn Wilson
I did. I was having a bad pot trip. I think the pot was laced with something - and this was back in the '90s, so I don't know what it could have been...but not fentanyl - but it was on Christmas morning. I woke up and got baked for some reason.
I was living in this abandoned beer brewery out in Brooklyn.
Lee Camp
Rainn Wilson
Uh, this filthy big warehouse space where the landlord kind of let us live there so he could take a tax write off on the building as like an artist loft kind of situation.
Lee Camp
Rainn Wilson
But we didn't have to pay any rent. There were rats scuttling around there. The toilet was a whole other floor [00:08:00] down. Our, our front door was kind of climbing up the loading bay door.
It was, it was all kinds of-- it was, it was bad juju. But, uh, I started having this really bad reaction, a really severe paranoid reaction. It wasn't your typical pot paranoid reaction. It was like, I was sweating profusely, my muscles, like in my arms and chest, were like pulsating. I couldn't catch my breath. And I was like, to my roommate, like, "Call 911!" And he didn't call 911. And so I was kind of rocking and holding myself and sweating and pulsating and he was kind of there, my friend John, just kind of, like, hanging out.
He eventually read from some JD Salinger Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters. [Lee laughs] Um, that was what he read to calm me down. It happened to be on the bookshelf.
But in the midst of that, I really had a vision of the face of God, [00:09:00] which looked surprisingly like a Mark Rothko painting.
So it was completely abstract. It was a very long, deep, wide, kind of endless horizon, almost like a, an endless sunset, with a lot of ochre and orange and yellow and brown, and it was incredibly bright and mysterious and translucent. And there wasn't actually-- there was no, like, eyes or nose or anything like that. It was very abstract.
And, and-- but in my head I was like, oh my God, that's the face of God. [Laughs] And I don't know if it was the drugs or if it really was the face of God. Who knows? All I know is I swore to the face of God, at that point, I was like, I'm never gonna smoke pot again. [Both laugh] And, and I never have. That was in, uh...oh boy, when was that? '91? Something like that.
Lee Camp
So do you go, do you think back on that moment very often?
Rainn Wilson
Not very often, no. I mean, I [00:10:00] think back on those years a lot because... you know, I quote, uh, the great writer Julia Cameron--
Lee Camp
Rainn Wilson
--In the book, who said, "I come to spirituality, not out of virtue, but out of necessity."
Lee Camp
Yeah. That's a beautiful line.
Rainn Wilson
And I... I feel that way and I respond to that line a lot. Like, so many people present as if they're spiritual because they're virtuous, and we can easily slip into kind of a guru mentality with people that talk about God and, and, and partially that's a problem with having clerics of any stripe.
But for me, I just started reading holy books 'cause I was miserable and I had anxiety attacks and I was trying to figure out what the hell my life was about. So I was reading all different points of view around God and universe and nature and the meaning of life.
Lee Camp
So were anxiety attacks things that you had had ever since you were young? Or was that something that was [00:11:00] precipitated by those particular years?
Rainn Wilson
It started right around this time, and I was in a lot of depression, and I think the anxiety attacks were connected to that. They were an expression of my deep-seated depression. I started going to therapy and-- but they would cripple me. I would end up on the floor sweating, you know, hyperventilating. And it was, uh, it was, uh, it was brutal. And yeah, I had at least 10, 20 very severe anxiety attacks.
Lee Camp
Yeah. You, uh, you began chapter two of Soul Boom with the, the poem from William Carlos Williams.
"It is difficult to get the news from poems. Yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there."
And then you say that your thesis is that, um, one could easily substitute the word 'spirituality' for the word 'poems,' that men die [00:12:00] miserably every day from lack of what is found in spirituality.
Rainn Wilson
You say 'poems' really weird.
I never heard. I never heard--
Lee Camp
[Laughs] My wife is gonna laugh about that because--
Rainn Wilson
I've never heard anyone say 'poems.'
Lee Camp
Rainn Wilson
Lee Camp
It's a, it's a Southern thing.
Rainn Wilson
Well, I have known a lot of Southern folks that don't say 'poems.'
Lee Camp
Yes. I was once interviewing the poet laureate of New York City and she also commented, but I think, uh-- anyway. Poems, poems, poems,
Rainn Wilson
Po-ems.
There's no 'i', there's no 'i' in it.
Lee Camp
Poem--
Look, you Midwesterners and Northwesterners--
[Rainn laughs]
Rainn Wilson
Pacific Northwesterners?
[Lee laughs]
Uh, yes. "It is difficult to get the news from poems, yet men, men, men die, uh, miserably every day, for lack of what is found there." It is difficult to get the news from spirituality, but men die miserably for lack of what is found there.
Again, we've thrown the spiritual baby out with the religious bathwater, collectively rejecting religion [00:13:00] and getting our spirituality sometimes in quite superficial ways, like from a yoga class or just a meditation app or an Instagram that has Rumi quotes on it. And I don't mean to, I don't mean to denigrate, you know, New Age folk or people that are looking outside of a religious system for spiritual inspiration, but there are universals in art and there are universals in spirituality that humanity desperately needs right now.
We're in the midst of a number of crippling pandemics that I outline in the book. We have a pandemic of climate change - that's a pandemic, besides COVID. We have many other pandemics. Racism is one. Income inequality is really a pandemic.
And the answers are to be found in that, the great and noble truths of what it is to be a human [00:14:00] being. And those are some of the concepts and, and precepts, uh, and ideas that I'm investigating in Soul Boom. But I believe that there are spiritual tools that can heal us both on an individual level and on a collective level.
Lee Camp
You, uh, at the very beginning of the book, another poem, that you have, from Mary-- [laughs] Mary Oliver is "Instructions for Living a Life: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it."
Rainn Wilson
Yeah. I love the last part of it - "tell about it." So, paying attention is one thing, and that is in great-- that is in every spiritual tradition of the world.
Lee Camp
Rainn Wilson
Right? It's, you know, contemplative prayer in the Christian tradition, uh, mindfulness in positive psychology, meditation in Buddhism. But to pay attention, to allow yourself to feel the awe and the wonder and the miracle of existence itself, and [00:15:00] then tell about it. So-- she's a poet, so she's telling about it every day in her-- through her poetry.
But we can all tell about it. We can testify. We can pray. We can tell God about it. We can journal. Uh, we can connect and talk to each other about it. We can share gratitude lists. There's a lot of wisdom in those few little sentences.
Lee Camp
Yeah. What does that look like for you to tell about it? I mean, obviously your book is a very public manifestation of telling about it.
But what does that look like for you on a day-to-day basis in relationships or in religious practice?
Rainn Wilson
Well, for me, your first question is, you know, kind of, about, like, why are you here talking to a theologian after, you know, being a TV star? And for me, it's really important for me to tell about it, for a [00:16:00] number of reasons.
One is, spiritual ideas helped transform my life and made my life better, and helped me with a lot of mental health issues.
And number two, I believe these pandemics that I briefly mentioned just now are threatening to rip us apart, and the stakes have never been higher. So theology aside, spiritual concepts that can heal and unite couldn't be more important.
I tell about it because the stakes are so very high.
This is not like a hobby of some actor who read a couple of mystical texts and, you know, is interested in spiritual ideas and decided to write a book about it. Like, I really-- you know, titled the book, Why We Need a Spiritual Revolution because we need a spiritual-- why we need one is 'cause we're dying. [00:17:00]
Lee Camp
Rainn Wilson
And we're, we're being ripped apart. And we need a spiritual revolution and a spiritual transformation, a spiritual evolution, to get out the other side. I'm afraid about the amount of suffering that we're gonna have to undergo collectively to get to that place.
And this is not a Baha'i thing, it's not a Muslim thing, it's not a Christian thing, it's not a Buddhist thing, it's not an agnostic thing, it's not a New Age thing. Everyone needs to turn to these ideas to move us forward.
Lee Camp
You're listening to No Small Endeavor, and our episode with Rainn Wilson, discussing his book, Soul Boom: Why We Need a Spiritual Revolution.
I love hearing from you. Tell us what you're reading, who you're paying attention to, or send us feedback about today's episode. You can reach me at lee@nosmallendeavor.com.
You can get show notes for this episode in your podcast app or wherever you listen. These notes include [00:18:00] links to resources mentioned in this episode and a PDF of my complete interview notes, including material not found in this episode, as well as a transcript. You may also want to note that we're regularly dropping unabridged versions of our interviews, like this interview with Rainn Wilson, that includes some other additional fascinating conversation and some funny moments.
Coming up, Rainn and I continue to discuss his book, Soul Boom, as well as what it's been like being a public advocate for religion and belief in God while also being a member of the so-called 'Hollywood Elite.'
In Soul Boom you quote British documentarian philosopher Adam Curtis, talks about how in Victorian times people spoke about death constantly, but never about sex. In [00:19:00] contemporary society, the reverse is true. We never talk about death, but we are obsessed with sex. And so you're encouraging us, inviting us to think about death.
Rainn Wilson
Lee Camp
Unpack that for us a bit.
Rainn Wilson
One of the things that poems talk about is death.
Lee Camp
Rainn Wilson
One of the things that spirituality talks about is death. It's in every faith tradition. We can live a richer and more fulfilled life with a greater knowledge of death and a greater contemplation of our mortality.
It frames the miracle of being alive, number one. Number two, if we are, as Pierre Teilhard de Chardin says, we are spiritual beings having a human experience, then what does this mean about death? Well, it means that death is simply, um, a transition to a different plane of being, a different way of being. Our [00:20:00] soul, our light, our spirit, our consciousness, our spiritual reality, in other words, continues after our bodies fall apart and fall away.
And this also informs how we live our life. It's a very different world if you believe that we're simply an assemblage of molecules, that we have this greater intelligence than, let's say, the great apes. And then when we die, our-- it's lights out and that's the end. And it's all just random. That's different.
That's a different way of living than if we are souls having a human experience and our souls will continue into infinite worlds of God and being that lie hereafter.
So this stuff needs to be investigated. I'm not saying I have the answers, but it's been investigated in every faith tradition up till now.
The Romans were crazy about it. The stoics with "memento mori", the Native [00:21:00] Americans, Egyptians, every culture has been very focused on death as a portal, as part of a journey, and how that informs us having a richer life on the day to day.
Lee Camp
Yeah.
So, being a member of the Hollywood Elite...
Rainn Wilson
Lee Camp
What sort of tension, trouble, or not has your public confession telling about your theism, your belief, your faith gotten you in?
Rainn Wilson
Well, I think I've been talking about it in bite-sized pieces for a good twelve years, and frankly, I think it freaks people out. I think that most of Hollywood, especially comedians in Hollywood, talking about God is the uncoolest thing you can ever possibly do.
Now, comedians will call themselves [00:22:00] nerds and say, "oh, I'm so uncool, I'm so uncool." But it's this weird thing. It's like, Hollywood is about who's sitting at the cool kids' lunch table.
Lee Camp
Rainn Wilson
Just like in high school. And are you invited to sit at the cool kids' lunch table or not?
And I've had some success on The Office and Saturday Night Live and some movies that I've done and a few little things here and there, but I've never been invited to sit at the cool kids' lunch table, because I think people are like, 'that's so weird, that comedy guy, that big weird-looking Rainn, Dwight guy just talking to Oprah about God, how bizarre.'
So do I, do I have any smoking guns? Do I have any kind of like, emails or-- No, not really. I can just kind of sense a collective eye roll about it. It certainly doesn't help my career. I'm not doing any, any of this for any self-promotion or, or career.
Even if this book sells like a bestseller, I can go do a week of television--
Lee Camp
Rainn Wilson
--and make way more [00:23:00] money than, you know, the best possible outcome of sales of Soul Boom, right? And financially.
Lee Camp
Rainn Wilson
So I do it out of passion and it may have, I may have taken a hit from it, but it's okay. Fortunately, I was on a great TV show, I got a lot of money in the bank. I'm doing just fine.
[Lee laughs]
And, uh-- but it really might be different if I, if I was still struggling, I might have really rethought it, because If I'm a middle class actor talking about God and trying to do comedy, it's not gonna help me.
Lee Camp
Rainn Wilson
Lee Camp
Perhaps counterintuitively to some readers, you don't go down the 'I'm spiritual but not religious' route.
Rainn Wilson
Lee Camp
And, and you're in fact arguing, we actually want to recover some sort of sense of religion that's healthy, true, good. [00:24:00] That's... moves beyond the sort of historical failings of various religious traditions.
Unpack that a bit for us.
Rainn Wilson
Yeah, so a lot of people have mistakenly thought, 'oh, great, Rainn's writing a book on-- for spiritual but not religious people.' And it's, it's kind of... I've kind of disguised it as such [Lee laughs] because I do, I do think that the 'nones' are the largest growing religious group in the United States.
'Nones' being those who check 'none of the above' on sur-- surveys about what religion they belong to. It's the largest growing subculture of young people in the Western world.
Lee Camp
And if I remember correctly, the largest group of the 'nones' are former Protestants.
Rainn Wilson
Yep. Mm-hmm. Yep, that's right.
And most of those former Protestants have left the church because of the church's ju-- judgmentalism and belief in, uh, the idea of hell as a place where one who is a [00:25:00] nonbeliever burns in eternity.
Lee Camp
Rainn Wilson
And what kind of God-- how do you rectify an all-loving God with someone who makes someone live in torment for eternity if they don't believe in that particular church? The list goes on and on.
But, um...
Lee Camp
Politic-- and political partisanship I think often figures significantly in that distaste that you pointed to earlier.
Rainn Wilson
Mm-hmm. Absolutely.
And those on the political left hear anything with church-- like even if you look on Twitter, like the most, like, rabid right wingers on Twitter always have crosses next to their name. [Lee laughs] So immediately you see like a cross next to someone name and you're like, oh no, that's a toxic person.
Lee Camp
Rainn Wilson
So the cross being a symbol of the Christ's resurrection, of this glorious moment where the Son is reunited with the Father in this beautiful way, and it's being used for, like, political toxicity and it's, uh, and it's creating division, [00:26:00] and uh, that's not something to be stood for.
But, yeah, so I very much make the case for religion.
I am not advocating for any particular religion. I'm not saying that people should become Baha'is or Christians or anything else. In fact, I do have a chapter on-- called, "Hey kids, let's build the perfect religion."
Lee Camp
Rainn Wilson
Which is about, can you take the very best of the world's religions and, and create a, a new religion? What would that look like?
And I do that hypothetically with kind of tongue in cheek, because I just wanna get, again, young people thinking about religion in a new way. We-- because people have been so religiously traumatized, they really defacto reject everything and anything about religion out of hand in a kind of a knee jerk reaction.
"I could never be part of an organized religion."
It's like, okay, well what, what is it exactly about that?
We have [00:27:00] lost something by losing religion. We have lost community that is seeking transcendence and service to something higher than that community. And just that in and of itself is such a beautiful and powerful thing. And going back to politics, politics have become this religion.
Lee Camp
Rainn Wilson
On both the left and the right. Politics have taken that place. Like, oh, if we can fix things politically on either the right or left, that will transform the world. And it's, it's humans' need to live for something greater than themselves. That's, it's, it's shifted to something kind of grotesque, like partisanship.
Lee Camp
Yeah.
You don't talk about this at length, but it seems to be significant, where you, you say, spoiler alert, you're not a big fan of hallucinogens for, uh, a [00:28:00] quick access to God.
Rainn Wilson
Lee Camp
And it seems to me that that fits in this conversation about religion in that, in your conversation about death, you suggest that life, then-- if we, if, if we think well about death, one of the things that gives us is a construal of life as a place in which we grow in virtues and grow in these sort of spiritual practices that make us better human beings. There's not a shortcut path to that kind of growth or that kind of living.
Rainn Wilson
Lee Camp
So any further commentary on that or unpack that for us any?
Rainn Wilson
It's a very, uh, unpopular opinion, especially among the, uh, the Joe Rogan set, which is a large part of the male populace, which is that hallucinogens are a valuable gateway to the divine. But the way that 95% of people use hallucinogens is what I would call consumerist spirituality.
Lee Camp
Rainn Wilson
Just like, hey I got a free weekend. Let's go down to Costa Rica. I know this shaman. I'll pay $1,250 and he's gonna distribute this ayahuasca, and we're gonna vomit in buckets together. We're gonna see the face of God. And then, uh, we'll fly back and then be at work first thing Tuesday morning, selling real estate or selling insurance or selling cars or driving a bus, or whatever it is that we do, without any substantial change in our lives or the life choices that we make. It just conveniently fits in our schedule at a good price where I can have, you know, inspiration and transformation on my time schedule. It fits in my, on my Google calendar.
Lee Camp
Rainn Wilson
And it's consumerist, but you know, it's similar hu-- that's a, it's a, it's a human thing. Humans want an easy way out, right? And Christians are especially, uh, suspect around this, where, you know, there has been a, a, a large percentage of Protestantism that is simply, [00:30:00] accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, get baptized, and you're set. It doesn't matter what you do in your life. It really doesn't matter.
Lee Camp
Rainn Wilson
You can lie, cheat, and steal. You've accepted Jesus Christ. You beg forgiveness and on-- you know, on your deathbed, you're good to go, baby. And that's an easy way out. It's like you want that easy way to heaven.
Well, you know, from the Baha'i perspective - and again, going back to death, and you mentioned this - we are in these fleshy soul-growing machines called our bodies, and we grow our spiritual virtues. We grow aspects of the divine over the course of our lives - our kindness, our humility, our compassion, our creativity, our love. And those are what we take with us.
So if you're just like, "I take Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior," then you're a dick your whole life and you die, you haven't grown those [00:31:00] qualities, right? And those are the qualities we take with us. So Baha'is don't believe in, I don't believe in any heaven or hell. I believe in a spiritual plane, and you are going to be in a kind of hell if you go to that spiritual plane without these beautiful divine qualities having culminated and grown and matured in, in your human experience over the course of your life. So again, that's another way out.
There-- people are looking for easy way outs. This happens with New Age people who do a little meditation and read a little Eckhart Tolle and go to a yoga class and listen to an app and feel tranquility and then leave it at that.
You know, like, oh, there's my spiritual practices done because I feel tranquil in my heart today.
Lee Camp
Rainn Wilson
Now that's important work. But it can't stop there. And this is the thesis of this book, which is this other path that we humans need to take is to take our [00:32:00] spiritual, our wisdom, and our resources, and our capacity, and help make the world a better place.
Going back to-- since you might have a larger Christian audience there, I, I mentioned earlier on that my dad used to invite born agains into the house and we would talk about God. And I remember one time when I was about 12 years old, he said, uh-- they mentioned like the kingdom of God on Earth. And I think they even had a picture of like a lion lying down with a lamb.
And it was like, look, in the future lions will lie down with lambs. And it was like literally someone painted it and we're like, oh okay. So it involves-- the kingdom of God on Earth involves livestock. But the, um... my dad said, "What does the kingdom of God on Earth look like to your particular denomination?"
And they said, well, we believe that in the future there will be... trumpets will blast, the clouds will-- there'll be a rumble of lightning, clouds will open up, and down from the sky will come [00:33:00] a city of silver and gold. And Jesus Christ will be there, and the angels, and they're blowing their trumpets, and they're gonna call all the believers to that city, and then everyone else is gonna be left behind.
And they said, "What's the Baha'i view of the kingdom of God on Earth?" And my dad said, well, it's similar.
Said, there's gonna be a rumble and you're gonna hear thunder and lightning and the clouds, and the clouds are gonna open up, but down from the center of the clouds are gonna come, like, bunch of bricks and some gunny sacks and a tape measure and some shovels and nails and a little note will flutter down from the sky and it'll say, "Kingdom of God on Earth. Build it yourself, kid."
[Lee laughs]
And, and that's what I think it's all about. You know, Baha'u'llah says, "All men have been created to usher forth an ever advancing civilization."
Lee Camp
Rainn Wilson
So this idea that we have a spiritual [00:34:00] responsibility to help humanity mature, to grow community at the grassroots, and to help humanity become more wise and transcend its petty squabbles.
Everyone has a role to play in that. You don't have to be an actor on a TV show or a podcaster. You can be a bus driver or a school teacher, and you can help make the world a better place at your bus driving place, or at your school, or in your community, or your cul-de-sac, or your church, or internationally, or through charity and nonprofit.
Um, there's lots of different ways to play a small role in, in the transformation of humanity.
Lee Camp
We're gonna take a short break, but coming right up, what the world's religions might have in common, what overnight fame meant for Rainn's own spiritual life, and how community and service to others are crucial aspects to a life of joy.[00:35:00]
As your book unfolds you-- the chapter, for example, you mentioned a moment ago about, "Hey kids, let's build our own religion"... in various ways, you point to commonalities between many religious traditions.
Rainn Wilson
Lee Camp
And you know, my, my experience in, in reading the book... I've done my own kind of work academically in looking at commonalities as well as differences between, for example, Christianity and Islam.
Rainn Wilson
Lee Camp
And thinking about, you know, what, what's the commonalities there and what are the surprising, beautiful things about Islam that many American Christians are completely unaware of?
Rainn Wilson
Lee Camp
And, at the same time, you know, I am aware of, uh, enough about world religions to know that there are these kind of significant differences--
Rainn Wilson
Lee Camp
--between some of their most basic convictions, visions of history, understanding of history and so forth... uh, [00:36:00] understanding the afterlife, blah, blah, blah.
But what I kept finding as I read your book was this sort of unexpected experience of so many of the things that I have even written about, thought about, kept coming up in your own discussion of your Baha'i faith.
And I, I don't say that to try to press my Christianity on what you're describing. Instead, I received it as, this is a beautiful description of his Baha'i faith, and I love the overlaps.
Rainn Wilson
Lee Camp
Rainn Wilson
Lee Camp
And it was just surprising to me how many-- and, and I'll even say, when you, uh, you had, uh, several pages where you discussed Christianity in a sort of pre-Constantinian vision of Christianity.
Rainn Wilson
Lee Camp
Which not a lot of people, you know, there's not a lot of Hollywood elites that can do that, Rainn, you know? But here you were doing that, and I thought this--
Rainn Wilson
It's one of the most beautiful several centuries in humanity's history.
Lee Camp
And, and it was just, uh, amazing to me, 'cause I've written a lot about Constantinian shift and so forth and all [00:37:00] that kind of stuff, um, and my own particular Christian tradition has talked a lot about that.
But talk to us about some of the things that you find beautiful and compelling about the overlap between various religious traditions.
Rainn Wilson
Thanks for that question, and I'm glad you're really open to those ideas because I do find a lot of Christians just jump on the differences.
Lee Camp
Rainn Wilson
And like, for instance, Baha'i's view, the holy condition of Jesus Christ as one of many very holy, special divine teachers that have an incredibly special station. So the idea of the Son of God from a Baha'i lens is not like there is one God-Father and he had this one guy, Jesus, as his son, but the son of God, metaphorically, points to this incredibly powerful, unique station of Jesus Christ. [00:38:00] Baha'is hold other divine teachers at a, at a similar level as Jesus Christ.
So there's a different, there's a significant difference there, but can we just stop and say we both love Jesus? We both believe Jesus is divine and beautiful and holds a station far above any mortal and is in direct communion with the Father and brings down a beautiful, transformative message of salvation, not only for Christians and the people of Galilee and Judea and Rome of the time, but of all of humanity. We can all agree on that. Let's just focus on that.
But I have a number of things that-- my top ten ways in which, uh, religions... what they hold in common. And I would love to hear if you have any that I left out.
A higher power. Life after death. Power of prayer. Transcendence. [00:39:00] Community. A moral compass. The force of love. Increased compassion. Service to the poor. And a strong sense of purpose. So those are the ten things that all religious faiths hold in common.
I think it's important right now for all people of faith to come together and work together side by side with their sleeves rolled up to help make the world a better, more just place. A more loving place. You notice that on here's the force of love and increased compassion. Can we love each other with the force of Jesus?
You know, can we emulate - we can never achieve that, but can we emulate, strive to emulate, compassion of the Buddha and love of Jesus and, you know, dedication of the people of Islam for, for Muhammad and work side by side to building better and more loving communities.
The time for squabbling is, is [00:40:00] done. Let's, you know we're, we're at the threshold of destroying the planet and each other, so let's just leave all those differences behind right now and, and seek a common focus.
Lee Camp
And so you, in, in the book, in talking about connection and love-- connection-love as well as joy and bliss. And, so, if I can, as we kind of get close to the end, ask a couple of questions about the not-- notion of connection and ask how your career as a comedian, as an actor who is a comedian, how do you think comedy and humor has allowed you to connect, and has there ever been a temptation for humor to be a source of disconnect or protection of yourself [00:41:00] from others? What-- in what ways has humor facilitated connection, and are there ways it's ever been a temptation to inhibit connection?
Rainn Wilson
Yeah, great, great question.
I did, when I had this digital media company called Soul Pancake and we did a, we did a documentary on this, and it's called Laughing Matters. And it was kind of the... examining the connection between comedy and mental illness and mental health.
Lee Camp
Rainn Wilson
And comedy is often arrived at because of trauma. You'll find many comedians and comic actors are funny because they used it as a coping mechanism.
Lee Camp
Rainn Wilson
And it kept them sane and it was a way to get attention and diffuse situations and to process the pain and irony of life. So I have to be very careful, and I think anyone who works in comedy has to be very careful that the comedy-- it can get dark real [00:42:00] quick and it can be a defense mechanism and, and comedy and humor can put up walls. It can-- comedy can easily lead to detachment and pessimism and cynicism as well. Mine certainly does, a lot.
But, uh, at the same time, you know, one of the things I'm most privileged about is being a part of a TV show, The Office, that has brought so much joy to so many millions of people. People tell me every day on social media, and if I run into them, how much The Office means to them and how, uh, uplifting it it is and how it brought their family together and how they were suffering mental illness and it helped them, or suffering through COVID and The Office healed them.
So I'm just so grateful that-- you know, I didn't get into The Office for virtuous reasons.
[Lee laughs]
"Oh, I think I'll do The Office to bring people, [00:43:00] bring all the little people some joy and, and, uh, and unity and, and love."
But what an incredible byproduct of doing the show that it has, it has, it has helped people. And that's-- I'll, I'll take it.
So I think that's what the arts can do. The arts have a very special role in a spiritual revolution. Uh, they can be as used as tools for upliftment, inspiration, and transformation.
Lee Camp
What's, what-- in what ways has fame and celebrity been a potential hindrance to your own growth in spiritual virtues?
Rainn Wilson
Yeah. The, um... I have a quote about that. I, um... today it's a Rumi quote. "The ego is a veil between humans and God."
Lee Camp
Rainn Wilson
Rumi. Wiser, truer words have never been said.
So fame is all about ego. [00:44:00] And it's, it's been a-- it was a crazy struggle. It's been a crazy struggle.
Uh, I was a, a struggling actor for my whole life, trying to pay the bills and pay the rent, and then all of a sudden was six feet under in The Office, and then a couple of movies that I did thereafter. Like, all of a sudden I was a household name and people would come up to me and start grabbing me. Literally grabbing me. 'Cause people are gonna be so crazily inappropriate.
"Oh my God, I love you." And for an insecure, nerdy, young actor to kind of have people groping at them saying, I love you, it's a... it can be really overwhelming. And I spent a lot of those early years, of The Office especially, like very unhappy because then it's not enough.
Well, I want more. I wanna be a movie star.
Lee Camp
Rainn Wilson
And I don't want to just star in movies. I want to be, I want to be the biggest movie star. Why am I not the biggest comedy movie star in the world? And even that probably wouldn't have satisfied. You know, it's never enough, and the ego is a veil between [00:45:00] oneself and God.
And fortunately, I had therapy and, you know, I had a wonderful wife who helped me process some of this and, and learned and grew and, you know, last-- the last many years have been really wonderful and living in, in balance and harmony around that. But fame can be a real bitch. And yet it's the thing that young people point to as their biggest goal and aspiration.
People want fame. Because it gives you love, it gives you money, it gives you status, it gives you all of that.
Lee Camp
Yeah.
So the notion of joy there at the end of the book, what's it look like for you to try to, out of all of that and your, decades now, long journey of trying to take seriously spirituality, understanding of, of faith in God, what has the cultivation of joy looked like for you?
Rainn Wilson
So, this could be a whole conversation to itself. You know, we'll do part two and we can talk about, like, mental [00:46:00] health and happiness and, and wellbeing and, uh, eudemonia and, and all of that.
But I think that happiness is a phrase I have a real problem with, 'cause it feels like happiness is a residual emotion due to circumstances that are mostly out of our control.
Joy is something we can decide to participate in. Joy does not eliminate struggle and sorrow. You can be joyful and then the next day you can be sorrowful and that's okay. You can be a balanced human being. Joy is something that you can decide to, to manifest every day. You can say, I'm gonna just put joy in my heart today.
You know, what are the ways, what are the manifestations of that? Awe, wonder, gratitude, service. I can just carry joy in my heart, right?
But here's the other thing about joy. You don't even have to feel particularly joyful if you're not feeling joyful. Guess what? Make [00:47:00] someone else feel joyful.
Lee Camp
Rainn Wilson
Give joy to someone else.
Call a sick relative, call a lonely friend, visit a neighbor and bring them a pie. Cultivate joy in others as an act of service. It's one of the greatest services there is.
So that's why I talk about joy - you know, cultivating joy and squashing cynicism as one of the tools of a spiritual revolution.
We're using a, a tool, a superpower, and we're cultivating it in our hearts and we are cultivating it in other people's hearts.
Lee Camp
We're here with Rainn Wilson at his home in the greater Los Angeles area. It's been a delight to be with you. Thanks so much.
Rainn Wilson
Hey, what a pleasure. A profound pleasure. Thanks for coming all this way with your microphones, and what a fantastic conversation.
Lee Camp
Rainn Wilson
Lee Camp
You've been listening to No Small Endeavor and our interview with Rainn Wilson on his book, Soul Boom: Why We Need a Spiritual Revolution.
We gratefully acknowledge the support of Lilly Endowment Incorporated, a private philanthropic foundation supporting the causes of community development, education, and religion, and the support of the John Templeton Foundation, whose vision is to become a global catalyst for discoveries that contribute to human flourishing..
Our thanks to all the stellar team that makes this show possible. Christie Bragg, Jakob Lewis, Sophie Byers, Tom Anderson, Kate [00:49:00] Hays, Mary Eveleen Brown, Cariad Harmon, Jason Sheesley, Ellis Osburn, and Tim Lauer. Special thanks for this episode with Rainn Wilson and my friends John and Sarah Martin.
Thanks for listening and let's keep exploring what it means to live a good life together. No Small Endeavor is a production of Tokens Media, LLC, and Great Feeling Studios.