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CJP #51: Religious Deconstruction with Jen Johannsen · Coconut Justice

• Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Hey everybody, ⁓ Jen Johansen is back on the channel. Welcome, Jen. Hey, what's good? If you haven't yet noticed, it seems like the religious right has taken control of the government and they're starting wars that align with their religious beliefs. Jen Johannsen is a leadership advisor cultivating leaders who remain clear, human grounded. She's also the director of Reasoned Reality, an independent media progressive think tank. She's been on the channel before. Jen Johannsen: Thank you, friend. Thank you. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): And we talk often. if we feel little comfortable around each other, it's because we're working together to make really good change for this country and bring awareness to a lot of these grassroots folks that are running that just need more help. Jen Johannsen: done differently. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): but she's coming back on the channel to talk about religious deconstruction and the separation of church and state. Before we get into it, remember to go to coconutjustice.com to get you some clothes that I think would look good on you. Let's go. Yes, done differently. And one of the rabble-rousers that I follow is ⁓ Jolly Good Ginger. And I can't wait to meet him face to face. But he released a video this morning that basically broke down how this, what we're living through in this government right now is a right wing. ⁓ Christian, white Christian coup. Jen Johannsen: Yes, emphatically yes. That's been decades in the making. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah. Yeah. And so I wanted to get together with Jen because we had a conversation with you, cats on the couch and ⁓ Mike C4 explosives. And one of the one of the first topics that we started addressing was when you said religious deconstruction and. I like forcing people to think outside the box that they're stuck in. And so I was excited when you agreed to come and talk to us about deconstructing this. So what's your background in as far as this stuff goes and like how can people trust that you're telling us the truth? Jen Johannsen: Thanks Ooh, I want to start there. I don't claim to be an expert, nor do I try to take things from the place of truth. I try to take things from the place of hypothesis and curiosity and humility. So we'll reframe that from the get-go. I'm not from a personally religious background. ⁓ Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Jen Johannsen: or minimally. So, but it was not a big part of my upbringing. have spent the last 11 years in the same city as Liberty University, which is a very evangelical conservative college and Jerry Falwell, who founded the university, who's deceased, ⁓ had a lot to do with the decades worth of this rising of Christian nationalism that's led to where we are now, especially when it comes to the weaponization of like everything against the LGBT community and abortion being a Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm. Jen Johannsen: big part of the conservative rights platform. That was not part of their platform at all in the early 70s at all. So out of Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Right. Let me interrupt. Let me interrupt. I don't know what was happening in the 70s, but boy, there's a lot of things that we're losing grip on that started happening in the 70s. Jen Johannsen: Yeah. Yep. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): We have to dissect the seventies. Anyway, I'm sorry for interrupting. Something in the seventies is just, ⁓ I don't know. Jen Johannsen: No, you're good. ⁓ Yeah, so. Basically, ⁓ 2020, I had growing frustration that was initially LGBT advocacy living where I live. Being in healthcare, because my original career is dentistry. I stopped practicing and I do this work full time now, but being in healthcare in the Bible Belt during the pandemic and being from the part of the country that was hit hardest, or one of the hardest areas that was hit early on, it was deeply painful to have coworkers who I had known for years, not just say, I don't believe the news, but say, I don't believe you. I don't believe that your people are going through this experience, whether it's in the form of loss of life, that's anything different than what we've experienced in the past. you know, a very good friend of mine was a pediatric anesthesiology resident in Manhattan when this all happened. And his day to day became intubating COVID patients. And that kind of cognitive dissonance paired with ⁓ what we all witnessed on January 6th, ⁓ I remember being deeply like... feeling rage and confusion and anger and just wanting to like wake people up. And I remember thinking I either need to move to like back to New York or somewhere more progressive or I am going to stay and learn and try to find a way through this and be part of the solution. Because even if I move, I'm to be aware that this exists and it's going to frustrate me. So I took I took some time. I wasn't like outwardly creating content or involved in anything initially, but I took a couple of years. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. Jen Johannsen: and really took a deep dive into learning about the Bible for the first time ever. And into learning about the history of Christianity and into learning about the cultural and social and political dynamics in our country, ⁓ particularly over the last century that have led to where we are now. One of the first books I read was called Jesus and John Wayne, How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. Jen Johannsen: ⁓ And I'm happy to jump into any version of this, but people who are in the Christian deconstruction space, like Brian Recker, Josh Scott, Mike Miyashiro, Melinda Hale, some of these people who have grown up in a more conservative tradition and have deconstructed from it or started to question the logic behind it. I loved learning from them. I had a very hard time learning from people who were still in the cult because every bit of it felt so gross to me. But following some of these folks in the Christian deconstruction space was a big part of my world for a while as I attempted to kind of reverse engineer the psychology of what I'm surrounded by here. And at some point, I can weave in an experience I had as a teenager that I now as an adult think of as kind of like a mystical experience. And it's given me a universal lens on what Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. Jen Johannsen: spirituality perhaps is. But yeah, deconstruction to me happens in a lot of different contexts, not just religion, but it's a it's an effort to with humility and curiosity look within and with and outside of us and examine where we have conditioned beliefs or where our wounds or our upbringing or anything that's like in our own psyche is kind of causing a distortion of reality. So to me, the journal, the journal Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. Jen Johannsen: is like unconsciousness, unawareness, distortions, inner work, healing work, whatever you want to call it, more clarity, more self-awareness, more emotional maturity. ⁓ Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah. I grew up religious by violence. You got up and you went to church or you got that ass whipped. ⁓ Jen Johannsen: No, no, Yeah. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): And I will say the one thing, the one thing that church does for me that I do like is the feeling of community. And it's like a really nice time out from the real world. You know, the congregations I've gone to have always been mixed. Race have always been inclusive. If you didn't let gay people in your church, I knew for a fact I didn't want to be at that church. And I don't care what denomination it was. I've gone to all kinds of churches with all kinds of people. If you don't get down like that, I can't be a part of your teachings. It's just that simple. We're not even going to get into the Bible and how it contradicts itself all the time. I'm just saying I've been around religious folks. My family's still very religious. I still have people that go to church every week. I grew up Seventh-day Adventist, so it wasn't even just religion. It was like strict religion. Jen Johannsen: you ⁓ yeah. ⁓ life. It's like a it's yeah, it's very squarely in the in the camp of what would be called high demand religion like Mormonism like there's a clear in and out. There's no halfway in between. ⁓ Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Right, right. So when I hear people, and I'm not gonna lie, people that are deconstructing and that don't even believe in religion, that don't believe in God, most of them are white. So it's funny to me that white folks started it and then white folks are the ones that are like, nah, I'm not living like that. Jen Johannsen: You know, and I wonder if part of that too is being in a place where somebody can question their beliefs requires a base level of safety and privilege. And I suspect that ⁓ that might come back to systemic racism. It is a privilege. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah. Yeah. Jen Johannsen: to be able to deconstruct one's beliefs and to go to therapy and do all the things. Have the time, the effort to self-reflect and not be in survival mode all the time. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): That makes sense. That makes sense. Yeah. And for me, I'm not going to lie. I get uncomfortable because I do still, I believe in God. I don't believe in religion. What God is, I can't, I can't tell you, but during my studies, I've been told, don't worry about it. It's too big. So I don't. So I worry about being a good person. Jen Johannsen: Yeah. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): You know, when I was a kid, I was told, be like Jesus. Jesus hung out with everybody. Jesus fed everybody. Jesus make sure everybody was good. So that's how I live my life. But I don't hang crosses on my neck. I think that's a little disrespectful for me. I think that's a little disrespectful for what he was supposed to be. He's supposed to be. like the Michael Jordan, you have a poster of Jesus on the wall. That's what I want to be like. But you don't let him get in the way of your relationship with God or nature or whatever, your spirituality. You know what I mean? Jen Johannsen: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, you know, I think I'm gonna say something that's gonna sound radical, but I think you're gonna catch on or it's gonna make sense. think Christianity, the religion, generally speaking, thwarts following the teachings of Jesus. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. Jen Johannsen: And I'll explain what I mean by that. ⁓ I think that the teachings of Jesus and the Buddha and other mainstream religions, originations of these were the same. And what these folks were teaching us, ⁓ I look at it terms of something called consciousness, which we can talk about. have like a scale kind of talking about human emotions that I can weave into our modern understanding of psychology and trauma. ⁓ But when we are in autopilot, or when we are in trauma responses that we're unaware of, or when we are operating under a lot of conditioned beliefs without examining them, we're operating from a place of blindness. And to me, the word sin has been translated from, I believe it's nine different words that have a variety of meanings. And the only word Jesus has recorded is having used as hemartia, which means to live blindly, to miss the mark, to miss the point of life. It's an archery term. that was morally neutral about an arrow going astray, misalignment to one's true self. It's how I interpret that and how a lot of people interpret that. ⁓ And I think it refers to the blindness of rigid thinking and not doing our own inner work, our own healing work, which ironically, the more fundamentalist the religion, the more someone gets trapped in that. Yeah. But hence, metanoia. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): I agree. Jen Johannsen: mistranslated in about the 300s, I believe it was St. Augustine, ⁓ metanoia meant to radically change one's mind or transform within. It had nothing to do with shame or punishment. That was human control being overlaid on an ancient text, the best I can tell. And if it wasn't, then we don't need this anymore because we know better as a human society now. ⁓ Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. Jen Johannsen: And the destination, salvation, meaning more closely liberation, to me that means from the prison of the mind, from the ego, from our blindness, from our distortion. So to me, it's distortion, ⁓ reflection, clarity. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. Jen Johannsen: which is an ongoing journey. I catch myself all the time being in an assumption, right? But I don't act on that assumption. I don't act on my knee-jerk emotional reaction. We've had situations, you probably know what some of them are behind the scenes with ⁓ all of us that are doing this work really intentionally on the left to bring about change. And there've been some misinterpretations, there've been some hard things, there've been some people who have misstepped. I move intentionally and work at ⁓ Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. Jen Johannsen: There was a situation recently, and I'm going to name who it was, but it was something racist that happened. Very, very, very racist. And instead of cutting that person out, I talked to a dear friend who's black and is very good at having these conversations. So would you be open to having a conversation with this person and helping them perhaps shed light on blind spots if they're open to hearing it? And she said, of course I would. Not many people can hold the space for that while holding accountability, right? It's not just this. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. Jen Johannsen: ⁓ It's very nuanced to be able to handle situation like that with emotional maturity. And this person ended up not ⁓ responding. Initially said they would and then they didn't and that's okay. And you know, I made the decision to have them pause from involvement in our chats for now, but I am keeping a line of communication open with this person so that when they're open to having those conversations, they know I'm here. hard and it does not. Accountability is incredibly important to me, whether it's deconstructing from MAGA or deconstructing from religion or deconstructing from racism, which I know that I have plenty of blind spots when it comes to race. I just bought this book that I'm really excited to jump into. And I had a very privileged upbringing. And ⁓ same friend of mine, I was asking what would be the best way to identify my own blind spots. But. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. Jen Johannsen: And I don't think everybody's meant to be a bridge-builder, if you will, but something that I feel is deeply part of my own purpose is to be able to, with healthy boundaries around my own energy, hold space for people who are coming out of toxic belief systems, whether that's religion or white supremacy or projecting their own traumas. ⁓ Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): you Jen Johannsen: And it's something that I have to do in doses so that it doesn't affect me negatively, but it's something that I ⁓ strive to do in this space. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah, and What I find interesting is the more rules you put on anything, whether it's religion, your country, going to school, the more rules, it seems like those rules divide us more. Jen Johannsen: I think the rules are an unconscious need for control to a large degree where, you know... Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah. Jen Johannsen: I'm going to I have a bunch of books next to me here that will end up kind of like holding up as we go. But this is this is my all time favorite book. It's called A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle. And it lays out of this arc ⁓ being sort of what calls like driven by or unconsciousness or unawareness. Ego being I asked Chat GPT earlier to give me like a one sentence ⁓ thing because thought it might be helpful. ⁓ The way describes it is it's a mind made sense of self that clings to past future and separateness. To me, this is the arc that Jesus and the Buddha and the others were teaching, how to then recognize that and do the work towards integration. So, you know, on the side of the ego, ⁓ you're often in the past and the future at the same time, and it causes a lot of guilt and anxiety and all these things wrapped into one. Whereas when we're in our more authentic selves or whatever you want to call it, we're more present. It's a privilege to be able to do, like I said, like, The amount of day-to-day stress most people have to survive right now does not allow for the kind of work that needs to be, like that, it requires time and energy and space and sleep to be able to do this amount of healing work. And I've been very privileged to be in the position to do that. So I try to weave that in everywhere I can because nothing that I say is ever prescriptive, it's more observational. ⁓ But yeah, I think a lot of that rule, creating pattern. is based out of fear and scarcity and ego-driven need to cling to a thing versus showing up in a way where, you know, in the group, the chat that I created that has all these candidates and creators and like people, I consciously show up in a way that makes it a team environment and a collaborative environment. And when that feels like it's getting off, I consciously think about how to kind of either ask someone kindly to perhaps have a conversation separately outside of that group if it's getting too, because we're allowed to disagree. That's not that's not it at all. But there have been times where people have been really fired up about a thing. And I want to keep that chat a place to have constructive, more solution oriented, ⁓ you know, forward moving kinds of conversations. It's just like a healthy boundary type of thing. But ⁓ I don't have rules for that group. I have a one pager and it's like an honor code kind of thing. And one of the things I'm going to take this. OK. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Sure. Jen Johannsen: and hold up another book. One of the things that... Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): I'm gonna run out of paper. I'm writing all that. Jen Johannsen: Good thing this is being recorded. ⁓ Richard Rohr is one of my favorite Christian authors, probably the only one that I've truly enjoyed because he has such a, to me he looks at Christianity as the Christ consciousness, which is something universal. Christ not being Jesus' last name, Christ being the transformation of consciousness that all of these people describe, that Eckhart Tolle describes, that plenty of people alive today have described in different ways. ⁓ But. ⁓ What were we just talking about? Rules. I had a point related to his work. We can cut out this part where I glitch. ⁓ Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): we were talking about. No, it's okay. ⁓ I leave in all my twitches or all my glitches. Jen Johannsen: Perfect. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): I think we were talking about the book and breaking away from the ego and Christ is the original sin. Jen Johannsen: I know what was. Original sin. Original sin was added by, again, I think it was St. Augustine in like the 300s, 400s. It was not originally a belief. Part of our, and that is a control tactic, period, full stop. Telling people that they're. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah. Well, that whole St. Augustine, his go at rewriting the Bible was just... Jen Johannsen: that. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): that. Jen Johannsen: As was the whole Nicene Council in 325, I think it was, where when Christianity became the dominant religion of ancient Rome, and it's like, okay, instead of it being about some kind of transformation, and I don't know if this was the actual conversation, but it became about having a certain belief. It became about an ego construct, not an internal transformation. And most of modern Christianity is based on Paul. not Jesus. But in this book, one of the things that he says that really really stuck with me is to have this idea deeply embedded in society, even people like me who weren't raised in a particularly religious household, that the first thing is to mistrust that people are inherently bad or wrong or depraved or whatever it is. This idea of original sin. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah. Right. You're born a sinner. Jen Johannsen: It's incredibly problematic. And the idea to love, that creates so much self-loathing and like so much of a negative place that we're starting on when we do our own kind of healing work versus starting from a place that's maybe we have situational traumas and things like that, but that... Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): So I'm already bad? I just showed up. Jen Johannsen: That gives us such this like a negative place to have to start that work from and versus what he says is, you know, he believes in original goodness. And it wasn't until I read this that I was like, so do I. And I always have. I believe we're born or conceived or whatever you want to say when a consciousness enters our body, which I don't personally think happens immediately, but I know that I don't know. I know that I don't know. ⁓ Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. . Jen Johannsen: But I think our consciousness when it enters our body is inherently good. But we experience traumas even in the womb. The physiological things that are experienced or whatever, like create physiological chemical reactions for a growing fetus that still affect how we're wired at a nervous system level when we're born. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): And you know that we're passing memories from generation down to generation. There we're learning that we're learning that. Jen Johannsen: It has a name. I think it's called epigenetic imprinting or something like that. But yeah. And it's not just memories, it's like embedded patterns, because if we don't take the time to pull back. But anyway, coming back to the idea of original goodness, it was just such a light bulb thing for me, because you can't love your neighbor as yourself if you're taught to hate yourself. So it's just this whole unfulfilled, like, right? And you can't love yourself. You truly can't if you believe you're sinful. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah, something like that. Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you think you're a sinner, you're gonna believe that your neighbor's a sinner. Jen Johannsen: Yeah, exactly. And then you're going to do it in kind of scarcity and like hoarding and gripping rules versus the way that I intentionally operate this or, you know, have have put the ethos together for this group is leading with trust, leading with original goodness. It's a it's an honor code type of thing. I don't take a deep dive into anyone's FEC filings. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): And you're not giving them a chance. Yeah. Jen Johannsen: I didn't understand money in politics in the beginning and there are a couple people in there that I'm pretty sure have accepted corporate PAC and foreign interest money that I interviewed way in the beginning and I haven't asked them to leave. If it becomes an issue, we'll figure it out as a group. We'll see what's most high integrity thing and if I ask those people to not, they're not people who are like super involved in it and I think that's totally fine but like the idea to have the through line be ⁓ grassroots funding came not in the beginning because this sort of organically, so let me tell that story real quick. the story of how this candidate group came about because I feel like that's relevant here and leading with the idea of trust and goodness and collaboration and not being a hierarchy being something where we are like I took leadership advisor out of my Instagram account title this morning so I was like I don't want to position myself as above ever. It just isn't me it never was me but I just didn't know what else to call myself and people kept asking. Now I just say I work with grassroots candidates for the House and Senate. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Jen Johannsen: And I do some private consulting work on the side, because everything I do in that group and that you see online is unpaid work and it's deeply meaningful and worth it for me. But this came about because I was trying to leave dentistry for forever. I hated it. About two years. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): And you did it for so long Jen Johannsen: I did it for so long. I graduated from general school in 2013. I finished my residency in 2014 and moved to Lynchburg, Virginia, where Liberty University is, and practiced for 12 years. I think it was 2014 to 2025. 11 years. Yeah. And. It was about two years into private practice that I got comfortable enough with the procedures to have the day to day not be just a shit show in my like stress physiology or just like running around and doing things and trying to do a good job. And, know, you have to present confidently. You're a doctor, but you're like a new doctor, but you don't want to come up. It's all this stuff, but you don't want to be inauthentic all the, at least for me, that's important. All this huge learning curve. I remember finally coming up for air and looking around and being like, do I even like this? And I'm so. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah. Jen Johannsen: I guess, I guess proud of myself that even then before I had done all this work on myself that I've done now that I was able to admit to myself, no, I don't. And it started a journey of starting to pursue some other things. And I always saw myself doing something that was a blend of personal development, growth, but from a place of subtraction, not from piling on more skills necessarily, but from a place of stripping back what wasn't ours in the first place. And strategy and tactical and that kind of thing. Like I'm both, I'm both sort of more the abstract and the more concrete. And I started to do some business coaching and marketing work for other dentists. I did that for a little while in 2017 and 2018. I was largely building out ⁓ Facebook ads for them. I did a lot of learning around how to do really effective strategic marketing and the energy I brought to it, at least tried to bring to it, was something Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. Jen Johannsen: unique that didn't feel ⁓ salesy because high integrity sales and marketing to me is nothing more than connecting a problem to a solution with with really good communication and integrity. It's not about convincing. It's not about forcing, but it is about it is the responsibility of the person doing the selling, if you will, to be able to ⁓ clearly communicate what it is that they offer in a way that the other person hears it. And ⁓ one of my favorite niches was people who did infant laser tongue tie releases. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Hmm. and intentions. Yeah. Yeah. Jen Johannsen: massive problem that new moms sometimes face who can't nurse because their babies have lip or tongue ties. And it's often misdiagnosed or undiagnosed unless people have a boatload of training. And so I sought out doing marketing for the people who had that training. And I knew what to look for in the training to help them communicate it in a way that the person on the other end needed to hear it to be like, ⁓ my gosh, that is, that's. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Okay. Jen Johannsen: And that's high integrity all across the board, right? There's someone with an incredible skill set, but they don't know how to communicate, and someone with a massive problem that doesn't know where to look for solution. ⁓ And I got burnt out pretty quickly. then, ⁓ so I didn't do that for super long period of time, and I ended up getting pregnant with my first child pretty soon thereafter. ⁓ But around the same time, I had the opportunity out of the blue through a patient to do, ⁓ I coached Miss Universe contestants on their interviews. And I loved it. I loved it. These women who they're. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): That's a unique gig. Jen Johannsen: Right? And it wasn't something that I could say on a resume. have X, Y, experience to have this qualification. But a patient and I connected and he's like, hey, and I didn't believe this guy at first. I looked him up and I was like, ⁓ this is real. But he has this business, this program where he has women from all over the world come to this area like once a year and they do like like a training kind of thing. And. ⁓ Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah. Jen Johannsen: It's, so I came in to help with the interview part in terms of presenting in a way that was like confident and not overcompensating and how to answer questions with more clarity and this kind of thing. And it was so cool, I loved it. ⁓ So didn't do anything outside dentistry and raising my kids for a long time and I'll hustle to pay off debt. because I knew that if I was debt free, I'd have a lot of choices. And we off our mortgage when I was 35, which is really cool. Paid off my student loans in a couple of years, paid off my mortgage when I was 35. Thank you. So that was a big part of my journey. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. Nice. Congratulations. The student loans is a big one. Jen Johannsen: It was $170,000 and I paid it off in about two and a half years. And I don't say that to be boastful. say that because in dentistry there's a higher income potential. I say that to shed light on a different approach to things that might build belief for somebody. I've done a lot of writing about this. I have a blog that I haven't updated in forever, but it's grounded hyphen now.com. And I've shared a lot of this journey on there. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah. Jen Johannsen: Fast forward to about a year and a half ago, started to want to actually leave dentistry and my kids are old enough now that I could do it in a way that was more sustainable. And I've done enough of my own work to not just immediately burn out the way I had in the past with entrepreneurship. I started doing business coaching for solo entrepreneurs, primarily in the form of running group programs. And it was very specific, low-hanging fruit skill sets that people needed, ⁓ like how to make their social media not only better, ⁓ Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. Jen Johannsen: the workflow easier because people can get down a rabbit hole of like, where do I spend my time? ⁓ my God, I just spent all day online and I didn't do anything. Right. And high integrity sales skills and then all of the inner work, the burnout, the self doubt, the imposter syndrome that comes up when you try to do anything new. So it was, you know, a less is more approach. It was not hustle business coaching. was like, how did we be strategic and stay in integrity with ourselves? Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, for real. Work smarter, not harder. Jen Johannsen: Yeah, loved it. So a lot of my account was talking about. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah, it's a thing. Jen Johannsen: time freedom and financial freedom. And to some degree, emotional freedom. And by that, mean freedom from the prison of our mind of these thoughts that get us trapped in like, wow, my worth is dependent on how much I'm doing. So I need to just do, do, do, do, do. Because that is the true pattern behind a lot of burnout or the inability to say no and feel good about it, not the actual amount of work on our plates. Right? That's a byproduct of the unconscious pattern. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah. Jen Johannsen: So alongside talking about time freedom, financial freedom, and emotional freedom, at some point as things started to, you know. all the things that are happening now. could not talk about basic human rights freedom. It felt very frivolous to not address how deeply basic human rights freedom matters to me. I did my first candidate interview in June last year with someone who's no longer running, but I was connected to him through a friend. he was 37 at the time. And it was the single most hopeful part of a large swath of time for me. And Kat Abakzale was already on my radar. Deja Fox was already running for that special election. in Arizona. And there were a few other people. I don't remember who it was in the early days. I think Bernard Taylor, that was the other one in the early days. And I remember thinking this is a movement. Like this is a pattern and I'm clocking this. I know it's early, but this is a pattern. This is going to be the swell of people. And Bernard was one of my next interviews, Josh Turrick, who's a, he's, he's Spina Bifida. He's been wheelchair bound his entire life. He's running for the USN in Iowa. He was one of my early interviews. My feed started to populate. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. Jen Johannsen: candidates for the House and the Senate. And I use the term grassroots now. I don't think they were all like these initial people were all grassroots, but at some point it was people who were stating clearly in their profile that they were not taking corporate PAC or foreign interest or any kind of influential money. Grassroots candidates for the House and the Senate. These were not local races or state races. So I started to do all these interviews and after the Charlie Kirk assassination, Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): which is huge. Jen Johannsen: I, and a few weeks after that I moved out of my house, I'm now in an apartment, I'm going through a big shift in my personal life too, and I found out that my dental job was ending because of ⁓ the owner was selling the practice, but I knew it was gonna happen at some point, but every part of me, even though I didn't know what it meant, said lean into the candidate stuff. And I did the signal chat started with four candidates. was Jeremy Whalen's idea, actually. He's a candidate in Massachusetts. And I meant it to be a way to just connect them to each other so they didn't burn out. But within a few days, I started to run it like I had run group business coaching stuff in the past, where a few people would be like, oh, video editing is so annoying and I don't have anyone else to do it. And I can't afford to pay like, then I'll be like, okay, download this app, hit this button, do this thing, and then you're done. Like, and that's what I would do. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Okay. Yeah. Jen Johannsen: do with business coaching, where I would point to the tools and the resources and the steps to do a hard thing in a simple way. And I would respond to it in the moment. It wasn't prescriptive, like, oh, go do this today. It was like, OK, here's a pattern that a lot of people are struggling with. Here's a way to go through that. But also, let's workshop it together. Like, I'm not prescriptive. Like, if anyone else has insights, please share them. But Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah. Yeah. Jen Johannsen: And then it just grew. And after we did, we did a big press conference with citizens impeachment at remove the regime in November. And I think it was 11 of them that spoke. And then it got a lot of attention and we had a lot of people come in and volunteer and offer their skill sets for free. And then I started to meet people like you. And now it's about 80 candidates. And I think there's over 160 people in the chat, but it's a team member for a lot of them, a candidate, and then several intentional influencers and organizers. So that's how this came to be. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Hell yeah. And it's great. It's great. Because when you are looking at all of these political ads, it's all these folks with all this money that normal people know for a fact that their best interest will not be looked out for. And we have this group of candidates that this is where this is where I got excited. to be a part of this group was I have a big mouth and I will say just about anything that needs to be said. I don't care. If it's the right thing, if it's going to lead us or if it's going to help everyone look at the point where we need to be looking at, I will say it. I'm that dude. And I see this group of people that are trying their best to do the right thing, but they're not getting any media help. Or they don't have the money to, like you said, to edit a video or to create content or, or, or I'm that guy. let's go. I throw you on my back and I take you across the river. Jen Johannsen: and Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): whatever the hell it is, I know that's me. I like doing that. And so being able to leverage my powers for good is what, how I've been explaining it to people. I'm leveraging my powers for good because we need to do this change. It needs to happen. I am personally tired of hearing all the same stuff. We're going to do this and we're going to do this. And then Jen Johannsen: Yeah. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): You know, when I, I tell this story often when I was in high school, things were scant. Then along my career, I saw a high school at the rich kid level and in the rich kid neighborhood, I worked there and I felt ripped off because my high school is struggling. And I saw a video where a young lady was talking about how they closed the library. ⁓ Jen Johannsen: Yeah. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): because they couldn't afford a librarian. So when you compare those stories to what I know is happening in the good neighborhoods, I know something needs to happen. And so when you reached out, you said, we got some candidates that might need a little ⁓ interviewing or a little help, whatever, whatever. You know, I showed up with bells on. That's me. That's my job. That's what I'm good at. Let's talk. Let's get your, let's get your voice out there. Let's get your point of view out there. Whether or not we agree or disagree that part, we'll figure it out along the conversation. But for the most part, I have done all of these conversations and everyone seems to be coming from the right side of the argument, from wanting to genuinely make things a better place for everyone. Jen Johannsen: Yeah, because it's from a place of realizing, I think, and this is to talk about the arc of like ego to more clarity or distortion to clarity. When you're in a place, I think of more emotional clarity or more emotional maturity, you realize that so many things that we think are zero sum game types of things are not. That's an illusion we create. When you come from a place of abundance on things like human rights, you know that it's a rising tide floats all ships type of thing. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. Right. Right. Right. Jen Johannsen: And, ⁓ you know, one of the things that when people use the word agree and disagree, one of the theories I have, I have a book outlined and I'll get to it in a minute. I think among this group of candidates, by and large, when the goal of everybody is to put human beings first, there's a natural sense of humility that goes along with that. And what I mean by that is, you know, nobody disagrees on the fact that universal health care is going to help humans in that group. What they might have is different ideas as to how to get there and how to pace it, but they don't have a right, wrong approach. They'll be like, ⁓ my gosh, I never thought about that caveat. You're right. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. Jen Johannsen: But how do we actually work through that? It's collaborative. ⁓ So disagreement can be healthy, can be good, et cetera, but when the goal is pure, there's very little of it that arises because you can approach somebody else's thought about the thing with curiosity versus right wrong. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. And that's what you should. That's what you should do. You know, you, the more you read, the more you learn and the older you get, the more you realize you don't know anything. Jen Johannsen: Yeah. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): And anyone who comes to you and says, have all the answers and my way is the way and I promise and everything is going to be great because of the way that we did this. That's not it. This is a we conversation. This is a we, you know why? Because rich people don't know what it is not to have. They don't know the struggle. Poor people don't understand just how much power they have. Jen Johannsen: Yeah. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): and they don't understand just how this is gonna sound. bad and it doesn't and I'm not meaning to it but getting out of a bad situation is easier than you think. You just have to move your feet in that direction. There's going to be challenges. There's going to be obstructions. There's going to be things that there's going to be doubt. There's going to be all those things. But I promise you, if you keep your feet moving one day, you're going to get up over that hill and all of a sudden there's going to be momentum and you're just going to be, it's going to be easier. And then you're going to turn around and you're to be like, yeah, that wasn't that bad. I did that. I did that. Jen Johannsen: And to come back to the idea of the ego constantly living in the past and the future, I think part of how we get stuck before we kind of realize that that's to some degree an illusion is we try to plan that whole path and we're like, ⁓ that's overwhelming. I can't do it. I, yeah, and I don't know what it is. This isn't something I like. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): And that's the biggest mistake, yeah. Jen Johannsen: necessarily learn to do. It's something that I've practiced and I've been in a privileged position where I've been able to practice it, but I've gotten really good at making hard decisions and trusting the process, which is part of how I've, I think, ended up in the place I am in a lot of different ways. But ⁓ for me, the hardest part leads up to the decision, because I'm discerning about big decisions. But once I make the decision, there's relief and there's this presence of Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. Jen Johannsen: experience and thought and I kind of trust the process and I look for cues and clues in my environment. ⁓ But whether it's been leaving a job or leaving an entire career or some of the changes in my personal life, I've been able to be very discerning up until the decision and then make a clear-headed decision and then trust that the path on the other side of it is going to appear. ⁓ Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. Jen Johannsen: And I'm going to bring up how privileged I am over and over over over because I have money and time and lots of things that a lot of people don't have. And yet ⁓ there's still a recognition of how much our thought loops keep us stuck that I think is a healthy thing that we can all ⁓ set ourselves free of to some degree. Does that make sense? Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): And I tell you, coming from where I come from, I come from a mom, single mom of two boys. Our dad was kind of in the picture, kind of not in the picture. We'll get into that another day. In, if you know, if you know Illinois, if you know, there's, was born in Chicago, did some time, did some time. Spent some of my time in Rockford, which is like, when I was a kid, it was, it was consistently voted worst city in the United States. And I lived half a block away from the projects. Jen Johannsen: you Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): So I got to see police brutality. got to see, you know, ⁓ the neighborhoods that I wasn't allowed to go in. I've been through all of that. But you know, I learned that in early age, just put yourself in a situation and like you said, trust the process. And I went from the projects to Silicon Valley. understanding that if I, this is where, I don't know if it's ego or whatever, but this is where, this is how I learned to control my ego was understanding that I was good enough to put myself in a situation to figure it out. Like I said, keep your feet moving. Jen Johannsen: Hmm. Yeah. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): So I figured it out and I kept figuring it out and I kept figuring it out and I kept figuring it out. understanding that I needed my ego to figure it out. But understanding that if you weren't careful, the world is going to check your ego. So when you, you know, you're feeling pretty good about yourself and you go to throw a party and no one shows up. Jen Johannsen: Yeah, and I want to make that distinction real quick. ⁓ There is a way to be confident from a place of humility and it comes with self-awareness. That's the missing link. So when I use the word ego, I mostly mean it in a sense where someone is not self-aware and they're projecting confidence that isn't. And sometimes we do need to intentionally put on a more confident face than we have. But when there's self-awareness involved, I don't think it's ego. think that's having an authentic sense of self-worth and Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. Jen Johannsen: and doing new things and putting ourselves out in the world to show our gifts. And ⁓ one of the things that I often pick up on an entrepreneurship space is undercharging for our gifts, that kind of thing. Like that's not ego. That's a help-sensitive self-worth, ⁓ which is the opposite of ego. But it comes with a degree of to land in the place where you can be. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): ⁓ yeah, that's a big one, especially for artists. Yeah. Jen Johannsen: confident and sovereign and humble, kind of like all in one. I don't think people land there without going through some stuff. and having to, and like, we're all going to continually have these things that happen that make us like, be like, whoa, like, I mean, I've had plenty of those in this last year as I've gotten to this path and gained visibility and I'm doing something different. And I'm on a lot of people's radars that I'm not aware of until I walk into a space. And I went to the California Democratic Party convention a few weeks ago and the first person I talked to was like, ⁓ my gosh, I follow you. It's like, have 18,000 followers. How do you follow me? Like, I don't have a huge following. I do long form content that doesn't go viral. Like, how do you know who I am? Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Same. Jen Johannsen: I'm still not used to that. But, you know, it, ⁓ but I've had plenty of moments where I've had to be like, ⁓ shoot, like people are watching me more than I realize. but it's, it's good too. Like, I don't think as much as I've talked about this whole like journey, there's never an actual destination. It's, kind of like cyclical, but I think that we can spend less and less of our time. And it's not binary either where you're like in your ego or you're not. It's not that at all. It's almost like ⁓ this like blend of emotions and thought processes we have. And the more I think self-aware we can be about what's running the show and kind of train ourselves to be in a more ⁓ self-aware, discerning, internally reflective. place without being hyperventilant and overly critical, because that's like the negative side of that that some people get into, myself included at times. But we can land in a place where we're more clear. And that to me is what the next generation of leaders will do differently and why I firmly believe it will be OK. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah. I think just the plain exposure to how bad things have gotten or like the repetitious, the pattern that is lying to the American public, taking their money to do you corny stuff. And now we're actually seeing it in real time that like they're leveraging our taxes to bomb other countries. One of the things that I do enjoy about this younger generation coming in is they don't see money the same way like when I was a kid and all the people, all the powerful people, all the politicians, they see the money in one way and this younger group just doesn't want to leverage money in that way. And I am here for it. They wanna actually help people actually solve problems. Jen Johannsen: Yeah. Yeah, they do. And it's, I don't know if you have this experience because we've both interviewed so many of them at this point, but like almost every time I do an interview, almost every single time I'm blown away. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): And that's great Jen Johannsen: And the times that I'm not blown away, like it might just be because I recognize that one of us is tired. It's not that they're not an awesome person, right? But like without fail, I do these interviews and I'm like, like Matt Conroy, I wish I had met him sooner because his primary is Tuesday. I did his interview like. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah, right. He's so good. Jen Johannsen: A few days ago, I didn't know he lost his dad in 9-11. didn't know he, like his whole background, his professional background, Reed Showalter, he's another one in Illinois, that I just didn't interview for. His professional career as an attorney and all the things he stands for and what he's doing on the ground, boots on the ground outside of that detention center. And these leaders are, oh my gosh, I talk about Kevin ad nauseam if he looks at any of my interviews. I about Kevin Ryan all the time. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah. Kevin Ryan, let's throw his name in there. Kevin is, yeah, Kevin is amazing. Kevin is so nerdy about law that, listen, exactly, exactly. And he's so friendly. I have zero qualms about getting into a political debate with anyone knowing that I got his number and I can text him at any time. Bring it. Jen Johannsen: but he can communicate it and he's human. And I could say that about several of them. And for the ones who don't have that degree of policy, he's one of the most, I would say, policy fluent. That's like a term I've started to use because a lot of these candidates are deeply passionate about policy because they can see the change it brings about. Not all of them are policy as policy fluent as Kevin. And I don't think they need to be because they have other great strengths and life experiences that they bring to the table. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah. Jen Johannsen: And when you have that humility and sense of collaboration, you're going to defer to people like Kevin and know that, you know what I mean? It's a both and, we need both. ⁓ But yeah, it's. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Right, right. I don't always need the answers. know where to go. I, as long as I know where to go to get it. I'm not good at, I'm not good at policy. I'm not good at breaking things down like that. I'm good at asking the guy and then making it palatable for normal people to be like, ⁓ okay, that makes sense. Jen Johannsen: And how much less stressful is life? Yeah. I'm a big picture thinker for the most part, and I can do some of the detailed granular work, but I know that there's other people who can do that work better than I can. I think in patterns and trajectories and how do we get, I'm very good at getting people to kind of move in the same direction because they see a vision from a place of integrity and obviously want to do the right thing, I'm not that good at being the one to do all of the little follow-up details. Hilarious admission, I hate event planning. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And love doing it. You guys, meanwhile, she plans so many events. Jen Johannsen: Well, I did the one and there was a lot of stressful things that happened and that's part of why we took the big step back. ⁓ But now what I'm doing is as candidates have things that they themselves are planning, I'm not gonna be able to obviously make it every single one, but we're probably gonna do some, I'm gonna be up in upstate New York for my kids spring break in a few weeks. So I reached out to the Connecticut candidates, Joseph, ⁓ I talked to Andrew Rice on the phone last night and Kyle. Ooh, I'm gonna talk about Connecticut in a second in general, cause I'm super excited about their races. But... ⁓ Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): I'm about to schedule an interview with that collection of people. Yeah. Jen Johannsen: Love. Talk to them about how nobody there has never been a primary election in Connecticut ever. All right, we'll get to that in a second. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): What? Jen Johannsen: But like, we're probably gonna do something on a weeknight when I'm there that they're going to plan. And I'll come and I'll get a few of the creators who are sort of local on board. Like Matt Gordon might come. I'm sure we'll reach out to a of the other people who are based in the Northeast. Katie Bansal might come even though she's in New Jersey. She's running for Congress there. But Victoria Broderick has something in the works for her district in Tennessee this summer. But like, as long as they do the planning, I'm happy if I have the availability and if I know enough ahead, I plan for this stuff. I'll get the people excited and moving on the same team and wanting to come to the thing. And if someone else does the planning, then that's a win-win. All right, let's talk about Connecticut. So I didn't know this until I started doing this work this year, but there is a wildly different set of requirements to get on the ballot in different states and timeline. I'm sure you've learned this from some of these interviews, right? Like in Illinois, their signatures were due around Halloween. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Hahaha Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Jen Johannsen: and their elections on Tuesday. We already had the primary elections in North Carolina, Texas and Arkansas. Some of the states, they haven't even started their signature collection yet and their primaries are in August. And in Maryland, it's like $100 and zero signatures or something like that to get on the ballot. And Harry Jerrian is running against like 12 people as a result. In Connecticut, it's not a fee or if it is, it's not a big fee. It is about 4,000 signatures, I want to say, in a very small window of time with a whole bunch of caveats about who these people are and having it notarized and having like the last four, they're social or something. Like there's some crazy set of, so it's not just getting people signing a paper. It's, it's a very specific set of things in a very short period of time at a high volume as a deterrent, probably for people running against established people. There has, I hope I'm saying this correctly, cause this is, I was talking to Andrew last night, Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): ⁓ wow. Jen Johannsen: I don't think there has ever been a primary challenger in the state of Connecticut ever. So if any of the three of them makes it on the ballot, that'll be a first. And I think all three of them will. I've had conversations with all three of them more recently, Joe and Andrew, about how to have strategy in place for their 42-day sprint. I think they're looking to get about 130 signatures a day at a minimum, hopefully more, so that it's not a stress at the end. And that's doable. You just have to have some volunteers in place and systems in place. ⁓ But what I've told all three of them on these strategy calls is, in a way, you guys have it easier than I think a lot of the candidates right now, because you can have one sole focus. You can have one sole focus and then it's getting your signatures. Sure, go to events if you want to, do your social media stuff as you want to, but like you have one sole focus and if we can get you on the ballot, and I say we because we all look at this as a team effort, right? Like in that group we'll crowdsource who has people in Connecticut. It's not a big state geographically. They can help any of those candidates if they want to. ⁓ If we can get them on the ballot, and I think we will, all three of them. They will all go up against establishment Dems who take APEC money. In Andrew's case, his incumbent has been there for over 30 years, Rosa DeLora, I think is her name. ⁓ Joe Courtney, who's Kyle's incumbent. ⁓ has had some problematic voting when it comes to ICE. And Jim Himes voted no on impeachment. They all do the things that frustrate all of us, right? ⁓ In different degrees, in different ways. ⁓ Joe Courtney's, believe, over the age of 70, and Rosa's over the age of 80. ⁓ And not to be ageist by any means, as a broad, because Bernie still, he shows up. He's articulate. But when a person or a politician doesn't show up in their community and doesn't listen to their people and truly aren't serving their people, Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Right, right. Jen Johannsen: a correlation between age and time in office. That does not mean that there aren't exceptions to that. ⁓ But if we can get them on the ballot, which would end in what's 42 days from the beginning, it would end in mid-May. We still have until August to help them win a primary. And with how this is catching on in the creator realm, Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Jen Johannsen: of what we need to do to have people have the kind of success that Ashley Bell did in North Carolina's 10th or even Kaia Craikmore in North Carolina's fifth. He didn't win, but he had a ton of momentum on. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Kaya showed up, He got so many votes for his first go-round. Jen Johannsen: as a 24 year old. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah. And like, like grassroots, grassroots, like he came from his story is similar to mine. ⁓ and I was so proud of him and I, and I, I remind people that I'm old all the time. So when I say things like, I'm proud of you. I'm not trying to be condescending. I've seen a lot in my life. So when I see a Kaya Creekmore show up the way he did. Jen Johannsen: He did the work. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): You did something, Kaya. You accomplished something. That's huge. Jen Johannsen: I don't think anyone has ever, so he got more votes than Ashley. Ashley had five other challengers and he had one. She got like 14,000 something, he got 19,000 something votes for Congress as a 24 year old. And second father who had him when she was 15 or 16. I don't know if you knew that. Great, yeah. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): coming from a single mother. after being yeah yeah Jen Johannsen: And he's not worried about that. He's made content about that more recently. someone had done a breakdown of votes, cost per vote in terms of fundraised. And the post said it was $0.46 per vote. He said later, I think it was in our group chat, that was more like $0.33, because not all the votes had been counted yet. $0.33 per vote in a congressional primary. I can't imagine that there are no Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): against an incumbent that with lots of money with. Jen Johannsen: Well, and the guy he ran against who ended up winning Chuck Hubbard, he didn't, he's not the incumbent for as the House of Representatives. It's Virginia Fox, who's a Republican who's in her eighties. But the guy who he ran against in the primary was the only person on the Democratic ticket in the primary last time. So the district knows who Chuck Hubbard is just from a place of name recognition. And he raised about $225,000. And it was like a little under $9 per foot versus Kai is 33 cents. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): ⁓ that's right, that's right. 33 cents. Jen Johannsen: I mean, to me, if he wants to run again, we've got this. He's got this. And that's up to him. ⁓ That's a decision he doesn't have to make right now. But. ⁓ Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): I hope he does. Jen Johannsen: I'm going to talk to Etienne Rosas tomorrow too, who had a similar situation in Texas where he, it was two people. He didn't win, but he did have a large percentage of votes on a very small amount of funds raised. And I'm excited to dig into that a little bit, but like, I think we are onto something collectively and I don't take ⁓ responsibility for like his success by any means, but collectively, I think we're onto something in terms of how to have them be kind of on the ground, doing the work in their community and have us collectively amplifying them with all these platforms and doing things a little bit differently and creatively. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah. And if people think that that's creepy, it's not. That's what the right wing has been doing. Like the jumping on Joe Rogan. Yeah. Yeah. That's why the Joe Rogan's came up on the news, the Andrew Schultz's and all those guys. They amplified this message that, that what we hear, we finding out that it's a lie. All those guys got lied to. Jen Johannsen: What, having podcasters amplify people? And the lack of true accountability is mind boggling. I mean, I've seen little clips of them trying to backpedal, but it's always like a half kind of accountability thing, which in my opinion kind of makes it worse. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah. And which is a perfect transition back to. And now we're learning that the heritage foundation and all of this outside money is going to fuel this war in the middle East. And there's a large chunk of people here that want this to happen because they're trying to do what they believe that is going to bring Jesus back. The second coming. Jen Johannsen: I'm so glad I got this around to this. All right. You want to talk about how the rapture was invented in the 1830s? Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Let's. Jen Johannsen: Okay, there's a man named John Nelson Darby who's from either Scotland or Ireland and he came up with his own interpretation in like the 1830s and the rapture was not a thing in Christianity until then. And it was again, like everything else, it was a fear based tactic to get people to comply. ⁓ And in the United States, ⁓ all of these things come up when like either, you know, church attendance is on the decline or whatever and people need a way to like reign in control again. But the rapture is not part of Christian Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah. Jen Johannsen: theology up until, ⁓ and I didn't know because where I'm from, I don't know anyone who believed that growing up. I thought that was kind of like, I didn't know people still believed in ⁓ creationism, naively, until I moved to the Bible Belt. I just thought that that was something that people let go of decades ago. ⁓ But like, the idea that the arrogance of this is the interpretation and I'm going to personally help orchestrate a divine event or something like that. Like the arrogance of that is a Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Like, wait, so wait a minute. God is promising you that he's coming back. But first you have to demolish all those, and let me tell you, what I see happening in Gaza, what I see happening in Iran is no different with the exception of the missiles. There's no difference than what's happening in the black and brown communities with the cops. They use the same language. They just got done saying that people that look like me are poisoning the blood of this country. They say the same thing about them. So, sorry if I don't co-sign to the bullshit that you guys are trying to do, but I see brown kids. All you have to do is wrap my head and I actually have one of those clothes. I can wrap my neck like this with one of those scarves that they wear and I look the same. I look the same. Jen Johannsen: White supremacy is so, I know that I know that I am only aware of the tip of the iceberg of how deeply embedded that is in all of our psyches and how much unlearning we all have to do. ⁓ But on the subject of the second coming of Christ, like what I think it could mean if it means anything at all. And again, assumptions. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. Jen Johannsen: our ego, ego is blindness or hemartia, the very thing Jesus was likely trying to teach us to transcend, right? Like if the whole idea is to recognize our blindness, recognize our ego, recognize we're arrogant and ⁓ land somewhere more humble, more nuanced, more clear, then they're failing at the journey big time. But anyway, ⁓ Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Right. Jen Johannsen: You know, the second coming, if it has what I think could be happening, and this is going to be drawing off of both of these books, is ⁓ I think that human consciousness evolves. And, you know, when different big landmarks in human history have happened, like fire or these massive things that we've had, they've happened at multiple times in the world at the same time among populations that wouldn't necessarily have had communication. I have the belief that's not held rigidly, because my beliefs aren't. I approach things with curiosity. But I do have the belief that our consciousness is connected in some way, and that there's all sorts of unconscious communication that we have as humans that's part of what makes us. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): same. Jen Johannsen: the species that we are in the most beautiful and toxic of ways. ⁓ But to me, God is somehow this collective consciousness that we don't understand and won't understand, and it's probably more than that, but it's part of that. And I think that consciousness evolves. And there are these tipping points where ⁓ we have these big ⁓ up levels in how we function as a human society. And I think we are in the midst of one of those tipping points right now. I think the second coming could mean that, and this is what he kind of describes in this book, A New Earth, is when a certain percentage of the population is functioning from that place of unconsciousness, ego, scarcity, black and white thinking, emotional maturity, whatever you want to call it, the collective is functioning that way. When a certain percentage of people ⁓ grow enough that they're not in that the majority of the time or they're self-aware when they kind of go back to that kind of thinking. And we come from a place of clarity. Like James Talerico in leadership is a perfect example of this to me. He comes from a place of clarity and sovereignty. And when somebody tries to put like a thought stopping cliche as a response to something he says, like Fox News does, or a, and that's like the, well, da, da, da, da, da. And they're trying to like just throw you off the subject and give some kind of saying that, or they, someone gets defensive or they just try to bring it back to transport. he stays really grounded in what he's trying to say and he's not, ⁓ he's not, he doesn't shame the other person, he's clear, right? ⁓ As more and more people land into a headspace that's more like that, ⁓ which is a whole spectrum, but like, Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. Right. Right. Jen Johannsen: The thought is there's this tipping point where you reach, and it's not half of human society. It's actually a relatively small percentage according to people in this sort of mystical space. But if enough people are that clear, it's so... obvious and healing and awakening and all these other things to enough other people. Like there's all there's Christians waking up out of fundamentalism. There's Texans waking up out of republicanism not representing what they think it represents all of these things. And James is the perfect representation of why that's happening. Right. So to me, the second coming, if anything, is this tipping point where the societal collective consciousness isn't operating from ego anymore. It's operating from clarity. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Jen Johannsen: Christ consciousness, if you will. Yeah. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah. You know, I'm going to explain. ⁓ I'm going to try to explain. This is my first time in public trying to explain what I think all of this stuff is. ⁓ I think it's like a mix between the Matrix and and something else, right? And video games. So I think Jen Johannsen: Yes? ⁓ Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): the whatever the magic is that makes me me makes you you you want to call it chi you want to call it consciousness you want to call it the Holy Spirit whatever it is whatever you want to call it I don't care that You basically, your spirit is in what you described, right? This collection of energy or whatever you want to call it, that would be God. then, you know, you, maybe you put 25 cents in the slot and then you come down to earth and you play the game. That's where like reincarnation makes sense to me. ⁓ Reincarnation was in the Bible at one point, you know, ⁓ again, going back to the the Nicaea. They took a lot of that stuff out because they were trying to convince you that you have one go at this and that was it. And you needed to be good. Right. Jen Johannsen: Mm-hmm. You needed to be under their control. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Right, right, and by good we mean under their control. Jen Johannsen: Right, ⁓ yeah, I get what you're saying, but in case anyone else is wondering. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah. And then we come down and then we learn and we, you know, like, and then that this is where you, know, if you haven't learned your lessons, you have to come back and learn your lessons and stuff like that. I don't remember previous lives and stuff like that, but I know, I know that I'm accidentally good at things that I've never done before. You know, so there's just different things. so yeah, like you come down and you Jen Johannsen: No, no, no, no. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): play the game of life and you have to learn to leave it better than how you found it. That's camping teaches you that hiking teaches you that picnics teaches you that anytime you're out in nature. That's the lesson. The lesson is leave it better than you found it. And so that's our job here on Earth. We have to whether it's mentally, whether it's environmentally, we have to come down and figure out how to leave this place a better place. Jen Johannsen: Mm-hmm. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): To me, that's religion, government, all those things. At the end of the day, that's what it is. And it's instilled in us because it doesn't, this game, quote unquote, game doesn't make sense until you have kids. Right when you have kids, for the majority of us, we think we need to leave this place better because my kids are coming through. That's how I see it. I don't need religion. I don't need you to tell me who's coming when, because I'm sorry, you guys, I was going to church in the 90s. I was going to church in the 90s. And there was a guy preaching and said, I don't know about the 80s, but I know we're not going to be seeing many of much of the 90s. I know Jesus is coming and here we are 2026. Jen Johannsen: You know I want to touch on real quick because we mentioned at the beginning is the weaponization of the Bible against the LGBTQ plus community. Mind if I go off on that tangent for a minute? So I am very aware of churches that welcome but don't affirm queer people. So for me it's not, and I don't go to church, but there's a lot of stipulations. If I were ever to have attended church it would have to like not believe in hell and all these other things. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Let's go. Yes, please. So church has don't ask, don't tell. Jen Johannsen: Well, ⁓ so... I feel like part of my purpose is to shed light on distorted thinking and when a church says we welcome but we don't affirm their quote-unquote sin, that's worse to me than just not having someone allowed into your space at all because it's psychologically really damaging to a person to feel welcomed. It's like a bait and switch but then actually you're not welcome. We're actually going to try to manipulate you and change you and we don't accept your whole personhood here. That's worse than just not including somebody in the first place in my opinion. think that's back to my research. But the word homosexual wasn't in any Bible in any language before 1946. Have we talked about this? Yep. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): I think we touched on it, but we've never gone in depth. Jen Johannsen: So here a little deep dive and I know we have to go in a minute but this is worthwhile. ⁓ Rocky Rogio, who's become a dear friend of mine, made a documentary about this a few years ago. It's called 1946 the Movie. You can find it on the, there's an Instagram account called 1946 the Movie, and the actual documentary is on Prime, and I believe it's on Apple as well. Along with a team of people, one of them being Ed Oxford, and I got to interview Rocky and Ed in person in September, and those interviews are about to come out on YouTube within the next couple of weeks. It's just taking us a little while to get them edited, ⁓ Ed is a gay man who grew up in a very conservative religious family and was suicidal a number of times and I think that was I think it's been multiple times. He's transparent about his story so whatever I'm sharing is stuff that he shared publicly but ⁓ they went through Ed and a woman named Kathy Baldock were the first people to ever try to go through the archives of the translation committee at Yale. In 1946, the word homosexual appears in the Bible for the first time ever in any language. Before that, there were times it said masturbators, sexual perverts, sexual abusers, all these other things. ⁓ Yes, surprise, no. ⁓ But these two Greek words, malakoi and arsinoikoi tie, that were for some reason blended together into the word homosexual. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): So the president. Jen Johannsen: Their question was why? What do these words mean? What do we know about what they mean? Malakoi is a little bit easier to define. ⁓ It means lazy, decadent, somebody who sits around and is lazy and is, ⁓ what's the word I'm looking for? Entitled. Arsenakoi tai ⁓ is harder to define, and it appears to be a word that Paul made up. Again, a lot of modern Christianity is based on the teachings of Paul, not Jesus, and they never met. And Paul's vision was something that largely went unquestioned, and he just shared what he wanted to share, and nobody knows. And we don't know. We don't know. We don't know. You know, we're basing this off of a vision that somebody had. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): We can't... Yeah, we can't... We... ⁓ Jen Johannsen: However long ago, you know, imagine how crazy it would sound if like I told you some vision I had now on this podcast and then 80 years from now somebody wrote it down in a book and 300 years from now was the first written Documented version that was recorded ever that was preserved and then two thousand twenty six years from now People were trying to decode that That's what we're talking about here that's exactly what we're talking about here. So anyway roughly Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): He Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the, and the author is like, we're just asking you to be good people. What are you doing? Jen Johannsen: ⁓ but. Right, the original person and like the people 2000, how many years in the future are like, no, this says it so it's true. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): No, we have to start wars. Jen Johannsen: Because yeah, no, it's crazy. when you remove afterlife, so in the evangelical community, being a good person is helping somebody go to heaven. But hell wasn't originally part of Christian theology either. It's a mistranslation of four words. So if you take out the afterlife being the goal, you realize that we're left to help one another. We're all we've got. And it completely shifts the thinking. Because the thinking, at least I think in a lot of the people near where I live, is you're being a good person if you're helping somebody go to heaven. But what if everybody goes? Or what if it doesn't exist? Who knows? What if God is restorative, not retributive? If God exists in the way we think it does. And I think that there's probably something that exists, but it's beyond anything any of us can comprehend. And it might be something that works in the level of physics and consciousness, a conscious, I don't know. Who knows? I don't think we're meant to understand it. But I don't think there's this human-like being that controls things at all. I just can't get on board with that thought. But back to the Malachoi and Arsenecoi thing. Yeah, yeah. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Right. Right. And let me sorry, let me interrupt. As a programmer, I understand that I can set up a world. I can hit run and I can walk away. That program will run. You know what I mean? So this is, I tell people that ⁓ I understand the God complex because I've worked with programmers before. They all think they're gods. Jen Johannsen: Mm-hmm. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): They all think they're gods. I promise you. They all think they're gods. Yeah, 100%. So if you think of, again, if you think of the earth as in life in general, as a game that someone possibly ran, let's just say that there is a person that programmed this. They walked away. Jen Johannsen: There's that ego again. There's that ego. They're joking, but they're kind of serious. Yeah. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): And the game is we have to figure out how to do this shit by ourself. That's the game. Anyway, go ahead. Jen Johannsen: No. So in our Sina Koytai, the only other uses of it are found in economic exploitation. So the thought process is that it's a term that means exploitation, which is very different than our modern understanding of consensual relationships among people with a specific sexual orientation. Sexual orientation wasn't understood until the last, like, the word homosexual was coined in the late 1800s. And the understanding of same-sex attraction or sexuality as an orientation wasn't Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. Jen Johannsen: removed as being like a psychological condition that needed fixing until like the early 1970s. So our understanding as a human society of this being like this is present in animal species, the 1970s, yeah. And gay people have always existed, like trans people have always existed. There's these several indigenous cultures that honored trans people and non-gender conforming people as the most wise because they represented both Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Again with the 1970s. Always. Always. Jen Johannsen: gender binaries in the same person. I think that's just stunning. ⁓ But in the documentary, they go through these documents and ⁓ Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. Jen Johannsen: they have a limited amount of time to do this. And toward the end of their week, they realize that there's this whole extra box of things that are on film, like real. Is that what it's called? Real is when it's like the old fashioned kind of film. And that was where they ended up finding the answer they were looking for. They couldn't find anything about that specific part of the Bible and why the decision was made to use the word homosexual until they found this series of letters between a... Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Jen Johannsen: pastor in Canada and the head of the committee and this man in Canada had written a letter and said I don't think this is accurate I just got out of seminary and these two Greek words this doesn't mean that this means something abusive not something that reflects how somebody's naturally born this is in the 1940s and Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm. Mm-hmm. Jen Johannsen: They ended up having a very respectful back and forth of a few letters and the head of the committee ended up saying, you're right and we will revisit this next time we convene. But this committee only convened every, I don't know, it was not annual year, even every other year. It was more than that. And by the time they reconvened, it wasn't brought up for whatever reason, probably because the four main versions of the Bible that are still the most commonly used versions had all been published with this mistranslation and it had become a politicized, weaponized thing. But when this documentary was made, which I want to say was 2021, they all I had was this man's name. And it was a very common name. His first name is David. I want to say his last name was like Walton or something very common. And yet they found him and he was still alive. He was 80 in his late 80s. He's since passed, but he's in it. And he's gay and he didn't come out until I think. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm. Jen Johannsen: I didn't know until they connected with the people who made this documentary and then he was finally comfortable being like, this is my lived experience but I also felt called into ministry. I just didn't share this part of myself because I knew I couldn't but I knew deeply that this is who I am and it wasn't wrong. ⁓ Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): I try to explain it to people. Again, I have ⁓ a ⁓ unique point of view because I have been a programmer. have quote unquote created worlds, but the delivery system was either, you know, on the internet or on an app. But I can set things up. I can give grass. I've built grass. ⁓ And I give it certain properties. You're this soft. And when you get chopped it, you know, like there's certain properties and certain it's true. And so you're able to, you know, I've done, I've done things like this too. I've done things where, you know, you have your, you have your working area, your stage. And I created certain dots. Jen Johannsen: No wonder you feel like that when you're doing Yeah, yeah. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): And I gave those certain dots, certain properties. You're going to be this color and this color represents whatever. And then you run it and then you just keep multiplying, keep multiplying and you see what the dots do. And then I'd go back and I add more properties. This time, this color is gay. This guy straight, this color is straight. This color likes everything. This color likes nothing. And then you run it. And then you see how it goes. so by doing all of these ⁓ programming exercises, I can understand why someone might be gay, why someone might be straight, why someone might be like both. There's asexual, there's don't touch me, there's don't touch me right now. You know what I mean? So I'm able to, by... Jen Johannsen: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): By leveraging some of my knowledge to do these little games for myself, I'm able to better understand people. Because in my own way, I created my own universe. And then, you you, you create a dot and it says that dot is violent. And then you see that dot going and I, you know, you have the dots moving around the screen and it's incredible to just watch how you can, you can create this stuff and you have a better understanding that, you know, like to simplify it and to get it away from the hot topic that is gay people. Jen Johannsen: Yeah. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): I hate melon. Watermelon, to me it tastes like cold vomit. But I don't hate people that like melon, water-dew melon. I'm like, here, you can have mine. Like, don't let it touch the pineapple. Jen Johannsen: Yeah. And that also, ⁓ you know, our culture especially ⁓ has so, and this comes back to evangelism and religion, has so much embedded shame about bodies and sex and sexuality. ⁓ I spent a considerable amount of time in Europe and several years ago I went to a beach in Spain that I did not realize was a topless beach until I got there. I didn't partake, but like I remember noticing how Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Ha ha ha. Jen Johannsen: on how nonchalant it was. And that's because when things aren't so suppressed, it's not as, ⁓ it's not a big deal. And we have so much internalized shame about bodies and sex and all these things. And largely, I think because of the impact of Western Christianity. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah, it's not a big deal. Yeah. Mm-hmm. When I was, okay, so I was 17 when I joined the army, when I signed the papers. I was 17 going on 18 and 18 right in there when I was in Germany. So you know I'm a damn fool, because an 18 year old boy is just a dummy. And I'm sitting here watching German television and they had a game show where if you got the question wrong, you had to take clothes off. Jen Johannsen: Hahaha Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): And it was like on at like nine o'clock at night or at a certain time, like their shampoo commercials, they showed, they showed all the bits. And I'm like, what? And all my German friends are like, so you've never seen boobs. Jen Johannsen: Yeah, yeah. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): And I'm like, well, now that you say it that way, like they're like, yeah, relax is just on TV. Relax. Jen Johannsen: I I love this little window into 18 year old Carlos's mind. This is great. No, really, it's so, you know, something that I've seen pop up on social media in the last ⁓ several months is that purity culture is rape culture. Because it completely, ⁓ you know, consent and ⁓ the like accountability and all these things, it's just such a... ⁓ I believe that to be true. I think that purity culture turns into rape culture because there's so much ⁓ that's suppressed and ⁓ Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Because it's easy. Because the people that are doing the bad stuff, the controlling, they want you to be clean or whatever for them. Jen Johannsen: Mm-hmm. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): because they're the powerful ones. They're gonna get what they want. And what they want is we're seeing it. The clean, untouched, they want to be the ones that are destroying this person. They wanna be the ones that are making them dirty. Jen Johannsen: which comes from a place of wanting to control. And it goes back to all the blindness and everything that we've been talking about this whole time. I do need to hop off in a minute, but one thing I wanna end with is that, in these conversations that I get into here, ⁓ Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. Okay. Jen Johannsen: I'm discerning about which ones I choose to pick up on because sometimes they're just draining, right? When you try to talk to people who are in a very rigid kind of thinking. But one of the things I like to ask sometimes, because I always bring it back to some other Bible verse or some other thing is just, when I ask this, I make a really big point to be in a grounded place myself so that it doesn't come off as the least bit snarky or anything like that. But I love asking the question, what? Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. Jen Johannsen: led you to decide to give the Bible authority in the first place? Some version of that question, because a lot of people I think in, and I'll say it like, I don't expect an answer. You don't have to think about that. You don't have to tell me, but like, the Bible's never had any authority in my life, and I don't say that to be. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. Jen Johannsen: blasphemous or any certain way. It's just that I, that's true of a lot of people. Like in Scandinavian countries, for example, that's the vast majority of the culture. They're not religious. And yet to me, ⁓ some of those cultures represent the Christ consciousness more than those that try the hardest because ⁓ there's presence. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. ⁓ yeah. Mm-hmm. Jen Johannsen: There's nurture, there's care within a community to a greater degree when we have it here. There's laws and rules and policies that make sense and actually help people, on the subject of abortion. ⁓ Denmark, I believe it is, has the lowest abortion rate per capita and outstanding results when it comes to things like ⁓ maternal and infant mortality. They're also like the lowest in that regard. Well, what policies led to that? ⁓ And they're very easy to name, because this has been studied. It's things like comprehensive sex ed, ⁓ universal health care, a wide array of birth control options that are available and free. Because not all birth control works and not everybody's body can handle every kind. ⁓ Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. Jen Johannsen: Also, that's a whole other conversation about that being a woman's responsibility. There's all sorts of directions that can take, ⁓ why does the Bible, why is it a source of authority in the first place? And my hope is to, ⁓ Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): You Jen Johannsen: show up in a way that makes people feel safe enough to ask questions over time. Even if it's just the tiniest little flicker of, she doesn't line up with what I've always been taught somebody who holds these beliefs would be. Right? She's loving. She has kids. She has friends. She's successful. ⁓ She's in a good head space, but I'm also human. And I also like share if I have a bad day, like I'm not someone who hides that either, but I do it in a way that's responsible and boundary, depending on the context, course. But like I aim to show up in my community in a way that's human. It's imperfect. I've had times that I've gotten frustrated. I've gotten times. I've had times that I've been upset by things. Before I learned enough about this, I was just constantly in shock in 2020 and 2021 as I learned how deeply embedded these beliefs are and how harmful they are. I didn't realize until it kind of was talked about more how racist and homophobic and misogynistic and all of the things the beliefs are of a lot of people in these evangelical communities. ⁓ Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. Jen Johannsen: But asking big questions without the expectation of an answer and helping people in the moment, conveying to them, even on a subconscious level, that they're safe and that they're enough, just as they are, is something that over time I've had a lot of success with. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah, I get it. Be Christ-like without being, without like taking it to the nth degree. Jen Johannsen: Yes! Be Christlike. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): There you go. We're in it together, you guys. I don't know how else to say it. And let me tell you, ⁓ there's a lot of gay folks that if they're not in heaven, I'm not going. There's a lot of trans folks that if they're not in heaven, I'm not going. There's a lot of people that don't believe in the Bible that if they're not in heaven, I'm not going. because I know I've seen the people that thump Bibles. I'm not going. I'm not going. What's happening in Iran, I'm not going. If that's what you consider your God and what God is expecting of you, I'm not going. My God doesn't make it that hard. My God wants you to be a good person, to leave it better than how you found it. If the way I'm living my life isn't good enough for your God, I'm good not going. I always go to the t-shirt that I saw that said, with so many religions, there's a lot of y'all going to hell. There's a lot of people getting it wrong. So how are you going to hold people feet to the fire when you can't even get it wrong or get it right? It's just crazy. It's just crazy. So. Jen Johannsen: But we can provide an alternative where the transformation isn't about what happens when you die and following rules. It's about waking up out of our blind spots and seeing a much more joyful way to live for that individual on the other side of this journey, as hard as it is. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. Yeah. And then, you know, bringing it home to what, what our efforts are doing, Jen, we need to vote in people that understand that all of us need the space. If you want to practice religion, you can, you can practice religion, how you want, where you want, when you want, with whom you want. And if you don't want to, you don't have to, because let me tell you something. Jen Johannsen: Yes. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): with the influence that I've had in my life, the seventh day is the Sabbath. Six days, shout out labor and do all your work. But on the seventh day, that's the Sabbath. So now you got a bunch of people that are forcing people to study or to worship on Sunday. To me, that's one of the biggest rule breaks. That's why I can't co-sign to your stuff. You can't even live up to your own rules. And I keep saying this, I keep reminding, and with this one we can wrap it up. Religious people thumping Bibles harder than anybody else, you're scaring people away from faith. You've scared me away from your faith. And I was taken to church and I was ingrained, you know, so... You guys need to relax a little bit because you're scaring people away from other people and the right way of doing things and the community that we're supposed to be building. So there, I know you gotta go, Jen. Thank you so much for taking time to come and hang out and helping me, because you know, I'm on my path. I'm figuring things out, and you're a wonderful, wonderful help, and I'm glad that you exist. Jen Johannsen: I'm glad that you exist and I cannot wait for the day we get to meet in person. Hopefully next month. Talk to you soon. Thank you so much. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): for real. Okay, and with that everybody, we're out.