Alex Hormozi Explains Why He Left Christianity & It Makes No Sense

This is the moment that stopped me in my tracks.

Watch this.

I definitely made a conscious effort. So when I was like 19 or 20, I became a born again Christian. The dunk, the whole thing was like, oh my God, life's amazing. Jesus is great. And then I ended up falling away from that because I was like, I don't know if this is true.

Alex Hormozi’s Story of Becoming and Leaving Christianity

Alex Ormosi, a former born again Christian explains why he left the faith. And at first it sounds convincing until you slow it down. What follows is a huge philosophical and theological mess. So let's get right into it.

Welcome back to Wise Disciple. My name is Nate and I'm helping you become the effective Christian that you are meant to be, which includes understanding why people deconstruct and whether or not those reasons are justified.

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One of my favorite sayings, probably like if I had one thing on my tombstone, it would be a permutation of a quote by Orson Scott Card, which is, we question all of our beliefs, except for those that we truly believe and those we never think to question.

That's a good quote.

Right. So it's like we like.

Is that true? As human beings living our lives, do we question only some of our beliefs, but not the ones that we hold near and dear to the chest? I think so. I think that describes a lot of us in most circumstances.

I don't think that captures the full of human experience because we can find ourselves in scenarios where one day we have a crisis of meaning or a crisis of consciousness or identity or whatever. And now all of a sudden we are questioning cherished beliefs that we held near and dear.

Right.

But I'm tracking him so far.

Like, oh, of course I'm opening to question my beliefs. It's like, what's trauma? Like when someone's like, I was traumatized, it's like, were you? Or do you just choose to label this trauma? And then now you've fucked up the rest of your life because you call it trauma.

When 200 years ago, it was life. And a thousand years ago, having your parent come in front of you was just nature. If you want to go biology.

Right.

And so we're just like, we just choose to create meaning around things. And so like at the end of the day, like end to end to end, bottom, bottom, bottom root, all our brains do is just create and destroy meaning.

And so we say, this is a threat. This is not a threat. We make like, we need to reinforce this behavior. We don't need to reinforce this behavior all through meaning. And so if you can control what you deem meaningful, you can massively shift the odds in your favor because you don't need to ascribe meaning to.

Well, couldn't that be, let's say like.

So there is an element of this that's very helpful, I think, you know. Actually, this also sounds a bit like choice theory, which is a behavioral management theory that I utilized. I sort of adopted it when I was a public high school teacher in the classroom.

And basically choice theory trades on reminding students that behavioral issues are their choice and they can always make better choices and avoid the consequences of their original behavior. You know, nobody is a victim to disobedience, right?

And that comes back to shifting a lot of students' perspectives on this issue, you know. On the other hand, there is a bit of conflating going on here. Did you catch it? Wherein Hormozy is rightly pointing out that people make subjective choices to ascribe meaning to certain things and they actually don't need to.

So, you know, if somebody cuts me off on the freeway and I can choose to get upset, you know, and let it ruin my day, well, certainly that's something I can do or I can choose to let it go, right? Water off a duck's back.

But what follows from this, you know, that there is no such thing as objective meaning? Because that's what Hormozy believes. He just got done saying that he's a nihilist, which by the way, I'm gonna put the link for the whole interview here below.

You should check it out. He admits this in the interview. So if the argument is, well, okay, people choose all the time whether or not certain things have meaning, therefore there is no such thing as subjective meaning in the world, this falls flat.

One does not logically follow from the other. Do you understand what I'm saying?

500 years ago, you see like a parent killed in front of you. Isn't that because all you have in your mind is like food, shelter, water. And now that we have this thing taken care of, our minds go to other places.

Sure.

I just don't think it changes the actual facts. So it's like, we have, there's stimulus response, right? And so like, we get to control the response, we control the stimulus. And so like, was it, it's either Seneca or Epictetus, who's like, no one yells at a rock.

Wait, so he's a Stoic then, right? Seneca and Epictetus are both Stoic philosophers. Hey, what's going on? I thought he said he was a nihilist. Nihilists are not the same thing as Stoics. As a matter of fact, Stoics, they wouldn't let nihilists into the club.

You know what I mean? This is interesting.

How did you transition from, I'm assuming you used to care a little bit more about beliefs and stuff like that. How did you transition from that to now not caring? And like, did you have to completely change your mindset to where your automatic response to things was just like, what are these chains of emotions and like the cultural constraints and stuff like that that are making me feel this way?

Yeah.

Did you just switch that light switch or do you still on occasion catch yourself slipping?

I just did right now. I was like, I just said that as a belief.

Right, that's what I figured.

Yeah. I mean, I think you systematically, you hear like, that's why the talking is so important. Like what words are we using? What do those words mean? Like you say trauma, I'm like define that. What do you mean by that?

Which is why like when you hear really good writing that's academic, like the first few pages will be like, we're going to talk about this and this is how we define this. And this is how we define this.

It's like, we're putting constraints around the words that we're using because they mean they equate to thoughts. They're just buckets, right?

Again, I mean, this is interesting, right? Because there are these, it's almost like he's not speaking consistently within one particular framework, you know? And the way that we figure this out is by noting the subtle insertions of worldview.

Like some of the language that's coming out in the course of this discussion reveals his worldview, right? What is that worldview though? And is that one consistent sort of philosophical system or framework, or is this like multiple things, kind of a cafeteria style philosophy?

You know, that's why I'm doing the video actually. Because in a moment Hormozy is going to explain why he rejected Christianity after being a born again Christian. But the question is like, how did he get there?

Was he justified in his thought process? Whatever he did at base, we can say that he assessed the world through a particular framework. But that's what I mean. In this case, it sounds like some kind of Frankenstein framework.

You know what I mean?

Little bit of this, little bit of that. And this framework contains presuppositions, right? So for example, like how did these all fit together? So he says on the one hand that words have meaning. Okay, great.

Amen, I agree. But a moment ago he said that he was a nihilist, which means life has no meaning, not even subjectively. There is no meaning to life, period. There can be no meaning that is discovered, right?

That's nihilism, okay? So, hey, how did these all fit together? You know what I mean? Also, why do words have meaning at all? Is it because words actually correspond to ultimate reality, to objective reality, or do words only capture our psychology, right?

The thoughts that we have in our minds. Words would then just become these symbolic tools within our human minds, but they have no tether to the real world at all. You know what this sounds like? You know what's going on here?

I don't think Hormozy is a nihilist. It sounds like he's an existentialist. This would be somebody who affirms that there is no objective meaning, therefore we should make up our own. That's actually what it sounds like Hormozy is affirming.

That we like say a word like trauma, and like it means something different to all three of us. So it's like we have to agree on the definition before we can talk about it. Does that make sense? And so no, I had, so I definitely made conscious efforts when I was like 19 or 20, I became a born again Christian.

The dunk, the whole thing was like, oh my God, life's amazing. Jesus is great. And then I ended up falling away from that because I was like, I don't know if this is true. And then I spent the next five years dedicated to apologetics, which is defensive faith of the Christian faith.

So just learning the arguments around like why Christianity, like is true.

Why His Critique of Christianity Flattens the Gospel

Are you tracking this trajectory? So at some point when he was in his early twenties, Hormozy affirms objective truth and objective meaning because both of those things are intertwined. As a matter of fact, he says that he ultimately left the Christian faith because he was not convinced that it was true.

I take it that he means objectively true. And then what? Somewhere down the line, he no longer affirms objective meaning and truth at all. Okay, why? Like what happened along the way? Is he going to explain this?

Right.

I ended up not believing in it and I can give a variety of reasons, but I'll give you the simplest one. Hopefully I'm not insulting anyone. This is just my belief that I'm sharing, which is a lot of, one of the biggest, one of the strongest arguments for Christianity against other world religions is that other world religions say like, so if you do a good job, you go to the good place, right?

And fundamentally it's a hard paradigm because it means like, at what point are you 51 good versus 49 Should I have just held one more door open and I would have gone to the good place forever, right?

Not even talking about like finite circumstances and creating infinite outcomes, but like whatever. And so if you can draw that line, then it makes, it kind of makes it ridiculous, right? It's like kind of breaks down on the like be a good person system, right?

And so that's all worldviews with the exception of Buddhism and Christianity. With Christianity, they're like, you don't have to be good. You just have to have faith. If you have faith in Jesus and you go to the good place, right?

You don't have to be good. You have to have faith to go to the good place. What a horrifically reductionistic take on the gospel.

You know?

So, I mean, if that were true, then what is the Bible even talking about here? Ephesians 2, verse 10, for we are his workmanship, God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

Doesn't it sound like you were saved in order to do something? So the formula is not get saved, shoot up to heaven in a divine tractor beam immediately, right? It's get saved, now get to work. Isn't it?

It's gain eternal life, which is knowing God, right? So that's John 17, three, and then living that life out of the overflow of knowing God. Heaven will come when it comes, right? In God's timing, amen.

But eternal life is experienced right now for believers. And the overflow of this leads to good works, good works that God set aside beforehand that we should walk in them. You know, why? Well, because the kingdom of heaven must continue to spread.

You see what I mean? There's elements of this that Hormozi is leaving out. This is why James talks about this too. Look at this, James 2, verse 18. Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works.

James is saying that your actions speak your faith. Do you have faith? Okay, your actions will prove it. You know, it's interesting. So every now and then I watch, for a laugh, I watch those fake martial arts gurus.

You know what I'm talking about? They wave their hands around in weird ways and they slap the body and the neck and the face and you know, in silly fashion or whatever. And you know, and the students are in on it.

So they're all, ah, they're all acting and pretending to fall down when they get fake hit by these gurus, right? That's what James is getting at here. The obvious way that you will prove that you have faith is through your actions.

Are you really living like Christ or not? Because if you truly believe in Jesus, you're gonna do what he says, right? I mean, that is something that Jesus said as well. But if you catch the connection here, well, then you realize, well, there is no such thing as in the Bible as a Christian who doesn't care about doing good.

So Hormozy, I don't know, I'm not sure. Hormozy, am I saying that right?

Yeah.

He has improperly framed the discussion and he's trying to do so in order to justify his decision to walk away from the faith.

And so the reason that for me, fundamentally, I didn't believe in that was because you actually create another false binary, which is believe or not believe. When in reality is to what extent you believe.

It's how hard you believe. And again, you create another 50 line, which is I believe 1 more.

No.

And then I would go into the good place forever, right? So anyways.

The False Binary of “Believe or Not Believe”

Again, did you catch that? This is a complete misunderstanding of what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ. So I can see why he rejected the faith. Honestly, I can start to track the logic here.

If this is how he framed the issue in his own mind when he was really thinking about this, which by the way, I mean, he's riffing right now, right? So he's talking about something and probably giving it the short shrift.

I mean, I'm sure this took time, right? But if he's even close to capturing what the actual thought process was, I can see why he left, which is really tragic. It's really tragic. Here's a guy who, and I don't know anything about him.

I've never seen a video. I know like of him. I've heard of him. Seems incredibly intelligent, very well-spoken, not only smart, but also successful, as far as I understand. That's all great, by the way.

You know what I mean? But because he essentially took biblical theology and flattened it out completely in order to what? Assess other religious systems of the world? So, I mean, is that what he did?

Right?

Like, so not only did he flatten out the theology of the Bible in order to turn it into believe by over 51 and go to the good place, right? But then he turned around and he also flattened out all the other religious systems down to do good and go to the good place.

You tracking me? I'm trying to use the words that he used. And based on this, he flattened them all out. Now he's surveying the landscape, it seems. And then he realizes, uh-oh, there's a problem with Christianity.

It creates a false binary. Wait a second. It's because you flattened the whole thing out though.

Right?

Actually, see, so this to me is not merely Hormozy's issue. This is a lot of our issue, really, you know, including a lot of folks in the church, you know? Now, Hormozy's uniquely expressing this in his own background and what he did and why he left the church, right?

And he was assessing the various religions of the world. But I think this is actually a more widespread issue and it's all principally the same problem. And so again, just think about this. People, a lot of us, want to flatten out biblical theology.

When biblical theology is actually thoroughly rugged, it's mountainous. The terrain is steep and jagged, you know? There's sudden drops, but then there's also breathtaking peaks. It demands careful exploration and perseverance, you know, endurance and awe and reverence to navigate and also patience, you know?

There are no shortcuts to the treasure that awaits you in the study of the rugged theology of God's word.

Amen?

But what you cannot do is pretend that the theology of the Bible is flat.

Why?

Because instead of traversing the peaks and the valleys there of its real ruggedness, you end up paving them over and turning theology into some kind of horrible caricature. That's ultimately what Hormozy did.

I mean, and we cannot do that, ladies and gentlemen. And that's what I'm sort of sitting with here is I think some of us, or maybe a lot of us, we tend to want to.

Why?

So that we can explain something, we can relay it. I mean, I'm sure there's good motives behind doing this very thing. And I'm just saying, we can't do it. We shouldn't do it.

Why?

Because we would be guilty of what Hormozy is doing, flattening out the Bible's rugged theology. And I suspect what would have helped Hormozy, which by, you know, and who knows, you know? Like, let's pray for this.

It's not too late for him to circle back around here and pick this thread back up, right? To truly appreciate not merely apologetics, which can often lean way too far into the philosophical,.

Christianity as a Personal Relationship with God, Not Mere Philosophy

Right?

So then you have the philosophical arguments for the existence of God, which is a logically propositional enterprise. But then you do it to the detriment of capturing the actual message that God is communicating through the gospel.

I mean, that's what I mean, you know? Christianity is not a philosophy. It's a personal relationship with God. Or for those of you who are more liturgically minded, right? Christianity is religious worship of the God you love and serve, amen?

And that's why we can never neglect our study of the Bible. Ladies and gentlemen, that's what I'm trying to do here in this ministry is ignite. It's one of the things I'm trying to do here. It's ignite a passion and a desire to get into God's word.

We must spend time in God's word and take it seriously and traverse that rugged theological terrain. Because if we do that, I think we'll be able to recognize and we'll realize what it's actually communicating.

What God is really inviting us to, you know what I mean? Look at this, Romans 5, 5. God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. Verse eight, but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Verse 11, more than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ through whom we have now received reconciliation. Ask yourself, what is this invitation of the gospel? What is Jesus getting at?

When he says something like this, look at this, Matthew 11, 28, come to me all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am gentle and lowly in heart and you will find rest for your souls.

What is this rest that Jesus is talking about? Does this sound like 51 belief and go to the good place? Or has Alex Hormozy flattened out biblical theology and completely missed the real invitation of Christ?

You tell me, what do you think? Go ahead, tell me in the comments. I'd love to get your thoughts on this one. Anyway, that's enough out of me. Hey, if you enjoyed the insights here, you gotta go check out the Patreon community.

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