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Leaving Pantheism For A Personal God: From Restless To Rooted | Jesus and Me Just Doesn't Work!

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From Restless to Rooted: Joshua Williams on Calling, Repentance, and a Faith That Endures.

What happens when the map you drew for your life no longer fits the road God is actually giving you? In this continuation of our conversation with Joshua Williams, we trace a candid journey through disappointment, redirection, and the quiet practices that turn belief into a way of life. This isn’t highlight-reel faith; it’s the daily, hidden work of following Jesus when the feelings fade and the next step isn’t obvious.

In this episode you’ll hear about:

Calling vs. career: how God reshapes ambition into service and steadies the heart when doors close.

Repentance as renewal: not shame, but the rhythm that keeps love honest and hope alive.

Prayer that holds in storms: learning to pray Scripture when words run out.

Community and accountability: why “just me and Jesus” isn’t enough when you’re tired, tempted, or unsure.

Sacrament and Scripture together: how worship and the Word form a faith that lasts beyond trends.

Suffering without cynicism: carrying grief to Christ and finding courage to begin again.

Why listen: If you’re in a season of waiting, change, or quiet rebuilding, Joshua’s story offers both clarity and comfort—practical ways to keep moving with Jesus when you’re short on answers but rich in questions.

If this conversation encouraged you, subscribe, share it with a friend who needs steadying grace, and leave a quick review with the one practice—prayer, repentance, or community—you’re committing to this week.

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What if the road to Jesus runs through a guru? We sit down with Joshua to trace his unlikely path from a Romanian “enlightenment” school to Orthodox Christianity, and we ask the questions seekers rarely say aloud: Do mystical experiences prove truth, or do they force us to ask which spirit we’re listening to?

Joshua describes leaving the U.S. to “throw himself into the arms of the universe,” clinging to ideas like reincarnation and religious unity while resisting the moral claims of Christ. Inside a syncretic school that blended Hindu and Buddhist concepts, he encountered a compelling teacher, apparent clairvoyance, and a vision of reality where Brahman reigns as impersonal essence. That promise of unity felt expansive—until it demanded he treat personhood, love, and moral responsibility as illusions. We contrast that with the Orthodox claim that God is personal and tri-personal: the Trinity as eternal communion, love that exists before creation, and a God who is everywhere present yet distinct from creation. Rather than absorbing us into a faceless One, God calls us by name and invites real relationship.

Across the conversation, we map the turning points: irritation at the name of Jesus giving way to self-awareness, recognition of authentic Christian witness, and a rethinking of “science versus faith” that leaves shallow slogans behind. We explore discernment of spirits, why power isn’t proof, and how an impersonal metaphysics drifts toward quiet nihilism. Then we look at the Orthodox vision of personhood that grounds meaning: if we’re made in God’s image, our capacity for love is not a cosmic trick—it’s the point.

If you’ve chased enlightenment and still long for a face behind the light, this story will meet you where you are. Listen, share with a friend who’s wrestling with pantheism or syncretism, and leave a review to help others find the show. Subscribe for more conversations that take faith, reason, and experience seriously.

Questions about Orthodoxy? Please check out our friends at Ghost of Byzantium Discord server: https://discord.gg/JDJDQw6tdh

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SPEAKER_01:

Eastern Orthodoxy, I think, speaks to someone who has maybe roots in an Eastern faith.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, evolution's true, so that would be nice if it was true. God knows us, we can know him. Right. The devil has real spiritual knowledge because he was next to the throne of God. Right.

SPEAKER_01:

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SPEAKER_00:

So it was in 2019 when I broke away from a spiritual school that I had been in for eight years, which I discovered on a uh some open-ended traveling that I was doing. I actually thought I would never come back to the U.S. Um when I left on that trip in 2009.

SPEAKER_01:

But this group you were part of, Joshua, they allowed you to embrace, and please correct me anywhere I'm getting the story wrong or the timing wrong, but you were able to believe in Jesus even when you're part of this group.

SPEAKER_00:

It was only because of this group that I came to believe in Jesus, even though it was in a heretical sense. So when I first arrived in Romania, seven months into that trip, I wanted to leave because the guy was the guru, was uh quoting Christ more than I cared for.

SPEAKER_01:

And uh why, Joshua? Why take us to that time? Why was Jesus an affront to you?

SPEAKER_00:

Sure. Because since my teenage years, I wasn't going to church and I was given an abundance of freedom to do whatever almost whatever I wanted. And so that gave me license to do certain sins that if Christ was real, then I would have to stop doing those sins.

SPEAKER_01:

Gotcha. You knew enough about who Christ was to know that he wouldn't condone.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes. To make a note about I I had different experiences with Christians. Some were really weird. The most off-putting experience ever with a Christian was somebody who uh I knew from school, and I happened to go to their church one time, and they he asked me, Are you saved? And it just seemed like a trap, loaded question. I I couldn't even articulate why, but it just seemed so off. How do I answer that? How would I know if I'm saved? And it seemed like a trap, right? But I also had experiences with Christians where I could just see that there was power in their faith. There was just power in really believing that. And so it was like I had an admiration for that kind of faith. But because I was not raised in a Christian household, I already had a more atheistic or agnostic worldview that well, evolution's true. So that would be nice if it was true. That would be great, but like we know that's not true because science, right?

SPEAKER_01:

We we believe science here, cloud witnesses radio, whatever that means. You know, it is a wonder that God will use anything, including heretical gurus, to bring some truth, to bring you to a place where you were. And tell us about that, Joshua, where you did genuinely want to see Christ.

SPEAKER_00:

Right. So looking back, I can't imagine at that time that there would have been any other on-ramp for me to start bringing inching me towards the Christ as He is. Wow. And um That was the way you needed to hear it. That was the packaging that I needed at the time. Because when I went on that trip, I was professing that I'm throwing myself into the arms of the universe and wherever it'll it'll lead me to the truth and wherever I'm supposed to set up my life, which I thought in no way was America anymore. And uh, but God knows what we're ready to let go of and what we're not. And so I said I was seeking truth, but I was not prepared to let go of my belief in reincarnation. I was not prepared to let go of my belief that ultimately all religions come from the same God, same source, right? In no way. So God met me where I was, but also used that to just draw me, draw me, draw me. I was supposedly so open, but I wasn't open to Christianity. And I saw that hypocrisy. And I was like, well, I'm thinking to myself, well, Christians are judgmental. And then I'm like, wait a minute, I'm being judgmental towards Christians. Yeah, very ironic, right? But just a little self-awareness goes a long way, right? Oh, that's huge. And then I was like, what am I, five years old? I I gotta believe in angels and demons now. But it it was uh a lot of experiences and eight years of going back to Romania every summer. But the the broad stroke of it is at the beginning I wanted everything but Christ, and by the end of eight years, I wanted nothing but Christ. Wow.

SPEAKER_01:

Would you describe this school? Were they Hindu? Were they Buddhist? Was it just some amalgamation of let's throw it together and whatever they wanted?

SPEAKER_00:

It was an amalgamation. So the guru was Romanian. He was getting other religious texts in Romania at some risk to himself because it was under communism still when he was doing this. And so it was kind of his thing because it was all based on enlightenment is the access to truth. If if your overall view of reality is informed by Far Eastern religion, Hinduism and Buddhism, right? And so for me that was. And so I wanted to access reality directly. So it was like, well, this man has done it, right? So so maybe he can lead me into it. And if he sees reality as it is, however he says it is, that's what it is. And I had seen people who were supposedly enlightened, and this man was way more impressive, intelligent, charismatic than in any of those people that I had seen before that had supposedly been enlightened, like Eckhart Tolle. He described his experience. I believed he was genuine. I looked at him and I'm like, this is some kind of enlightenment where it doesn't have the worries that a lot of us have, and this kind of thing.

SPEAKER_01:

I remember you shared some of those stories, Joshua. Things he had said that almost seemed clairvoyant, or he thinks he was able to know that and I remember we talked about this. It's easy to say, oh, it's just a charlatan or this or that, or he got lucky, or he's but we now know there are real spirits involved.

SPEAKER_00:

Exactly. Right. But which spirits right. The devil has real spiritual knowledge because he was next to the throne of God. Right.

SPEAKER_01:

Because so I want to know, and it's and it it's curious to me because pantheism itself, just to put it very plainly, yeah, is that pan all theism, God, right? All is God, right? God is the universe. In that God seems to be a thing, a sub an essence as opposed to a personal God, like which we get in our faith in Christianity. God knows us, we can know him, right? We can speak of him as a person, right? This is not the case in his Hinduism, correct? I guess what I'm getting at is uh these personifications, Vishnu, etc., where is that personification coming from? If ultimately God, whatever God is just this essence, this unknowable right.

SPEAKER_00:

So the highest vision of reality is Brahman, right? And so then that is the ultimate unity beyond even the triad. And so they look at all of these things as illusion, as personhood as an illusion, because it can only be that if on top of everything is an ultimate unity, right, and only one universal self. Some visions of, I would say ultimately, though the vision of Brahman is impersonal.

SPEAKER_01:

So, but see, I guess what I'm pointing at to me, it sounds like it's a cognitive dissonance. For sure. Because, like you said, there's this ultimate unity, right? Yet they cannot what they they cannot lose sight of the fact that we all understand the world as individuals, right? Right. The way we interact with each other, even with ourselves, with God, it's all personal, right?

SPEAKER_00:

Sure. And if you just say that, they almost could still appeal to the illusion thing. But I'll go to the highest step for God, for the ultimate and only infinite being to lack something that we as individuals have, right? It makes no sense. So if God is the source of all things, then for them, I g I guess the best argument that they they could have is well, it's it's just an illusion, but why that's not a good argument is because it eventually gets us to a nihilism, right? So so if God is the source of all good things, we cannot have something that he lacks, right? That in some ways that would make us above him, right? But where some people get tripped up in what they want to get out of us, they think of God then as having the trappings of personhood or even personality in the way that we do. Because for us, personality in the way that we understand it is a form of limitation. We have strengths and we have weaknesses, right? And that is true on the level of the individual person, right? Because we are not infinite, we are finite by definition. So God has personhood in a sense beyond what we can fully comprehend, right? We're made in his image, right? So we're not identical. So so the the sense in which we have personhood is not identical because we're only an image, we're not the full person, right? Only and from our point of view, God is also tripersonal, right? And so again, where God this is a little bit of a tangent, but it it has a bearing on it. One of the key things that a pantheistic God can never do is he can never have love that goes outside of himself because it's just him. It's just all narcissistic self-love, right? Whereas the triune God, as much as it can be challenging, if logic is your highest, it's not illogical, but it's not the tr the Trinity is not bound by rationalism and making rational thinking and logic the highest thing. Logic should be taken as far as it can be taken. But as Orthodox, we also believe that the reason why and the manner in which we interface with God has everything to do with persons. Right. And so that we can have a direct experience of God, partly in part because he is personal, and so we have this ability to interface with other people, and so his creation still mirrors him. He's still mirroring, but it's mirroring him, but it is not him.

SPEAKER_01:

And the St. Athanasius, right, talking about God. In creation, God is present everywhere, right? We believe this as Christians. God is everywhere, yet God is distinct in being from that which he orders, right? Uh and he directs. God gives life to all, he contains all, yet he is himself the uncontained, uh, existing solely in his father, right? In other words, he is uh the source of all, we are all in him, uh, and uh God is everywhere and in all, uh, and yet God is separate from and outside of uh his creation. And I think this is to my mind a very interesting way that uh Eastern Orthodoxy uh I think speaks uh to someone who has maybe roots in an Eastern faith, an Eastern paganism, because we can meet on a certain level that we can't with some of our Western brothers. Look at that. You made it to the end. Hope you enjoyed it. Don't forget, please like, subscribe, ring that bell if you want to keep up to date with all that we have coming your way. Remember, right now, over at our Patreon, the entire uncut clip is available for you. Go check us out over there at Cloud of Witnesses. God bless you. We hope you were edified, and we'll see you on the next one. Bye bye.