Hawk Nelson's former lead singer says he has a hard time actually saying he doesn't believe in God.

Well-know Christian artist, Matthew West, started a podcast show on August 1, and this week's guest is an interview with Jon Steingard, former lead singer of Hawk Nelson, and his journey through doubting that God exists.

On September 16, West posted about the podcast on his Facebook, saying, "Jon Steingard and I had similar beginnings to our stories – he was a “preacher’s kid” and frontman for Christian rock band Hawk Nelson. But recently, Jon publicly announced he no longer believes in God. This week we explore his story in a special two-part interview."

In one month, Matthew West's podcast has received over 100,000 downloads.

"Deep down we want to be part of something meaningful anyway," says Matthew West in part one of the podcast. 

Jon Steingard says, "That is it, what you just said. That is inherently, self-evidently true."

Steingard says, "In May I uploaded a post and put it on Instagram outlining where I had come to in regards to faith and believing in God. I had been going through a several year process of privately having some doubts about God, faith, and Christianity. I publicly came out and said that I really didn't believe in God anymore."

Originally from Vancouver, B.C., Steingard now lives in San Diego, CA with his family.

Regarding his announcement, he says, "It's been really cool because it's enabled me to connect with so many people that are in the same boat as me."

Hawk Nelson started off as a rock, pop, punk band with a positive message back in 2004, but it was Steingard that encouraged the group to take a specifically Christian direction in 2012 when he moved into the position of the lead singer. Before that, he was the guitarist.

He says, "What I discovered is as soon as I did that, I did have freedom like I felt this whole new level that I'm not constrained by Christianity anymore. Now I can believe whatever I want and I felt so free but then very quickly, had to ask myself, so what do you believe? I'm finding like what you said, that we want to be part of something bigger than ourselves, and that's true."

He admits that his announcement brought its share of challenges with his family and wife's family as well. 

"One of my biggest frustrations with Christian culture is this culture war lense of looking at everything. There's a real problem when we're looking through those lenses because we're not listening to each other."

Steingard mentions he's been on shows with apologists since his announcement, as well as been a guest on podcast shows with atheists. 

He says, "Incidentally, on most of the atheist's podcasts I spend most of my time defending Christianity."

During the podcast, Steingard admits he is agnostic rather than an atheist. 

"I'm in this awkward place where I'm just like, a lot of the things that you would need to believe in order to say that you're a Christian, I have a hard time believing. But then I also don't feel satisfied with just a completely atheistic perspective."

Steingard is now filmmaking, something he dabbled in near the end of his time with Hawk Nelson. He created the music video for "Diamonds."

"If you can have a career doing things that help people in any way, that's pretty cool," he says.

In having this poignant conversation with his friend, West says, "Especially as the world seems so divided today, I find such value in having conversations about viewpoints and beliefs that may not align with my own."

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