Beyond the Screen: Why Your Physical Presence is the Secret to Mental Health ⛪🫂

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Speaker 1: The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that deny God. As such, we need Thinking Christian to become as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian Podcast. I'm doctor James Spencer, and through calm, thoughtful theological discussions, Thinking Christian highlights the ways God is working in the world and questions the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions that hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ. Now onto today's episode of Thinking Christian.

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Speaker 2: He called to make a difference in mental health.

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Speaker 1: To learn more about making a difference in mental health through Christ centered education.

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Speaker 1: Hey everyone, welcome back to this episode of Thinking Christian. I'm joined today by doctor Ben Matthew. He is a professor of counselor education. I almost always get that wrong at Columbia International University, And today we're going to be talking about the embodied leg of this sort of structure we're pulling together in relation to faith and mental health. And just to remind everybody, we're really sort of playing off this article that dealt with deaths of despair and how when Blue State laws and those laws were related to the closure of retail outlets on Sundays were done away with, there was an increase correlative increase in these deaths of despair. And so as we dive into this embodied leg, what we're really talking about is what is the communal life, the embeddedment in being embedded within a communal life. What does that do for our mental health? How does that help us, how does that ground us, how does it give us sort of symbolic handles to understand the world and to cope with its challenges. And so that's where we're kind of going today. So I'll just I'll kind of kick it off and just say, you know, I think a lot of times where we are right now, I do a lot with digital world stuff. I do a lot with social media and all that kind of fun stuff. And I know there are some detrimental aspects to this, but I also don't think that we push back hard enough in certain instances. And part of the reason I was drawn to the Deaths of Despair report was that it unearthed something that wasn't digital. And it's the idea that when given choices and the ability to make those choices easily, we are often going to choose things that aren't that good for us. In other words, if I can drive to the store and shop as opposed to driving to church and worship, I'm making a poor choice.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: And so our mobility, right, our ability to move about as that's expanded, I think we haven't thought through quite well enough where we want.

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Speaker 2: To travel too in a given instance, and.

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Speaker 1: How traveling to something like the church is going to give us a ritual symbolic rooting in the world.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I was. I think I was talking to you about this and some others early. I still remember as a kid Sundays where everything was closed like that, that was the norm for most Sundays. And when those when those laws started changing, when those stores started opening up, both this sense of like, uh, are we allowed to do this? Like it is this allowed? Is God gonna strike us down from the Holy Mountain? And also some excitement like, oh, I can actually go to the store during this time, I can actually go see a movie on Sundays. And yeah, like the thought of what it opened up was kind of exciting for a young kid like myself because it was formally blocked off, and I saw it as, to be honest, an opportunity like I get to do more of what I want to do, rather than I get to do church and then I get to go home and back in the day. Then we'd go back to church at Sunday night, like we had all kinds of church going on like all day, and it just seems so so plaustrophobic. Whereas when those laws change and I could go to the mall, I could go to the movie theater, I could go to the arcade back in the day when I had to go to a physical place to play video games like it was all it was all very right, and that itself, I remember the excitement, the fear, and the excitement of that. But again, what we always try to do with this, researchers understand the correlational, like you said, reactions of is that this didn't cause necessarily these realities, but they tend to find connection in terms of what it then provides. How we then responded with so many other correlates that were available at that time, one of which is this disconnection from the Body of Christ, if not just relationally and socially and spiritually even physically. Right, even me saying we should have a Sunday night meeting, I don't think that's normative any And I'm not trying to make an argument that Sunday night is, say good or bad. It's just we've lost more sense of that communal rhythm of togetherness, and that's got to play an implication into some of the struggles that we're dealing with as a society.

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Speaker 1: I think so, I mean, I think we're at least in some of the research that I'm doing. I've gotten into cognitive psychology and the notion of embedded or embodied knowing and how it is that our bodies help us to understand the world around us. And I told the story on a previous podcast. You know of the different ways that you know my wife when she's walking in a in a or when she's traveling in a city by herself, she doesn't feel comfortable walking. I don't really think like that. I feel generally safe in most places. I assume that there's going to be somebody who's more of a you know, who's a better target for.

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Speaker 2: Someone than me.

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Speaker 1: Now maybe that's the wrong assumption, and I'm just fooling myself, but either way, you know the way I embody the world, I do feel that way, and then you know, you have the juxtaposition of that I can and this is a totally different story, but I can remember working on the farm when I was over the summers, when I was a kid to work on the farm, and in high school, I was still pretty big. I hated being in small spaces, anything where both shoulders were touching the sides of two things would drive me crazy because it just didn't feel comfortable. That sort of space. So it's not an argument to hey, let's get you know, let's embody the world in a very particular way, but it is the point is that the ways we the physical situations that we put ourselves in, do have implications for how we think and understand the world around us. And that's not trivial. It's actually, I think becoming more and more that people are realizing it's not just that it's not trivial, it's actually pretty crucial.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, And I mean in a clinical context, research and psychological studies are appreciating that physicality that is part of the therapeutic process, right, if not how we breathe, you know, structured box breathing. Right, we talk about this idea of control breathing as a measure of regaining some calm and panic attacks, or the utilization of a cold pack on the back of your neck or certain pressure points, the ability to physically One of the things that I'll use with clients that are struggling with severe anxiety is to name five things in the place you're sitting in. Okay, there's a window, there's a chair, there's a speaker, that the engagement with the physicality of your setting research is finding it has an incredible way of what we call grounding, right, I mean it literally helps you calm your heart rate, calm your breathing, calm your response. That generally what we understand about anxiety is this kind of flight or fright or freeze response. Right when we perceive some danger in the physical emotional perception, our body physically respond. So let's do things to the body. Let's not just get to the cognitive. Let's just tell a person you're fine, you're in an office, you're not being chased by a line, and you're okay, Yeah, that doesn't work here. So what can we do physically to actually help clients? And there's something to that I think is just so theologically rich as well as to how many times, if not the nation of Israel or the Church is called to inhabit embody space. Yeah, in sacrifice in temples, in the Lord's Supper, in Baptists, like all these liturgies that we recognize are very physically oriented in order to help us get beyond the physical, but not apart from the physical. And there's something that I think needs to be engaged there.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think it's interesting, Like one of the things I've tried to help people understand when I talk about what John Vervaki calls participatory knowing it's this sort of interaction between the agent and the arena that they're in. I'll talk about how how easy it is for us to tell the difference between a bath and a baptism. Right, So, a baptism, we can distinguish that clearly. You know, you're usually in front of a congregation, there's a pastor involved, there are words spoken, there are maybe there's music playing in the background. Right, there's someone who's physically dunking you under the water. Right, Like, there's all of these elements that you're actually participating in and as an embodied individual that make a baptism a baptism. It's not just immersion in water, Right, You wouldn't mistake it for a bath, which has a completely different setting is usually more individual and right off, soap and towels and those kind of things. But like, some of the elements are the same, but that you can clearly tell the difference. You could do the same thing with You wouldn't mistake a baptism for a cannon ball in a pool. Right There, there's all these things within our environment that cue us to this is special or this is one event and this is another event. In the same way you could say, you know, you go out to an Italian restaurant.

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Speaker 2: You're having a little bread and a little wine. This is not communion.

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Speaker 3: As good as good as that garlic bread maybe.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yep, yeah, thank you alive garden. This is not communion bread and wine. Right, And so you just sit back and you kind of like, Okay, there's a there's a ritualistic element, a set of of elements within the environment that are helping us to understand that we've entered a different space, that we're doing something of different significance, and that this actually has more of a storied or symbolic meaning to it.

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Speaker 2: But that's an embodied understanding. It requires that environment for that to be the case.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, and almost to your point. I mean, I love the baptism construct. Part of the other reality of a baptism that helps clarify that it's a baptism is the embodied space with others. Yes, in contrast to a bath that is very individualistic in private, as it should be. Yeah, the whole point of a baptism is a communal celebration of this person identifying with death and then being resurrected to life. We just had one last Sunday out at my local church and to see there are these moments where you're kind of waiting for that person to come up out of the water, and you can feel the excitement of people like yes, they start clapping, and you just see the response of the community, which is a right respect the Lord's Supper as well. As much as I take up these physical elements, that is not olive garden, but it is in the construct of her. As often as you eat the bread, drink the cup, you do so in a manner that helps me remember this truth about Jesus. But the whole point is that Paul's writing to a church, a community at Corinth that is expected to gather together, that I take this bread to use your point sometimes touching shoulders with people on either side, that I'm like, dude, give me a little space, like this is a little too close, and that's that's not comfortable all the time. If there's times I could take the Lord's Supper by myself, I'll be honest, I'd like to do that, right. But part of Paul's expectation is that you do this not just this way, but this way with others as well, which I think is pretty amazing.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it does sort of feel though in many of at least in the churches that I've gone to, we're losing some of that ritual and you know, it becomes a little more casual. Oh okay, today's communion Sunday. We're just gonna go up and grab some stuff and come back to our seats, and yeah, we'll eat it all together. But it's not you know when I grew up, I grew up Lutheran, and you'd go up and you'd kneel on the thing in.

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Speaker 2: The front, physically kneil.

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Speaker 1: You'd physically kneel, you know, you're facing the front right Like. There's a whole context to it, and I think informs it, and so you know, we can think of it this in a very similar way. It's like if you know, a five year old, you know, gets into the which I have a five year old now, and I could actually see her doing this.

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Speaker 2: You know.

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Speaker 1: Let's say let's say she, you know, gets into the church room where they're keeping the little bread wafers.

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Speaker 2: And the you know, and the grape juice, and she's just challenged down on that. We're not calling that communion either.

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Speaker 1: You know, you could see you know again, if you if I just use her an analogy, she you know, is running around the baptismal and falls in not a baptism.

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Speaker 2: Right.

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Speaker 1: So there's all these different aspects to it that make it into something unique and special. And I think what maybe we haven't wrestled to the ground yet, is why is it that those sorts of rituals are ever important? Like why is it that that something like a baptism has such meaning to a congregation? You know, the cynical person might say, well, it's just because you're adding to the roles and now you're getting more gifts.

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Speaker 2: Come in or whatever. Right, Yeah, you know you're you're hitting a number that you're aiming for.

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Speaker 1: That's really not it. It's a celebration of a new life. It's a celebration of someone who is committing to the process of discipleship. It's it's all those other aspects. But I think that as we if we lose these, or to the extent that we have lost these, it feels like life just takes on a.

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Speaker 2: I'll use this analogy. You'll understand this, maybe some people won't.

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Speaker 1: There's an old game called Super Mario Brothers Classic, right, and it always had levels, Right, You'd get to the end of the level and the little guy would jump on the flag and he'd slide down and then you go to the next level. But if you can envision playing Mario Brothers without that, where it's just one really super long level that you're having to run through and there's no there's never a time where you jump on the flag and you end.

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Speaker 2: It's just all one thing.

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Speaker 1: That's sort of what I feel like we've we're producing. Without these tools, there's no punctuation, right, there's no sacred moment in life. It all just starts to bleed together. Yeah, does that make sense?

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Speaker 2: Ben?

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Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, I just had flashbacks of both Super Mario Brothers and dun Hunt all at the same time. Yeah, because you're absolutely right. It was those Yeah, it was those moments when you, I mean, think again on that flag. It helped punctuate both the the reality of the here and now and the anticipation of what's next. But it gave me those that the constant rhythm of that Yeah, Oh, there's something that there the reality of. I think even what the Lord's Supper, for instance, does right the ritual that the rhythm of the Lord's supper. For as often as you eat the bread, drink the cup, you do so you remember what he did until he comes. So like in this present moment, I reached back into the past thousands of years ago about what this man Jesus did on the cross, but also in this present moment, I look forward to the return of the King. Like I engage with all tenses, but I do so in a very time oriented, space oriented weekly And I think you're right. It is a concern of mine that we are missing out in some of that ritual communal living like that, that purposeful day in, day out, week in week out, that builds that remembrance, lived reality and eschatological hope. When my wife and I moved here to Columbia, South Carolina, we started looking for churches, and in itself was kind of a new thing for us. We've been going to a church for twenty plus years, so this was our first chance. And I remember thinking, particularly at some of the churches that were how can I say this, Well, we're constantly like a movie theater. Yeah, and listen, they are great, great musicians, great preachers, but the whole time you go in, lights are dark. Yeah, and all the attention is up on the stage. And my wife was the one who really helped me see this is like it felt like we were at a concert every time. And not that I'm opposed to the style necessarily, but the biggest dilemma is we couldn't see everyone else beside us. It actually wasn't. What was the concern wasn't necessarily up on stage. It was the concern that we couldn't see the people that we were worshiping with. We felt the loss of connection and the weekly rhythm of what the church should be. The church we go to now has great windows and we're like, yes, we get to see people every Sunday because there was something that we felt was so necessary. As much as I want to hear the preaching of God's word and I want to have a community of the saints and I want to have fellowship and prayer and singing, I want to do it with people in a way that helps me recognize why I'm doing this as well and clinically. That's one of the struggles I'm trying to deal with with my clients is as much as I want to work with them individually, Yeah, what often I need to do is actually open up their abilities to engage communally. Yeah, I'm going to work with you individually. But if you think this is actually where health comes just you and me sitting together in a room talking for forty five minutes, you got to put this into practice. And the best place to put this in practice for Christians is within the context search for non Christians and some communal aspect that gives those regular rhythms of ritual and engagement and ultimately for community.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think.

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Speaker 1: There's something to that, to the punctuation we're you know, I mean, I think your point about the communion looking back, looking forward, being in the moment all at the same time. Yeah, we're sort of creatures in time, like part of our embody and is an experience of time, and and so we need to build in this rhythm of some some sort of sacred time, something that disrupts everything else we're doing. And if I had to put a finger on and I don't think this is exactly what you're saying, but like from my perspective, if I had to put a finger on why sometimes that sort of rock concert sort of church and I mean I've been to churches where they actually played like nickelback.

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Speaker 2: From the front, and you're just like, right, like what is happening? But you know, to put my finger on.

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Speaker 1: It's like there's no interruption in the week, right, especially.

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Speaker 2: Right it's all screen, you know what I mean.

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Speaker 1: It's like I can watch I can, you know, watch Netflix all week and then go to church and basically get a Netflix type performance.

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Speaker 2: I can, you know, I can.

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Speaker 1: I go to work and I do my thing at work and it's these sort of superficial conversations or whatever it is, you know, and then I go to church and it's kind of the same thing. Right, I'm constantly being entertained. My attention is always what people want. And so now here's what it is.

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Speaker 2: And there's no you know, to use the sports and alley, there's no change up. It's all fastballs.

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Speaker 1: You just kind of get used to it and you're just like, okay, whatever, I guess this is all there is. But we do need that change up, like it's got to be in the mix because I think as creatures in time, time just starts to grind on us. If we don't punctuate it with something sacred, it all becomes sort of good banal.

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Speaker 3: And I imagine, I imagine that's part of what even the preacher was saying in Ecclesiastes, right, like there's a time for dancing, there's a time for morning, there's a time for picking up stones and late, like he talks about time in so many constructs, and that he has also put eternity in your hearts. So like in the very same I think, is chapter three right where he talks about both realities there's times for and he's put this other thing called eternity into both and reality that were meant to have sacred punctuated realities that help us realize it's not supposed to be. This is linear engagement, like he said, and I will say coming out of COVID, this is probably one of the biggest, one of the biggest issues I continue to deal with with a lot of my clients. COVID gave understandably people of the ability just to turn on my TV Sunday morning and watch the message. Now, for whatever your response or politics may be as to whether that was right or wrong, it was the reality for the vast majority of the world during that time. What that then opened up was the reality that even when I don't have to do it because of social distancing, whatever is, I can do it. And if I can do it on Sunday morning for my couch, what prevents me from having that same mindset even there as well? Where like you said, I can watch Netflix at one channel, I can turn on ESPN with the other channel and look, there's my church on the other channel, and it's all on the same level. But we trick ourselves into thinking, yeah, but I got church. Like I heard the preacher, I saw him saying, I actually even pray. I put my head down when they prayed, And so I did church. And there's something about that that continues to falsely advertise as good enough. And what it's doing is it's missing out on the actual embodiment of space and time with others that is such an important aspect of human flourishing, not just Christianity, but just human flourishing in general.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, because I mean, I think I can think we even if we took this out of a church context, which maybe this isn't the best analogy, but I mean, I can remember my parents being in a bowling league.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, like back in the day, and they turned me out to the bowling alley.

00:24:00
Speaker 1: Whenever we go to the bowling alley, they had this like horrible little diner out there, and so I'd get you know, what I thought was a great burger and fries and then a Shirley Temple.

00:24:11
Speaker 3: Oh man.

00:24:12
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm like, this is this is great. And it was weekly.

00:24:15
Speaker 1: Every week we're doing this, like and I never got tired of the burger and fries. I'd actually look forward to it and I'm like, no way, it's bowling league night, Like this is awesome, right, And you know this was this was an era before even game boys or anything like.

00:24:28
Speaker 2: That came out.

00:24:29
Speaker 1: So I'm literally sitting there watching bowling and enjoying myself because this is just the cadence of life. It's every week, this is where I am, this is what I'm doing. It was a ritual and I got to spend time. Like there were other kids there that I never got to see or whatever, you know, and so like it had this sort of meaning to it because it was regular and it was different.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And I think.

00:24:53
Speaker 1: That that's sort of part of what we need the church to sort of rethink because it does give this sort of of if the church could do it, It provides that sort of meaningful, different experience that comes along every.

00:25:08
Speaker 2: Week and gives us a true departure.

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Speaker 1: I don't want to say break because I don't feel like it's yeah, I don't want to frame.

00:25:15
Speaker 2: Church is like a break from my normal life.

00:25:18
Speaker 1: It breaks into my normal life and it reminds me that there's more here than sometimes I realize that the week can kind of grind this out of me. But the reality is that life is sacred, and this is where we remember that. This is where we get re energized that life is sacred. This is where we start to understand why life is sacred. And if it's just a continuation of the same that gets really old, really fast and kind of go back to some of our previous conversations. It creates an existential anxiety because if I'm already frustrated with the way the world is going and this place sounds exactly actly the same as everything else I'm encountering, what hope do I really have?

00:26:04
Speaker 3: Ye?

00:26:05
Speaker 2: Right?

00:26:06
Speaker 3: Yeah, And and that's such a good thought. The we need to remember the framing of the church is not this yeah, break from normality. In fact, it helps it helps clarify, focus, uh re engage with what is normality between the rest of the week in a way that the rhythms that the habits of my heart, you know, to kind of put some of the kind of like what uh James K. A. Smith kind of talks about those We we develop our affections through those rituals, right, The rituals actually help clarify and focus some of what we what we need. And it's done in the context of others. That's the hard part because I've met some of those others and they've met me, and we we we know too well, right, But those others are not the easiest. And so it's so much easier if I could just retreat to myself, retreat to my space, my time, and you know, have meted out engagement in very if possible digital formats as much as possible, rather than actual, real lived practices together. And yet the the hardship is worth the effort because it actually forms better affections for better tasting meals beyond Shirley temples and burgers.

00:27:31
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, when I.

00:27:34
Speaker 1: Do think it creates you know, we mentioned in a previous episodes like the church is this non anxious presence, right, And I think part of at least what I mean by that is is saying the church has an.

00:27:47
Speaker 2: Ownership of itself.

00:27:50
Speaker 1: Right, then it's now responding to God's claim on it, as opposed to trying to be something.

00:27:57
Speaker 2: It's not. You come to church, it's it is what it is, right.

00:28:05
Speaker 1: And I don't care about the worship style and all that kind of stuff like that's not what I'm talking about. But but it's also not a performance to you. It's not a moment where you should be entertained. If you're entertained, that can be a byproduct, I suppose, but it should have some different substance. It should have some different cadence. It should have some real meat to it, right, that embeds you back into the symbolic world that you're always a part of anyway, yep, but that the outside.

00:28:40
Speaker 2: World tends to drive out of us through the week, you know.

00:28:45
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that again why it refocuses When my family and I lived in Iowa for about twenty years, yeah, and one of our neighbors behind us was a huge Iowa Hawkeye fan, so University of Iowa, and he we started getting into it. But he's like, no, no, you don't really understand Hawkeye football until you go until you go to the stadium. And we went with it. He had season tickets, so he said, listen, I gotta let you know, we do the whole nine yards when we go to these things. He got up at like four thirty with his get there. First thing he does is he makes steaks and drinks. And then as we get to the game, we have to touch this left foot of this statue and the right hand goes on a helmet and you got to get your you know, vestments on, I mean your jersey, and like it was religious. It was a religious experience, right, and every home game he does this. He said for him though, this is this is his engagement, this is his this is his church of sorts, right, because it gave him a sense of refocusing. But it wasn't enough just to turn on his TV at home, which he can do. He has you know, big twelve football he can turned on. For him. It was the engagement of the food, the liturgy, the clothing. There's even one point. Iowa is famous for what's called the Iowa wave where the university hospital is overlooking the stadium and they bring all the sick kids out to the windows, and at halftime, everyone in the stadium turns around and waves at the kids. It's one of the most beautiful things. And my friend says, I know it's not much, but I get to give back a little. Yeah, that little physical movement to him to do that with all those forty fifty thousand people. He's not under no delusion that he's solving cancer for those kids or anything like that, but he knows it's something that he can both be part of, find joy in and give good too. I'm thinking, if they can do that at a football game, my goodness, how much more can the local church be that place? And to your point, take the responsibility of providing a place to do that, not just as a spectator, but as an actual member that is contributing to that reality.

00:31:07
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, if you were in Chicago, I'm sure they have it in other talents, but it was the fourth phase, you know, offense, defense, special teams.

00:31:15
Speaker 2: And the fans and the fourth phase. Right, and as corny and cheesy as that is, you got it too. You get into it, right, you go to the game. You're freezing, you know.

00:31:26
Speaker 1: I mean I remember the first Chicago Bearts game I went to and somebody told me, no, you got to take a piece of cardboard to put your feet on.

00:31:32
Speaker 2: It helps your feet not be cold. I'm like, no, it doesn't, it doesn't at all. But I mean, you're the fourth phase. You got to be there.

00:31:39
Speaker 3: Yep.

00:31:39
Speaker 1: So yeah, I think that's a really good analogy. And I think that as we think about sort of faith and mental health, this just needs to be a component of what happens.

00:31:50
Speaker 2: There has to be this.

00:31:51
Speaker 1: Moment where you're not just playing Mario all the way through without being able to jump on the flag. You're not just you know, watching football on television while you you know, do your laundry or whatever. Right, these are those sort of it keeps everything mundane. Yeah, And I think what we need is a moment uh in every week where the world is reframed as symbolic and meaningful and theological for us.

00:32:15
Speaker 3: Yea.

00:32:16
Speaker 1: And and that can set the stage then for us to move out into Monday through Saturday in a different way with a different perspective.

00:32:24
Speaker 2: Not that it'll solve all of our problems, but it.

00:32:27
Speaker 1: Does give us that thing that is going to provide us with a different depth of meaning.

00:32:33
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that that resilience that I need to then confront the other realities of the day. That this is not get rid of those dilemmas, those issues, those problems, Right, but it gives me in the true sense of the word encouragement. It gives me courage. And I need that re encouragement. I need I need that that communal context that says, Okay, yeah, I'm in this, but I'm not in this alone. That to me is such a powerful message. This does not diminish the problems, but it does share the burden kind of like what Paul says in Galatians, right, that there are some burdens that are pretty big, but that's why we have this thing called the church. Are we providing a facilitation where we can be encouraged to bear the burdens of each other in the ways that actually help.

00:33:28
Speaker 1: Yeah, and definitely in that embodied fashion. Yeah, any problem, I mean, you and I are barely in the same place. I mean, we've been in the same place at the same time, we've actually met, but we're very seldom in the same place at the same time. And so it's great to be able to have these kind of conversations. But if this is all we ever did, yeah, and you're just completely isolated from anyone else, it's not going to work now. And so there has to be this embodied piece where there is there is just something about out that being in the presence of others that is really gonna help. I think with the way that we feel, with the way that we act, the way that we think, that that embodiment is crucial.

00:34:13
Speaker 3: And I know that's your heart with I've talked to you about why you're doing these podcasts. I know whenever I take these invitations, I love doing it because I'm hopeful for more. Yeah, whoever's hearing this, whoever's watching this, my hope is be encouraged by this. But what will this activate in you in ways that'll actually push you to what's better?

00:34:33
Speaker 2: Right?

00:34:34
Speaker 3: Great is listening to a podcast at one point five speed is because let's be honest, that's what we're doing most of the time. I gotta get through it. My hope, Like my clients, I want counseling to be helpful, but I want it to be moving you towards something better.

00:34:50
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think that is my conviction is the local church has to become more of the centerpiece of our lives and less of a marginal and voluntary piece of it. And it's awesome that sort of embodiment aspect that we're talking about here and we'll talk about in the next episode is just it's crucial to that because the local church is the closest thing you that's the that is the physical manifestation of the Body of Christ in your area. Yeah, it's the one you engage with, and so we've got to attend to it. But this has been Great's uh, let's close it off there and we'll come back and we'll talk a little bit more about embody.

00:35:28
Speaker 2: This embodied the leg of the.

00:35:29
Speaker 1: Stool and maybe address some issues of loneliness and how embodiment can actually oddly solve loneliness issue.

00:35:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, so very good.

00:35:39
Speaker 1: Well, thanks Ben, thanks everybody for listening, and we'll catch on the next episode of Thinking Christian.

00:35:44
Speaker 2: Take care.

00:35:46
Speaker 1: I just want to take a second to thank the team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on the Thinking Christian podcast. If you go to lifeaudio dot com, you'll find dozens of other faith centered podcasts in their network. They've got shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting, and yeah,