🧠 Faith or Therapy? Navigating the Mental Health Crisis in the Church

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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. Hey, everyone, welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian and doctor James Spencer and I am joined today by Ashish Varma, but also.

00:00:37
Speaker 2: Doctor Michael Moko.

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Speaker 1: Mike is a former professor of counseling at Moody Bible Institute and he continues in private practice and today we're going to have a conversation about the intersection of mental health and faith and so excited to have you here. Mike's great to see you.

00:00:54
Speaker 2: Thanks, It's great to see both of you, and I can't wait to just explore this topic that is coming really popular. I just saw a conference where it's titled the Convergence of Faith and Mental Health. Of churches are doing things like they have a pastoral pastor of pastoral care because it has become such a hot topic now, even the relationship between faith and mental health. There's in Chicago the Center for Religion and Psychotherapy. It is all over the place, especially in the church world. I'll just say, church world.

00:01:33
Speaker 1: How do you see it? So I know a lot of the counselors I've had on the podcast talk a little bit about this idea that you're You know, they experience a lot of people coming in to have a paid friend, like there's not you know, big psychological issues that need to be dealt with, but they're really coming in to deal with what would normally have been identified as sort of the normal anxieties and stressors.

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Speaker 2: Of the day.

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Speaker 1: Are you finding a lot of that and how does that sort of intersect with this trend within the church.

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Speaker 2: So when I first started my practice over thirty years ago, i specialized in couples, couples who couldn't get along, But then I also do individuals. So an answer to your question, yes and no, there are therapists who they just are okay with renting a friend. They don't want to probe deeper, maybe because they don't have the skills or they don't know about them maybe themselves enough to do it. So there's that, but there's also depression, anxiety. This idea of I need to look in myself has become so much more relative or in my generation, it's going to sound terrible. No one ever talked about how do I feel. No one talked about maybe I should go see someone, you know. I remember in my own life after I experienced some really traumatic losses, and I'll just be vulnerable. I was a pastor at the time. I got up to preach and I knew something wasn't right, and I just said, here it is packed. It's at church, about one hundred and fifty people. I just started the ball I'm at the bulpit, I'm ready to preach. I can't even I am crying. One of the elgers comes up. He puts his arm around me, and he says, the pastor spoke a powerful message. They sang a hymn and they closed. I went home that day and I said, there are a lot of barnacles in my life that I need to scrape off. And I sought some help. And that's when I started to When I first started too, I also thought who pastors the pastor, so yes, they're a rent a friend. But there are those people who, because trauma has been very I use the word trendy since the nineties, there's trauma informed therapist who really want to help people who have pushed things down to bring him to the surface. That's a whole other topic. Sometimes it's denial. It should be your best friend, and other times it shouldn't be. So I can go off, but I want to stay on topic. Very good.

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Speaker 3: So you sort of alluded to a lot of different cross sections of people here. You've been a pastor, you've been a professor of undergraduates, you have retired from that, but you continue to be to have a practice, So you're seeing people in mental health settings. There are stigmas for different generations. But how has each of those different elements of your practice pastor, professor, actual therapist and formed the way that you think about both the pros of why therapy is an important thing and it's a good thing, that it seems like it's here to stay, but also perhaps ways in which we might rely upon it wrongly, over rely upon it.

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Speaker 2: So historically, and you know, I've done a lot of work in Angola, Africa, Historically, I would go to my pastor, I would go to mentors, older mentors who would guide me and walk me through this. In other cultures you still find this. I think maybe in the West we've gotten so preoccupied with the appearance that everything is okay that we'll go into a back room to see someone, but we won't just become you know, authentic and say, hey, I struggle with a lot of different things. But as I understand my transformation, the transformation process, God is still working in me, and you can take these things and what might be a label or a diagnosis might be something that is a strength for me. So we used to be you went to your pastor, you went to your grandma, you went to some leader. Nowadays, because it was a trend, I want to say, in the eighties or the nineties where everything turned into we handed over to the professionals. And there is a book called Faithful Angels. I think that's the name of it. But it was tooth therapists in the nineties who wrote about how this idea of social workers have given up the field of helping the oppressed, the poor, the widows, and they have gotten into it so that they can have a very nice income and live a good life, and they've sacrificed the cause of social work for a cushy life, if I can say that. And there's times when I've even looked in the mirror and said mm. And I think the passion that my wife and I had working in Angola kind of mood. We were like, you know what that kind of If I could say, it makes me feel a little better. So I don't know if that answers your question, but ask more and I'll open up more for sure.

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Speaker 3: So you made the distinction of a distinctly Western sort of setting. I have a couple of different contexts in mind. One I think of a student that had years ago from Puerto Rico. He was a middle aged man and within the larger scope of class. In our discussion, he mentioned that growing up he was very poor. But if you asked him, are you poor, he would not have said yes, because he never thought in those categories. It wasn't until certain influences had begun to enter into to try to show these people where the gaps were between their way of life and what was perceived to be the maturity of Western civilization that that idea entered into his mind, and in retrospect he thought it actually impoverished him to have that given to him. Now, I want to put that next to I have a cousin who has spent years in the IT world, but for the last a little over a decade he has gravitated towards psychology and mental health and he's actually very soon going to be setting up in India a mental health practice, but in a place that has a lot of stigma against mental health therapy, not least because it's seen as a Western science that overrides the Indian mind, the Indian ways of doing things. Now I want to put both of those together. You recommend it to me years ago book Crazy Like Us, which is sort of taking up this issue. Do you want to talk quickly what you see as the thesis of that book, why you saw it as important to recommend, and how would you speak to these environments?

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Speaker 2: And I would beat you have normal psychology. First thing we did was a kind of like set the stage and begin to read this book. It's a globalization of the American psyche and how we have the West is so powerful, So any diagnosis comes out of the DSM five. When I was doing research on trauma. It was very difficult to find articles that were not connected to the DSM, so I had to find people who are in Australia, the Netherlands, UK who are writing. The premise of the book is that we take our diagnosis because of this label. In the DSM five just gives you criteria. So in the DSM four, if you met criteria six criteria, you would be considered Let's say manic, I mean major depressive disorder when the DSM five or eight. When the DSM five came at only six, so you could have not a major depressive disorder, but when the five came, now you have a major disressive disorder. So we take this and they put it over different The author puts it over different places, and one of them is especially telling. When the tsunami hit, there were a therapists in the States who said, oh my gosh, there's gonna be a tsunami of trauma, and so they gathered up all these therapists who went there and they couldn't get past the language, they couldn't get past the food, they couldn't get past anything else. And one person who goes really sick stayed and saw how this community had dealt with different tsunamis on different basis and just were resilient. They worked together, they rebuilt, life went on for us it would be like the end of the world. Then you know, you go to like the last chapter was a man who was eccentric or a unique in Madagascar. He comes here and because of our society the way things are, he ends up in the hospital being labeled schizophrenic. So the West has negated unique cultural peculiarities, community language, for all that kind of stuff that moves people along instead of pulling them out and putting them in a psych word, labeling them, giving them every kind of medication that over the long term, you know, it's like is it you're going to be on this for life? Or as I like to say, sometimes you know, I'm not against it, but it's a cast. You put it on. When you're done with it, you move on. And so when we go to different cultures, it's ask questions and listen rather than imputing what we think is right in our culture to another culture. It's like when I would teach on empathy, I would tell my students, what is what utensils do you eat with? Forksmen in a life. How many people in this billion, how many multi billion world eat with that? I don't know how many people either hands or how many people eat with chopsticks. I said, it looks different, but that doesn't mean it's wrong or it's not good enough. And we have an epidemic of not being good enough, always trying to be better. And even when it comes to cultures though even the word developing culture as if we are more developed than someone, in some ways we're less developed. When we'd go to Angola, I was I remember the first time we're in a tent in a refugee camp in Sub Saharan Africa, and I did a couple of weddings there and the couple were telling me how the church assigns them to a couple who is not related to either family and they meet with them once a week for a year. And I was saying to myself, Wow, that's developing. That's more developed than what we have here, where the divorce rate is so high and people are just you're on your own unless you find a therapist or in a church where they have someone who comes alongside of you. So the premise is don't don't take what we have and make it like something that fits every single culture around the world. They don't use a spork, a foon and a knife, we don't use chopsticks, we don't use their hands. Simply bese their hands. Let's just learn from each other. And what we have lost in our culture today is a sense of family community, people bearing one another's burdens, because if you're a burden, you must be something must be wrong with you, or you must have a weak spiritual life, or you're in all of Job's friends when they mentioned talk to him that same concept, so.

00:13:56
Speaker 1: So Michael, when when you think about that sort of that cross cultural aspect of what you're talking about there, what I think I'm hearing is we have more to learn, or we have something at least to learn. It's not that we don't have anything to give. We definitely have something to learn from these other cultures. Because part of the reason that may be unhelpful to export these sort of diagnoses from the West into these other areas is because they've already got structures that are dealing with many of these matters in ways that we've forgotten our independence, our self reliance, are pull ourselves up by our bootstraps sort of vibe has created an independence that now virtually necessitates therapy. Right Whereas if you're in a culture that is much more communal, mutual dependence happening within a community, you have shared rituals, to shared symbolic structures, all those kind of things, therapy becomes at a little bit lower lighted, let's say, like less maybe not completely trivial, but certainly less prominent than it is in our culture. Is that, you know, sort of those all those different elements have to be taken into account as we understand why therapy is so crucial to us, why diagnosis is so crucial to us, versus why it might not work in another place.

00:15:22
Speaker 2: I agree with you seriously, if I could have to boil it down. Yeah, it's all about relational connectedness. When I was a pastor at a church in Chicago for many years before I became a professor at Moody, I was the pastor of families and small groups, and I used to say, the more people are in small groups, the less my phone will ring. Because they had a net of people who would pray for you, who would help you move, who would bring you meals when you had a baby, and it was like, I want you to be a part maybe relational community. And then these communities would birth other communities, and then we would always have a group in birther group and birth, and we'd have grandfather groups and we have like seven or eighty people come together like at the church. Oh. Ever, since we started looking at we all came out of the same community. But it's when you lose this idea of relational connectedness, you've lost something that goes way back when you read scripture look at you know, it was like it was Israel and the tribes and all these different people had one another. And it's ironic that when you look at the New Testament you read all the one another passages, but we become no, it's not about one another. It's only me and not another. Yeah. Yeah, and even even it's interesting how there's always there's a book I used to say that my students always wanted to write called your check Engine Light on how when you drive your car and the check engine light goes on, most people don't park in the ground. They called up a service station. They go somewhere where someone else can help a group of people. Whatever they talk about. It okay in our in our own psyche, it's like we push things away rather than saying, do you struggle with this? I struggle with this? How'd you get over it? Well? I did A, B and C. And the problem with thinking Christian though, is as it's managing or walking through a jungle. Because there are some people who say your mental health are directly related to your spiritual health. Yes and no, okay, because we all come out of family systems. Moses had a problem with anger, and he kept having a problem with anger, and God didn't let him lead the people into the Promised Land because of his anger. Abrahm had a problem with lying. Isaac had a problem with lying. Jacob had a problem with lying. There are systemic things that need to be address that you could be a very spiritual person, have a walk with God, but the family system that you come out of still kind of gives you little dimples and wrinkles that are okay if they don't damage other people.

00:18:19
Speaker 1: Very helpful.

00:18:20
Speaker 2: Go ahead.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, So this brings up an interesting subpoint to me. A lot of our lives are based upon the fragility of our memory.

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Speaker 2: Right.

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Speaker 3: A lot of studies have shown more recently we have prominent examples like the NBC News Brian Williams escapade that our memories are highly unreliable. They're open to suggestion, they're open to being nudged in directions subconsciously that we're not even necessarily trying to create. And so studies have shown in the last decade or so especially that therapy has has to shift and has made some shifts because suggestiveness within therapy sections has often resulted in the sudden creation of memories that there's no outside evidence ever existed, or there is no self understanding of such past traumas or abuses having happened. Now, in light of that, therapists have this odd position that's very different than what you describe, right, of a community in which you're going to people that their lives are intertwined with yours in a daily way. The therapists you see from maybe an hour a week or every other week doesn't really know you. There's a bare you're almost by intention right in order to try to be objective in a third party person. And now they make certain suggestions to try to delve and understand, and suddenly memories are created. Right, How does a therapist take this dynamic into play right, recognizing that there is a role for the therapist, There is an important work to be done with a client, and yet at the same time, the fact of this distance and the fragility of memory create an environment in which you honestly can't take everything at face value. How does the therapist work through this and why is that instructive for a person going in.

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Speaker 2: When you therapist assumes client is telling the truth, but the truth that's relevant to the client. So you're if you're a therapist worth your salt. You listen well and you say, O, conneck the dots now in the last ten years, No, in the last two years. Here's I read an article three weeks ago, and then Wall Street Journal. Three point two million people seek AI as their therapist every day day, GPT chat, whatever it is they are on there. Dear AI, I have a problem with my child. What should I do? I have a problem with my boss. I'm struggling with this and AI doesn't okay, So answer your question. You have to stay relevant to what's happening, and when you sort out there. There are many people who narrative intertwines with everybody on Quora and Reddit, and maybe Facebook or whatever, because they want to be a part of something, and so they'll add something to it and they find all these invisible community groups. Oh man, that's me too. It's like, really, wasn't you. There's a kernel of truth and they spin a whole costume around it. And sometimes if you listen, well you'll hear inconsistencies or My approach to therapy is not sit back and I just say how do you feel? How do you feel? I'm a challenger. I ask questions. I say this doesn't make sense. I ask what if you were this? Or what about that? My therapy has moved to instead of just listening and saying how do you feel, to be more interactive. People don't want to go to therapists who just say okay and they answer your question. It's if you probe and you begin to untangle some of these things, maybe a client will say, well, I really wasn't truthful? Or what I will do as a a concept called leading, I'll say I might say something like I think you're not telling me everything, and they're like, what do you mean? I say, you know what I mean? Now, I have no idea, but what I'm doing is I'm throwing a hail Mary thinking that oh man, he or she must know something. Okay, this is what really the truth is, and so they'll do that. But in terms of, you know, working with clients, therapists need to really, like, like I said, stay present, stay up to date, and keep their tool sharp. If I'm dull, you know, they say, a dull knife does more damage in the sharp. If I am dull, the therapeutic process is going to go flat and people are going to have a bad experience. And if I don't know my own stuff, then the counter transference gets in the way or I fall into the web of the client's issues and they walk away disappointed. I like to say, we get lost in the forest together rather than helping them find a way out.

00:24:07
Speaker 1: Do you do you coach any of your clients as they come in on sort of what the best posture for them to adopt in a counseling setting actually is, Mike, So, I mean, it seems to me that it is a two way street, right. They have to they have you can only really react to what they're telling you to some degree, and so there needs to be some level of transparency from the client. But then they also have to recognize that you don't know the full picture. And so whatever advice you might give them, they still need to sort of contextualize that, think about it, reflect on it. Is that Is that something that you make clear with clients or is that something that just emerges from the relationship.

00:24:47
Speaker 2: Well, very clear. I tell my clients, I'm not Hudini. Okay, the more you inform me, the more I can inform you. But here's here's you know, there's a there's a concept they use it in corporate America called the Johari window. There's four quadrants. I see, you see, you don't see. I see, I see you don't see. No one sees. If you don't know how to ask the right questions to help them see what they don't want you to see, you'll never have that insight. And so I'll tell I'll ask clients, have you been a therapy before? What went right? What went wrong? I'm not about bashing of a therapist and saying oh yeah, now, it's just like, okay, I don't want to repeat something that you've already went around. What would make I'll ask them what would make this therapeutic relationship profitable for you? So that when it comes to termination, when we're down, you say that was worth it, it was worth my investment, my time, whatever. And sometimes they will say and basically I help them lead the treatment plan if you want to put it into like you know, assessment OLC. Come when it's a treatment plan, It's like, okay, so our goal and I'll go back. It's like, you know, if you're right, this is going back to what you're abstract is what what's the thesis of it? Now? Go back? Okay, you know you came in here for this. Where are we in? What mile marker are we in? I'm super big on metaphors, and I have clients who say, wow, I was never enlightened like that, and never, you know, no one ever gave me a picture of what it is that I'm struggling with or dealing with, or how I can best with other people.

00:26:33
Speaker 3: You you mention these practices for the therapist, How do you prepare the I guess you can't prepare them. But if you had a word of advice sort of to piggyback on James's question to those entering into therapy, into that setting, what should a what should a person expect out of therapy, and what do you see as a common thing they're coming in with that maybe they should set aside.

00:27:05
Speaker 2: So when you take a trip, you know your destination. You might not figure out how to get there because there might be detours, but you know what the destination is. Let's pretend that I got into therapy and I would the therapist, I would hope, would ask me, you know, what is it that you're coming what's the presenting problem? And then how do you know when you feel like you've gained enough insight that you can move on your way. My goal is to to get myself out of a job. As they say, there are there are therapists who in our field we call chronics. They love chronic people who will just go in because of insurance, just keep going in for years. They don't want to do any work, and the therapist loves this because they don't have to do work that make excuses whatever. So it's for the person coming in, it's where do you want to go? Or do you just want to be like the Israelites wandering for forty years thinking there's a promised land? But you know, where do you want to go? What do you want to get out? Of it. Again, I can only help you to the extent that you give me as much insight, but I also have to be a part of that process. And you know, when it comes to like, it's interesting this whole field of the church and mental health. It's the healthier people are, the more they can engage with other people in the church. People usually leave church because of relational differences something like that. But again, it all boils down to how do we view ourselves in relationship to others. And if we have a faulty view of self everywhere we go, we will think something's wrong with me. When we might go into a situation that stinks like a skunk and say, wow, I smell. No, your environment is toxic. It's the word or it smells or it's unhealthy, and it's like, no, that's not me because I know how I smell and I don't smell like that. And I'm not going to own someone else's issues because that's what people will do, especially when you see it in the church, at workplace wherever, they will dump their stuff on you. And if you don't say sorry, I'm gonna hose myself off with my raincoat and walk out because that's yours to carry and not mine. So again, when you go in knowing who do I bring into who's the person I bring into the therapeutic relationship? How do I view myself? And then if you want to talk about this from a Christian perspective, is how do I view God? And how do I think God views me? So much of life revolves around how I feel and if you think about myself when I'm in the context of others, because if others are constantly projecting and projecting and I don't interpret they're going through something, I'm gonna I'm gonna think that something is again the same words, not good enough, I'm in trouble, I don't belong you know, how come I misunderstood all the time. And so it all goes down to when you go into into a therapy or relationship, this is what I'm at, This is where I want to Where I'm at, this is where I want to be. It's never perfect or that this never comes to an end, but I know I'm on the journey towards someone who I feel really comfortable with that God has made me in my unique personality in the family system, that He has placed me in and in an environment where I feel like I can add something, you too. But if someone doesn't value themselves, they're not going to value you. Because in the church, the worst thing I see even you know, even in academia, jealousy, envy, all these things that because someone has a greater insight or has a personality that's more attractive or sees things differently, and that is threatening to people.

00:31:25
Speaker 3: So let's see an envy in academia.

00:31:26
Speaker 2: No, no, no, never, never never.

00:31:30
Speaker 1: You never saw any of that.

00:31:31
Speaker 2: And it's like, you know, and it all goes back to like, hey, this is how I with a fourkspeen of a knife. You're using chopsticks. Something's wrong with you.

00:31:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's really funny you say that, Mike, because I've just been going through this exercise. We're trying to figure out, you know, over the next five ten years, you know, where do I want to go professionally and that kind of thing. And part of the struggle has been this doesn't seem good enough, right, and so you start looking out at other people who are doing these other things. You're like, yeah, what I'm doing isn't good enough. I feel like I could do so much more or whatever. And I've had to sort of curb some of those. Obviously, part of that's good, you know, you want to be ambitious, But then you also have to recognize, like I also have very specific limitations and things that I don't want to give up in order to pursue this, And so you start to sort of situate all these different pieces together. But I would say, I, you know, I was fighting jealousy, I was fighting frustration. You know, I was fighting those feelings. So it's just kind of interesting to think through what is your desired state? It can't usually, at least in my experience, hasn't been a only vocationally. I just want to do this vocationally and nothing else matters. It's almost always within a system of relationships where you're sitting back and saying, well, what is my desired state at the end of five, ten, fifteen years. Who do I want to be as a family man, Who I want to be as a Christian?

00:32:59
Speaker 2: Who do I want to be?

00:33:00
Speaker 1: You know, all these different aspects have to kind of come together. My other question for you, which I find so your comments about you know, you have to kind of know what your destination is. So I've consulted with a number of different organizations over the years, and one of the things I've found is they almost always call me because they feel like they have a recruitment and a marketing problem. Right, that's always the issue, Right, we're short on enrollment, which means we're short on money, which means we need your help to help build our marketing and recruitment are And I'll get into the organization and it starts to become clear that they don't they don't know what that destination is. And so I've always found it to be interesting as a consultant. You kind of go in and you're talking with people and you're trying to help them understand that this one little pain point isn't quite what they're shooting for. Yes, they need to solve for it to some degree, but there's something bigger they need to develop. Do you find you do that in therapy as well, Like somebody comes in with almost a destination that's shorting where you think they need to go and sort of expanding their vision of who they desire to be long term in the future.

00:34:09
Speaker 2: Yes, So what you said in the James in the beginnings, some like with corporations or people or whatever, they feel like they're stuck. Yeah, here's the irony. And it's the strangest thing. People are more afraid of being successful, you know, than they are. Everyone knows they're going to experience failure. But it's like me be like write a book that people read. Me, has to be to speak at some whatever me. It's like no, no, no, And so it's like I'll challenge people. If not you, who or how come? Where does this mindset? And the especially Price followers, they confuse this with humility. I'm like, and maybe you should do a all said about himself? Okay, but it's like, if you're really good at something, then shine, shine and know that. You know. When you were talking, it was like it came to a place in life where I realized I needed to be the best person God made me to be. Are people you know. I don't listen to Taylor Swift, but she to sing a song called I Think It goes like people throw rocks at things that shine. I phrase something like that. I don't some young person would know it. Maybe not, but people I thought, wow, what a great title of our song. People throw rocks at things that shine, and some things maybe are generational it's like, no, that's not what you do. No, maybe, but that's maybe back then, but today, no, you need to do that. Otherwise what happens is you stay stuck and then then anger and resentment comes in. And you know, there's a book, right, I don't even know. We used to always bring in books in the classroom and tell students and they were too kind of like, oh, to know anything about reading it. But it's by a guy named James Hollis called Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life, okay, and he looks at the second half of life after forty right. But the book is it's a fascinating book about when you get to a place in life you understand that so much of the interaction we have with other people is their own insecure projections on other people. And if you're in an environment and where there's a hierarchy, oh man, the projection is it is so blatant, and we have to understand that own what's yours and discard what isn't because these are people who, for whatever reason, well they cannot be wrong, they cannot handle correct, they cannot see anything different because it is affront to their own little world of whether it's control or power or whatever. But projection happens so often in life. When I work with couples, it's like they usually just respond this, don't respond in a negative way. Look at your spouse and say, it sounds like you're having a frustrating time in life, but you haven't really told me what you're frustrated about, and you're just slinging mud at me. And they're like, wow. But it's this idea of when you when you work, when you live long enough, you say, it's like all these books that were around in the New York Times bestseller about four or five years ago. You know what the aff do I care what people think about me? Or the same author who gives a sahi whatever about like, you know what people think? It doesn't matter. How come that matter so much? They don't they don't pay our bills, They don't live with the person I live with, or have the children I have, or have the hobbies or interests I do. So what do I care?

00:38:08
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, I mean I think Friedman's book Failure of Nerve it resonates with a lot of what he talks about in there, the non anxious presence, the self differentiated leadership concept. I think those ideas. I ran across those right at the right time toward my last few years at Moody, and they were really helpful because they do sort of if you can learn how to do it, like not take things personally, not be defensive, they really do sort of allow you to be calm in the midst of tumultuous situations where you're recognizing, yes, there's a lot of this that is my responsibility, there's also a lot of it that's not, and there's not a whole lot I can do about that. I can't solve all the problems. I can really be responsible for myself and what I can do, and then everybody else needs to sort of feel you're out not figure out their own lives in a bad way. But you do have a sense where it's like I can't be the solution to everyone's problems, and there is a calmness to that. It creates a piece I suppose, not a callousness, but a piece.

00:39:20
Speaker 2: Yeah, And the beginning of it is always say this to my students, because I get to say it to myself. What kind of people annoy you so for me? Ignorant people, people who are I'm just be stupid and think they know so much more, and I just shake my head and sometimes it's okay. I remember, sometimes it's okay just to shut your mouth and act like a fool, because there's a saying that that forgo. They used to tell us, the higher a monkey climbs, the more he exposes himself. And it's like that. It's like, let these people babble on for what because their ignorance is just so pathetic. And I used to say, Okay, you know what, they're gonna annoy you, but just let it go and walk away. They're not like back in the day in your classroom. But when they when they're ignorance, trive to control me. Oh man, I would be like, take that leash off of me. You know, microman and micromanaging people. You said, you just drive me crazy. Yeah, but again I had to be learned. Okay, you know what, what is it about this person? Interpret the person? Otherwise you will become the problem. Yeah, and you know it's hard to get out of that. Sometimes it definitely is. But all this relates to like how we again going back to what I said earlier, our relationship and relationship to other people and being okay with who you are and your emotional state, your physical state, your spiritual state, all those things because God has uniquely made each one of us, and he talked about it. The body of Christ is made up of different parts, you know. And if we're okay with how He's made us, what we're interested in, and and just how we impact other people in that world, we're okay.

00:41:17
Speaker 3: At the risk of opening up a larger can than we have time for, I'm gonna do it anyway, because it's what I do.

00:41:31
Speaker 2: That's the one thing I always appreciate about you. You know. I thought about you today because the church I go to has a pastor who's really passionate about the arts. And so my wife put this beautiful woodblock print in and she was talking to this guy, and he had never heard of the book Faith and Art or you know, the the and I forgot his name, the Japanese guy who has these incredible works of art let he puts around. Yeah, yeah, that's great.

00:42:05
Speaker 3: So as a theologian, I live in a world sometimes where there's understandably so much weight placed upon our relationship with God, and it's it's an odd thing for theologion to say, perhaps so skewed that we forget that our relationship with God is in the context of relationship with others. And you bring up the body of Christ's imagery right where there's there's two entailments from it that Christ is our head, but also there's a whole bunch of other people around us that are part of the body with this that we work together with. Right now. I bring this up because this podcast is thinking Christian. We want faith to be something that's not just on the back burner. And yet there has been a stigma that I think, even in the changing climate, still exists in some forms. And you know, we had a former president of Moody who we won't name, who got up in front of everyone and said, uh, we have all these mental health problems. All you need is to read your Bible more and have a better relationship with God. I think we're probably all on the same page here of so way too simplified.

00:43:22
Speaker 2: Opened so much cancer. I was on a comittee. I told you doesn't that wanted to get rid of that person to person counseling center And because of the bottom line and pay I'm not going to even say how much money it was every year to a phone service that a student could any time, And it was like, they don't even know our theology, they don't know the student. This is not relevant, This isn't even zoom, this is just a phone. It could be like some person in some country I won't even mention around the world who's up at it during the day when it's night. And I was like, what the heck? Yeah, so that's a whole can of worms that we have to go off camera.

00:44:08
Speaker 3: For for sure. For sure, so somebody on camera part of it. In light of that reality where I'm sure there's still a lot of people who are saying, I think mental health therapy might help me, but I know that if I do it, there's a whole group of people that will look down upon me because they'll say, your relationship with God isn't good enough. Why is it important in your in your thinking for someone to recognize that faith in God as fulfilled in the person of Christ and lived by the very breath of God given to us. Takes seriously that engaging in mental health therapy with another human being is not different from trusting God.

00:45:01
Speaker 2: We compartmentalize the emotional well being from anything else, so Let's say that I was eighty pounds overweight and I came to Jim and I said, Jim, you know, can you help me? And he would say, you know, you have to pray your weight away. You have to like just read the Bible or you'll become like Eli who fell over and whatever. But how come I could go to Jim and Jim isn't going to say to me or James, sorry, Ok'll good that. Hey, you know what, I can't help you. First, you have to get God's help and then maybe you know because but how can we compartmentalize so many things but yet the one area that is so relevant to our faith walk? If I see my self as less than how can I ever believe God can use me unless I'm so Unless I go to First Corinth and say He takes the foolish things me of this role to confound the wise. But how can I ever believe that I'm good enough to lead a Bible study, I'm good enough to be someone who engages in helping youth if I'm constantly struggling with you know what this as one pastor years ago said worm theology. And all I do is feel like I just crawl across the ground and I'm not good enough except be careful and I'm stepped on? How does that fit into how God wants to use me? And when you look at Scripture, it was like every you know, Moses was a great leader. Do he have his issues, yes, but he led the people out. Look at Paul, all of these people they had issues, okay, And yet in our world we can say no, no, no, forget this, just follow the boy. Scripture is good, it's it's relevant for everything. But yet all those people had something we never had. They had elders, they had families, they had other people who carried and guided them. When you're all alone, life becomes really scary. But when you're in real community, not fake community where you show up on Sunday morning for an hour and hour and half and then you leave, you know, like it's a baseball game or something. Real community where people are interested, they have you over, you know, their kids, their lives. That is all part of the growth process because you let them inside of your very fears, your insecurities, your struggles, and they're like, I'm gonna pray, not so my prayer can be a gossipline. I'm gonna pray so that you might be encouraged, And I'm gonna be here so you're couraged. What makes a a so effective any time of the day. I can call my sponsor anytime of day. I'm struggling anytime of the day. Okay, But he doesn't say, Hey, you know what did you talk to God before you called me? Now, it's an assumption of we are the body. I'm an extension. I'm his hands and feet. But our world says, don't inconvenience me only if I get a benefit from it? Was it now? When who talked about a disinterested love? He said, when we invest, we want interest, but when we liber oal lives of people, we should be with no expectation of interest back just give because of that's what we're supposed to do. Yeah, and we you know, when we I can only speak of like Angola. But I remember leaving when we said these. Now I under understand what it means when Scripture said that you have I have bred you know nothing about went there and it was like wow that they have back in the day, cell phones, no internet, no running still today many electricity no running one and no but they have bread. I know nothing about because they have each other and church was there. Even to this day, their lives revolve around church, not because it's a to do thing, but it's a people relational thing. Yeah, and I think you know we talk about our mental health Christian walk. It cannot be compartmentalized. It has to be intertwined because even the person who was quote unquote unique or eclectic finds his place or her place. HM. Very good.

00:50:00
Speaker 1: Well, Mike, thanks for being here. This has been an awesome conversation. Really appreciate you being on the show. And uh, and thanks for sharing your insights with us or call it a day there, but part two, we'd love to have you back. This would be it would be great. I know there's a lot of grounded didn't cover, so you're welcome back anytime. We'll get your scheduled. This was fantastic and I just really appreciate you being here. We'll close it out today and uh, we'll catch you on the next episode of Thinking Christian. Thanks everybody for being here.

00:50:32
Speaker 2: Take care.

00:50:33
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 more.