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Soul Toxins Pt 8 · Mental Health and the Mission of the Church

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Good morning, everybody.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: I'm in a different spot, can you tell?
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: I am actually in my uh one of my granddaughter's bedrooms.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: I'm in Austin, Texas.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: We're actually Georgetown, Texas, just north of Austin.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: And uh uh this is where my daughter, the phone call daughter, the one that I tell that story about, lives.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: But uh my other kids are coming in today, so we're gonna have a couple of days, a few days with all my kids and all my grandkids.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: So uh it's gonna be awesome.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: And if I look a little tired, it's just because we're an hour off and this is earlier than I'm used to, but no big deal.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: Last week we talked about uh assigning motives to people.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: You know, when people do things, we we kind of tell ourselves why they did it, and um that that's a form of judgment, but it's also a a form of efficiency, you might say.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: Uh your brain likes to, because there's so many different experiences you have had and are going to have, your brain puts things in categories.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: You know, uh this kind of person, this this uh this kind of a moment tends to go this way.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: And um we just kind of put things in categories, or you might call it labeling.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: We label things.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: And kind of like assigning a motive or judging, when you uh when you label something, it affects the way you see it, it affects the way you experience it even.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um have you ever met someone and um you responded very negatively to them?
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you did your best for it not to show, but internally you responded negatively to them, and um their behavior, the energy they gave off, uh just the way they talked to people or about people, uh, just something about them was a bit of a turn-off to you.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: And um, and you know, in a sense, you judge them, you you you categorize them, or you label them.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: You know, this is an angry person, this is a an arrogant person, this is a lazy person, this is a and uh some of it goes goes on below the conscious line.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: And uh by the way, we might talk about that next week, uh subliminal thinking, and uh uh we'll see.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: We'll we might talk about that next week.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: But so you've reacted to this person, your brain is in its effort to conserve energy, kind of says, okay, this person is this, and you label them, and you know, it it makes it puts kind of like a handle, and you can kind of carry it around, and and you know, anytime you see that person or someone like that person, you uh you kind of know how to react to them, how to respond to them, how to treat them, maybe how to avoid them.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: It just depends.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: So uh labeling is another form.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you know, the fancy word for it might be prejudice, pre-judge.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: Pre-judge simply means that you judge someone before you have uh sufficient information.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: Uh pre-judge means you judge someone before you've really gotten to know them and that kind of thing.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: So here's a thought for you.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: Have you ever met someone responded negatively to them?
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe that went on for days, weeks, months, who knows?
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: It could even be years.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: And then at some point you heard their story.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: You you know, you heard a friend say, Oh, wasn't it terrible, blah, blah, blah.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: And you're like, wait a minute, are you talking about so-and-so?
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: And they're talking about the person that you've assigned a label to.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: And um, you've categorized, you've assigned motive, and in a sense, you've judged them.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: And listen, guys, it's not always wrong.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, it's how we survive.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, it's what we teach our kids.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: We, you know, you know, don't talk to strangers.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: Well, a stranger is a label.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: A stranger is a judgment.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: In a sense, it's assigning a motive.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: And again, I'm not saying this is wrong, it's the it's the best uh thing to do in a in a culture that's potentially dangerous, uh, and that is we we we categorize them, right?
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: So it's not always wrong.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: That's not my point.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: So later you hear a friend talking about this person that you've labeled, and uh you catch up and you say, wait a minute, are you talking about them?
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: And they, yeah, you didn't know, and next thing you know, that you hear their story, and it explains.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: Uh remember, excuse and explain are not the same thing.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, maybe we need to talk about that sometime.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: Excusing someone's behavior is very different from explaining someone's behavior.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, explaining someone's behavior gives actually everything we're talking about.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: It gets behind the what and the how to the why.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: It gets behind what they do and how they do it to why they do it.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: And um again, remember, explaining behavior is very different from excusing behavior.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: So you hear their story, and it's like, oh my gosh, how they act in that situation we were in makes sense now.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I drew this conclusion, and it was the wrong conclusion.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: It was a it was an unfair judgment, uh, assessment, if you will, of them.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: Now here's the other thing that's remember we're still talking about toxins.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: We're talking about things that that in and of themselves, in in small little amounts, are not that big a deal.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: But as they build up in your system, they cause uh weakness, they cause inefficiency.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, they make your system just not work well, and they uh they cause discomfort, pain.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: So what we're talking about today is this whole idea of labeling, and labeling is is again, it's your brain's desire, excuse me, to be efficient, if you will, conserve energy, and protect you.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: And it it's quick to assign labels, quick to assign the uh the person or thing to an a category, and then you you uh uh associate that person with everybody else in that category.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: So a couple of quick things about labels.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: When you label something, you you you s you you don't see it for what it is anymore.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: Once you put a label on something, you you see everything in light of the label.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: You might say it this way, we've talked about this a good while back, I think.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: Uh labeling produces what we call selective attention.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: Selective attention is when you see what you're looking for.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we talk we teasingly talk about how spouses have selective hearing.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they only hear what they want to hear.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: Well, once you've labeled someone, you see what you want to see.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: There's another thing that uh we call confirmation bias.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: Confirmation bias means once I've decided what something is or why someone does what they do, once I've made that assessment, then I see all the data, the evidence that supports or confirms my opinion.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: So it could be an individual, it could be an entire group of individuals.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and we form these labels, and then we fall into what we call confirmation bias or selective attention, where we only see the parts that agree with what we've already decided is true.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: Again, what we're talking about is toxins that get in our soul and disrupt the way our soul operates, our mind operates.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: And uh we do the same thing with ourselves, by the way.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: We label ourselves.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: And when we label ourselves a certain way, we see things and gather evidence to support the label.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: I've told you many, many times you're lazy, you'll never amount to anything.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: My father would say, Well, I gathered evidence to support that.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I no longer believe that because now I'm able to see all the other things about myself that don't agree with that label.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: And um, that's what I want for you.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I want you to learn to do that.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: Love your neighbor as yourself.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to learn to do that with yourself, but I also want you to learn to do that with the people around you, where you're able to assign uh uh a freedom to them.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: You you give them the freedom to be unique and you stay curious and want to learn more about them.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: All right, love you guys, and I will catch you next week.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: Bye.