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Beyond the Quick Fix: Sadness as a Rational Response to a Broken World · Thinking Christian: Bible, Theology, and Culture

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  Speaker 1: The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that
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  Speaker 1: deny God. As such, we need Thinking Christian to become
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  Speaker 1: as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian Podcast.
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  Speaker 1: I'm doctor James Spencer, and through calm, thoughtful theological discussions,
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  Speaker 1: Thinking Christian highlights the ways God is working in the
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  Speaker 1: world and questions the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions
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  Speaker 1: that hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ. Now onto
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  Speaker 1: today's episode of Thinking Christian.
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• 1:21
  Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian and
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  Speaker 1: doctor James Spencer and I'm joined by doctor Ben Matthew.
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  Speaker 1: He is a professor of counselor education at Columbia International University,
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  Speaker 1: and we're going to be continuing our conversation about faith
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  Speaker 1: and culture. I'm sorry, not faith and culture, faith and
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  Speaker 1: mental health. It is sort of a cultural conversation, I suppose,
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  Speaker 1: so I won't count that as a complete and total biff.
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  Speaker 1: But today we're going to be thinking about the issue
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  Speaker 1: of sadness and how it's a rational or maybe even
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  Speaker 1: a theological response. But I think probably the best place
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  Speaker 1: to start with this is to differentiate a little bit,
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  Speaker 1: like what's the difference between just feeling blue occasionally and
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  Speaker 1: actually being depressed? Like, are there are there sign posts
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  Speaker 1: that people should be watching for where they would say,
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  Speaker 1: I'm not sad, I actually might need some help here.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I think there are some helpful ways of
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  Speaker 3: looking for indicators right, yeah, warning signs of sorts. My
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  Speaker 3: wife has a newer car, so she's at all these
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  Speaker 3: bells and whistles. But my car, I think, is twenty
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  Speaker 3: three twenty four years old right now, and it's still running,
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  Speaker 3: so I can't, in good justification get rid of it,
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  Speaker 3: even though, and every once in a while these little
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  Speaker 3: warning lights come on to let me know, really, you know,
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  Speaker 3: this car is two decades old. For the most part,
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  Speaker 3: they're not really serious, but every once in a while,
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  Speaker 3: a more serious red light engine break like something red
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  Speaker 3: comes on. It would be a foolish of me to,
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  Speaker 3: you know, pull a hammer from my back sat knock
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  Speaker 3: the you know, dash light out, and say, oh, look
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  Speaker 3: I fixed it. No, not really, because the indicator is
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  Speaker 3: actually not the problem. The indicator is an indicator of
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  Speaker 3: something underneath the hood that's really going on. The sadness depression.
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  Speaker 3: You know. Some of the things that we're talking about
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  Speaker 3: here are indicators, and it's important, especially in our I
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  Speaker 3: think in our Western context, sometimes we just want to
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  Speaker 3: get rid of the indicators altogether. We think sadness means something,
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  Speaker 3: that sadness needs to be removed, and I would argue
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  Speaker 3: that that's missing the opportunity. That's punching out the light
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  Speaker 3: without actually dealing with what's underlying it. Because sadness is
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  Speaker 3: an indicator that life is not going the way it should. Now,
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  Speaker 3: whether that's a right response or not, we can get
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  Speaker 3: into that. And sadness generally is that initial response to
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  Speaker 3: perceived wrong in justice, personal preferences not being aligned to
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  Speaker 3: the ways that I should. The question becomes when does
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  Speaker 3: it become clinically significant? Within a clinical lens, we look
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  Speaker 3: at things like duration, is this just in terms of
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  Speaker 3: the moment? Listen, having a bad day. We all have
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  Speaker 3: a bad day. We all know what that feels like.
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  Speaker 3: Sometimes that it may extend even to a weekend where
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  Speaker 3: the situation just continues to be like a cloud hovering
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  Speaker 3: over you. But more often than not, when that situation
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  Speaker 3: has kind of gone, is no longer ap pressing reality,
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  Speaker 3: but the indicators of sadness continue to persist generally over
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  Speaker 3: a couple of weeks. That for me is a red flag.
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  Speaker 3: That's another indicator. I'm like, okay, it's not just situational.
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  Speaker 3: It's tending to hover. And then I start asking questions
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  Speaker 3: of my clients like what is this doing in terms
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  Speaker 3: of your relationships. What is this doing in terms of
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  Speaker 3: your work? What is this doing in terms of your sleep?
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  Speaker 3: What is this doing in terms of your appetite. I'm
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  Speaker 3: looking for consistency across life that it's not just I
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  Speaker 3: hate work, but everywhere else is great. Well, I can
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  Speaker 3: kind of tell you the problems probably work there needs
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  Speaker 3: to change. But if a client tells me I'm really
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  Speaker 3: struggling at performing at work, my grades are really struggling.
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  Speaker 3: If I'm a student, I'm lashing out at my loved ones,
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  Speaker 3: my sleep is really bad. Like when I start seeing
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  Speaker 3: a prevalence of problems across life, that's another indicator that
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  Speaker 3: we're moving away from just situational sadness or relational sadness
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  Speaker 3: to something that's a little more clinically significant, that is
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  Speaker 3: not necessarily connected to a situation or relationship. It's at
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  Speaker 3: that point where I start asking the questions whether or
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  Speaker 3: not it's starting to affect thoughts and affections and behaviors
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  Speaker 3: towards things like suicide and suicidal ideation. Have you thought
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  Speaker 3: about hurting yourself in a way that would end that's suffering?
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  Speaker 3: That's at that point we start recognizing there's a shift
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  Speaker 3: now it's not just normal sadness. We're starting to get
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  Speaker 3: into areas where an individual is having persistent negative reactions
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  Speaker 3: without much explanation, and it's negatively affecting life towards the
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  Speaker 3: development of solutions. I'm using air quotes here for those
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  Speaker 3: of you that can't see it, like suicide, that is
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  Speaker 3: really not a solution, but for those in the moment
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  Speaker 3: of depression, it feels like the only thing they can do.
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  Speaker 1: So when we think about these indicators, a question came
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  Speaker 1: up when we didn't talk about this one before the podcast,
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  Speaker 1: So it'll be a little bit of a curve ball, but.
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  Speaker 2: I'm sure you can handle it.
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  Speaker 1: You know, you mentioned you know, sadness is an indicator,
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  Speaker 1: and it's sort of one of the primary emotions that
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  Speaker 1: we would feel when something just doesn't go right. I'm
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  Speaker 1: wondering if you're seeing any shifts in that given some
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  Speaker 1: of the trends we're looking at in the digital world.
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  Speaker 1: So the digital world tends to breed anger, frustration, like
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  Speaker 1: not exactly sadness, but almost like I would want to
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  Speaker 1: say rage. Rage isn't exactly the right word, but it
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  Speaker 1: leans that direction. Yeah, so you may be sad about it,
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  Speaker 1: but you're also expressing maybe that sadness through anger.
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  Speaker 2: How do those any ideas on how those might relate.
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  Speaker 3: Oh that's interesting. Yeah, I don't do a lot of
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  Speaker 3: work with kids, but I know developmentally speaking, anger for
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  Speaker 3: kids more often than not is an outward expression of
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  Speaker 3: inward depression. And what I mean by that is because
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  Speaker 3: kids don't have necessarily the emotional language or maturity to
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  Speaker 3: know how to express themselves in a if I can
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  Speaker 3: say in appropriate ways, what often comes out is anger.
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  Speaker 3: Write this sudden outbursts or this throwing of something, and
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  Speaker 3: sometimes it could be anger, but a lot of times
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  Speaker 3: for kids, they just don't have the band with to
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  Speaker 3: be able to express the sorrow. I kind of use
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  Speaker 3: that as a bit of an analogy to what we
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  Speaker 3: see online. Yeah, that in a lot of ways, I
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  Speaker 3: think there's some real heartache, some real if I can
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  Speaker 3: use the word sorrow over life situations, context of our society.
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  Speaker 3: But what often comes out is to the social media
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  Speaker 3: is it's like a little kid who just wants to
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  Speaker 3: rail and just vent because they now have a platform
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  Speaker 3: where they can vent. And it's a lack of communal maturity,
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  Speaker 3: communal vocabulary, communal resistance to let our base or impulses
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  Speaker 3: go forward, where again, when we don't have a space
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  Speaker 3: to then share the lament over something, the only other
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  Speaker 3: response we think is anger, and it has a self
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  Speaker 3: fulfilling prophecy in that those of us that view that
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  Speaker 3: those videos on constant loop through doom scrolling, we then
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  Speaker 3: kind of develop our own response. Well, heck if I
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  Speaker 3: ain't angry too, Yeah, that's right, and the rage machine
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  Speaker 3: continues to polarize, continues to feed into the algorithms, and
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  Speaker 3: we know the whole crazy cycle that goes from that.
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  Speaker 3: That's one of the first things that's start thinking about
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  Speaker 3: when you mentioned that there's there's a correlation of source
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  Speaker 3: between how little kids respond to depression and anger and
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  Speaker 3: kind of what we're seeing online as well.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, because it feels like there's sort of a you know,
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  Speaker 1: and you mentioned like little kids don't have the vocabulary
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  Speaker 1: necessarily to verbalize exactly what they're feeling. They can't express it.
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  Speaker 1: And I think maybe even an adult part of that
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  Speaker 1: that could be part of the problem, but I think
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  Speaker 1: even the bigger part of the problem is that we
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  Speaker 1: don't feel like we.
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  Speaker 2: Can do anything about it.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, and so we're we're almost being conditioned is
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  Speaker 1: a strong word, and I don't mean that in sort
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  Speaker 1: of a conspiracy theory sort of way, right, but we
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  Speaker 1: are being maybe enculturated a bit into thinking that this
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  Speaker 1: sort of rage is an appropriate response to our frustrations.
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  Speaker 1: I remember I'm doing a different series with a buddy
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  Speaker 1: and he was talking about we're talking a little bit
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  Speaker 1: about biblical masculinity, and we got into aggression and he
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  Speaker 1: said one of the things that I believe it was
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  Speaker 1: Winston Churchill said about Gandhi, right when Gandhi was doing
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  Speaker 1: his nonviolent resistance of the Great of Great Britain. He said,
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  Speaker 1: you know, look at the effeminate leader that they have.
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  Speaker 1: He's not even going to fight back. And you're just like,
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  Speaker 1: how interesting. Yeah, right, because you think about, you know,
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  Speaker 1: some of the things that Gandhi did, and it's like
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  Speaker 1: he's into this more passive resistance, like he's just not
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  Speaker 1: going to play the game that everybody wants him to play,
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  Speaker 1: and in that is an active resistance. But as we
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: just think about that comment, it's like, that's what it
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  Speaker 1: feels like we're supposed to do now, is the way
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  Speaker 1: to get things done is to take this more aggressive
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  Speaker 1: stance toward whatever it is that we're railing against and
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  Speaker 1: really punchbody in the mouth, whether it's you know, verbally
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  Speaker 1: or physically or whatever like.
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  Speaker 2: That's the response.
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  Speaker 1: It's not a reason I'm going to step away from
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  Speaker 1: the fray and do my own thing. It's nope, this
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  Speaker 1: is an appropriate response right now. This guy's an idiot
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  Speaker 1: and everybody needs to know it. Kind of I do.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, Oh that's interesting because I mean, unfortunately it works
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  Speaker 3: right when I give those verbal jousts.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, I get.
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  Speaker 3: The likes, I get, I get the clicks, and it
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  Speaker 3: continues to monetize our attention in a way that again
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  Speaker 3: fulfills what it's designed to do. But to your point, yeah,
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  Speaker 3: it doesn't necessarily create a compassionate response towards those realities
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  Speaker 3: in ways that I think are in line with Christian virtues.
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  Speaker 1: And it may be masking a sadness, is what I'm
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: kind of And I don't only put works in your mouth,
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  Speaker 1: but what I'm kind of hearing you say is it
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  Speaker 1: very well may be masking a sadness underneath. It may
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  Speaker 1: not actually be angry at this one particular thing, but
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  Speaker 1: this one particular thing is just sort of piling on
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  Speaker 1: to this deeper existential anxiety, deeper sadness that we have
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  Speaker 1: about the way the world has turned out for us
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  Speaker 1: and maybe for others. And now when that one other
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  Speaker 1: thing piles on, we don't respond with a lament, We
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  Speaker 1: don't respond with you know, those sort of tools, right,
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  Speaker 1: we're actually expressing this deep sadness and disappointment at the
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  Speaker 1: way the world is.
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  Speaker 2: We just get angry.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah. And I remember one of my boys, he's probably
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  Speaker 3: all a four years old. I went to go pick
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  Speaker 3: him up from Sunday school downstairs, and he was having
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  Speaker 3: a grand time, loved being with his friends, loves being
• 12:44
  Speaker 3: at Sunday school. And I said, okay, buddy, it's time
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  Speaker 3: to go. And he looked at me and said, no,
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  Speaker 3: I don't want to go. I said, no, it's Sunday
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  Speaker 3: School's done. We got to go go. He grabbed his
• 12:53
  Speaker 3: little jar of a plastic jar of crayons and threw
• 12:59
  Speaker 3: it as the room and the thing just went. And
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  Speaker 3: I remember everyone, myself, the shide school teach, all the
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  Speaker 3: kids went what do we do with this? It was
• 13:08
  Speaker 3: just this outburst. I remember, obviously trying to be calm,
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  Speaker 3: and picked him up and walked him out. And had
• 13:16
  Speaker 3: to deal with them accordingly, and later in conversation said, Dad,
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  Speaker 3: I was just so sad. I loved my friends. I
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  Speaker 3: didn't want to leave them. Yeah, to hear to hear
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  Speaker 3: him respond that way rightfully, I was discouraged by his
• 13:32
  Speaker 3: initial response. Sure, and yet I wanted to how can
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  Speaker 3: I even say this, even applaud him for the sorrow
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  Speaker 3: of leaving behind his friends, Like, there's something good that
• 13:43
  Speaker 3: I want to foster in that that he loves his friends,
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  Speaker 3: that he wants to be with his friends, and he
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  Speaker 3: feels heartache when he's not with his friends. Yeah, that's good.
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  Speaker 3: Like that there's something good there that I wanted to
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  Speaker 3: foster in him. Now I want to help mitigate his
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  Speaker 3: response when he doesn't get those things right. Yeah, obviously
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  Speaker 3: we need to work on that a little bit more.
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  Speaker 3: But being all of four years old, I kind of
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  Speaker 3: get you don't have them wherewithal the maturity, the insight,
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  Speaker 3: the vocabulary. How do we build that? My concern paralleling
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  Speaker 3: to us today in our culture is that we highly
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  Speaker 3: reward the vocabulary of anger in the midst of real sorrow,
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  Speaker 3: and sometimes you need to get angry, I realize. I
• 14:28
  Speaker 3: think Jesus flipped a couple of tables from what I've
• 14:31
  Speaker 3: read here and there, and so there may be times
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  Speaker 3: for that. If there's also a lot of weeping over
• 14:37
  Speaker 3: the city of Jerusalem too, and one is not more
• 14:40
  Speaker 3: biblical masculinity than the other, I think they're both in
• 14:44
  Speaker 3: that sense, truly biblical masculinity.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: I mean, there's a sense in which I think we've
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: denormalized sorrow to normalize the lament, and it's only appropriate
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: in certain spaces, right, you know, broken limbs probably okay
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: to cry and be sad about. You know, that's a
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: that's an area of vulnerability. We're okay with funerals, totally fine.
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: You know, weddings, you know, my daughters, when my daughters
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: get married, I'll be I'll be a mess.
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  Speaker 2: I'm sure, Like there's no doubt in my mind.
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  Speaker 1: So, I mean, we have these sort of corners where
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: it's okay to express that that sort of deep, non
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: angry emotion. But you know, you can envision someone getting
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: online and just sort of lamenting the way the world
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: is and being in true sorrow sackcloth and ashes sort
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: of right, and just look him and go and it's weird,
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: like why, Like I mean, I even know what my
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: response would be. It is just not something we're used
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: to seeing, and so we tend to either oh, that's
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: great for them, and then go about our merry way, right,
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: as opposed to recognizing it as a true expression of
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: something that could actually be helpful and maybe even sort
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: of you know, help us pull away from the depressive attitude,
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: might actually make us less sad. Yeah, Like, if sadness
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: were appropriately expressed.
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  Speaker 2: We might actually end up being less sad.
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  Speaker 3: There's something so good about that, James. The ability to articulate,
• 16:23
  Speaker 3: to voice, to give space doesn't lessen the severity of
• 16:28
  Speaker 3: what got you there, but it does give you space
• 16:31
  Speaker 3: to deal with it a little more holistically, right, the
• 16:34
  Speaker 3: ability just to kind of let it out. There's times
• 16:37
  Speaker 3: in counseling with clients where, especially with some of my
• 16:41
  Speaker 3: male clients, when they do start showing emotion, maybe even tears.
• 16:47
  Speaker 3: And that's not the goal of counseling per se. But
• 16:49
  Speaker 3: how many times I've heard clients say, I'm so embarrassed,
• 16:52
  Speaker 3: I'm so sorry. I don't mean to be emotional. I'm like, dude,
• 16:56
  Speaker 3: if this isn't the place to do it, then.
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: Like where right?
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  Speaker 3: And that response that they feel shame or they feel embarrassed.
• 17:07
  Speaker 3: I remember hearing the first time that phrase at a funeral,
• 17:10
  Speaker 3: I think one time, someone asking, well, how so and
• 17:13
  Speaker 3: so doing, like the spouse or the kids. Oh, they're
• 17:15
  Speaker 3: doing well, They're they're keeping a stiff upper lip, right,
• 17:17
  Speaker 3: they're holding it together.
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 17:20
  Speaker 3: And I remember thinking I didn't even hear what that meant,
• 17:22
  Speaker 3: that phrase meant. But the idea that you're not even
• 17:25
  Speaker 3: letting your lips quiver for fear of showing emotion at
• 17:30
  Speaker 3: a time that I'm like, but wouldn't that be appropriate here?
• 17:33
  Speaker 3: Wouldn't this be a normative context that even here at
• 17:37
  Speaker 3: the death of a loved one, they're doing fine. And
• 17:40
  Speaker 3: even the moralizing of it, right, that to not do
• 17:43
  Speaker 3: fine means that you're kind of losing it, but to
• 17:45
  Speaker 3: do fine means that you're keeping it all together.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: And I've done this experiment, this thought experiment with some
• 17:50
  Speaker 3: of my clients, especially those who are a faith when
• 17:52
  Speaker 3: we talk about Jesus in the garden, Like, what's the
• 17:55
  Speaker 3: mental image you have of Jesus in the garden praying
• 17:59
  Speaker 3: to his father? And nine times out of ten it's
• 18:03
  Speaker 3: this stoic Jesus looking into heaven single tear down the
• 18:09
  Speaker 3: face and I'm like, sorry to burst your bubble, But
• 18:13
  Speaker 3: most likely in the engineer's context, he's on the ground
• 18:17
  Speaker 3: like full on weeping, probably most likely what we would
• 18:21
  Speaker 3: call out of control. But that was an appropriate say.
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  Speaker 3: And I'm not here to say one is necessarily better
• 18:28
  Speaker 3: than the other, but I think there is an authenticity
• 18:31
  Speaker 3: that we need to allow for in those moments, especially
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  Speaker 3: in our context where there is this real existential dread
• 18:39
  Speaker 3: that I think is a proper response. But how it
• 18:42
  Speaker 3: can move sometimes when we don't give space for it.
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: I think this is when it goes back to your
• 18:46
  Speaker 3: earlier question, when can it start getting too much where
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: we tried to keep it in and it starts affecting life,
• 18:53
  Speaker 3: It starts affecting relationships, it starts I think what I
• 18:56
  Speaker 3: see in some context of what is clinical depression in
• 18:59
  Speaker 3: terms of a diagnostic criteria, it's just the fact that
• 19:01
  Speaker 3: a person hasn't had this space or wherewithal to have
• 19:04
  Speaker 3: honest reflection about the hardships that they, if not society
• 19:09
  Speaker 3: is dealing with.
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: Do you find when you're dealing with people who have
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: who are trying to cope with sort of just general sadness, right,
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: and maybe I'll put it like this non event based
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: sadness got it right.
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: Like so nobody nothing you couldn't point back to.
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: Man, I know, you know, some tragedy happened in my
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: life and I'm really sad about it, but just sort
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: of that non event based sadness, Like there's something going on.
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: I can't really articulate it, but I'm just sad all
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: the time. I'm depressed all the time. And even if
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: they're continuing to sort of function, right, they're functioning in
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: a in.
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: A way that we would define as.
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: Fine, yeah, to use your word, right, but it's clear
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: that they're not elevating beyond fine, right, Like they're getting
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: all the task done that everybody around them needs them
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: to do, but they're not actually fine.
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Like I find it.
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: I mean, I've been married down for twenty six years
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: and it's finally been drilled into me that when i
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: think I'm doing fine, when i think I'm sort of
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: masking the sadness to the frustration of the day, my
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: wife's like, you're doing a horrible job at it, Like
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: there's no chance that you can hide the fact that
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: you are preoccupied with all these other things that you're frustrated,
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: like you don't hide it. Well, I'm like, really, because
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: I thought I was it was great job, right, So
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: I'm functioning right, yeah, but I'm not. She can tell
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: the difference, you know. So how do you how do
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: you think through some of those things with folks and
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: help them get to a point where they could actually
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: express the sadness in a way that is helpful to them.
• 20:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, Now it's good. I mean thinking about even personal
• 20:57
  Speaker 3: context of when I've made changes in work or sometimes
• 21:03
  Speaker 3: even physical location. I remember they're using the phrase our wives,
• 21:08
  Speaker 3: our wonderful helps in this. I use this phrase with
• 21:10
  Speaker 3: my wife where I'm fine or no. How did I
• 21:14
  Speaker 3: say I'm okay, but I'm not okay being okay?
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah?
• 21:18
  Speaker 3: In that it kind of exemplifies what you were just saying,
• 21:21
  Speaker 3: like I'm getting everything done. There isn't like some heavy
• 21:24
  Speaker 3: situation or relational burden. There's nothing wrong with life. I'm okay, right,
• 21:32
  Speaker 3: but there is this sense that if that's all there is,
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: I don't like it and I'm okay, but I'm not
• 21:39
  Speaker 3: okay with just being okay.
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 21:42
  Speaker 3: And so this has prompted me as I often say
• 21:46
  Speaker 3: I don't drift towards holiness. I don't drift towards growth.
• 21:51
  Speaker 3: And there are those times where you just feel like
• 21:53
  Speaker 3: you're drifting, You're just kind of there. Those are moments
• 22:00
  Speaker 3: that I think can be when there isn't this against
• 22:03
  Speaker 3: situational or existential. It's just this kind of driftingness that
• 22:07
  Speaker 3: I think in itself can be an opportunity to consider, explore,
• 22:13
  Speaker 3: talk about other options. That may mean a change somewhere, vocation, location,
• 22:20
  Speaker 3: that may mean a perspective that needs to be adjusted
• 22:23
  Speaker 3: of saying okay, is if this is the place where
• 22:26
  Speaker 3: I'm at, how do I then maximize flourishing in this context?
• 22:31
  Speaker 3: What needs to change in terms of my context? Again,
• 22:36
  Speaker 3: there's something good about giving space for that drifting frustration
• 22:42
  Speaker 3: rather than just kind of washing over. I'll just get
• 22:45
  Speaker 3: over You've got a good job, be okay with the
• 22:47
  Speaker 3: people that in your life. Just get over yourself already.
• 22:51
  Speaker 3: I want to give a little space for that, because, again,
• 22:53
  Speaker 3: I think, especially for Christians, just drifting doesn't result in
• 22:59
  Speaker 3: flourishing in every sense, theological, psychological, physical. You know this
• 23:05
  Speaker 3: as a trainer, like you don't drift towards health, no anything,
• 23:11
  Speaker 3: you tend to drift towards being unhealthy, and it's the
• 23:13
  Speaker 3: push that tends to motivate towards continued health. I want
• 23:19
  Speaker 3: to give space for that and then use it as
• 23:21
  Speaker 3: a creative energy to say, okay, so what do we
• 23:23
  Speaker 3: do with this? How can we capitalize on this?
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 23:27
  Speaker 3: Give it real energy to acknowledge the frustration, but give
• 23:32
  Speaker 3: it some growth towards going back to what we said
• 23:35
  Speaker 3: earlier about telling us right. This idea of meaning towards
• 23:38
  Speaker 3: what you're made for might me meets some adjustment, but
• 23:42
  Speaker 3: it's for a greater purpose.
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I find it interesting to think, you know,
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: making sure that we're not masking sort of this underlying
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: existential anxiety, this sadness, this frustration.
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: The passage that always.
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: Comes to my mind is the martyrs under the altern Revelation.
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: This is John's vision, and they're crying out to the
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: Lord because he hasn't yet avenged them, and so the
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: world hasn't yet been made right. And even though we're
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: up in heaven, you know, with God. And it's a vision, right,
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: I don't know that it's the exact picture of what's
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: going on, right, So, but it is John's vision. And
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: so it has to make sense on some level. But
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: this notion of there's an appropriate anxiety and expression of
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: a desire for completion, a restoration that all of us
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: should feel, and I think sometimes we're not so attuned
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: to that.
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: I know, I'm not.
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: I just I'm okay most of the time, just grinding, right,
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: and you know, the world isn't what it is. I
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: know the world's not the way it should be, thank
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: you Plantinka. But like you've got to keep grinding, like
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: there's no there's nothing else to do.
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: You just grind. You're just grind.
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: It's like, well, but there is something else to do, right.
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: You see these these souls under the altar, lamenting, crying
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: out to God, you know, to sort of bring all
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: of this to a completion.
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: We had that opportunity as well.
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: We've talked about the lament song, the lament psalms and
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: those kind of things like these expressions can be formative
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: for us and help with that drift not away from
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: holiness but toward holiness. They redirect us toward holiness just
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: through the expression. It seems like you see that, you know,
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: the lament salms almost always break into praise, like if
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: that's not drifting toward holiness, right, Like that's a redirection
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: of that drift.
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: It's it's good. So I don't know.
• 25:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it gives honest space for the struggle. But where
• 25:49
  Speaker 3: does my hope come from. I look to you, a
• 25:51
  Speaker 3: Lord Career. There's always this movement towards something, and yet
• 25:59
  Speaker 3: it is the tint right. And I've talked about this
• 26:01
  Speaker 3: with you before. GK. Chesternan has always been an incredibly
• 26:05
  Speaker 3: helpful voice on this to me because of his desire
• 26:09
  Speaker 3: to help the reader embrace tension, not just balance, but
• 26:13
  Speaker 3: tension as a point of the Christian faith. If the
• 26:17
  Speaker 3: paradox of orthodoxy, as he talks about it, that you
• 26:20
  Speaker 3: have these points that should be diametrically opposed to each other,
• 26:24
  Speaker 3: and yet the only way to embrace them in faith
• 26:27
  Speaker 3: is not to balance them. In fact, the greatest heresies
• 26:30
  Speaker 3: of the world have come when they've tried to balance out. Well,
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: maybe he's like fifty percent Man and fifty percent God,
• 26:36
  Speaker 3: and you're like, no, that's heresy, don't do that. I
• 26:40
  Speaker 3: apply that same logic to things like this, that there
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: is both what we said before, eschatological hope. There is
• 26:48
  Speaker 3: a movement towards the mountain of God and the city
• 26:52
  Speaker 3: that he will establish. And we're in the midst of
• 26:57
  Speaker 3: real pain and suffering and languishing. That is, that is
• 27:02
  Speaker 3: our current reality. Who the passage I was thinking about
• 27:05
  Speaker 3: is in Hebrews, after that great presentation of the heroes
• 27:09
  Speaker 3: of faith that more often than not they're faithful in
• 27:13
  Speaker 3: the midst of suffering.
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 27:16
  Speaker 3: The writer then gives the par examplar of Jesus, who,
• 27:19
  Speaker 3: for the joy set before him, endures the cross. Like
• 27:24
  Speaker 3: it's not it's not an either or. It's actually through
• 27:27
  Speaker 3: the suffering of the cross that the greatest joy is
• 27:31
  Speaker 3: experienced in the sun. There's something about that that I
• 27:36
  Speaker 3: it's hard. Again. We don't like the tension because even
• 27:39
  Speaker 3: the word itself means that we got to resolve it.
• 27:43
  Speaker 3: What if? What if instead that the greater meaning, hope,
• 27:47
  Speaker 3: joy is found in not the resolving of the tension,
• 27:49
  Speaker 3: but by the embracing of the tension, as it means
• 27:53
  Speaker 3: that actually helps us then say, this is not the
• 27:56
  Speaker 3: way it's supposed to be, and there's one who's gonna
• 27:59
  Speaker 3: put it right. I can still cry for the injustice
• 28:02
  Speaker 3: and cry to the one who can make justice right.
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: Well, it's interesting.
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: I mean Chesterton, I've done most of my reading on
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: him in terms of his notions of progress, And one
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: of the things he talks about with progress is, you know,
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: you use that term, but you very seldom know where
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: you're going. Is kind of the gist of it. You know,
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: progress only matters if you have an end point where
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: you understand where this progress is leading you. Otherwise it's
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: just movement. And I think that you know, sort of
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: framing this in terms of that tell us what's going
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: to happen the joy that's set before us. Now, what
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: we can start to see is that the sadness and
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: the suffering are actually progress. They're moving us toward that
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: end goal of joy, and they're not hindrances to it.
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: They're not a betrayal of it. Yeah, part of this
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: sort of move that we make toward it, and in
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: part I think it's because we need to feel it
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: on some level so that once we get to the.
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: End, we understand what we have.
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: I had a guy on a Bible study one time
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: asked me, you know, why, how do you know once
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: we reached the New Creation? We were studying Revelation twenty one,
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: twenty two. He's like, once we reach the New Creation,
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: how do we know we won't sit anymore? You know,
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: why why wouldn't we make the same choice Adam and
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: he've made in the garden And I just said, well,
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: I think the difference is that they'd only known paradise.
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: There's something unknown about what's on the other side of paradise.
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: Could it have been better? We know the answer to
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: that now, Yeah, it wasn't even Yeah, even when it
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: was presented as being better, Like they didn't know what
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: was out there, So, you know, could God have been
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: holding back on them and this paradise that they're in,
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: Could it have even been you know, that much better
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: for them? Like they didn't know, they'd only experienced the paradise,
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: and so we haven't. We've experience it's the fallen world.
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: We know what we're in, and so by the time
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: we get to the New Creation, we're just going to
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: be elated to be there because there are no tears,
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: there are no pain there, you know, that's wiped away,
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: And so you can sit back and you're like, no,
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: we wouldn't make that choice again because we understand what
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: we're choosing.
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: We didn't come back to this, and.
• 30:24
  Speaker 3: We have a context for that understanding that. Oh, that's so.
• 30:28
  Speaker 3: I just made this point last week when we were
• 30:31
  Speaker 3: talking about the I grew up in an evangelistic tool
• 30:36
  Speaker 3: of bad news. Good news.
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: Okay, bad news.
• 30:39
  Speaker 3: You're a sinner. Good news, Jesus loves you, which is
• 30:41
  Speaker 3: a great truth. I believe both those points. It wasn't
• 30:44
  Speaker 3: until much later that I realized, Well, the story doesn't
• 30:47
  Speaker 3: start at Genesis three. It doesn't start with bad news.
• 30:51
  Speaker 3: It starts with good news. And I was trying to
• 30:55
  Speaker 3: make the point the word fall doesn't even make sense
• 30:59
  Speaker 3: unless you understand and where we have fallen from from
• 31:02
  Speaker 3: right right. What you're highlighting here that I think is
• 31:05
  Speaker 3: wonderful is the other side of that. We can't We
• 31:09
  Speaker 3: can only enjoy more the glory to come because we
• 31:12
  Speaker 3: have experienced what the fall is. It only makes greater sense,
• 31:17
  Speaker 3: It only gives us greater joy. As much as we
• 31:20
  Speaker 3: lost this much in the fall from from creation.
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: Right, we're going to gain that much more.
• 31:25
  Speaker 3: How much more? I was just gonna say, how much
• 31:28
  Speaker 3: more because we know the pain, and the experience of
• 31:31
  Speaker 3: the pain actually provides even greater joy of what we've
• 31:34
  Speaker 3: gained in the new creation. That's a beautiful thought.
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: And I just think there's something as we think about,
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: you know, sadness as this rational or theological response, it
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: just I think there's.
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: A texture there that is.
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: Our expression, our naming of that sadness, are our deepest
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: experience of it, not ignoring it, not letting it come
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: out as anger or frustration. But that deepest experience of
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: the sadness is part of our sanctification because it does
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: give us a depth of understanding of where we are
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: right now, so that when we are in that new creation,
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: when we've reached the joy, we understand what we've lost.
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: We sloughed off the sadness, like the tears wiped away
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: aren't aren't trivial to us because I never cried anyway.
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: I was always tough, So that doesn't mean anything to me.
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: Right Like, we've actually delved deeply into that emotion as
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: an appropriate theological response.
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: To where we are.
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And I just think there's something really powerful about
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: that thought.
• 32:43
  Speaker 3: I mean, psychologically, there's a corollary to the construct of
• 32:47
  Speaker 3: what we call grit, this idea of developing resilience in
• 32:51
  Speaker 3: the midst of hardship that psychologists have realized this, your
• 32:56
  Speaker 3: development of grit actually helps propel you because there's gonna
• 33:00
  Speaker 3: be another curveball coming your way, there's gonna be another hardship.
• 33:04
  Speaker 3: The question is what have you learned through these processes
• 33:07
  Speaker 3: that actually gives you greater opportunities for flourishing in the
• 33:11
  Speaker 3: next opportunities. And there's a whole world of psychology and
• 33:15
  Speaker 3: research that has been developed that highlights this is what
• 33:19
  Speaker 3: helps bring about greater human flourishing. But grit can't be
• 33:23
  Speaker 3: developed unless there's something to be gritty about. If I
• 33:27
  Speaker 3: could say it that way, you got to go through
• 33:29
  Speaker 3: something in order to build up something better. And that's
• 33:33
  Speaker 3: kind of what we I mean theologically, that's the word
• 33:35
  Speaker 3: we give for sanctification. There is this process of you've
• 33:39
  Speaker 3: got to go through something hard, but it's not it's
• 33:43
  Speaker 3: not a throwaway, right, It's it's intended to be deeply
• 33:47
  Speaker 3: purposeful and meaningful to not just me, but to the
• 33:52
  Speaker 3: greater tapestry of the grand narrative of what God is
• 33:56
  Speaker 3: doing in history and how we then get to be
• 33:58
  Speaker 3: part of it as well.
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's great. Then I think we leave
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: it there, and I think this covers the existential leg
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: of the stool pretty well.
• 34:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, I.
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: Think we've delved pretty deeply into the existential leg of
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: this stool. So we had the social dimension, the existential
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: connection or the social leg, the existential leg, and now
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: in the next couple episodes we'll talk about the embodied leg,
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: and so excited to get into that and looking forward
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: to that conversation.
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: So thanks again, Ben for being here.
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: Really appreciate it, and thanks everybody for listening to the episode.
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: We'll catch you on the next one. Take care.
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: I just want to take a second to thank the
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: the Thinking Christian podcast. If you go to lifeaudio dot com,
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: you'll find dozens of other faith centered podcasts in their network.
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: They've got shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting, and more.