Latest / God + Mental Health Podcast / What the Bible Says About Trauma and Panic Attacks: A Conversation with Dave

Transcript

What the Bible Says About Trauma and Panic Attacks: A Conversation with Dave · God + Mental Health Podcast

0:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Hello and welcome.
0:01
[SPEAKER_01]: You are listening to the god image of health podcast.
0:04
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm so excited to be back in front of the microphone with y'all this week and I am so incredibly excited about today's interview.
0:11
[SPEAKER_01]: He's gonna talk a little bit about himself but I want to let y'all know personally when I got the email to interview some amazing person that you're about to hear about I was super excited just because of his story
0:21
[SPEAKER_01]: And so he has a book coming out in September that we're gonna talk about.
0:25
[SPEAKER_01]: It is called, and the sea was no more.
0:28
[SPEAKER_01]: Read in the Bible in the deep.
0:29
[SPEAKER_01]: It is not only just a book, but also kind of a Bible study companion.
0:32
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think you all are gonna really, really enjoy hearing about a day.
0:36
[SPEAKER_01]: So, hi, David, how are you?
0:37
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm great, how are you?
0:39
[SPEAKER_00]: It's great to be here.
0:40
[SPEAKER_01]: I am doing fantastic.
0:43
[SPEAKER_01]: So, I am so excited.
0:45
[SPEAKER_01]: I said this today, I'm offline, that when I got his email,
0:49
[SPEAKER_01]: from his publisher that I was incredibly excited to interview him just because of his work as well as being someone that is now about to be a author of a second book.
0:58
[SPEAKER_01]: Is this your second book at this point?
1:00
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, actually this is my sixth, but the other ones were all I know.
1:05
[SPEAKER_00]: The other were all academic, right?
1:06
[SPEAKER_00]: This is my first book for normal people.
1:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
1:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, I'm so excited to hear about it.
1:13
[SPEAKER_01]: So why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself?
1:16
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
1:16
[SPEAKER_01]: And what you do and who you are.
1:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Great.
1:18
[SPEAKER_00]: My name's Dave.
1:19
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm a professor of New Testament studies and Christian theology at Seattle Pacific Seminary.
1:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Living Seattle most of my life.
1:27
[SPEAKER_00]: I am married to this wonderful person named Theresa.
1:30
[SPEAKER_00]: We've got two kids, 20 and 22, so they're not really kids, but they still feel like it.
1:35
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm just super happy to be here today.
1:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for the invitation.
1:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, of course.
1:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Of course.
1:41
[SPEAKER_01]: So I kind of told you this that our podcast is a little bit focused on all things mental health and faith.
1:47
[SPEAKER_01]: So I definitely want to get into your story.
1:49
[SPEAKER_01]: So why don't you kind of tell us a little bit about what got you into wanting to write a book personally for yourself kind of a memoir as well as a Bible study guide, but tell us a little bit about what got you into wanting to write this book.
2:02
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and I'd be a long story, but you can make a long story short or a long story long either one is fine.
2:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
2:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, interrupt at any point.
2:09
[SPEAKER_00]: The short answer is I didn't set out to write a book.
2:12
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't even want to write this book, and then when I wrote it, I didn't want to publish it.
2:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Because I had so much shame around it.
2:17
[SPEAKER_00]: But what happened was, I guess my story would be I've always thought of myself as a kind of high functioning nervous wreck when I was young.
2:24
[SPEAKER_00]: I had anxiety when I was all through my life.
2:27
[SPEAKER_00]: I had anxiety.
2:29
[SPEAKER_00]: But he was most part able to function pretty well.
2:32
[SPEAKER_00]: And then when I had my first child was born, 22 years ago, I just noticed that my anxiety really began to ramp up.
2:41
[SPEAKER_00]: And then the older he got when he turns two, three, four, I started having panic attacks.
2:49
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I started having like intrusive images and intrusive thoughts.
2:56
[SPEAKER_00]: I never went like full on into psychosis, but psychosis was in the room next door like I could, you know, I was losing control of my mind and it got so bad that I finally started getting some help and therapy saved my life among several other things.
3:11
[SPEAKER_00]: But then therapy sort of helped me to get calm again and to sort of recognize what was going on and recognize my triggers.
3:23
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't have words of faith to describe what I had experienced, and so I returned to public speaking around 2013, started spending time at a retreat center.
3:37
[SPEAKER_00]: And while I was there, I was just brought to enough of a calm and safe place that I just started writing, trying to articulate what it was that I'd experienced and we could talk
3:51
[SPEAKER_00]: But that just started a long-long process.
3:54
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, fast forward 10 years or so when I realized, oh, no, I think this is a book for other people.
4:00
[SPEAKER_00]: And, and here we are.
4:02
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so did you know at the time, especially when your son was first born that it was anxiety or it was panic attacks, so that something that you knew it was or was it something you had to kind of discover from going to counseling?
4:13
[SPEAKER_00]: I knew what it was, but I wasn't completely clear why it was happening.
4:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I should say this.
4:22
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I had a very traumatic experience as a child, the book describes this experience.
4:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Actually, I had several through my life, but the big orienting one was this first one when I was somewhere between five and seven years old.
4:33
[SPEAKER_00]: And I began to have images about that.
4:36
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what was coming back.
4:37
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think he's just simply as my son got closer and closer to the age I was.
4:41
[SPEAKER_00]: It was all just sort of busting out of me.
4:44
[SPEAKER_01]: be on my control as these things do.
4:48
[SPEAKER_01]: So kind of these visual reactions that you were kind of experiencing over time.
4:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
4:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you know, honestly, the first time it happened.
4:57
[SPEAKER_00]: It was boxing day December 26, 2004 was when the images of this tsunami, the Indian Ocean tsunami were coming in and just watching waves coming and just washing people away, it just sent me into my first real panic attack.
5:13
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's just because that's how I actually felt inside.
5:18
[SPEAKER_00]: And so yeah, and I started having more and more and I used increased in the years that followed.
5:23
[SPEAKER_00]: So.
5:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so tell me, what was that like for you, especially as a believer, because I know that it can be very overwhelming for a lot of us who kind of look at with our faith nowadays, especially in this time we are so all connected to each other, via our phones or social media or information overload.
5:44
[SPEAKER_01]: There can be this thought process that if I'm experiencing these things, my faith is impacted.
5:50
[SPEAKER_01]: I know you've talked about this before,
5:54
[SPEAKER_01]: Tell me a little bit about having these experiences, especially for such a period of time, how did that kind of impact your faith to or even your belief system?
6:03
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it completely changed my faith and belief system.
6:06
[SPEAKER_00]: And I mean, I was already a PhD in theology at that point.
6:09
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm supposed to have it all figured out.
6:10
[SPEAKER_00]: And then, you know, and then all this happens and you realize all the things you don't understand.
6:16
[SPEAKER_00]: I think in my case what it was was I just I had this long treasured bag of tricks that I would always reach into whenever I felt my anxiety going up and that was things like praying and reading my Bible and doing spiritual disciplines and when I lost my mind and what I realized just how cognitive my faith actually is and how much of my body was not connected.
6:43
[SPEAKER_00]: to whatever I thought was going on in my consciousness.
6:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Because again, I started losing.
6:48
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I lost the capacity to read my scripture and any depth to pray.
6:53
[SPEAKER_00]: My mind was just completely crazy out of control all the time.
6:58
[SPEAKER_00]: And so yeah, all those bagatrix just sort of went away.
7:00
[SPEAKER_00]: And the way I kept teaching, I just fell deeper and deeper into not just mental illness, but then it kicked off a lot of physical illness.
7:12
[SPEAKER_00]: both bodily, like, not just that I have a body, but I actually am a body.
7:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, what do I do with this?
7:18
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think I thought of myself as this brain, this troubled mind, sort of lugging this body around like a luggage, right?
7:25
[SPEAKER_00]: And then my body just started saying, I'm not working anymore, and so I had to discover an embodied Christianity for one thing.
7:32
[SPEAKER_00]: But I also had to sort of figure out what was going on in the way I articulated the faith.
7:39
[SPEAKER_00]: that kept me from being able to go to these places that I had been running away from for so long.
7:45
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, when did that kind of hit you?
7:47
[SPEAKER_01]: Was it when you started exploring therapy or when you started going to this retreat center?
7:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Where did you kind of?
7:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Where did that kind of click?
7:54
[SPEAKER_01]: And of course I know, like over time, hindsight 2020 we learned more in wisdom.
8:00
[SPEAKER_01]: But what was that like for you when you were kind of in that in-between space?
8:04
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think I would name two different stages.
8:08
[SPEAKER_00]: finally realizing, okay, I'm not having a stroke.
8:11
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not having a heart attack.
8:12
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm having panic attacks, and my dear wife who's also a therapist got me in touch with a god bless her.
8:19
[SPEAKER_00]: I know, right?
8:20
[SPEAKER_00]: I know.
8:21
[SPEAKER_00]: I am privileged to bless the dude to be married to the right person, given who I am.
8:26
[SPEAKER_00]: So she got me into a trauma therapist.
8:30
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was then that I really came to grips with how much of, you know, you can talk more.
8:36
[SPEAKER_00]: particularly about this, but just simply that your body stores all this stuff and that my body had just started taking over.
8:43
[SPEAKER_00]: And so that was an important moment for me to sort of discover that my body was carrying a weight that my mind that I wouldn't let my mind carry basically.
8:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
8:53
[SPEAKER_00]: That was one thing.
8:54
[SPEAKER_00]: And again, three years of EMDR therapy and all that kind of stuff really helped me so much and I began to be able to articulate very clearly what was going on in my mind and in my body and that helped me to recognize my triggers and not go into panic quite so much, but my faith was sort of stuck.
9:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Yep.
9:14
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
9:14
[SPEAKER_00]: At that point.
9:16
[SPEAKER_01]: the way I like to explain it to clients and layman's terms.
9:19
[SPEAKER_01]: I am also EMDR trained as well, so I definitely understand that therapy very much so.
9:25
[SPEAKER_01]: But what I like to explain to clients is when trauma occurs, no matter what age, depending upon what is going on, sometimes people can experience traumatic events and it doesn't impact them.
9:35
[SPEAKER_01]: However, a lot of us experience traumatic events and it does impact us.
9:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Your brain kind of goes into this shock phase, or it can experience these moments where it's like, what do I do with this information?
9:46
[SPEAKER_01]: And it will literally store it away.
9:49
[SPEAKER_01]: I like to say it's stored in an attic inside of a box.
9:53
[SPEAKER_01]: It's inside three boxes in a binder in a slip folder.
9:56
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, literally.
9:57
[SPEAKER_01]: And you will not even know that this is existed.
10:01
[SPEAKER_01]: And I even have experienced with clients while X about childhood, and they cannot remember.
10:06
[SPEAKER_01]: It's almost like a blank black screen in their head.
10:10
[SPEAKER_01]: And so it's very common to not remember these experiences.
10:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Until something happens, it pulls that paper out of the slip folder, out of the three boxes, out of the two boxes, out of the attic and down to your front door, that kind of reinvigorates what's going on, and your body remembers these things.
10:28
[SPEAKER_01]: Even if consciously, like if I say to you pink elephant, your brain immediately thinks about pink elephant.
10:35
[SPEAKER_01]: where these experiences will come up and they start like you experience those flashbacks.
10:39
[SPEAKER_01]: And so Dave talks about EMDR EMDR is a very helpful trauma therapy, but also being able to have a therapist or even just a trusted individual that you can banter with around these conversations is a very good starting place to be able to start to process those experiences.
10:56
[SPEAKER_01]: And so even though we're talking about faith, these are bodily experiences we are having as a body soul and spirit.
11:05
[SPEAKER_01]: So why don't you talk a little bit, Dave?
11:07
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not kind of when they're at this moment.
11:08
[SPEAKER_01]: That's great.
11:09
[SPEAKER_01]: I love about about where your faith was and what happened that kind of made you rebuild it over time.
11:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
11:18
[SPEAKER_00]: So,
11:19
[SPEAKER_00]: I've mentioned that my first big panic attack was the images of the Indonesian tsunami coming through and wiping out whole villages.
11:27
[SPEAKER_00]: After that, I began having recurring nightmares of water and waves and being and drowning, basically.
11:35
[SPEAKER_00]: And they just kept happening, kept happening, kept happening.
11:38
[SPEAKER_00]: Again, EMDR therapy got me back to a somewhat more level place, but it wasn't till I went to this retreat center.
11:45
[SPEAKER_00]: And I am a speaker, right?
11:47
[SPEAKER_00]: So I spoke for the first time after years, I spoke at a retreat.
11:50
[SPEAKER_00]: And somewhere in that, either the first of the second retreat, I was in a quiet space.
11:54
[SPEAKER_00]: And I went to my room, and I opened the Bible to the Psalms.
11:57
[SPEAKER_00]: I liked to read the Psalms.
11:58
[SPEAKER_00]: I read Psalm 69, which begins, saves me a Lord for the water as come up to my neck.
12:05
[SPEAKER_00]: I sink in deep mire where there is no foothold, falling on and on from there, and it reminded me very suddenly of something I've known very well about the biblical story and that it has this theme of water and not a good theme there, you know, this is the chaos water that overwhelms us, right?
12:22
[SPEAKER_00]: And that begins in Genesis runs all the way to Revelation and happens all the way through the whole Bible, it's like a thread.
12:27
[SPEAKER_00]: And all of a sudden it all just hit me, like that's what I'm going through.
12:33
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was as though that song, that was a thing.
12:35
[SPEAKER_00]: It was almost a mystical experience because I felt for the first time in a long time like scripture was actually speaking for me.
12:43
[SPEAKER_00]: It was getting me words that I did not have to articulate what it was I had gone through in words of faith.
12:50
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I just began writing and writing and writing and writing.
12:54
[SPEAKER_00]: And when I went back and revisited those major biblical texts, I just found again and again and again
13:02
[SPEAKER_00]: and directly to my life, and it helped me to re-narrate how God is involved in our suffering and in our chaos, and how God, how the story at least reveals how God joins us there, and so that's what the book's about.
13:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and I loved your perspective on suffering, and so I want to kind of land there for a second because you mentioned a couple points that I think were really good about for the first time Scripture spoke to what you were speaking to
13:35
[SPEAKER_01]: What was that like for you when you were finding that I think a lot of us and I I say this to clients a lot of times like I always kind of ask in the beginning times where I meet with someone you know, it's faith that coping mechanism for you Do you find yourself leaning on your faith when you're experiencing that sometimes I get different answers based on whatever their person is experiencing
13:56
[SPEAKER_01]: And so for you, what was it like, where it felt like I am a believer, but I'm experiencing this, what feels like bodily reactions to trauma anxiety, but my faith is hard for me to stand on this because I don't feel like I know or had the language to be able to have this uphold me.
14:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
14:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think the problem,
14:21
[SPEAKER_00]: in part was that I had all this theological training.
14:24
[SPEAKER_00]: And so so many main questions have sort of been, sort of, you know, neatly put into file folders in my mind that I can pull out and tell students all the time.
14:35
[SPEAKER_00]: And then all that stuff got tossed up in the air and I had to kind of rebuild, right?
14:40
[SPEAKER_00]: And in particular, it's at least in my case.
14:43
[SPEAKER_00]: So my experience is of a sudden intrusion of a deeply traumatic event.
14:48
[SPEAKER_00]: and then becoming very attuned to the fact that though we have our theology of God's providence and God's sovereignty, that God is governing the world, that God is a good God who provides and all of this.
15:02
[SPEAKER_00]: When my life began falling apart, all I could see around me was this sense that chaos totally rules, that there does not seem, that there's not
15:16
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, and so that to me became the big issue.
15:18
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't so much.
15:19
[SPEAKER_00]: She's got good.
15:20
[SPEAKER_00]: I never kind of lost my last sight.
15:23
[SPEAKER_00]: I never got into those sort of, maybe God doesn't exist mode.
15:25
[SPEAKER_00]: I never got there either.
15:28
[SPEAKER_00]: It was just sort of how do I live as a person of faith in a world that can blow up on a heartbeat, and there's no sort of rhyme or reason.
15:38
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
15:38
[SPEAKER_00]: And of course, you see this from the Gospels, people ask Jesus, why did this person get born blind?
15:43
[SPEAKER_00]: It's somebody's sin, something like that, because they're just trying to find a logic.
15:46
[SPEAKER_00]: It will help them make sense about unpredictable world.
15:50
[SPEAKER_00]: And so for me, it was tracing that water team that gave me the sense that, oh, no, this chaotic meaninglessness is actually a part of God's good creation.
16:02
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not, it's part of what God allows to be in this world.
16:07
[SPEAKER_00]: and scripture provides us a way to approach it, to think about it, but we will never be able to master this thing or control it in any rational sort of way.
16:17
[SPEAKER_00]: It's simply part of being a creature in God's world.
16:20
[SPEAKER_00]: And the task is to follow Jesus and to continue to trust even though everything can go hey, why are in a heartbeat?
16:28
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's just life, right?
16:30
[SPEAKER_00]: And so much a Christian faith, the way it's practicing America,
16:33
[SPEAKER_00]: And it keeps us.
16:34
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like a shield or a drug that keeps us from having a face, the reality of death's dominion.
16:41
[SPEAKER_00]: It asserts control over the world.
16:44
[SPEAKER_00]: And a lot of fake leaves us in denial of that stuff.
16:46
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's a major problem for people was for me.
16:49
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and I think you write this in the book around just like how Jesus is really like not trying to absolve us from these things he is trying to meet us in this and be with us in it and so for you what I'm here you describe is it almost is like
17:08
[SPEAKER_01]: The threat of the deep, or you can talk about that, of just this water analogy through thread through the Bible, almost was an affirming to you that God is good and I can also experience suffering and still be grounded with him.
17:24
[SPEAKER_01]: So, so I want to kind of ask a question a little bit how and I've heard this from my own research of just listening to some of the things you've done, but also how was you defined the deep?
17:34
[SPEAKER_01]: I know that that's like a very nuanced question considering that's a lot of what the book is about, but how was you defined that?
17:41
[SPEAKER_01]: And then of course kind of what's the distinction for people when they are experiencing that and struggling with kind of coming to grips with the suffering piece of it.
17:51
[SPEAKER_00]: That's great.
17:52
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'll answer the deep question in two ways, both in the way it functions in Scripture, but then a kind of big summary, since like what I think this thing really is.
18:01
[SPEAKER_00]: In Scripture, when God creates and chapter one agenesis, we get a snapshot of the process already underway, right?
18:08
[SPEAKER_00]: It's as when God was creating an effect.
18:11
[SPEAKER_00]: And the first thing that's there is the spirit of God hovering over this dark, covered watery chaos that's called
18:20
[SPEAKER_00]: in English translation.
18:21
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's not a good thing.
18:23
[SPEAKER_00]: It's chaos.
18:24
[SPEAKER_00]: It's uncontrollability.
18:26
[SPEAKER_00]: And then God creates a space where in life can flourish within this watery chaos.
18:33
[SPEAKER_00]: But what's striking about it, what really struck me powerfully, was when God creates the world within this thing, God doesn't destroy the darkness.
18:44
[SPEAKER_00]: God doesn't destroy
18:46
[SPEAKER_00]: the chaotic waters of the deep.
18:48
[SPEAKER_00]: God in effect gives them a vocation.
18:52
[SPEAKER_00]: So like God takes the darkness and says I'm going to make light and he calls light good.
18:58
[SPEAKER_00]: Doesn't say darkness is anything but God looks at darkness and says you're going to be night.
19:02
[SPEAKER_00]: So like God takes this thing and gives it a job in the world a function.
19:07
[SPEAKER_00]: and likewise with the water, it's going to feed the fountains and the rivers and all of this, but God creates a situation in that genesis narrative where the waters of chaos are surrounding us at all times, and they can come busting in at any time.
19:21
[SPEAKER_00]: And of course this is what happens when Noah's flood happens, right?
19:24
[SPEAKER_00]: God opens the windows of heaven and opens the floodgates from below, and the waters of chaos come in and like undo creation.
19:32
[SPEAKER_00]: And so that ends up becoming a metaphor,
19:37
[SPEAKER_00]: any time experiences something that is catastrophically overwhelming, whether it's illness or the weight of sin or an army coming to run you all down, the primary metaphor are images of water and waves rolling over people.
19:53
[SPEAKER_00]: And again, once you are a tune to it, you start reading a scripture you see it all over the place.
19:58
[SPEAKER_00]: So it is the image for that which is completely beyond our control.
20:02
[SPEAKER_00]: It is what overwhelms us catastrophically.
20:07
[SPEAKER_00]: death exercising its dominion.
20:10
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not the same thing.
20:11
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not death itself, but it's death trying to prove to us all that it's the most powerful thing in the universe.
20:19
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's why we experience it as
20:21
[SPEAKER_00]: you know, complete chaos beyond our control.
20:24
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's the other cool thing, I'm not, I don't know if it's cool.
20:27
[SPEAKER_00]: But in scripture, like, no, you're just kicking out over scripture.
20:30
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm totally kicking out.
20:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Am I all right?
20:32
[SPEAKER_00]: Can I just keep going?
20:33
[SPEAKER_00]: You're good.
20:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, good.
20:34
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, please.
20:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
20:36
[SPEAKER_00]: In scripture, you know, like we often think of Satan as like the ultimate bad guy, but in scripture, Satan is repeatedly told we can resist Satan.
20:44
[SPEAKER_00]: But we cannot resist death.
20:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Death is the, is the last enemy.
20:48
[SPEAKER_00]: It is the thing that has complete power over us.
20:51
[SPEAKER_00]: and only God has power over this thing.
20:53
[SPEAKER_00]: And in the same way, in Scripture, only God has power over the sea.
20:58
[SPEAKER_00]: And so at the very end of the biblical story, you know, you get to revelation that I see a new heaven and a newer and the sea was no more, it says.
21:06
[SPEAKER_00]: And therefore, a death will be no more.
21:08
[SPEAKER_00]: And mourning and crying and pain will be no more for the first things in all passed away.
21:13
[SPEAKER_00]: And so the whole Bible is framed by this image of this
21:16
[SPEAKER_00]: overwhelming force in the world that just a flicks creation.
21:19
[SPEAKER_00]: And God's the only thing that is only power that has more power than that thing.
21:24
[SPEAKER_00]: And that provides me a way to think about being catastrophic or the way.
21:28
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, I love that, and the scripture that came to mind while you were saying this is when Jesus was saying, you know, he defeated death in the grave and this coupling of suffering is also met immediately with victory.
21:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Even if in the moment it doesn't feel that way, there is this promise of this of this coming promise that we will get to experience.
21:53
[SPEAKER_01]: And like you said, and the sea was no more.
21:56
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I think even with that for someone who might be experiencing maybe just really coming to understand their trauma, maybe experiencing, you know, illness or sickness in their body, grief, you know, just, you know, I think a lot of times now we experience it probably more I'd like to say tangibly because we we see it more, I think people think about my mom's age,
22:23
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm, you know, it took, even I'm a millennial.
22:26
[SPEAKER_01]: So like even in the 90s, news took a took time to get to us.
22:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Even if it was for the TV, you had to wait for the news to come on.
22:33
[SPEAKER_01]: We had to read it in the newspaper.
22:35
[SPEAKER_01]: And so now we see it so much more.
22:37
[SPEAKER_01]: So there's this heightened sense of knowing that suffering is occurring.
22:41
[SPEAKER_01]: So for some of that might be experiencing that and they do feel this sense of loss hope.
22:47
[SPEAKER_01]: Where?
22:48
[SPEAKER_01]: even in Scripture, or what would be a great exploration and or practical practices that would be helpful for them to just connect.
22:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
22:56
[SPEAKER_00]: For me, and again, I'm, you're the therapist.
22:59
[SPEAKER_00]: You have the expertise here.
23:01
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm a Bible theology guy.
23:03
[SPEAKER_01]: That's okay.
23:04
[SPEAKER_00]: But I can speak, I have expertise in my own experience, right?
23:07
[SPEAKER_00]: And I, one of the things I learned both in my own experience and through Scripture.
23:11
[SPEAKER_00]: is we are, as humans, we are not made to be individuals.
23:15
[SPEAKER_00]: We are not made to be alone and on our own.
23:19
[SPEAKER_00]: And so suffering as you know, mental health, especially those more hidden disabilities, they just drive us deeper and deeper into hiding and into shame for me in a lot of ways.
23:30
[SPEAKER_00]: And so it was really because of, I had this amazing spouse by wife who saw me struggling and said,
23:40
[SPEAKER_00]: And I got together with a great therapist who we can and we can't say that I'm with you and stood by me and walked with me through it.
23:49
[SPEAKER_00]: And then as I began to say more and open up with certain people, other people could say, oh my gosh, I'm going through that too.
23:56
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we really are meant to be in communities of, I'm going to go ahead and use the word safety.
24:03
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that it's overused in ways that aren't helpful.
24:07
[SPEAKER_00]: But we need to be able to be naked and unashamed before other human beings.
24:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Therapy, good therapy does this very, very well.
24:19
[SPEAKER_00]: But I think close relationships, I think church can do that to an extent.
24:25
[SPEAKER_00]: It can also keep us from doing that.
24:27
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, God is God with us and God made us to be with each other.
24:33
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, withness, you know, working together,
24:38
[SPEAKER_00]: being companions.
24:39
[SPEAKER_00]: This is the crucial bit.
24:40
[SPEAKER_01]: yeah for me.
24:43
[SPEAKER_01]: How is this?
24:44
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm just curious before we close.
24:47
[SPEAKER_01]: How has this changed for you as a professor?
24:50
[SPEAKER_01]: There really talks a lot about the new testament.
24:53
[SPEAKER_01]: It's really dealing with you know, Jesus' life, Paul, all of the apostles is especially going into, you know, revelations.
25:08
[SPEAKER_01]: kind of willing people into this understanding of their own discovery in the allergy and faith.
25:16
[SPEAKER_01]: How do you feel like that has shaped you as in your career as well?
25:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's changed a lot of things.
25:25
[SPEAKER_00]: On the one hand, there isn't a single class that goes by right, don't speak very openly about my own mental health struggles.
25:31
[SPEAKER_00]: We know from studies in demographics, the vast majority of our students are likewise experiencing mental health issues.
25:38
[SPEAKER_00]: So, just simply normalizing it and talking about it in class, I make that a key point.
25:44
[SPEAKER_00]: But then I also teach scriptures through sort of the lens, the struggle to be human, like what is it, what is it to be human in this world?
25:54
[SPEAKER_00]: And unlike why so much again, so much of our way we talk about Christianity to America, the way we practice it, presumes this idea that we're supposed to kind of have victory over the things that drive us into weakness,
26:07
[SPEAKER_00]: And the deep irony, of course, is, I mean, we could get into this all day long.
26:12
[SPEAKER_00]: But when Paul talks about like the power of the resurrection working in me, it actually enables me to go deeper and deeper into weakness and deeper and deeper into vulnerability and to openness with others because that power of death no longer has the power that it had that kept me hiding and in shame.
26:29
[SPEAKER_00]: And so this, this idea that the community of God is a community of weakness,
26:37
[SPEAKER_00]: relying on God, all of that, that's really what church is.
26:41
[SPEAKER_00]: And to get students excited again about that possibility is what I'm really focused on now.
26:49
[SPEAKER_01]: I kind of wish we started there because I have recently, this is kind of going into a short tangent about myself, but I had recently had this wrestle that what I see was being presented like you said about, you know, Western church in Christianity in America is really not
27:13
[SPEAKER_01]: us humbling ourselves and making Jesus Lord.
27:17
[SPEAKER_01]: And what I tell people is this undoing that we think we're doing is actually supposed to be making us die to ourselves in a way that we are not supposed to be comfortable.
27:29
[SPEAKER_01]: It is a changing of the way you view things.
27:33
[SPEAKER_01]: And
27:34
[SPEAKER_01]: I do think that like you said, Jesus coming alive and is more reinforces this humility, exposure, being in community.
27:44
[SPEAKER_01]: I have people in my community that will call out manipulation, call out things that I would not see if I wasn't so open.
27:56
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think
27:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Especially now, we have reinforced this isolation, or we don't need to show we only need to show the highlight real of our life.
28:04
[SPEAKER_01]: We don't really need to share actual depths of who we are that are extremely ugly.
28:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Because in that practice of doing it with each other, it is almost a mirror of how we do it with God.
28:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
28:19
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
28:21
[SPEAKER_00]: It's exactly right, I totally agree.
28:22
[SPEAKER_00]: And we are inheritors of this history of Western Christianity where Christianity has been in Meshden, cultural power and all that.
28:31
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we, I have limited expectations for what I might call big church.
28:36
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, you know, going the church on Sunday, that's a good news place, that's a community gathering all of that.
28:42
[SPEAKER_00]: But to me, it's such a tragedy,
28:44
[SPEAKER_00]: that like, for instance, alcoholic synonymous, it had to start because they couldn't be follow themselves in church.
28:52
[SPEAKER_01]: All right.
28:52
[SPEAKER_00]: So you got to get together in a small group and say, my name's Dave, I'm an alcoholic.
28:57
[SPEAKER_00]: And here's what I'm fighting with this week.
28:59
[SPEAKER_00]: And then somebody else in that circle can look at you and say, I think you're, I think you're full in yourself.
29:04
[SPEAKER_00]: You're not being totally true on that.
29:06
[SPEAKER_00]: And these communities of real deep formation are still very possible.
29:14
[SPEAKER_00]: but I think because of our culture, we can't expect big church to do that, but certainly big church didn't work to resist that.
29:22
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's what I see more often than not is.
29:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, I think that's what I think goes into it.
29:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, which I think is goes back to the thread of community.
29:31
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm big on talking about shame because I always say shame was in Genesis.
29:36
[SPEAKER_01]: When Adam hid from God, and in his communication with God,
29:41
[SPEAKER_01]: He went from personal accountability to blaming God for the woman you gave me and then Eve took that Unaccountability and was like well know the serpent made me and it's like we don't want to expose
29:55
[SPEAKER_01]: and God's communication us was who told you you were naked, which in my mind tells me who told you you couldn't expose yourself to me?
30:03
[SPEAKER_01]: Who told you you couldn't be before me and open up?
30:06
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think kind of what you said about that naked and unshamed, it is this intimacy space that I believe intimacy is depth, intimacy is exposure, which draws out that connection.
30:19
[SPEAKER_01]: and allows us to be able to see each other.
30:20
[SPEAKER_01]: And also, I think, like you said, meet the need.
30:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
30:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Meet the place that we need the most support.
30:28
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's exactly right.
30:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Why you said it well.
30:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Mm-hmm.
30:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, great.
30:32
[SPEAKER_00]: So the book comes out September 22nd, at least it ships them.
30:36
[SPEAKER_00]: I am actually getting my own actual hard back copy tomorrow in the mail.
30:41
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm very excited about that.
30:42
[SPEAKER_00]: It feels bad.
30:43
[SPEAKER_01]: I think.
30:45
[SPEAKER_00]: The book itself walks through the story of Scripture, and it tells my own story along the way, so I call it a memoir in Scripture, because I've often told my students
30:56
[SPEAKER_00]: We come to the Bible and discover to our surprise, it tells our story better than it could tell it ourselves.
31:01
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I wrote this book to see if that's actually true.
31:03
[SPEAKER_00]: And it turned out it is true for me.
31:05
[SPEAKER_00]: And so it's my stories interacting with biblical stories.
31:08
[SPEAKER_00]: It's part Bible study, part memoir.
31:11
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, each section just walks through a different part of scripture walking all the way through.
31:16
[SPEAKER_00]: It is pretty raw in places.
31:18
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm definitely very vulnerable.
31:20
[SPEAKER_00]: I spent a good year and a half convinced I wasn't gonna publish it under my own name.
31:25
[SPEAKER_00]: because I was experiencing that much shame about it.
31:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Now that's all gone, I feel great about it, so I don't care anymore, but it took me working through that process.
31:35
[SPEAKER_00]: So very vulnerable, very personal book, but also a Bible study I was trying to bring my own expertise to this reality of my life and what I think is the reality for many, many, many people.
31:47
[SPEAKER_01]: Hmm.
31:48
[SPEAKER_01]: No, thank you for this.
31:49
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I think people are going to find it to be super useful and something that can refer back to and so yeah, I appreciate it.
31:56
[SPEAKER_01]: And thank you so much.
31:57
[SPEAKER_01]: So I will have all of Dave's information in the show notes.
32:00
[SPEAKER_01]: I thoroughly enjoy talking with you Dave and I can't wait for you to see your book come out and super excited for all the things to come for you.
32:08
[SPEAKER_01]: So thanks so much.
32:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so much.
32:10
[SPEAKER_00]: This has been a lot of fun.
32:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Appreciate it.
32:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Awesome.
32:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Bye.
32:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Talk to you next week.