Latest / Northman Coaching / Faith After Disappointment: Learning to Trust Again
Transcript
- Gary: What do you still believe after life has given you reasons to doubt? And how do you keep faith without asking yourself to ignore what you can see? Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening. Wherever you're listening from, welcome back to the Northman Coaching Podcast. I'm your host, Gary Hults. Today, we are talking about the core value of faith. When we hear the word faith, many of us go straight to religion. That is part of this conversation for me. And I will share a piece of my own story. But faith reaches beyond a church, a creed, or a particular tradition. We put faith in people. We put faith in our relationships, our institutions, our communities, and the systems that we depend upon. We put faith in our own ability to begin again. Faith can mean trusting that someone will keep their word. It can mean believing that a painful season isn't the whole story. It can mean taking a step toward a future we can't fully guarantee. But we should ask hard questions about faith too. Is faith the same as certainty? Does having faith mean trusting everyone? Does it mean giving an institution unlimited loyalty? Or can honest faith include doubt, evidence, boundaries, and accountability? Today we will explore faith as trust that stays awake. We'll talk about faith in people, faith in systems, faith in ourselves, and faith in God. And I'll share how after my divorce I fell away from my Catholic faith and how I found Christianity again on top of Redemption Rock in Idaho. So faith is not the same as certainty. Let's start here. Faith does not mean that you have every single answer. Sometimes we talk as if a person of faith should never question anything. They shouldn't struggle. They shouldn't have doubts. They should just believe harder. But that version of faith can make a person afraid to be honest about what they are experiencing. I don't believe questions automatically cancel faith. A question can be a sign that you care enough to engage. Doubt can make us look more closely at what we believe and why. Sometimes we come through that process with a deeper commitment. Sometimes we realize we need to change our understanding. Either way, thoughtful examination can make belief way more honest. Faith is not pretending there is no uncertainty. It's deciding how you will live while uncertainty is still very much present. Think about a relationship. You can't know everything another person will do in the future. Trust grows through experience. Honesty, consistency, repair after conflict, and the way someone acts when keeping their word costs them something. You take your risk when you let someone matter to you. But you do not have to pretend that trust means ignoring patterns. Faith doesn't require you to hand someone the keys to your life before they've shown you how they handle responsibility. Trust can grow in steps. Boundaries do not mean you have no faith in people. Sometimes boundaries are what make trust possible because they let you stay open. Without abandoning good judgment. That gives us a useful distinction. Faith can begin with hope, while trust in a particular person should also pay attention to evidence. We can hope someone will change and still require them to demonstrate change before restoring access. We can believe in a person's potential without denying the harm that they have already caused. That isn't cynicism, it's care joined with discernment. Now, when we talk about faith within people, this matters because none of us becomes who we are alone. Someone believed in us before we had much to show for ourselves. Whether it was a teacher, a parent, a friend, a coach, a sibling, or even a partner. They saw more possibility in us than we could see at the time. And at some point, we may be called to offer that kind of belief to someone else. Maybe a child is struggling. Maybe a friend has made a mistake and is trying to take responsibility. Maybe someone in your life is rebuilding after divorce, a job loss, or a season that they are not proud of. What does it look like to believe in someone? Without rescuing them. It might mean telling them the truth and staying present while they do the work. It might mean reminding them that a mistake is part of their story, not necessarily the final word. It might mean refusing to confuse accountability with humiliation. So here's a question to consider. When someone you care about fails, do you still see the person? Or do you reduce them to the worst thing that they've ever done? And we should ask the mirror question too. When you fail, do you believe that you can make a different choice next time? Or have you decided that your past has the authority to define your future? Faith in people isn't blind optimism. It doesn't say everyone is safe or that everyone will change. It says people are more than a single moment, and that growth is possible. When it's met with honesty, effort and responsibility. So let's talk about faith in systems and the risk of blind loyalty. So we all know that we already place faith in systems. We trust that a school will educate our children. That a court will weigh evidence, that a doctor will listen, that a workplace will apply its rules fairly, that a government will serve the public, or that an organization will live by the values in which it advertises. We need systems. They help people coordinate, solve problems, protect rights, and provide services that we could not create alone. But systems are made up of people, and people can make mistakes. Systems can be useful and still have blind spots. They can have rules that work in one circumstance and completely fail in another. They can earn trust in some areas and lose it in others. So what does faith in the system actually mean? Does it mean loyalty no matter what? Or does it mean hoping the system can do good while expecting it to show its work, correct mistakes, and answer for harm? This is where free thinking really comes in. We can question institutions without assuming every person inside of them is corrupt. We can value public service without treating every decision as beyond criticism. and we can ask for evidence, transparency, and accountability without giving up on the possibility that people can improve the system in which they share. A system that deserves trust should be able to hear a serious question. And a person who cares about the system should be willing to examine whether it is living up to its purpose. This applies to groups, churches, businesses, and even our own coaching communities. A mission statement is not proof of integrity. Actions fucking matter. How leaders handle criticism fucking matters. How people treat the least powerful person in the room really fucking matters. What happens after a mistake also matters. So ask yourself, where have I confused loyalty with silence? Where have I decided that questioning a group means betraying it? And where have I dismissed something useful simply because it isn't perfect? Faith without thought can turn into blind loyalty. Skepticism without openness can turn into permanent distrust. We need the courage to keep evaluating what we depend on and the humility to admit when our judgment needs change. I wanted to share something personal with you guys about my divorce, my Catholic faith, and a place called Redemption Rock. So after my divorce, I fell away from my Catholic faith. I wasn't living with the same connection to faith that I had once known. For the better part of five years, my life felt a distance. Then I found Christianity again at the top of Redemption Rock in Idaho. Hiking with some of the best people that I know. But yeah, we'll go more in depth at another time. I can't reduce that experience to a formula or pretend it answered every question I had. What I can say is that something about being there opened a door for me. I began to reconnect with faith and a relationship with God that became important in my life again. I share that because sometimes we imagine faith as a straight line. You believe that you never struggled and you never wandered. That hasn't been my experience at all. My path included a painful life change. Distant from the faith that I grew up with, and a moment in a particular place that helped me find my way back toward Christianity. If you are in a season where faith feels far away, I am not here to tell you exactly what your path has to look like. I'll just say that the distance doesn't have to be The end of the story. And sometimes the next step is a question, a conversation, a quiet moment, or simply being willing to look again. I also want to point you toward a couple of people that I respect very much. First, Joel Rosario. He wrote the book May December End, The Ballad of Joey Flowers Excellent book. Please check it out. Joel and his wife Glo also host a podcast, Sessions and Lessons. And Glow also hosts Glowing Off Script, which is her own personal podcast. Check out their work and show them some support. Now, let's get back to faith and what it looks like or what it asks of us in ordinary life. Faith in yourself isn't believing that you will never fail. It is believing that you can respond to failure with honesty and make a moral line choice next time. A lot of us have broken promises to ourselves. We said we'd make a change and went back on an old habit. We said we'd hold the boundary and gave in because we didn't want someone to be upset with us. We said we'd take care of our health, build the business, repair relationship, or get help. And then we stalled. After enough of that, it's easy to say, I can't trust myself. Maybe the answer isn't to make it bigger. Maybe it's to make a smaller one and keep it. Faith in yourself can grow through evidence, too. You tell yourself you'll take a 10 minute walk and you do it. You tell yourself you'll make the call and you actually make it. You tell yourself you'll admit when you were wrong, and you practice saying the words. Each kept promise gives you another reason to believe. Not only yourself, but believe that you can rely on yourself. That doesn't make every goal easy. It doesn't mean that you should have to carry every burden alone. Sometimes faith in yourself looks like admitting that you need support and asking for it. It can take more courage to say, I need help, than to keep acting like you have everything handled. Ask yourself, what promises have I made to myself so many times? That it no longer feels believable. And then, what is one smaller promise that I could keep today? We don't rebuild trust by shaming ourselves into perfection. We rebuild it by practicing honesty, making commitments that we can actually honor and returning to the work when we miss a step. So faith in God is a living practice. For me, faith in God is part of this conversation and it is part of my life. But even there, faith is not just a set of words that I repeat. It is how I shape, how I treat people, how I handle responsibility, and what I do when no one is watching. The Bible says in it's Hebrew chapter 11, verse 1, I believe. Now, faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. People understand and interpret that passage in different ways. For me, it speaks to trusting God, even when I cannot see the whole path ahead, and I don't want to see the whole path ahead. That's part of the plan. It's not for me. That trust doesn't mean I know exactly how every situation will turn out. It doesn't mean I get to use faith to avoid hard work. Or difficult conversations. It doesn't mean that I claim certainty about someone else's life. Faith can give me a place to stand while I take responsibility for the next step in front of me. And this is another place where we can examine ourselves. Do the beliefs that we say that we hold make us more patient, more honest, more compassionate, or more courageous? Or are we using religious language to excuse behavior? That contradicts those values. That question isn't meant to condemn anyone. It's meant to bring our words and our actions into the same conversation. If I say that I have faith, then I should be willing to ask whether my choices reflect the character that I claim to follow. So let's make this practical. Here are three ways to practice faith this week. First, name what you trust and why. Think of one person, practice, belief, or community that helps you live well. What have you seen that earns your trust? Naming the reason helps keep faith grounded instead of automatic. Second, Ask one honest question. Choose a belief or assumption that you've been carrying. Where did it come from? Does it match your experience and your values? What evidence would make you revise it? You don't have to reject it, just give it an honest examination. And third, take one step before you have the whole map. Reach out. Apologize. Ask for help. Show up to the conversation. Take the first step in a goal that matters to you. Faith often becomes visible through action while the outcome is still unknown. I want to leave you with a few questions to carry into your week. What does faith mean to you when you are not using the word to describe religion? Where have you placed your trust in a person, a system, a community, yourself, or God? And what has that trust been built on? Are you holding on to a belief because it continues to serve what matters? Or because you are afraid to question it? And where might you be ready to begin again? Even without certainty about where the next step will lead. Faith is not a guarantee that nothing will go wrong. it is not a demand that you ignore evidence or silence your questions. Faith is a willingness to stay engaged with people, with your values, with God, and with the possibility of a future. That you cannot fully see yet. Sometimes it means trusting someone enough to be honest. Sometimes it means asking an institution to live up to its purpose. Sometimes it means trusting that you can keep a small promise to yourself. And sometimes it means admitting that you've drifted. Then being open to finding your way back. So as I close this out, I want to ask you if this episode gave you something to think about, please share it with someone who might need the conversation. Follow or subscribe to the Northman Coaching Podcast and leave a review if you can. It helps more people find these discussions. If you want to keep doing this work shoulder to shoulder, then visit Northmancoaching.com and learn more about the North Northman Brotherhood. If you are looking for focused personal support, You can also reach out about one on one coaching. I am Gary Hults. Keep questioning what you believe. Keep looking at whether your actions match your values. And when life takes you off course, remember that you can begin again brick by brick. Till then, I will see you guys next time.