Latest / Mental Health and the Mission of the Church / Can Faith and Science Work Together? Two Christian Psychiatrists Respond

Transcript

Can Faith and Science Work Together? Two Christian Psychiatrists Respond · Mental Health and the Mission of the Church

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_05: Probably a less frequency would say, like, oh, you can overcome cancer with prayer alone.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_05: Like they would never tell you, like, don't go take that chemotherapy, you know, like, but there is something about mental illness where it's treated differently, where it's treated more as like a spiritual issue versus something that's biologic that needs to be treated.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_02: I just did a call earlier today with a lot of apartheid pastors on the call.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_02: They love this stuff, man.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_02: They know their little bumper sticker solutions aren't working anymore.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_04: And for Christ's sake, and I love you.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_04: I love you so much.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_04: I want to open your heart.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_04: I will do everything I can.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_04: That's a whole nother level.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_04: Imagine if we just get a little bit of that in our hearts.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_02: One manifestation or aspect of having dominion is science.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: Hey guys, it's Brittany Gardner, and you're listening to Mental Health and the Mission of the Church with Pastor and Counselor Chip Judd.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: Dr.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: Baron Short is back.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: Head over to our episode from earlier in April this year to catch his story of transformation and supernatural encounter with Jesus.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: He's a psychiatrist on the cutting edge of brain stimulation for mental health.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: And today he's joined by his close colleague in the same field, Dr.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: Ethan Ashley.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: Dr.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: Ashley, a longtime Christian, shares the joy and surprise of watching his mentor, Dr.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: Short, come to faith in Christ.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: Alongside Chip and Joey, here's a conversation that's classic mental health and the mission.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: Two experts in brain science, two pastors, Chip a counselor as well.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: All four are all in on the science, and yet deeply convinced of the need for a personal relationship with our Maker.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for listening.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_03: Well, actually, I've when did you get saved, Chip?
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_03: 76.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_03: 76, yes.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_03: That was a year before I was born.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_03: I was gonna say, I I I think I found Jesus at like three or four.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_03: So yeah, you've you've got more Holy Spirit than me.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_02: I know you were born, I know you were born saved.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_02: I know.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_03: Hey, I actually had a lady tell me early on in my pastoring days that I'm not a Christian because I don't remember when I gave my heart to Christ.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_03: And I was like, okie dokie.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_02: Well, the three of us might vote on that, Joey.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_02: Hey everybody, welcome to the Mental Health Mission of the Church podcast.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_02: So glad you're joining us today.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_02: And honestly, uh, I'm about as excited about this particular call as I was the last one.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_02: And uh one of the people's back, it's not often you get the opportunity to talk, share, listen to the story, and basically drain the brain of uh uh one psychiatrist who is a believer and loves Jesus.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_02: How about two at the same time?
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_02: I am honestly humbled and blown away that we're gonna have a really cool conversation today with two gentlemen.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_02: I'll introduce them and then they can share a little bit about themselves.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_03: Real quick, are you not excited to see me?
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_03: Who what was your name again?
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_03: We're friends, man.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_03: Like it I don't bring delight to your heart at all.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_02: You know, do I have to answer that right now?
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I can just leave.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_02: I'm happy to see you, Joey.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_02: Yo, Joey, Joey, you know the deal.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_02: For for our our guest today, my my love language is sarcasm.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_02: If I if I don't pick on you, I I probably don't trust you like you or something.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_02: So Joey, Joey gets the brunt of my teasing.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_02: Um so we're joined today with uh Dr.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_02: Baron Short and Dr.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_02: Ethan Ashley.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_02: Love for you guys to just share a little bit about yourself.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_02: Who wants to go first?
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_03: And I'll remind listeners, and I don't know exactly what the order of releases will be, but we did have uh a really great conversation with Baron sharing a very supernatural encounter that left a permanent imprint that I I want to say you're probably still processing.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_03: Are you guys y'all work super closely with one another?
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_04: That's probably worth even a discussion about that because as we've started to talk about yeah.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_04: Anything anywhere you guys want to go, ma'am.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and I'll say for you guys that y'all had mentioned before we hit record that we we want to make clear that you guys are talking from a doctor's perspective, two guys that love Jesus, but you are not representation of MUSC right now.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_05: All right.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_05: So my name's Ethan Ashley.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_05: Um I'm originally from Dallas, Texas, was born and raised up until college, went to the University of Georgia for undergrad, and then went back to Texas for medical school.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_05: And then I came to Charleston for my residency in psychiatry um in 2017, um, did my residency where Dr.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_05: Shore was actually one of my attendings.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_05: Um, so worked under him uh for that four-year period.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_05: And then um after residency was done, decided to stay in Charleston, joined faculty, primarily working in the hospital setting, doing inpatient adult psychiatric, uh like acute stabilization and management.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_05: A few years ago, I also joined our brain stimulation service that Dr.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_05: Short was the medical director of, um, doing treat specific treatments for just refractory psychiatric illness.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_05: So that's kind of just my background work-wise from a spiritual standpoint.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_05: I did not grow up necessarily.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_05: I grew up in a cultural Christian home, but my parents um thought you're gonna say cult.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_05: You know, uh Christianity texts and texts can maybe be viewed that way sometimes.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_05: But that's a good point.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_06: That's a good point.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_05: But no, uh, I grew up with parents who were not professed believers and not become believers until I was in high school, actually.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_05: And so my sister and I began a relationship with the Lord before them.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_05: Um, I would say starting like in high school is kind of when I began like a serious relationship with Jesus.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_05: Um, and that continued on into undergrad and then till where I am now.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_05: So while I enjoy my work and what I do from a day to day, like my faith is the lens through which I view everything, um, whether that's work, things outside of work.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_05: Mental health in the church is a little bit of like a soapbox topic for me.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_05: Um, and so I enjoy this kind of discussion.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_05: So I'm uh flattered to be here today.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_03: I want to just speak on Chip's behalf because nobody likes, or I wouldn't say no one, but people of relative character, they don't want to just go out and brag on themselves.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_03: But Chip has brought to Seacoast, I think, probably the most profound shift in our culture probably a decade plus ago, in really getting the ear of our senior pastor and how we uh toil with real mental health within the confinements of church, got his ear and his attention, and they became really good friends.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_03: But Chip has been very instrumental in changing our culture to the point, and we've talked about this before, to the point where some people on staff, and it and it it's not any sort of divisiveness, but there has been mention of wow, it seems like we value psychological therapy more than we value pastoral counsel.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_03: You know, those kind of discussions have happened because we value mental health so much.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_03: And we did lose a pastor to suicide in 2021.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_03: Two years before that, I was in my own mental health crisis going through about three days of being suicidal.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_03: So I want to say those two situations also magnified the sense of urgency of our lead pastor, who's I said senior pastor, he founded the church in 88.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_03: That's Greg Surratt.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_03: Our lead pastor is Josh Surratt, who was overseeing the church when uh Pastor Darren took his life, and then two years before that when I was having my mental health crisis.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_03: So, Chip, would you agree that those those two instances kind of almost brought a sense of urgency of yeah, what Chip's been saying, let's run full speed.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it wasn't it wasn't hard to open the topic very much after that.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_02: It was pretty pretty easy to get the conversation.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, to the point that now we have a we have an actual counseling practice, uh Seacoast counseling.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_03: I I want to make a distinction.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_03: We have a pastoral counseling department, but what you're saying is we have actually a staff of licensed therapists.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_02: And have a waiting list all the time.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_02: Ethan, I was gonna ask you, you got said you got saved in high school and then maintained your walk through college.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_02: I would say those must be some of the hardest years to be a Christian.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_02: I got saved a month after I got married.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_02: I have never been single and Christian.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_02: If you can kind of catch where I'm going there.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_02: Gosh, those had to be rough years, man.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_05: Uh I I'm single Christian.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_05: I have many years of experience in that particular department.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_05: Um, I know it's uh yeah, I think the key for me actually was community.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_05: Um that would be kind of the word that I would use to summarize that.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_05: Developed great community in college, people that I still, you know, keep up with and see on an annual basis to this day in my medical school.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_05: Um, and in when I came to Charleston, and that was one of the one of the probably the biggest reasons why I wanted to stay in Charleston after residency was finished.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_05: One, I was tired of moving, but also I developed such great community in the local church here that that I think that has been uh the key to everything.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_02: So, like when you were in medical school, how many was the class you were part of, and how many believers would you say there were?
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_05: In my class, um I would say a little over a hundred.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_05: Um, and then we um had a CMDA as a national organization, Christian Medical and Dental Association.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_05: We had a chapter of it um in my medical school at Texas AM, um, where there was, I would say in my class six to ten.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_05: Um the organization group you know made up multiple classes, but yeah, so I would say so we could roughly call about 10%.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_02: That's higher higher than I thought it would be interesting.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_03: Well, listeners, today we want to take we want to take this opportunity given you know the title of this podcast is Mental Health Admission of the Church, and we have two extremely bright folks in the psychiatry field who also value a relationship with Jesus.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_03: And so we want to take this opportunity to take a deep look at uh at how a religious teachings can be an impediment to good professional psychological help, i.e.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_03: science, and also how the science community in turn can cause roadblocks for people to connect on the spiritual.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_03: I I will I'll ask you, Baron, you you shared a good bit of your story, but how would you describe your your faith journey right now?
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, would you say there's like a newness, uh like a newness to it?
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_04: Uh yeah.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, for folks that may hear our other podcast, you know, I kind of relatively new to the game in terms of an opening to Christ, um, but not an opening to spirituality.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_04: And I was one of those kids that um 18 years old, I was like, what's the point of life?
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_04: Is it to get a job, get married, have kids, get divorced, and die?
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_04: Is that it?
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_04: Had never really stopped asking that question um and would say more relatively better answers for that.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_04: Um and Ethan knows this.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, you know, uh heavy into science, heavy into philosophy, metaphysics, interested in experiential uh practices, right?
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_04: And so that kind of drew me more into the Buddhist uh and even Advaita Vedanta approaches, which I still think they do a really great job of like finding uh a type of unity, uh a unity consciousness.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_04: And as we had talked about Chip before, what I still um find unique um is just that relational, like to develop a personal relationship to God and to Christ, as I kind of expressed before, kind of just uh doing a little tweak of a practice and having this opening and finding you know love a very clear, like a love coming through me that was beyond this world but in this world and makes this world and fills us and wants to connect between us, and then having this moment like seeing through the eyes of Christ and like the level of love that He has for us, despite how we're messed up, you know, um, still moves me.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_04: Um Chip.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_03: I told I told Baron when I was editing his episode, I just would be like, Oh god, I like just I would get emotional just hearing him talk and just hearing about your experience for sure, man.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_03: For sure.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_04: And so there's definitely a newness, there's newness for me of even like reading the Bible, but I have to read it in small bits because it blows my mind, particularly reading like what Christ said, you know, just just so many just powerful things there.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_04: And I'm probably now in the phase of like when you start to uh uh uh know the love of Christ, how does that transform you as a human being?
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_04: And how does that transform like it's not something you do you know once a week or something, right?
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_04: It's like it's like how do I do that now, right?
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_04: And knowing I can't do it by myself, but he can help me, right?
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_04: He's got my back.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_04: How does that start to repair?
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_04: So if you think of uh the sp spiritual, the psychological and the biological and the relational, as you start to, as the spirit starts to come in, how does that start to transform your psychology?
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_04: You know, like it it makes me do a genuine inventory.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_04: Like people could say, Hey, he's a nice guy.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_04: And like, but when you know that level of love, where do I need to bear my cross?
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_04: You know, where I could I could really do better, like, you know, in relationships with my family or other people, or you know, maybe you have a rough night to sleep and then you get all cranky and say something mean to somebody.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_04: It's like that matters now, you know.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_04: That's before you're like, ah, you know, like let's let's let me learn to bear my cross on a daily basis.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_04: And so and it and to have fluctuations, uh I think when initially started was just on a a love high, you know.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_04: But what happens when you get a contraction of that?
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_04: What happens when I do something in a way and I feel that love constrict and it's so painful to hurt to be cut off?
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_04: And how do you open back up and how do you open your heart?
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_04: And so there's a lot of newness, and I'm I feel like I'm learning a lot every day.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_04: And I would say as as I'm learning more on the spiritual and the agape love, it is transforming these other layers, and it's transforming how I relate to people, and I it's a new life, but I'm motivated to we're experts in uh psychiatry, we're experts in the the science, and we actually focus in brain stimulation, and I have a big advocate to get the word out so that people know because less than one percent of people get access to brain stimulation therapies like TMS back there or ECT.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_04: But then, and we'll get into this with the with as we talk about the differences.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_04: My field does a really bad job of acknowledging the spiritual, does a so-so to mediocre job of the psychological, and can do okay.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_04: We got a long way to go with the biological, but um can do pretty good.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_04: But we have a, I would argue we have a fragmentation problem.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_04: We can over-reduce rather than somebody just says, I'm just a biological being or I'm just spirit or you know, or just a soul.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_04: We're multidimensional, right?
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_04: We're a we have a body, we have a mind, and and we're a soul, we're spirit.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_04: And if we're not, and we're in relationship, and we're in relationship to God, we're in relationship to each other, we're here to be with each other, right?
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_04: And so if we're not taking, if we're not nurturing those different dimensions of our being, how can we ever be well?
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_04: And we live in a time now where that's not only at a personal level for any one of us, but it's like we're at a civilizational level.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_04: We've never had more material abundance, but people are never been in more crisis.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_04: So we're moved past survival and like how do we actually thrive?
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_04: And science tells us about the nature of things.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_04: Science tells us the the the behavior of things, excuse me.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_04: We can study little particles, we can study little cells, we can study organs, we can store it, but it doesn't tell us what it means, right?
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_04: Or what we should value, you know, and and in the most extreme, we get into issues where science can even say you don't have a mind or you definitely don't have a soul.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_04: And vice versa, you could have people that don't want to acknowledge the biological and how important it is.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_04: So we we'll dive into that.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_04: But we're here to try to change that.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_02: Uh yeah, I rethought some.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_02: I really do, Joey, and again, I mean this with the utmost respect.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_02: I want to call you guys doctor.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_02: Two two reasons.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_02: One, I want to honor the work you've put in, but two, I want this anybody listening to realize you're not just a couple of dudes.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you guys are you guys are in the business of repairing human beings' lives, and you're at the highest level of scientific training available by saying Dr.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_02: Short and Dr.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_02: Ashley.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_02: I just want to stress, you guys are in a category, we'll call it, that uh you need to listen differently.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_02: But look at, you know, one of the things I want to say to you, Dr.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_02: Short, is what I love as I listen to you, I kind of know to listen for certain things.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_02: One of the things that breaks my heart is the body of Christ has lost the connection between information and experience.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_02: The body of Christ is bought into the lie that information translates into transformation and it doesn't.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_02: Every transformation, every formation that we've ever experienced, anything that formed us into who we are today was experienced.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_02: It wasn't information.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_02: It was information, experience, fact, whatever, that we experienced.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_02: And I love that you've come from the Eastern side of things, which I did too, by the way, the Upanishads and Bhagavad Gita and all that stuff.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_02: And what I liked about it and still do, the emphasis on connection, the emphasis on experiencing peace, not just saying doing a teaching on it.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm excited about the implications of that because I think it would revolutionize the church if we would go back to kind of like back to the future sort of thing.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_02: Go back to some practices that we've drifted away from.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_02: Ethan, I was gonna, or Dr.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_02: Ashton, I was gonna ask you, did have you did you know Dr.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_02: Short before this refreshed faith in God?
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_02: Give us your take on his journey.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_02: You knew him before, you know him now.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_02: What what was what's going on there?
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_03: I can say he was the biggest jerk ever.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_05: I hated his gut.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, as he was talking, I was I was thinking about this.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_05: Like, gosh, where where we've come from, where we are now, it's remarkable.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_05: Um so uh what I would say is like Dr.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_05: Short's always been a very passionate person.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_05: Um he's passionate about the things that he cares about.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_02: Like I could see that when he hide that very well.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_05: Always has been an emotional person, but like I've but uh you know, I've seen him like get Thierry talking about the good work we get to do of healing people, bringing people having from from death to life, you know.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_05: So I I've I've been able to see that over the years and see that passion.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_05: I always viewed him as a very highly intellectual, um, you know, philosophical, metaphysical-minded person.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_05: So I think we all have those people in our, and this is something I've I've told him.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_05: So you know, this is not new information to him, uh, because I reflected this to him, you know, the other month.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_05: We have these people that we are like almost intimidated to get in a theological conversation with or you know, an apologetic conversation with, because I'm like, this guy's gonna run laps around me.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_05: Like, I man, I I know this person who's been a mentor to me.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_05: I would love for him to know Jesus for who Jesus truly is, and it's like so intimidating to bring that up for the longest time.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_05: It's like you know, and I I prayed for that, but yet I did not enter into conversation.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_05: But what the Lord showed me was that he didn't need me at all, the Holy Spirit just did a work that did not involve me at all.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_05: And then I I start hearing about it, like this experience that he you know shared, and I was just like bewildered, you know.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_05: And so I don't know, it's just cool.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_05: And then to see him like seeing an emotional person get emotional about like the words of Jesus.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_05: It was just I don't know, it was just a I think it's a great testament to like to what you're speaking of.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_05: Like, this isn't about like intellectual ascent, it's about an experience um and building like a real relationship with with Jesus.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_05: And and he doesn't have I told Baron this, like the Lord doesn't need us, he invites us to be on his team, he can take all the shots, um, and he kind of proved that in this situation.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_05: So I don't know, it's just super encouraging just for listeners thinking about there are people in our lives where you're like, Man, uh this might that this person would be the la and the people I work with, this would be the last person I think that I could get on Team Jesus, and sure enough, it ended up being the next one.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_05: So it's it's awesome just to just to hear how this experience has played out over the last several months.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_03: I wonder if you would relate to this sentiment, Dr.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_03: Ashley.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_03: And uh for for me personally, I I just grew up in this, and I've for sure experienced the supernatural, but when I hear you talk, Dr.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_03: Short, there's a freshness to it that is so edifying.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_03: To my soul, you know, when I hear, dang it.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_04: It's okay, brother.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_03: Like when I hear you talk about just how the knowledge of Christ, how it can transform you, like you're you're asking that question, like, okay, well, now that I've encountered this love, how is that supposed to change me?
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_03: You know, how is that gonna inform me?
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_03: And it's like there's just such a freshness to that question.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_03: There's such a freshness to your encounter.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_03: And I think for someone like me who's 48 years old, and it's I mean, this is just my context.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_03: This is just it's like a fish not realizing that I'm in water.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_03: And then I hear of someone like you who just became a fish, you know, and it's like, whoa, I can breathe underwater.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, that's probably a weird example.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_03: I know it makes sense.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_03: Dr.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_03: Ashley, I asked Dr.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_03: Short this as well, but do you ever have any concerns or has there ever been times when your faith could hurt you professionally?
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_05: You know, I I think the biggest, maybe this is kind of a way of answering the question.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_05: I think the biggest challenge I see, especially like working in an academic setting where we're not only are we taking care of patients, we're also educating, you know, doctors and training, we're educating medical students.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_05: And sometimes the things I want to tell patients aren't necessarily the things I feel like I can tell them in that moment.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_05: Like I believe there's like some spiritual truths that need to be shared, but um, my goal in that moment is to help them achieve whatever goal they have or help them develop a goal, but versus what I think they need, you know.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_05: So there's there's this there's this tension that exists sometimes.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_05: I think if I went on, you know, the inpatient unit was just telling every patient about the Lord, then I think I that would be something that potentially could get me in trouble because okay, am I not focusing, you know, on on my job, right, versus like what I'm just personally passionate about.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_05: So that tension exists.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_05: Um, but I would say outside of that, I that I couldn't I can't think of an another example.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_03: So if colleagues listened to this, or if if Dr.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_03: Short was listening to this and he was not a Christian, could you get any flack from the professional community of saying, hey, hey, hey, come on, man.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_03: You're you're you're scientific.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_03: Like this is this is a point of contention.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_03: Um because I think science, I think science has that reputation by a lot of Christians.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_03: A lot of Christians think that science is antagonistic to spirituality in an abrasive, offended, offensive way.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm just curious if that's your experience.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_03: And then, you know, I want to I want to keep this conversation going on the science community and how they relate to the church and spirituality.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I would say there probably would be some colleagues that would feel that way who don't have any sort of religious background.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_05: Maybe they consider them from an agnostic or atheistic sense.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_05: Um, you know, because I to that point, sometimes we think it's either one or the other.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_05: Either what this patient experiences purely biological or what this patient's experiencing is purely a spiritual issue.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_05: And then the question I present is why is that a mutually exclusive situation?
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_05: Can it be both?
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_05: And the answer I believe is yes, it can be both.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_05: And so you have people that kind of fall in either extreme.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_05: I do think there it makes sense to have a middle ground that is inclusive of both things.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_05: And so, yeah, I and I I I think there would be some colleagues that would be like, okay, I understand.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_05: That's just kind of his his again, his lens of how he views things versus negating biology.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_05: Because I don't think any of my colleagues who aren't spiritual that would hear me talk would say, Oh, he's negating biology, but almost as if well, he also is putting this other lens to it that necessarily isn't just from a uh medicine approach.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_03: And and so people in the science field who are antagonistic toward spirituality, it is this where the conflict is.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_03: In my seminary studies, this is what at least I was taught.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_03: It was in science, the assumption is that the natural is the only thing that exists.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_03: Thus, the supernatural has to be discarded.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_03: And the apologetical response to that is if the supernatural does indeed exist, then science can't measure it.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_03: So you can't say on the basis of science that the supernatural doesn't exist.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_03: You don't have the tools to do that, and so it's almost like a your story falls short because you're using science to do something that science couldn't do if the supernatural did exist.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_03: Is that where the science community is coming from when they want to push out spirituality?
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_03: Is it like the assumption, the presupposition is the natural is the only thing?
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_03: Because if so, I think that's as a humbly say, that's a really, really ignorant or audacious thing to assume that there's no supernatural.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_03: Why?
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_03: Because science can't measure it.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_03: That really is kind of like really that seems to be a little short-sighted.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_05: Things that are tangential that yeah, or tangible, sorry, things that are tangible, things that we can measure, that we can see, right?
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_05: Those are the things that the scientific community wants to be able to look at.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_05: Which is ironic for a field that probably in psychiatry that relies less on, you know, imaging, blood work, it's et cetera, than any other field in medicine.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_05: Um, things that we're just kind of seeing, right?
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_05: Um, not necessarily seeing on on radiographs.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_05: But um, no, I think the way you summarized it is very accurate.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_04: I want to jump in there real quick.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_04: I think one of the ways, because I think there's a way to kind of reinterpret science, philosophy, and religion and personal experience or contemplative knowing that what we get closer to.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, to it's critical to me.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_04: That's the core to reorient subjective, intersubjective, objective knowing, reflective knowing.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_04: I've written some papers on this.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_04: So uh happy to share.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_04: So one of the ways we can differentiate within science or science community, and this would be people within science and also outside of science, is to separate or differentiate the scientific method from scientific philosophy.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_04: Scientific method really says, I know that I don't know.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_04: I know that my mind can deceive me, and I want to know better.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_04: So I'm gonna design experiments.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_04: I'm gonna have a hypothesis and test that.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_04: I may be right or wrong, that's okay.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_04: And as I keep doing this over and over, I can start to make generalizations about the behavior of things.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_04: Notice I didn't say what things mean, just what how they behave.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_04: And if they behave repeatedly in a certain way, like gravity, and I keep dropping the pen, I can then start to make law mathematical laws and rules about it and use that.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_04: And by the way, whatever method I come up with, as we continue to learn, I will have to update my model.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_04: Okay?
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_04: So that's coming actually from a place of radical discovery and a radical I don't know-ness.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_04: And if people stay there, they need to be open about the supernatural and say, well, maybe I don't want to look into that, or maybe I have to look at that with a different lens instead of objective knowing, that's a contemplative knowing or reflective knowing.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_04: But that's not where it stops.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_04: What happens is then scientific materialism gets snuck in.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_04: And people call it science, but it's not science.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_04: It's a type of philosophy.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_04: And scientific materialism says the only thing that matters is matter.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_04: The only thing that's fundamentally real is matter.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_04: And in its most extreme versions, it'll say, not only do you not have a soul, you don't even have a mind.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_04: In the most extreme versions of it, they would say, your mind is an illusion.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_04: Well, what is that going to do to an individual, right?
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_04: If I if we all tell each other we're we're hallucinating a conversation that was very helpful.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_04: I feel better.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_04: And so then that forces you, if you look at an individual and collective level, it forces people into kind of two pathways if they stay at a scientific materialism view.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_04: They either have to go to hedonism, how much more can I get?
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_04: How much higher can I get?
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_04: Can I take drugs?
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_04: Can I get more money?
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_04: Can I get what's going to get my high?
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_04: Or they just go, it doesn't matter.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_04: So nihilism.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_04: So hedonism or nihilism.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_04: That is not a suitable solution.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_04: If you're designing a civilization, you can't stay there.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_04: But that's where we are, right?
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_04: And that's a default dominant mode, and it's making people sick.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_04: If we learn to re-differentiate and say there's a scientific method which is totally about discovery and I don't knowness, but I'm trying to get closer to knowing relative truth, and I currently can only apply it to things I can repeatedly observe, and at minimum be quiet about judging, because they're not being asked to judge something that doesn't fit that paradigm.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_04: That would be a great start.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_04: And to, if people are a scientific materialist, to just own that that's what it is, and that's not science, that's a type of philosophy.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_04: Now, I'll also add modern science is getting us closer and closer to disrupting scientific materialism.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_04: So there's more and more science coming out to say, man, this is way more amazing.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_04: Even the natural world is way more amazing than anybody ever knew.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_04: Like God's, and you could say God's creation is way more amazing than anybody ever knew.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_04: And um we get closer into other scientists philosophical models.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, there's what they call pan-psychism, idealism.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_04: These actually fit more in um kind of contemplative and uh contemplative Western and Eastern approaches.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_04: Um they're actually getting closer to philosophical models that fit with science, but also fit with contemplative knowing.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_04: Right?
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_04: So we're getting closer to doing that.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_04: And so that's why it's really important we differentiate what I call science philosophy and kind of religious or contemplative practices.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_04: So at the science level, in the biomedical model, people just treat people as bodies and behavior.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_04: Uh unless they're a good human being, then they realize that there's some additional decency to have.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and then in psychiatry, hopefully we kind of leap to the level of mind and say, you know, there's things to do with your thoughts and feelings and perceptions that you can modulate, right?
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_04: But we usually stay pretty quiet about the spiritual as a field, you know, and hence you could see why someone of faith or spirituality would have reservations, right?
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_04: And why people can have spiritual experiences.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_04: And sometimes it could be part of a psychiatric illness, and sometimes they're having a spiritual revelatory experience that's not, doesn't need to be path uh pathological.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_04: They need to ideally be in a culture to help support them and nurture that.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, I like that.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_02: There's some really, really good thoughts in there.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_02: My concern and the sadness is that I don't know that the church thinks enough, deeply enough.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_02: I think we just kind of react and muddle along.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_02: You know, you were talking about the uh the the hedonism and nihilism.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not sure I can say his name right, but Nietzsche or Nietzsche, however you say his name, he's famous for saying God is dead, and most people take that a certain way that he didn't mean.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_02: What he really meant is what you were just describing.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_02: He said, if you take God, remove God from your sense of reality, all the rules are gone.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_02: All the boundaries that protect us from ourselves are gone.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_02: And basically, in his profound, crazy way, he foresaw that we were going to go the way we've gone, that slowly but surely we would become a culture of lawlessness.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_02: Fascinating that he foresaw that back when he did.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_02: It's crazy how much this stuff makes sense.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_02: If you go to the right points in history and and extrapolate them, it's not that hard to figure out how we got here, how to get from here to where we need to be.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_02: That's like Dr.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_02: Ashley said, you know, that's a God, that's a God level project.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_03: All right.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm gonna take this because we're gonna we're gonna turn the corner and and talk about how the church gets in the way of science.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_03: But I want to just take this further.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_03: Like Dr.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_03: Ashley, uh imagine you did a TED talk on spirituality and it just exploded, and there's millions of views.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_03: Would that not affect your career at all if it was focusing on the spiritual?
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_03: And you said, you know, I I here's my background, here's what I do for a living.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_03: I've got to tell you I want to talk about the spiritual.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_03: I'm going after this because I know for sure most Christians think that science is a persecutor of the church, and it doesn't sound like you guys are coming from that angle.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, not obviously y'all aren't persecuting church, but it doesn't sound like you guys feel that way about the science community.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I mean, so to your example, if I did a spirituality podcast, people listening to it, my hope would be like, oh wow, here's someone who understands medicine, who understands science, but also can appreciate the another level of this, that we don't just keep it on the biological level or even the psychosocial level, as Dr.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_05: Shor was alluding to, that we can take it to the spiritual level.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_05: I think there's some that would maybe say, Well, so again, which is it then, right?
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_05: They're not they're not able to meet in the middle on that.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_05: My hope would be that I would if I someone said, Oh, you know what, that that doctor did that talk.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_05: I'm here talking with them about my severe depression.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_05: This person can offer another perspective or another layer that should be addressed.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_05: You know, the American Psychiatric Association APAs are kind of governing bodies, so to speak, and they have a position statement about the fact that psychiatrists should be talking or asking patients about spirituality in intake assessments, things like that.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_05: But the fact of the matter is it's just not normally done.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_05: So I do think it's an important aspect, and and my hope would be that you know, someone wouldn't view me as like a counterfeit doctor because I'm talking about and because I treat with you know biological agents, right?
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_05: I'm not I'm not counterfeit because I'm talking about spirituality things, but more so that I just understand this this other aspect that's being neglected.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_03: Do you both think there's a big and you you guys may know, and I'm wondering if there's some closeted scientists who have found this too, but are are there a lot of scientists who are recognizing the limitations of science when they see how fine-tuned things are and how non-random life is?
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_03: Is is there a lot of scientists saying, yeah, science is limited, there's something else to the story?
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_03: Because a lot of Christians like to say, yeah, a lot of scientists out there starting to get with the program, which I'll say that's true.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_04: I think that's the case.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_04: And I think you see both people coming out of the closet about that, and you have people that are in the closet.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_04: I I I know some colleagues that are scientists that love Jesus as well, but they don't feel comfortable saying it out loud to their colleagues.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_04: And yeah, I think I was saying this to you, Ethan.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_04: It's kind of interesting to I'm just be candid about this, that that there are some people that have heard about the changes in me and they're like, oh my gosh, you're gonna be Christian now.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_04: Those people are so judgy.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_04: And I'm thinking, who's talking about judgy?
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_04: Right?
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_04: Like it goes, it can go both ways, right?
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, and and they just put you in a box.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_03: That that's a form of prejudice.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_04: And so I go, well, you know, if you're worried about the the judgment, you're you're doing it too.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_04: You know, look pull the log out of your eye here.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_04: I do think there's still enough of a blind spot, unless people have had some suffering in their heart or something that they're kind of like willing to look a little further, they may not be challenged, right?
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_04: They're just kind of imitating the culture that they've been handed, right, and what they've been taught in school.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_04: But, you know, in the scheme of it, if you if you just said pull away your preconceptions and you said, here's this amazing universe, and we're mostly made of space and energy that interacts in a certain way, and there's this profound intelligence that you know, even our cells have goal-directed mind behavior.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_04: There's bioelectric fields of memory that are in our bodies that tell our bodies to behave a certain way before we even get to a thing like a brain, and we like this whole amazing universe, and to say, and yeah, this all came from nothing.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_04: Really?
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, like that's that's like that's kind of crazy talk, right?
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_04: Like that takes a lot of faith.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_04: More faith, I would say.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, more faith, right?
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_04: And then you could at least be humble or open to say there may be some type of intelligence, or maybe we call it God, or maybe so you do see people doing that, but unless they've been moved existentially, they may be just imitating what they've been learned, what they've been taught.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I've thought about it this way: like if anybody were to ever be walking on the beach and they just saw a laptop laying there, nobody in their right mind would be like, oh, look what nature delivered.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_03: It'd be like, somebody left their daggone laptop, and and yet we're walking around as humans, way more advanced, and it's like, oh yeah, nature just delivered on that.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_03: All right, I've got a question for all three of y'all because I have a theory on what I feel the churches hang up is on science, and I feel pretty strongly about this.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_03: So when we read the gospels, when we read the book of Acts, we see Jesus going around touching people, healing.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_03: We see a lady that grabs the hem of his hem of his garment and she's healed.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_03: There's automatic healings.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_03: That's the ministry of the disciples when Jesus ascends.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_03: People get healed.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_03: In a sense, you would you'd have to admit for their physical healing at the you know, because that's what we saw, the physical healing, the the demonic casting out, and it was automatic.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_03: It didn't take work, it just took that must be the Messiah.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_03: There's something about him.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_03: Please make me see, please touch my eyes.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, you just spit in the mud, yes, please rub that on my eyes.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_03: I I'll and I'll give you an example of myself.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_03: When I was in my mental health crisis, and I love I love my mom's side of the family, but they for sure I I came from a Pentecostal background that I don't think did me great favors personally.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_03: But my cousin, who loves me so much, she just I think was in so much pain seeing me go through so much pain.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_03: She literally said one time, I think she texted me, she said, I just have to say it, Joey.
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_03: You gotta snap out of this, you just gotta believe.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_03: Like you, like this is too much.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_03: Like, God wants to heal you.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_03: You gotta do this.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_03: Like, almost like it's your responsibility somehow.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_03: Like, you gotta figure this out.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_03: And I think it's because that's how we were taught healing works, because that's what we saw.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_03: And I get it.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_03: I get it.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_03: I get how someone can say, no, that's not how Jesus works.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_03: Medicine, therapy, you you want me to hook my brain up to something like pray to Jesus and He'll do what he did in the Gospels.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_03: That's my theory.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_03: That's why I think it's so hard for Christians because of what we read in the Gospels, and I and I understand.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_04: Do you think those same Christians would say, just pray and you'll get an oil change and new tires on your car?
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_02: They would not.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_02: I know some that might.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_05: That is true.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_05: Or or even to like a more similar analogy.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_05: It's like, you know, if you were struggling with a severe medical condition, let's say you were in the hospital with severe pneumonia, like, or diabetes, whatever sort of the medical diagnosis, would your mom have that same kind of approach to you?
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_04: Broke your arm and there's a big gap in the bone and you need to have surgery.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_04: Would they just say pray over it?
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_04: Don't get surgery.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_03: To Chip's point, some would.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_03: There have been kids who have lost their lives because a parent said, We're not taking you to the doctor, we're gonna believe.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_03: So, yes to that question.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_03: Some people would say that.
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_03: Now I think that's an extreme, but it does exist.
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_05: And it and it's not to say that you're right, like uh the Lord can perform miracles.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_05: Like, I've seen situations where people were healed and it wasn't because of the medicine, or it didn't make sense, like that what we were doing maybe wasn't working, and all of a sudden it just started working.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_05: You know, I I saw a survey that said like 35% of churchgoers would say you know, mental illness can be overcome with Bible study and prayer alone.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_05: So that's a pretty significant, you know, we'll say a third, you know, of churchgoers would say that.
• 43:59
  SPEAKER_05: And it's more the idea of like, well, again, does it have to be that alone, right?
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_05: Because we I probably would probably a less frequency would say, like, oh, you can overcome cancer with prayer alone.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_05: Like they would never tell you, like, don't go take that chemotherapy, you know, like that that would be a very rare subset as as y'all acknowledge.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_05: But there is something about mental illness where it's treated differently, where it's treated more as like a spiritual issue versus something that's biologic that needs to be treated.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_05: And to your point, Joey, you look at like the the healings of Jesus, the overwhelming majority of them were physical ailments.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_05: There might be one ish example of like more of a mental illness standpoint, but otherwise they were physical.
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_05: The neurological situations or uh other types of physical disorders, right?
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_05: But so, you know, Jesus didn't seem to view it that way.
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_05: You know, we we think about, you know, um demonic influence and things like that.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_05: People ask me all the time about like my encounters with like spiritual warfare and demonic influence.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_05: Um, I don't, I don't believe that my colleagues and other specialties get asked that question as frequently as I do.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_05: Because again, we attribute we attribute um those types of things to mental health issues.
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_05: But yet when we see in the scriptures, that demonic influence is actually more commonly at play with physical ailments.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_05: It's it's not to say that we don't discount what God can do and miraculously heal people, but at the same time, I don't see the Lord looking down at my tools of treatment, medications, brain stimulation, whatever it might be, and he goes, What are those?
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_05: Like that's you know, the those things were not developed outside of his sovereignty, just like any other medical treatment for any other medical condition was developed outside of his sovereignty and knowledge.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_05: So um I think it's just again how we like to approach it.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_02: One of my favorite verses, because it I feel like it's one the church has not properly understood and applied, right back in the first chapter of the book, you know, um be fruitful, multiply, replenish the earth, and subdue it.
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_02: Uh he gave us dominion.
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_02: I prefer the word responsibility to steward the planet.
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I heard a guy say years ago, probably 30 years ago, that one manifestation or aspect of having dominion is science.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_02: One of the ways we've we've learned to steward the earth, including our own bodies, is through science and medicine.
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_02: You know, that covers a lot of ground for me.
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_02: The other thing I was gonna say is I have found, I mean, I've been banging my head against this wall with inside the church for pretty much 50 years.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_03: Literally, I've seen him in his office.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_03: He's so frustrated.
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_02: And and I'm telling you, man, you go back to the 70s and 80s, and I was in the charismatic circles, which are hyper-spiritualized, and and I don't mind that.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_02: But dude, I don't know how many times I was told that uh 2 Corinthians 5.17, if amen be in Christ, he's a new creature.
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_02: Old things have passed away, behold, all things become new.
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_02: You don't need to talk about your past, you don't need to deal with this stuff.
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_02: I I think it was you, Dr.
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_02: Ashley, said, you know, just just pray more, read your Bible, you know, you'll you'll feel better.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_02: My my point, the good news is I feel like it's part of my calling to study secular science and blah, blah, blah.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_02: And I call it sanctified psychology.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_02: I just kind of pass it through my understanding of scripture and my walk with God and try to say it in a language the church can can wrap their head around.
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_02: I just did a call earlier today with, oh, I don't know, probably 10 pastors on the call.
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_02: And uh, they love this stuff, man.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_02: They love it.
• 47:39
  SPEAKER_02: They know their little bumper sticker solutions aren't working anymore.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_02: And that's basically what happened to me.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_02: I got saved into a hyper-spiritualized environment.
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_02: But God used me in counseling.
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_02: And the quick, the quick version of it is you know, I learned what I could, and I, I mean, we we did some deliveries and stuff, and I believe some of it was real, I believe some of it wasn't.
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_02: And then I learned how to do a little bit of marriage counseling, a little bit of uh cognitive therapy and that kind of thing.
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_02: Went back to school, got my master's.
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_02: But but then eventually I realized, okay, you know, the Bible talks about the members of your body, and one of the members of our body is our brain.
• 48:17
  SPEAKER_02: And if we believe a heart can break, a spleen can break, a pancreas can break, why can't a brain break?
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_02: And eventually I would start teaching that, and the lights would start to go on.
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_02: And it got just a little bit easier for somebody to say, Hey, can I talk to you?
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_02: And we talk, and they'd say, I'm just wondering if I need to be on medication.
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_02: And I'd and I'd say, Darling, I've been pastoring you for 10 years.
• 48:43
  SPEAKER_02: You need to be on medication.
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_02: I promise you, I'm not allowed to prescribe it, but I can tell you you are a first-class candidate for medication.
• 48:53
  SPEAKER_02: And some of them, they go and they get on medication and they come back and they want to kiss me.
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_02: They want to like, and I tell them, I said, hey, all they're doing is just like insulin or whatever.
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_02: They're giving you a medication that enables your body to do what God designed it to do.
• 49:09
  SPEAKER_02: That's all they're doing.
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_02: We're getting, we're making progress.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_02: We really are.
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_05: I there was a 2007 study um where that showed that 21% of churches either dissuaded or forbid the use of medications.
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_05: So, you know, we're looking at about 20 years ago.
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_05: So about 20 years ago, but still that's that's an alarming number, about one in five, basically.
• 49:31
  SPEAKER_05: So when you I hear you say that, they're like, wow, that's that's that's the approach the church should be taking.
• 49:36
  SPEAKER_05: Um we we want to address the spiritual aspects of mental illness, because what we tell patients is, you know, or what I tell patients is your brain is an electrochemical organ that is affected by life stuff.
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_05: It seems to be the only one that is affected that way when when then there's aspects of life that are very traumatic or troubling, you know, it doesn't affect our pancreas or our liver in the same way where our brain gets affected, right?
• 50:01
  SPEAKER_05: But it doesn't mean that there is not biological dysfunction that can be medically addressed.
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, it seems like if we could get closer to um a complementary bridge model, right?
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_04: So we were talking about depression at the last podcast, and you can think of say depression as a disease that's at the brain level, right?
• 50:23
  SPEAKER_04: And praying will help, but just you may you may not get the miracle cure.
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_04: You might and you might not, right?
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_04: And maybe you don't hedge your bets on that alone, right?
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_04: If God gives us the technology to help uh a brain heal, that's okay to use, I think.
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_04: And then if we're not careful, the scientists, scientific minded may just stop there, or some psychiatrists they say, okay, now work on your mind level, thought, feeling, perception, your past.
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_04: Hey, we all grew up, nobody had perfect parents.
• 50:59
  SPEAKER_04: You you've got some kind of type of trauma, little T and big T trauma.
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_04: And to ignore that is dangerous, just like ignoring your brain is dangerous, ignoring what's happening in your mind.
• 51:10
  SPEAKER_04: And then to stop there is a problem, right?
• 51:12
  SPEAKER_04: To say you're in relationship with other people or your family, the world.
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_04: So your connectivity and then your connection to God, right?
• 51:20
  SPEAKER_04: Your sense of spirit.
• 51:21
  SPEAKER_04: And so I almost think of when things get severe enough.
• 51:25
  SPEAKER_04: We're talking about depression as a disease in the brain, depression as a psychological disorder, depression as a reaction to a social situation.
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_04: We were, I was thinking about the spiritual, almost think of it as a love distortion.
• 51:39
  SPEAKER_04: If God is love, and this are the primordial ontology, the primordial reality is God is love infusing into this world and in trying to infuse into us if we choose to accept the invitation, then there's usually some type of distortion of that.
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_04: Like you somehow we've denied the invitation, right?
• 51:59
  SPEAKER_04: Or we've not processed at these other levels.
• 52:01
  SPEAKER_04: It's an it's all hands on deck, and at a particular moment, a particular area may be more important.
• 52:08
  SPEAKER_04: So for example, there might be somebody who's really sick and suicidal, and to just say pray more is cruel.
• 52:15
  SPEAKER_04: That's like really mean to a human being.
• 52:17
  SPEAKER_04: On the other hand, somebody may have kind of milder depression anxiety, and it's tied to a huge existential thing.
• 52:23
  SPEAKER_04: And like pills aren't going to fix that.
• 52:25
  SPEAKER_04: And people come to us, hey, give me the pill to fix that.
• 52:28
  SPEAKER_04: And it's like, that's where there's the work.
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_04: Work on your mind, but also with your soul and like your sense of connection.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_04: And we talk things about death.
• 52:36
  SPEAKER_04: Like, where do you how do you make peace with death?
• 52:39
  SPEAKER_04: Like, so in most of our culture, we have a death scare and we don't talk about it.
• 52:43
  SPEAKER_04: And arguably talking about death is can be one of the most meaningful things because it it makes life alive and it makes us like address the ultimate concern and ultimate meaning.
• 52:54
  SPEAKER_04: Why why would we cut one of these off?
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_04: If these are like appendages, you know, why would you just use your left arm or just your right leg or that makes no sense?
• 53:03
  SPEAKER_04: These are all parts of our uh we're multidimensional beings in relationship with each other.
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_04: So why would we ignore these dimensions?
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_04: It's dangerous and and cruel.
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_04: And otherwise we can be loving.
• 53:14
  SPEAKER_03: Chip, I proposed this theory to you uh a while back, and I don't think you are fully comfortable with it, but we go ahead.
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_03: Let's hear the joke.
• 53:24
  SPEAKER_03: That's probably an understatement, Joey.
• 53:28
  SPEAKER_03: But I I think if you look at how Jesus handled humanity, you would rightly assume that people are supposed to get healed automatically.
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_03: It even says like Jesus didn't perform miracles because of lack of faith.
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, well, if you didn't get healed automatically, then you didn't have enough faith.
• 53:47
  SPEAKER_03: My theory is that Jesus was ushering in a kingdom and showing people what it was going to be like.
• 53:56
  SPEAKER_03: When we are in God's kingdom, we will have a purified, perfect, off-the-charts, impeccable healing.
• 54:05
  SPEAKER_03: And maybe there will be an automation to it, like when you know, when we die, we're just automatically and so I think that people look at Jesus and say, Well, if you're following Jesus, that should happen in this day and age.
• 54:20
  SPEAKER_03: I think there was a specific purpose for Jesus' healings when he was here that doesn't exist right now.
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_03: It can in uh increments because it does happen in increments, but it doesn't happen like it did in the gospels.
• 54:36
  SPEAKER_03: That's my theory.
• 54:37
  SPEAKER_03: And then same thing with the disciples.
• 54:39
  SPEAKER_03: They were, I think, tasked with spreading the church.
• 54:43
  SPEAKER_03: There was a, you know, Jesus was validating himself in the kingdom.
• 54:47
  SPEAKER_03: The disciples were spreading the church.
• 54:49
  SPEAKER_03: Uh Moses had a very specific calling where miracles were needed to get people's attentions.
• 54:55
  SPEAKER_03: I just I I just think miracles had a specific purpose that aren't necessarily the purpose right now.
• 55:05
  SPEAKER_03: Are you comfortable with that, Chip?
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_03: Theologically?
• 55:08
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I you might be right.
• 55:10
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I would say it's more of a mixture where that could be a factor.
• 55:15
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I think one of the reasons we don't we don't see a release of the miraculous through the church is I don't think God could trust us with it.
• 55:22
  SPEAKER_02: I I just think we'd start a ministry and raise money and have a newsletter and start selling prayer cloths, and we just we're just stupid.
• 55:31
  SPEAKER_02: And uh we don't know we don't know how to humbly partner with God and allow him to do amazing things.
• 55:38
  SPEAKER_02: So I think that's an issue.
• 55:39
  SPEAKER_02: I think um Chip is very optimistic about the church.
• 55:43
  SPEAKER_05: We're stupid.
• 55:45
  SPEAKER_05: And well, maybe we've seen that too, maybe be abused in a sense.
• 55:49
  SPEAKER_02: Oh gosh, yeah.
• 55:50
  SPEAKER_02: And I think, you know, a little bit about what Dr.
• 55:54
  SPEAKER_02: Short has said.
• 55:55
  SPEAKER_02: I think the Western church has has settled for an information-driven gospel.
• 56:02
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, let's be honest, guys.
• 56:04
  SPEAKER_02: And again, correct me if I you disagree, but we we look at the new birth, someone praying that what we call the sinner's prayer, as almost like the end of a journey when it's really the beginning of a journey.
• 56:16
  SPEAKER_02: We seem to be okay with Jesus in John chapter three to Nicodemus.
• 56:21
  SPEAKER_02: Unless you're uh born again, you can't see the kingdom, unless you're born again, you can't enter the kingdom.
• 56:26
  SPEAKER_02: Well, here's the deal: entering the kingdom means you step one foot across the line to this amazing adventure of discovering and learning how to live in the reality of his kingdom here and now.
• 56:38
  SPEAKER_02: And let's be real, man.
• 56:40
  SPEAKER_02: How much of the church is actually putting shoe leather to that?
• 56:43
  SPEAKER_02: And how many leaders are putting shoe leather to that?
• 56:47
  SPEAKER_02: And learning how to, uh, I would say, Dr.
• 56:50
  SPEAKER_02: Short, mix Eastern and Western practices to really learn how to experientially encounter God and his kingdom now.
• 56:59
  SPEAKER_02: Here's what I think, Joey.
• 57:01
  SPEAKER_02: It's hard to imagine what real Christianity looks like because we don't see much of it.
• 57:06
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm not discouraged.
• 57:08
  SPEAKER_02: I'm having a blast.
• 57:09
  SPEAKER_02: And what I I mean, to be honest with you, that's what I meant at the beginning of the show, I'm thrilled, and I mean this both of you doctors.
• 57:16
  SPEAKER_02: I'm honored to be on the call with you guys, and I hope we're gonna do more of this because we gotta we gotta rock the boat, man.
• 57:23
  SPEAKER_02: We gotta rock the boat.
• 57:25
  SPEAKER_04: Chip, I want to chime in on there and see if you think this is crazy talk, okay?
• 57:31
  SPEAKER_04: So if we're on Earth and we're living by the rules of the kingdom of man, right?
• 57:37
  SPEAKER_04: So it's like we're cut off.
• 57:40
  SPEAKER_04: Some of it's related to science and bad philosophy and things like this.
• 57:45
  SPEAKER_04: But we say, I'm just here for a little while, so I need to get my peace, and then or I don't know if anything's worthwhile.
• 57:51
  SPEAKER_04: Like people behave from a, you know, sense of greed, pride, there's all these compensations.
• 57:57
  SPEAKER_04: Christ is asking us, as you said, to kind of be born again and open our eyes and our heart to the kingdom of God.
• 58:04
  SPEAKER_04: And that that's not just something when we physically die.
• 58:08
  SPEAKER_04: That's now.
• 58:09
  SPEAKER_04: That's like today.
• 58:11
  SPEAKER_04: And when our heart is really awake, like when we were crying earlier and stuff, it's like that's its opening, right?
• 58:17
  SPEAKER_04: It's trying to come through.
• 58:19
  SPEAKER_04: This the kingdom is trying to come through us, and guess what?
• 58:23
  SPEAKER_04: And it's that's why I'm just like, is this crazy talk?
• 58:25
  SPEAKER_04: It's already here, y'all.
• 58:26
  SPEAKER_04: And so it's not an intellectual thing, it's it's a felt knowing, it's a contemplative knowing.
• 58:33
  SPEAKER_04: And in the Eastern traditions, they're very comfortable with there's a transformation that occurs, right?
• 58:42
  SPEAKER_04: So a Buddhist or a uh Hindu, they they could talk about words like enlightenment, and that is a type of union with God.
• 58:50
  SPEAKER_04: They may or may not use those terms.
• 58:52
  SPEAKER_04: A Buddhist might talk about nirvana, a Hindu may talk about God or Brahman.
• 58:57
  SPEAKER_04: So there are other cultures that are actually open to some type of, there's a kingdom here, you just gotta open your heart and eyes and mind, and there are practices you do in order to for grace to hit you.
• 59:10
  SPEAKER_04: Right?
• 59:10
  SPEAKER_04: So this is like you got to put in the effort so that grace pops you.
• 59:14
  SPEAKER_04: I see less of that in Christianity, but but when I read, at least in my experience, when I read what Christ is saying, that's what he's talking about.
• 59:23
  SPEAKER_04: And he, I would argue, and we talked about this last time, he took it a whole nother level.
• 59:28
  SPEAKER_04: So if that same primordial love is something inherent to reality and is the source and the goal, it's in a sense it's it's expressing through nature.
• 59:40
  SPEAKER_04: Like a Buddhist, like initially they were just like uh early Buddhism was like, man, there's a lot of suffering here.
• 59:45
  SPEAKER_04: How do I just get out?
• 59:46
  SPEAKER_04: Like, how do I, not to physically die, but unhook from all this suffering?
• 59:50
  SPEAKER_04: And then a next level was like, okay, it's not just about me, how do we do it?
• 59:54
  SPEAKER_04: And then it was like the bodhisattva vow, which was like, in this may or may not throw our audience, but they talk about from reincarnation, I'll keep coming back until everybody's free.
• 1:00:03
  SPEAKER_04: And then the Christ model, if we think of it that way, is like a whole nother level.
• 1:00:07
  SPEAKER_04: It's like, I'm not trying to get away, you know, I'm not trying to disappear.
• 1:00:11
  SPEAKER_04: I'm gonna come here and you bring your worst form of suffering.
• 1:00:16
  SPEAKER_04: You bring shameful death, like a crucifixion, right?
• 1:00:19
  SPEAKER_04: That was a shameful death, you know, in the Roman Empire.
• 1:00:22
  SPEAKER_04: If you were a Roman, you didn't get it, if you you needed to be killed, they wouldn't kill you with crucifixion.
• 1:00:28
  SPEAKER_04: That was just for the lowly people.
• 1:00:30
  SPEAKER_04: Let me pick a way you're gonna suffocate when you can no longer lift your body and then you take your last breath.
• 1:00:37
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, oh my.
• 1:00:39
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, it how you can't make it worse, is my point.
• 1:00:42
  SPEAKER_04: And for Christ's sake, and I love you.
• 1:00:45
  SPEAKER_04: I love you so much.
• 1:00:48
  SPEAKER_04: And I want to open your hearts.
• 1:00:50
  SPEAKER_04: I will do everything I can.
• 1:00:52
  SPEAKER_04: That's a whole nother level.
• 1:00:54
  SPEAKER_04: And I love you no matter what.
• 1:00:56
  SPEAKER_04: Imagine if we just get a little bit of that in our hearts and we start to repair within ourselves.
• 1:01:02
  SPEAKER_04: We start to repair in our family and friends, we start to repair in our community, we start asking for our politicians to talk sense again.
• 1:01:10
  SPEAKER_04: And it's not a it's not like a football team that one has to win.
• 1:01:14
  SPEAKER_04: Like we're on the same team, y'all.
• 1:01:16
  SPEAKER_04: We're on Team America, we're on Team Humanity, um, we're facing this metacrisis of problems left and right, or suffering is just immensely growing.
• 1:01:27
  SPEAKER_04: We're like ripe for this transformation for the kingdom of God to come into our hearts and our minds, a metanoia.
• 1:01:34
  SPEAKER_04: And so I would love to hear and see more of that, but I don't know if I'm being heretical or not, you know.
• 1:01:41
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I've not heard you say anything yet.
• 1:01:46
  SPEAKER_02: He'll point it out.
• 1:01:47
  SPEAKER_02: He'll point it out.
• 1:01:50
  SPEAKER_02: No, and there's a lot of ways to, I mean, I've been at this 50 years.
• 1:01:54
  SPEAKER_02: There's a lot of ways to explain where where the church has gotten up, you know, like the whole, you know, treating salvation as a you know, get out of jail free card.
• 1:02:06
  SPEAKER_02: It's disgusting.
• 1:02:07
  SPEAKER_02: You know, bumper sticker, you know, Christians aren't perfect, just forgiven.
• 1:02:11
  SPEAKER_02: I hate that bumper sticker.
• 1:02:13
  SPEAKER_02: Don't you dare reduce Christianity to just forgiving.
• 1:02:16
  SPEAKER_02: I'll say, God, I'm forgiven.
• 1:02:19
  SPEAKER_02: But Christianity is so much more than that.
• 1:02:21
  SPEAKER_02: So much more than that.
• 1:02:23
  SPEAKER_02: It just drives me nuts, man.
• 1:02:24
  SPEAKER_02: I told Pastor Greg this when he first started to talk to me about coming on staff 14 years ago.
• 1:02:30
  SPEAKER_02: I said, here's the deal, man.
• 1:02:32
  SPEAKER_02: Someone is going to shake Christianity for the next 50 years.
• 1:02:36
  SPEAKER_02: There's a bunch of people out there.
• 1:02:38
  SPEAKER_02: I do not want it to be them.
• 1:02:39
  SPEAKER_02: No.
• 1:02:40
  SPEAKER_02: Am I arrogant enough to say it should be me?
• 1:02:42
  SPEAKER_02: No.
• 1:02:43
  SPEAKER_02: But I don't know if Martin Luther knew he was reshaping Christianity.
• 1:02:46
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know if Calvin knew that he was reshaping a portion of Christianity.
• 1:02:50
  SPEAKER_02: All I'm saying is, I want to bang around with anybody who has kind of a holy discontent and a hunger and a willingness to be uncomfortable and make other people uncomfortable.
• 1:03:02
  SPEAKER_02: The church is just not showing up for work.
• 1:03:04
  SPEAKER_02: And if you just take the political environment, how how can you act like you're acting and think Jesus is okay with the way you talk to people?
• 1:03:12
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, both sides.
• 1:03:13
  SPEAKER_02: Both sides.
• 1:03:14
  SPEAKER_02: Where do you put him when you talk like that?
• 1:03:17
  SPEAKER_02: Do you put him in the chair over in the corner and say, here, Jesus, sit over here.
• 1:03:21
  SPEAKER_02: I'm going to do some things that I know you don't approve of, but I know you love me.
• 1:03:25
  SPEAKER_02: Just sit over there while I take care of this.
• 1:03:27
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm just like, what in the freaking world, man?
• 1:03:30
  SPEAKER_02: Amen to that.
• 1:03:31
  SPEAKER_04: We haven't talked about the I like to use the word deceiver much, but do you feel like that's, in a sense, the way the deceiver got got a hold of even Christianity a little bit?
• 1:03:40
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 1:03:41
  SPEAKER_02: He, if he can't get keep you out, he'll get you in it wrong.
• 1:03:44
  SPEAKER_02: I believe that the devil's smart.
• 1:03:47
  SPEAKER_02: He's been at his job for a while.
• 1:03:48
  SPEAKER_02: He knows how to do it.
• 1:03:49
  SPEAKER_02: He'll choke you with what you want.
• 1:03:51
  SPEAKER_02: He'll give you what you think you want until you choke on it.
• 1:03:54
  SPEAKER_02: Unfortunately, we don't notice it.
• 1:03:56
  SPEAKER_02: We, you know, we don't look in the mirror and whatever, man.
• 1:04:00
  SPEAKER_02: Jesus is on the throne, God's good, he loves us all.
• 1:04:03
  SPEAKER_02: And and he loves all the people I'm talking about.
• 1:04:06
  SPEAKER_02: Not a one of them does he not love.
• 1:04:08
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not sure he likes them, but he loves them.
• 1:04:12
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I uh Dr.
• 1:04:13
  SPEAKER_02: Ashton, I'm not sure if you know or not, but I'm uh 14 months out from a double lung transplant.
• 1:04:19
  SPEAKER_02: So I've kind of looked the dragon in the eye because I was I was getting pretty bad.
• 1:04:24
  SPEAKER_02: I don't have some kind of like, oh, I gotta do whatever, but the last, the second gift he gave me.
• 1:04:29
  SPEAKER_02: I don't, I don't think like that.
• 1:04:30
  SPEAKER_02: I want the world to see an accurate representation of what Jesus really looks like.
• 1:04:35
  SPEAKER_02: I believe that's why we're here.
• 1:04:37
  SPEAKER_02: We're here to model what the life surrendered, yielded, in union and communion with God look like.
• 1:04:44
  SPEAKER_02: You know, a lot of people, oh, Jesus is coming back any minute now.
• 1:04:47
  SPEAKER_02: I don't believe that.
• 1:04:48
  SPEAKER_02: Because if we leave now, we leave losing.
• 1:04:50
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't want to spend eternity having to look Jesus in the eye and we sucked at our job.
• 1:04:55
  SPEAKER_02: I want the earth to see the tenderness, the gentleness, the firmness, the strength, the honor, the integrity.
• 1:05:01
  SPEAKER_02: I want them to see Jesus in us.
• 1:05:03
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not sure that the world's seeing it very well right this moment.
• 1:05:06
  SPEAKER_04: The good news is there's enough suffering that that's more likely to make people change.
• 1:05:12
  SPEAKER_04: Um, if if things are going good enough and you're hanging out with your deceiver well enough, why would you change?
• 1:05:19
  SPEAKER_04: But if you're hanging out with your deceiver and you're still don't know if you want to take another day of life or you just feel rotten in your soul, at some point that's the the provoker to open your heart.
• 1:05:30
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:05:31
  SPEAKER_03: Well, Dr.
• 1:05:32
  SPEAKER_03: Barron is coming back on here soon.
• 1:05:34
  SPEAKER_03: You you get to kind of play and we'll we'll have to frame it up to where you're comfortable because I know you don't want to do your line of work on air, or maybe you do, but kind of talk about some of my struggles, and then we're bringing on a pastor buddy of ours who is a self to what was self-professing.
• 1:05:51
  SPEAKER_03: That's what I'm looking for.
• 1:05:52
  SPEAKER_03: Self-professing.
• 1:05:53
  SPEAKER_03: Well, he's but he's also professionally diagnosed.
• 1:05:55
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, with OCD.
• 1:05:56
  SPEAKER_03: It's it's I mean, like we're talking like wow.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, major, major stuff.
• 1:06:02
  SPEAKER_03: One one thing that I wanted to get to that we won't be able to and would love to hear y'all's thoughts is just when a church does recognize the need for good sound mental health from the science community, we need to be careful with our words.
• 1:06:17
  SPEAKER_03: And I'll I'll I'll give myself a little bit of credit.
• 1:06:19
  SPEAKER_03: Me, me and Chip has helped when someone in a sermon just tosses the word around anxiety as something that, you know, and I know the scripture says, cast all your cares, all your anxiety on him, and he'll give you peace that passes all understanding.
• 1:06:35
  SPEAKER_03: You gotta make a distinction.
• 1:06:37
  SPEAKER_03: You know, if you're worried about the trivial things of life, yes, throw that anxiety at God and get peace that passes all understanding.
• 1:06:45
  SPEAKER_03: If your brain is wired in a way that's malfunctioning, you gotta make that distinction because people who are sitting there like, man, I'm consumed with anxiety, and I think it's something wrong with my brain, and you're telling me that I should just have peace that passes all understanding, would love to get into how we can be more careful.
• 1:07:02
  SPEAKER_03: Dr.
• 1:07:03
  SPEAKER_03: Short, you said something about uh nirvana, and I thought to myself, you've got to be a big freaking band to be so huge that when a couple of generations hear the word nirvana, we don't think a meditative state.
• 1:07:17
  SPEAKER_03: We think smells like Holy Spirit.
• 1:07:19
  SPEAKER_03: Like I I never hear the word nirvana and think anything but current cobain.
• 1:07:24
  SPEAKER_03: It's true, right?
• 1:07:25
  SPEAKER_03: Think a little deeper to be like, oh yeah, that's also uh um a mental ascent.
• 1:07:31
  SPEAKER_03: Well, thank y'all.
• 1:07:32
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:07:33
  SPEAKER_04: Our pleasure.
• 1:07:34
  SPEAKER_04: Thank you for having us, and thank you for um trying to get the word out.
• 1:07:39
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, we're chip and Joey and Ethan, like God is we're more open to being an instrument of God, and God is asking us to help in the integration, right?
• 1:07:52
  SPEAKER_04: There's all this fragmentation in the medical community or the church or et cetera, and like we're trying to do our part as God will let us to kind of connect and repair uh and to make whole, right?
• 1:08:06
  SPEAKER_04: And and arguably as we all you know participate in our part, we enhance God's wholeness here on earth, right?
• 1:08:14
  SPEAKER_04: We bring a little more of the kingdom of God here, or open the open the hearts a little more to it.
• 1:08:19
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I think our conversation displays that you know the church is unprepared to talk about mental illness.
• 1:08:30
  SPEAKER_05: The mental health community is also equally unprepared to talk about matters of spirituality.
• 1:08:34
  SPEAKER_05: So there's room for growth on on both sides.
• 1:08:37
  SPEAKER_05: And um, you know, I think as a society we are doing better about destigmatizing mental illness, talking about, I think, especially post-COVID.
• 1:08:47
  SPEAKER_05: But I'm not sure yet if the church has yet keeping pace with that.
• 1:08:52
  SPEAKER_05: And I think there's encouragement, there's more room for growth.
• 1:08:54
  SPEAKER_05: There's encouragement like what's being done Seacoast, and I hope other places follow soon regards to what's available to people who are struggling.
• 1:09:02
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, well put.
• 1:09:04
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for listening to Mental Health and the Mission of the Church.
• 1:09:07
  SPEAKER_01: If this episode was helpful, share it with someone who might need it.
• 1:09:11
  SPEAKER_01: And don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode.
• 1:09:14
  SPEAKER_01: You can also follow Chip on Instagram at Chipjud and find free resources for your spiritual and mental health journey at chipjudd.com.
• 1:09:22
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks again for listening, and we'll see you next time on Mental Health and the Mission of the Church.