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Why Your Mental Health Is an Embodied Experience (Benjamin Matthew) · Thinking Christian: Bible, Theology, and Culture

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  Speaker 1: The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that
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  Speaker 1: as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian Podcast.
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  Speaker 1: today's episode of Thinking Christian.
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  Speaker 2: That's CiU dot edu. Hey everyone, welcome to this episode
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  Speaker 2: of Thinking Christian.
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  Speaker 1: I'm doctor James Spencer and I'm joined by doctor Ben Matthew.
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  Speaker 1: Ben is a professor of counseling at counselor Education at
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  Speaker 1: Columbia International University, and we're going to be doing a
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  Speaker 1: series here on faith and mental health, and we're going
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  Speaker 1: to start by talking about an article that I actually
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  Speaker 1: had one of the authors on the show. So you
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  Speaker 1: can catch that episode if you'd like. I'll link it
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  Speaker 1: in the show notes. But it's an article that deals
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  Speaker 1: with what are called deaths of despair, and so these
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  Speaker 1: authors looked at how various sorts of different deaths of despair, suicide,
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  Speaker 1: deaths from alcohol and drugs, those kind of things were
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  Speaker 1: correlated to the lifting of what are called blue laws,
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  Speaker 1: or allowing to have retail on Sundays. And so found
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  Speaker 1: this to be really compelling and wanted to have been
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  Speaker 1: on to talk a little bit about let's differentiate what
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  Speaker 1: it looks like to be in despair versus just to
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  Speaker 1: be a little sad or have some.
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  Speaker 2: Depression in those kind of things.
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  Speaker 1: So we're going to start there and then we'll progress
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  Speaker 1: through the rest of the series talking about various different
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  Speaker 1: elements of faith and mental health. So Ben, welcome to
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  Speaker 1: the show again. It's great to have you back.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, I love these conversations. Appreciate you having me back.
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  Speaker 2: James, Absolutely, I'm looking forward to this one.
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  Speaker 1: I found this article to be really fascinating and I'm
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  Speaker 1: just sort of wondering if you can give a little
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  Speaker 1: bit of your take on some of it.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, like you mentioned, is trying to engage from both
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  Speaker 3: sociological and economic values, which I found in itself just
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  Speaker 3: fascin That's not my area, but man, was it just
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  Speaker 3: really interesting to kind of see how they were developing
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  Speaker 3: some of these ideas. How we talked about this earlier,
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  Speaker 3: some of these seemingly innocuous decisions on economics on you know,
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  Speaker 3: store hours have pretty large implications to society and things
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  Speaker 3: like that as well. For me, it was helpful, particularly
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  Speaker 3: to kind of then think through if there is this
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  Speaker 3: category that they call despair, what that kind of plays itself.
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  Speaker 3: Out in terms of the trajectory that gets to despair.
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  Speaker 3: That part is something that I deal with, whether it
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  Speaker 3: is kind of just the hardships of life and difficulties
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  Speaker 3: of adjustment to circumstances, or whether it gets into more
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  Speaker 3: of a clinical construct something we often refer to as
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  Speaker 3: major depressive disorder or anxiety disorders. But then there's this
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  Speaker 3: other category that they've bring up in their paper that's
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  Speaker 3: something a little beyond just the individual response. It's kind
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  Speaker 3: of this existential despair dread that is formed by societal realities,
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  Speaker 3: either disengagement from that or other implication. So I just
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  Speaker 3: it got me thinking in a lot of good ways
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  Speaker 3: that I'm sure it did with you, both the psychological theological.
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  Speaker 3: I mean, my economics professor would be very happy about
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  Speaker 3: this too.
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  Speaker 1: So well, it's fine, yeah, because they do deal with
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  Speaker 1: and I'm much more sort of I've thought through more
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  Speaker 1: of the sociological dynamics than I have the psychological dynamics,
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  Speaker 1: and so from a sociological perspective, I sort of look
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  Speaker 1: at it and say, this is really interesting, because you
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  Speaker 1: are hearing an awful lot I mean, everything from Bowling Alone,
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  Speaker 1: which I think was the late nineties or in early
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  Speaker 1: two thousands book All the way into Now you know
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  Speaker 1: John Bravaki's work on the Meaning Christ. You hear Jordan
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  Speaker 1: Peterson talk about this of the varying amounts. You hear
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  Speaker 1: all the crisis with boys.
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  Speaker 2: Young men, you know.
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  Speaker 1: And so when you're looking at those big broad cultural
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  Speaker 1: trends and I read an article like this, it's kind
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  Speaker 1: of like, yeah, all this starts to fit together in
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  Speaker 1: sort of a loose hodgepodge of oh, yeah, we've got
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  Speaker 1: cracks here, cracks here, cracks here, and it's all feels
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  Speaker 1: like it's crumbling apart. And so that that sort of
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  Speaker 1: social setting I'm envisioning then exacerbates individual psychological problems.
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  Speaker 2: But how do you see that connection?
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, it was interesting. I think the article that actually
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  Speaker 3: had a figure in one of the later appendices about
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  Speaker 3: kind of the the downward trend of social connection and
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  Speaker 3: then around like the eighties and nineties you saw this
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  Speaker 3: other trend line going up regarding things. And I think
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  Speaker 3: the three categories they talked about were like suicidality, liver
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  Speaker 3: disease which is usually because of increased alcohol abuse, and
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  Speaker 3: some other indicators that as you saw less and less
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  Speaker 3: social engagement, whether it's religious church things like that you
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  Speaker 3: saw around the eighties and nineties, this trend line of
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  Speaker 3: those other despair indicators going up. Psychology has some interesting
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  Speaker 3: research that kind of validates some of this as well,
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  Speaker 3: that around the eighties and nineties we started seeing an
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  Speaker 3: uptick in a lot of what we call mental health disorders,
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  Speaker 3: particularly in the areas of depression and anxiety. This is
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  Speaker 3: then implicated by the increase of mental health services across
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  Speaker 3: the board, and then when we get into the two thousands,
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  Speaker 3: and then not too long ago at the pandemic, it
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  Speaker 3: just kind of took off on another spike, right. So
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  Speaker 3: the trend line and for social engagement is continuing to
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  Speaker 3: do this, but we're only seeing more of this kind
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  Speaker 3: of engagement. And it's interesting how that the research is
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  Speaker 3: validating itself, if not sociologically, in light of even like
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  Speaker 3: we said before, economic decisions. The psychology is continuing to
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  Speaker 3: highlight these realities. But one of the if I can
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  Speaker 3: say this all respectfully to my discipline, I think one
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  Speaker 3: of the things that we lack is appreciating some of
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  Speaker 3: those larger systems and how they implicate themselves into the
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  Speaker 3: struggles of individuals. We tend to then just focus on
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  Speaker 3: the person in the chair across from me, and that's
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  Speaker 3: a good place to start. Yeah, But what I liked
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  Speaker 3: about this research is it's trying to say, how about
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  Speaker 3: we concentrate on the person in front of us as
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  Speaker 3: well as the larger systems that may be contributing to
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  Speaker 3: the hardships of the individual in front of us. It's
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  Speaker 3: not an either or. The article was helpful for me
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  Speaker 3: to say, it's a both and and I think we
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  Speaker 3: need to appreciate both those elements.
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  Speaker 1: When you think about an idea despair. So the article
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  Speaker 1: was deaths of Despair, and it's arguing that these like
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  Speaker 1: I said, the lifting of these blue laws allowing retail
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  Speaker 1: on a Sunday then had this correlation to these deaths
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  Speaker 1: of despair and sort of the running thesis. And again,
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  Speaker 1: when I talk to one of the authors, you know,
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  Speaker 1: they're not trying to draw a hard trend line between
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  Speaker 1: these things. And so some of this is kind of
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  Speaker 1: interpretive on my part just from what else I've read
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  Speaker 1: and you know, some of the other things that I see.
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  Speaker 1: But basically what I took away from it was it
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  Speaker 1: does reinforce or give credibility to this notion that as
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  Speaker 1: we've lost that social connection, you're going to see individuals
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  Speaker 1: have a more difficult time dealing with society large. And
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  Speaker 1: so where my head sort of started to go with
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  Speaker 1: despair and some of these things was into structural evil
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  Speaker 1: and structural sin. And so I guess I'm wondering number one,
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  Speaker 1: when you think about it from that sort of psychological perspective,
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  Speaker 1: despair is but right, and then maybe we have a
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  Speaker 1: brief conversation about structural evil and how some of that
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  Speaker 1: would play together.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, And one way that that's a great question
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  Speaker 3: that I try to think through. Defining despair is sometimes
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  Speaker 3: in contrast to things like simple sadness or maybe clinically
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  Speaker 3: even more significant, like major depressive disorder. I think there's
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  Speaker 3: categories that we have for some of these things, and
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  Speaker 3: it's not like this TV dinner that they're all nicely
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  Speaker 3: portioned off.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, Like christ, I mean, I think we've all experienced
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  Speaker 3: the realities of sadness, right, this this pain over loss
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  Speaker 3: of context relationship, and generally speaking, it's temporary, it's situational,
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  Speaker 3: and I think that that's a normal experience of the
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  Speaker 3: human condition, right, if you live in this world long
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  Speaker 3: enough you felt those realities and most likely will again.
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  Speaker 3: That the time that it kind of takes up a
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  Speaker 3: little bit more for me clinically is when I see
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  Speaker 3: that persistent sadness, sorrow that is not just situational, but
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  Speaker 3: it kind of goes beyond the situation and starts implicating
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  Speaker 3: itself into life in non helpful ways. Right, So we
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  Speaker 3: look for a couple of things as clinicians. How long
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  Speaker 3: has this been going on? Right? If this has been
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  Speaker 3: persistent for a couple of weeks, okay, that's going to
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  Speaker 3: be one red flag. Two? Is it starting to affect
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  Speaker 3: other realities of life like your work and your marriage,
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  Speaker 3: or your parenting or your church life. Is it could
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  Speaker 3: be something here in your life, like you know, your
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  Speaker 3: relationship with your spouse, but it's starting to have implications
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  Speaker 3: and negatively influencing the rest of.
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  Speaker 2: Your life as well. Yeah, and it's.
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  Speaker 3: No longer situationally connected. It's now somewhat holistically engaging with
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  Speaker 3: your life. And so when we start seeing that that
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  Speaker 3: that kind of bumps it up a little bit more.
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  Speaker 3: This is more than just some situation that's a normal
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  Speaker 3: human responsive sadness. Now it's negatively affecting your ability to
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  Speaker 3: live life well, and so that's why. And then we
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  Speaker 3: start looking for that. This this idea of despray despair
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  Speaker 3: bumps it up another level where there seems to be
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  Speaker 3: something about the loss of hope that has now implicated itself.
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  Speaker 3: Now it may start situational, it may start moving beyond
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  Speaker 3: the situation, but more often not. When I work with
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  Speaker 3: people who are dealing with situational sadness or even major
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  Speaker 3: depressive disorder, even with the most depressed, they want to
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  Speaker 3: find hope, They want to find meaning beyond that. They
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  Speaker 3: know this is not how it should be. You know,
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  Speaker 3: I'm trying to think of that that line, you know,
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  Speaker 3: not the not the way it's supposed to be. The
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  Speaker 3: vandalism of Shalom talks about right. Most of my clients
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  Speaker 3: who are dealing with depression, they know that, they know
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  Speaker 3: this is not the way it's supposed to be. There
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  Speaker 3: are some that I work with where they go beyond.
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  Speaker 3: Not only do they say this is not the way
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  Speaker 3: it's supposed to be, but I can't see any hope
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  Speaker 3: beyond it. And now it's taken on like this other level,
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  Speaker 3: this other existential level of abandonment of hope that has
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  Speaker 3: carried with it over time, to be sure, but to
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  Speaker 3: the degree that it's it's really negatively impacting not just
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  Speaker 3: life and relationships. But why should I even try? Like,
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  Speaker 3: what's the reason beyond even continuing to do this? That
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  Speaker 3: sense of despair really is one of the defining for me,
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  Speaker 3: one of the defining elements that I see in my
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  Speaker 3: clients where this has gone from sadness to this idea
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  Speaker 3: of maybe depression to now despair. When I see that
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  Speaker 3: lack of hope, that that's pretty significant.
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  Speaker 1: When I see that, it's interesting because when I think
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  Speaker 1: of when I was reading through this slat voice came
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  Speaker 1: to mind. He's a postmodern philosopher. I'm sure if it
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  Speaker 1: comes to everybody's mind when they do this. He had
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  Speaker 1: he had a lecture. It's called why we Might Need
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  Speaker 1: a Better Chicken, I think, is what he calls it.
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  Speaker 1: He's kind of a strange guy anyway. He talks about
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  Speaker 1: ideology and he says, part of the problem with ideology
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  Speaker 1: is that it raises real problems, but the way that
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  Speaker 1: it addresses those problems is actually a part of the
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  Speaker 1: problem itself, and so what you end up with essentially
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  Speaker 1: within ideology from his perspective, is this sort of cyclical problem.
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  Speaker 1: Anytime you're trying to solve the problem that the identity,
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  Speaker 1: the ideal ideology identifies in the way that the ideology
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  Speaker 1: suggests you should solve the problem, the problem never goes
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  Speaker 1: away and it just exacerbates, And so you have this
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  Speaker 1: sort of you know, flywheel basically, right, a really bad flywheel, right.
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  Speaker 1: And I find that fascinating because I think when when
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  Speaker 1: I was thinking through, okay, what's the space where it's
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  Speaker 1: this lack of hope because you're essentially on the hamster
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  Speaker 1: wheel and you're like, I can never get off. This
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  Speaker 1: is the way life is going to be from here
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  Speaker 1: on through. And that's just it, you know, it's it's
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  Speaker 1: a difference between seeing a transition to a phase.
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  Speaker 2: Right, like.
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  Speaker 1: You know, okay, you know, I'm almost fifty now, Like
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  Speaker 1: I know my body's gonna hurt for a while, but
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  Speaker 1: eventually I'll get to that point where you know, nobody
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  Speaker 1: will have any expectations for me and I can just
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  Speaker 1: get fat and where a Spiito's is the beach, right,
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  Speaker 1: Like it's fine, you know.
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  Speaker 4: Like just embrace it, right, this will pass, right, It'll
• 14:36
  Speaker 4: be okay, you know so, but you have that sort
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  Speaker 4: of transitional concept, right, like this is a even though
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  Speaker 4: it's a.
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  Speaker 1: More durable sadness or durable depression, it feels like there's
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  Speaker 1: something on the other side of it, like something will
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  Speaker 1: switch at some point You're not sure when, but it
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  Speaker 1: will versus being on the hamster.
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  Speaker 2: Wheel like this is all I have left. I just
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  Speaker 2: have to run on the wheel. That's what.
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  Speaker 1: That's what the pictures that kind of came to my
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  Speaker 1: head when I was thinking through despair.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, and again I do want to give space
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  Speaker 3: for that, I think, and you know this, there's biblical
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  Speaker 3: language for this, right, I mean, the Psalmists particularly give
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  Speaker 3: us some really helpful means of being honest with that
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  Speaker 3: not just sadness, but despair. It's sometimes maybe connected to
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  Speaker 3: my enemies surround me, strong bols ofvation surround me kind
• 15:29
  Speaker 3: of idea. Yeah there, but there is this like existential
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  Speaker 3: heartache at the at not just the situation, but where's
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  Speaker 3: God in the midst of this? How do I find
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  Speaker 3: meaning and purpose? But to your point that oftentimes the
• 15:44
  Speaker 3: Psalmist speaks to himself, right, not just to his situation.
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  Speaker 3: Where does my hope come from? And so there is
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  Speaker 3: at least a spiritual working through it. It needs to
• 15:56
  Speaker 3: go through it though, Right I just said this to
• 15:57
  Speaker 3: a client yesterday, Good Friday. We're coming up on Easter
• 16:01
  Speaker 3: here soon. We have these terms called Good Friday and
• 16:05
  Speaker 3: Resurrection Sunday because we have the benefit of looking back,
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  Speaker 3: we know the story as it were. But the disciples
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  Speaker 3: Good Friday was not good for them, nor did they
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  Speaker 3: have necessarily the hope of a resurrection Sunday. To be maybe,
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  Speaker 3: in the most kind of clear way, Saturday sucks, right, yeah,
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  Speaker 3: And in the midst of that, it's actually some of
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  Speaker 3: my Catholic friends who have kind of helped me embrace
• 16:30
  Speaker 3: that idea of what Saturday means is this moment in
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  Speaker 3: between death and hope. But for the Disciples at the moment,
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  Speaker 3: they didn't really have that, so I can understand it.
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  Speaker 3: But to live there constantly the hamster wheel that you
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  Speaker 3: talked about, Yeah, that's an incredibly heavy burden to continue. Hence,
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  Speaker 3: I mean, not to get too philosophical, the difference between
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  Speaker 3: a Kirker guard and a Nietzschee. Right, yeah, we talked
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  Speaker 3: about some of those existential dreads that come upon right,
• 17:01
  Speaker 3: are you willing to take a leap of faith and
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  Speaker 3: trust that there's actually something on the other side, not
• 17:06
  Speaker 3: necessarily rationally but ontologically, or let's just forget it, like
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: God is dead, like it's not worth trying because the
• 17:14
  Speaker 3: futility of it all that those are real struggles.
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  Speaker 1: Do you think we could say that despair also has
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  Speaker 1: a notion of abandonment of agency. So when we talk
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  Speaker 1: about loss of hope, right, there's a way we think
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: about that where it's like a mentality, Right, these things
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: will pass, I have to grip my way through them,
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  Speaker 1: but there is something better on the other side, like that.
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  Speaker 2: Sort of sense of hope.
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  Speaker 1: But then there's also almost like in the way that
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: we would think about faith, right, in terms of more
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: cognitive belief and then working out an action, hope has
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: that similar dynamic where you'd say, no, even if I
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: don't think things can change, it doesn't mean I'm abandoning
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  Speaker 1: my entire agency within this situation, Like I'm going to
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  Speaker 1: make the best of it somehow, and there sort of
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  Speaker 1: that internal motivation. Do you see that as coupled the despair?
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  Speaker 1: Am I overreading that?
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  Speaker 3: I think there's something to that the loss of hope,
• 18:12
  Speaker 3: that that dread that kind of comes upon. Here's the
• 18:16
  Speaker 3: way that I often hear it with my clients, why
• 18:18
  Speaker 3: even bother? Like, why should I even try anymore? But
• 18:25
  Speaker 3: when I hear them talk about themselves in that way,
• 18:27
  Speaker 3: not just the situation, not just the the existential dread,
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  Speaker 3: They're talking about themselves now in a way that is
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  Speaker 3: essentially implicating that that autonomy, I can't do anything, like
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  Speaker 3: there's no movement, there's no course of action that I
• 18:44
  Speaker 3: can take that will actually find not just resolution, but
• 18:48
  Speaker 3: even a path to resolution.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: So when I hear that phrasing why even try?
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  Speaker 2: What?
• 18:53
  Speaker 3: Why am I even doing this? That I think there's
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: something too that that definitely play plays into that sense
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  Speaker 3: of there's nothing I can do. I'm no longer an autonomous,
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: actionable individual in the midst of this pain, and that's
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  Speaker 3: becoming more prevalent as we have a loss of shared meaning,
• 19:15
  Speaker 3: and this is going to be something we're going to
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: be getting into more. It's not just my meaning, it's
• 19:20
  Speaker 3: shared meaning. What does that mean to be part of
• 19:23
  Speaker 3: something more than myself that not only communicates the meaning
• 19:27
  Speaker 3: but validates it. Be As we become more and more
• 19:30
  Speaker 3: isolated onto ourselves, that becomes harder and harder to rationalize.
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that goes, you know, to sort of
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: pull in at theological point. It goes to structural evil,
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: and it goes to you know, sort of social sin.
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: However, we want to.
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: Talk about that, but there is more beyond just individual
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: sin that we're dealing with. And I think sometimes when
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: we think about structural evil or social sin, you know,
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: people may have a bad taste in their mouth about
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: that just because of the way it's you know, we
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: hear about these structuring problems of society and all that
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: kind of stuff. But I don't think we should be
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: so fast to dismiss it just because we don't like
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: the way some of it's applied. I think these things
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: are real. The pressures and tensions are real. The way
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: people feel and respond to the pressures of life are
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: very different. And no matter how you slice it, some
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: of us have I don't know whether you'd say, through
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: you know, God's grace, through hard work, through you know,
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: through a number of these different factors, we built up resilience.
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: I can remember, I'll just give this illustration, but I
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: can remember at one point Kim and I were going
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: to go on a weekend away. And this was when
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: we were first married, so we were dead broke. I mean,
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: it was like we didn't have any money, and we
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: got this bill in the mail. Evidently in Chicago, they
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: don't read your meter every month. They sort of guestimate
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: it and then they come by and read the meter
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: and then and then send you a bill based on
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: you know, and if their estimate was low, you're getting
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: a big bill. So we got this six hundred dollars
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: bill the day before we're going to go on vacation.
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: Oh man, and we're kind of sitting there like, what
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: do we do because we don't have we.
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: Don't have this right and you know, the vacation, the
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: money's already spent, like we're we're already ready to go,
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: and now you're just adding that six hundred dollars on top.
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: We're both just like, man, what did we do?
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: But at the same time, you know, we had we
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: had family resources, we had other people. We could have
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: talked to you to figure this whole thing out. I
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: was employed. I had a decent enough job, right like,
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: so it wasn't like, oh my gosh, we're out on
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: the streets. We knew that wouldn't happen, but it was
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: still this moment where it's like we really don't want
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: to ask people, we don't really want to do and
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: it's more of like a socially uncomfortable thing we want
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: to get base ourselves than it is like a catastrophe going,
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: oh my gosh, we're going to go bankrupt. We don't
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: have this, you know, the power is going to get
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: shut off or what have you. Like, we didn't have that,
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: but a lot of people do. Yeah, and so you know,
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: we like, I think we just have to understand that
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: at some point these pressures, no matter what it is,
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: these pressures that produce despair sometimes are very real pressures.
• 22:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, And it goes back to what you said
• 22:17
  Speaker 3: before too, like sometimes when we recognize the problem and
• 22:20
  Speaker 3: then we are on this hamster wheel of trying to
• 22:23
  Speaker 3: then deal with it, it actually compounds the problem. I
• 22:26
  Speaker 3: do think your point of what's often referred to this
• 22:29
  Speaker 3: individualistic lens and this kind of collectivistic lens. We're a
• 22:34
  Speaker 3: little more individualistic in a Western context, right, And it's
• 22:37
  Speaker 3: not a either or both, you know both and reality
• 22:41
  Speaker 3: it's it's it's something we need to recognize. Different cultures
• 22:44
  Speaker 3: have different ways of understanding that. But I do think
• 22:48
  Speaker 3: we struggle with that in our content because if that
• 22:50
  Speaker 3: six hundred dollars bill comes, I got to figure out
• 22:53
  Speaker 3: how to deal with this like that. That's my knee
• 22:55
  Speaker 3: jerk reaction is I've got to pull myself figure it out.
• 22:58
  Speaker 3: I've got to answer this dilemma in front of me
• 23:00
  Speaker 3: rather than thinking okay. And there's something both I think wonderful.
• 23:05
  Speaker 3: I think it's it's led to some wonderful realities, particularly
• 23:08
  Speaker 3: in our Western context, that we can applaud and celebrate.
• 23:12
  Speaker 3: But you're right, I think we do kind of have
• 23:14
  Speaker 3: this like we don't talk to me about systems, like
• 23:16
  Speaker 3: we don't want to go there. That's that's Marxist, like
• 23:19
  Speaker 3: we don't want to get into that area, right, you know,
• 23:21
  Speaker 3: we throw the big M word around and then it
• 23:23
  Speaker 3: just like shuts down all conversation. And I think you're
• 23:26
  Speaker 3: right because while it can be abused, and we do
• 23:29
  Speaker 3: have enough historical precedence where systems as the answer and
• 23:33
  Speaker 3: the pin se tell everything becomes the end all be all,
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: that doesn't mean we'd throw it out right. I grew
• 23:40
  Speaker 3: up near Toronto and so the last World Series. Sorry
• 23:44
  Speaker 3: for a sports reference here. When the Blue Jays made
• 23:47
  Speaker 3: it to the World Series, I remember saying to some
• 23:49
  Speaker 3: of my friends here down in South Carolina. I think
• 23:51
  Speaker 3: it was, you know, Game four or five, Hey, we
• 23:54
  Speaker 3: we won the game. We won the game. And one
• 23:56
  Speaker 3: of my friends, you know who lovingly uses sarcasm as
• 23:59
  Speaker 3: their lovelaneguage, they said, what do you mean we won
• 24:02
  Speaker 3: the game? Like you ain't on the Blue Jays? Brother, Like,
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: what are you talking about? Ask anyone who follows the
• 24:09
  Speaker 3: sports team they love not just talking about the team,
• 24:12
  Speaker 3: They actually identified themselves with the team. There's this communal
• 24:17
  Speaker 3: identity that we tend to share in a way that
• 24:21
  Speaker 3: is understandable. Right, We feel that connection, and that's something
• 24:25
  Speaker 3: we need to be willing to help press into. I
• 24:28
  Speaker 3: think it's deeply theological. I have a non Christian friend
• 24:31
  Speaker 3: of mine who was really upset at the notion of
• 24:34
  Speaker 3: the Gospel. So you're telling me, Ben, some dude named Adam,
• 24:37
  Speaker 3: like thousands of years ago on the other side of
• 24:39
  Speaker 3: the world, ate some fruit and now I'm messed up.
• 24:42
  Speaker 3: I'm like, yeah, actually that's a good summary. It so
• 24:49
  Speaker 3: angered him, and I understood why, right, he had no
• 24:53
  Speaker 3: Going back to your other point, he felt he had
• 24:54
  Speaker 3: no agency, had he had no say in the matter.
• 24:58
  Speaker 3: And I remember then trying to highlight the atom, to
• 25:01
  Speaker 3: which I was like, yeah, but wait, there's another guy
• 25:03
  Speaker 3: that came years later. He took all the pain and
• 25:07
  Speaker 3: suffering and punishments so we can have life. My friend
• 25:11
  Speaker 3: actually got angry at that too. He actually said, no, no, no,
• 25:15
  Speaker 3: I don't want him to work for me. I'll do
• 25:17
  Speaker 3: it myself.
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 25:19
  Speaker 3: So not only was he angry at the first atom
• 25:22
  Speaker 3: for messing things up, he was actually angry at the
• 25:24
  Speaker 3: second atom for doing the work that he wanted to
• 25:27
  Speaker 3: do himself. And it was such an example of his
• 25:31
  Speaker 3: individualistic constructs. Struggling with what I think is the engineer
• 25:35
  Speaker 3: Eastern acceptance that there is this system that informs the Gospel,
• 25:41
  Speaker 3: both the sin and the salvation that comes. On a
• 25:44
  Speaker 3: clinical level, there is something that I'm trying to help
• 25:47
  Speaker 3: my clients understand, helping train my students to help their
• 25:51
  Speaker 3: clients understand. Yes, you are an individual, but you cannot
• 25:56
  Speaker 3: divorce yourself from this system that you're in, especially when
• 26:00
  Speaker 3: the system is moving in a direction is continuing to
• 26:05
  Speaker 3: isolate self apart from community and the consequences of it.
• 26:11
  Speaker 3: To our danger. We ignore the system and think, let's
• 26:14
  Speaker 3: just deal with the individual, let's just help them. Things
• 26:16
  Speaker 3: will get better. Spinning wheel man, it's not working.
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think the other side of it is
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: I had this experience with my wife at one point
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: we went out to walk in the evening in Chicago,
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: and she just made the comment, She's like, this is
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: nice because whenever I travel, I never get to do this,
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: like she doesn't. Whenever she travels by herself, she doesn't
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: get to do this. She doesn't get to go out
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: and walk around a city at night by herself.
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: She's just not comfortable doing that.
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: Sure, And so you think about how like I embody
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: the world differently than she does, and that doesn't bother me.
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: But then if you flash forward to this trip we
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: took out to Utah and we're doing this canyoneering stuff
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: and like my kid to my wife are kind of
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: going through these little crevices, and there was one point
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: where I seriously thought I was getting stuck.
• 27:06
  Speaker 3: I just got the image those little crevices.
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: Oh it's bad.
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not a good small space guy anyway,
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: but I mean I had scrapes on my chest in
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: my back because this an area like I just couldn't fit.
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: Through, and I'm like, this is not good.
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: I may be stuck, you know, like you can imagine
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: like the panic going through and it's like same body,
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: different space, completely different experience. And so it's not a
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: question of you know, does one way of embodying the
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: world is it better than any other? You can clearly
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: see in those illustrations, it's like, no, it depends on
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: the situation that you're in and how this is embodied.
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: So there is a point where it feels like people
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: who might be in despair, if they could just somehow
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: change their situation right like be in a different space
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: and physically necessarily but just a different space, that this
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: would help them gain a different perspective on life and
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: sort of.
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: Break that to spare up a bit. Whereas when we're.
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: Isolated, and maybe this isn't the only mechanism or even
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: a mechanism of this, but I think it seems plausible
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: that you would say, if you're isolated, you really just
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: have yourself. Your capacity runs out at some point and
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: then whatever systems you're interacting with, you're just at your limit,
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: like you can't go beyond that, and so there's a
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: very real sense in which things are never going to change.
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: Right. It's a really hard sort of moment to come to.
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: But you think about what all the people around you
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: actually do and the degree to which if you're more
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: and more socially isolated, you have to rely on your
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: own capacity more and more and more and more, and
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: sometimes it's just not going to be enough.
• 29:03
  Speaker 3: No. And again social science is recognizing this. I mean,
• 29:07
  Speaker 3: most of the theories early on in modern psychology were
• 29:10
  Speaker 3: very individualistic, you know, to be very stereotypical. The Freudian
• 29:15
  Speaker 3: tell me about your mother, like, what was that kind
• 29:17
  Speaker 3: of particular? Listen, we need to start somewhere right. And yet,
• 29:22
  Speaker 3: I mean when I talk about this in developmental psychology,
• 29:25
  Speaker 3: we talked about broffin Feffer's I'm gonna say this incorrectly
• 29:29
  Speaker 3: braff and Brenner's ecological model of development, and what he
• 29:33
  Speaker 3: talks about is, yeah, we need to deal with the individual,
• 29:36
  Speaker 3: but there are these other meso systems, exosystems, there are
• 29:39
  Speaker 3: these other realities around that need to be understood to
• 29:45
  Speaker 3: help the individual and recognize the system as well, and
• 29:49
  Speaker 3: to do to not do that work is a disservice
• 29:53
  Speaker 3: to our clients to think that if I just work
• 29:56
  Speaker 3: with you and just your inner thoughts and affections, that
• 30:00
  Speaker 3: don't make life. But they're still in the system though,
• 30:02
  Speaker 3: and if we're not understanding the larger family, church, neighborhood
• 30:09
  Speaker 3: time frame, like one of them is a chronosystem. And
• 30:12
  Speaker 3: he talks about how we need to look at different
• 30:14
  Speaker 3: life stages. Sure, how you and I were with our
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: wives when we're first married is very different twenty years
• 30:20
  Speaker 3: later the grown kids that are in high school and college.
• 30:23
  Speaker 3: We need to recognize those different systems to really bring
• 30:26
  Speaker 3: help both to the individual and hopefully they even consider
• 30:29
  Speaker 3: what does it look like for the flourishing of the
• 30:31
  Speaker 3: cities that we're in, the communities that we're part of
• 30:33
  Speaker 3: as well.
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: Well.
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: I think it's worth and we'll get into this in
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: the next episode too, but I think it's worth just
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: saying I wouldn't put the blame on the environment or
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: the system necessarily. Yeah, I think again theological perspective, right,
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: every broken system is going to have its own unique
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: way of deforming us.
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Right.
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: One of my favorite narratives is first Anuel fourteen, because
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: you know, the Israelites have asked for a king, and
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: Samuel comes back and he's like, Okay, take your king,
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: and then he says, but just remember you still have
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: to fear the Lord, and if you don't, there's going
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: to be trouble. It's like, we'll change the structure around,
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: we'll rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic, but you
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: know what, both still.
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: Got a float.
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: Like at the end of the day, nothing's changed that much.
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: You still have to do what exactly what you have
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: to do.
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: And I think this is sort of the flip side
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: of that coin where I would say that despair can
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: emerge in any system, and what we're what we're constantly
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: trying to do is figure out how to relate to
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: I would argue God, one another, and our environment in
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: ways that push back that despair. Yeah, that and that
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: requires meaning in life. It seems to me.
• 31:58
  Speaker 3: There needs to be an outside agency, outside truth that
• 32:02
  Speaker 3: actually can help reform to those systems. And that's often
• 32:06
  Speaker 3: what I say to my clients. You're not determined by
• 32:10
  Speaker 3: your system, but you are affected by your system, right.
• 32:14
  Speaker 3: I think past models were very deterministic because your mom
• 32:17
  Speaker 3: was like this, because your family was like this. Therefore
• 32:21
  Speaker 3: you had to be this way, and I think that's
• 32:24
  Speaker 3: just just a removes that autonomy, that that human agency
• 32:29
  Speaker 3: that we talked about earlier. Now we still need people
• 32:31
  Speaker 3: to show up and be responsible accordingly. Choose you this
• 32:35
  Speaker 3: day who you will serve, regardless of whatever context is
• 32:38
  Speaker 3: going around. You have to make a decision. But we
• 32:40
  Speaker 3: don't want to go to the other extreme and say, well,
• 32:42
  Speaker 3: your systems don't matter at all. No, they have a
• 32:45
  Speaker 3: pressuring right. Do not be conformed by this world. The
• 32:48
  Speaker 3: world is seeking to pressure and conform us in a
• 32:51
  Speaker 3: certain mold, and we're naively, dangerously naive to think that
• 32:56
  Speaker 3: that's not part of our reality as well, and to
• 33:00
  Speaker 3: recognize both the individual responsibility and systemic constructs that we're in.
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: Well, the next we'll kind of close that off.
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: I think that's a good place to stop, and we'll
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: start the next episode maybe talking a little bit about
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: identity and dignity and just getting a little deeper into
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: this idea of meaning. We're hitting on it right now,
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: but we'll dive a little deeper into it in the
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: next episode. So Ben, thanks for being here, everybody, thanks
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: for listening, and we'll catch you on the next episode
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: of Thinking Christian take Care. I just want to take
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: a second to thank the team at Life Audio for
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: their partnership with us on the Thinking Christian podcast. If
• 33:35
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• 33:37
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• 33:40
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