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Family Systems and the Church: Is the Problem a Person or a System? (David J. Van Dyke) · Thinking Christian: Bible, Theology, and Culture

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Speaker 1: The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that
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Speaker 1: deny God. As such, we need Thinking Christian to become
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Speaker 1: as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian Podcast.
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Speaker 1: I'm doctor James Spencer. Through calm, thoughtful theological discussions, Thinking
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Speaker 1: Christian highlights the ways God is working in the world
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Speaker 1: and questions the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions that
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Speaker 1: hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ. Now on to
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Speaker 1: today's episode of Thinking Christian. Hey, everyone, welcome to this
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Speaker 1: episode of Thinking Christian. I'm doctor James Spencer, joined by
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Speaker 1: my co host Ashishin Varma, and today we're joined by
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Speaker 1: a special guest, David J.
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Speaker 2: Van Dyke.
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Speaker 1: David is a professor at Wheaton College, head of the
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Speaker 1: Marriage and Family Therapy program, and co host with his
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Speaker 1: wife Tara on the With You podcast. And they also
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Speaker 1: have a book coming out with IVP, so plenty of
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Speaker 1: stuff going on. The IVP books out this February. I
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Speaker 1: think you said right right, so very good. Well, welcome
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Speaker 1: to the podcast, David, Thanks for being here.
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Speaker 3: Thanks James, I'm glad to be here.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, So talk a little bit about maybe we just
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Speaker 1: kind of jump in a little bit but what do
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Speaker 1: you talk to us a little bit about how marriage
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Speaker 1: and family therapy works at Wheaton College. So within the
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Speaker 1: program you oversee what's the overwriting philosophy of marriage and
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Speaker 1: family therapy and how do you all think about it?
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Speaker 2: And then maybe we can jump off questions there.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, I think the first thing I always try to
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Speaker 3: help people understand is marriage and family therapy is very
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Speaker 3: different from counseling and from clinical psychology. And everybody thinks
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Speaker 3: when you think of mental health, it's just psychology in general.
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Speaker 3: Marriage and family therapy is a way of thinking about
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Speaker 3: health and pathology from a relational, systemic way. So the
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Speaker 3: easiest way to describe that is, if someone is diagnosed
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Speaker 3: with depression, it's more of the family depression that resides
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Speaker 3: in the individual than it is just the individual's biology.
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Speaker 3: And neurobiology matters. Medications really important in treating some mental
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Speaker 3: health things, but we're looking at the relational side of
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Speaker 3: it of how it helps create maintain that symptom and
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Speaker 3: that the symptom serves the system rather than just individuals.
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Speaker 3: So when you think about clinical psychology, they're doing testing
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Speaker 3: looking at kind of what are the root causes within
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Speaker 3: the individual counselors are looking at resilience of the individual.
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Speaker 3: Marriage and family therapists are looking at the relationship. And
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Speaker 3: this can be working with an individual thinking about the
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Speaker 3: relationships that they're in, the actual relationships like marriage and
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Speaker 3: family members coming in or even consulting with churches. So
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Speaker 3: you think about pastor's moral failure, it ends up being
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Speaker 3: a congregational issue than just that was a bad hire.
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Speaker 2: Yeah.
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Speaker 1: Interesting, I mean I was first, I think I was
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Speaker 1: first probably introduced to marriage and family therapy side of
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Speaker 1: seminary by Edwin Friedman's book Failure of Nerve, where he
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Speaker 1: talks a lot about marriage to family systems, and so
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Speaker 1: what it sounds like you're describing is very similar to
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Speaker 1: what he's describing. Would that be from a layman's perspective,
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Speaker 1: pretty accurate.
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Speaker 3: Swedman took one specific kind of family systems theory. It's
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Speaker 3: called from Murray Bowen Bowanian family therapy, and so he
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Speaker 3: took that and really applied it to congregations and to
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Speaker 3: synagogues and actually to leadership of looking. He talks a
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Speaker 3: lot about non anxious presence and it's kind of the
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Speaker 3: center of the person. Nowadays we talk about neurobiology so
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Speaker 3: we talk about the limbic system and the prefrontal cortex.
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Speaker 3: But if you think of fight or flight, we have
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Speaker 3: a reaction that if I'm not feeling comfortable with you, James,
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Speaker 3: or with you Ishiesh, I'm going to get reactive, and
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Speaker 3: that reactivity is going to be informed by my family
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Speaker 3: of origin. So if our family never talked about things,
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Speaker 3: my response to a perceived threat will probably be shutting down.
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Speaker 3: If I come from a highly conflictual family, I'll come
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Speaker 3: after you. But it's a default mode, and Friedman talks
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Speaker 3: about that in terms of individual leadership but also within
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Speaker 3: the congregation of how do we get centered and acknowledge
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Speaker 3: our feelings, understand what's being evoked by the context that
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Speaker 3: we're in, and then intentionally that kind of executive functioning
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Speaker 3: of our brain respond to what's going on rather than
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Speaker 3: just reactive. I'm sure neither one of you have ever
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Speaker 3: been reactive, and so you only work from that executive functioning. Yeah.
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Speaker 1: I don't even understand what you're talking about. So it's
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Speaker 1: what are these reactions you're talking about? Maybe it's yes,
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Speaker 1: it's like Freedman, Yeah, yep, exactly. So Freeman is more
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Speaker 1: narrow though than what you guys would do. Like, he's
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Speaker 1: really applying a fairly one specific theory and there are
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Speaker 1: multiple theories of which I'm just not aware.
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Speaker 2: That's what I'm hearing.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, he just one specific theorist and there's I don't know,
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Speaker 3: probably thirty five that are commonly accepted. So it's different
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Speaker 3: ways of attacking relationships, maybe not attacking addressing relationships.
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Speaker 2: Either way.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, I tend to be more sports minded, so you know,
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Speaker 3: therapy is a competition, you know.
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Speaker 4: Competition, reaction, attack. That sounds sounds like sports perfectly to me.
5:28
Speaker 3: That's right, And it's marketing.
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Speaker 2: Right.
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Speaker 3: If I work from a bone and want people to
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Speaker 3: be more intentional, you have to create a little anxiety.
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Speaker 4: That's marketing, job job satisfaction right there.
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Speaker 2: Right, that's right, that's right.
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Speaker 1: When you when you think about doing marriage and family therapy.
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Speaker 1: So we've I've had other counselors on and they really
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Speaker 1: just do more one on one counseling. But part of
5:53
Speaker 1: what I find interesting what you're saying is when you
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Speaker 1: think about and you mentioned it, like when a pastor
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Speaker 1: has some sort of moral fail, it becomes a congregational issue,
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Speaker 1: it becomes a family issue. How do you how do
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Speaker 1: you train students to think through the overlapping domains there. So,
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Speaker 1: in other words, you've got the family and the organization
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Speaker 1: sort of butting up against each other and it creates
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Speaker 1: this whole complex of problems that you know you've got
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Speaker 1: multiplied across multiple things.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, it's not for family. Therapy is not for the
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Speaker 3: faint of heart because there's so many movings and quite frankly,
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Speaker 3: a lot of people, because of the individual culture here
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Speaker 3: in the US, are are only thinking about the internal state,
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Speaker 3: the emotional and the thoughts of the individual. I want
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Speaker 3: to be careful how I say this, because I don't
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Speaker 3: want to kind of clipped out. But I'm not really
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Speaker 3: interested in the stories that families are telling. I'm interested
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Speaker 3: in the way that they're interacting around the stories. So
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Speaker 3: psychologist counselors are going to delve into the meaning. Their
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Speaker 3: questions are going to be more why why are you
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Speaker 3: feeling that way? Why are you doing that? Why are
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Speaker 3: you thinking that? I'm more interested in how and what
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Speaker 3: so when that happens for you as ye, how do
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Speaker 3: you respond or how James, how does your family respond
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Speaker 3: to you when you're doing that? I'm going to be
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Speaker 3: tracking the relational piece that informs or shapes that and
7:19
Speaker 3: so getting students to think think relationally. And part of
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Speaker 3: it's about I mean, if you've noticed already I like
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Speaker 3: doing interaction. So pulling people into interaction with me as
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Speaker 3: I teach to give them a new experience, then maybe
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Speaker 3: what they anticipate that counseling would be. And we have
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Speaker 3: it set up in a developmental frame our students. We
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Speaker 3: have a clinic at Wheaton College that's just for relational purposes.
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Speaker 3: We work with individuals, couples, families, but we're mainly thinking systemically.
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Speaker 3: And so the first eight weeks the students start, they
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Speaker 3: watch me or one of my faculty doing the therapy
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Speaker 3: and they're we're on camera, and then we take a
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Speaker 3: break from the family. They stay in the room. We
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Speaker 3: talk with the students of here's what I'm thinking, here's
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Speaker 3: what I'm doing, what would you do in the room?
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Speaker 3: Go back and do it. So they observe us for
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Speaker 3: about two months, and then we divide them into groups
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Speaker 3: and one or two of them are working with families
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Speaker 3: and we are the rest of the team and myself
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Speaker 3: are behind the mirror and they're doing the work or
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Speaker 3: behind the camera and then they come in and so
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Speaker 3: we have them see it, we have them kind of
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Speaker 3: sweat it out and do it and just have all
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Speaker 3: sorts of anxiety. So a lot of that supervision is
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Speaker 3: just like, don't forget to breathe, don't forget to stay
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Speaker 3: in your body, be a normal human being and respond.
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Speaker 3: And then we send them out into the wild in
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Speaker 3: their second year, and we have placement partners all over
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Speaker 3: the Chicagoland area. So that's the mechanism of how we
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Speaker 3: do it. It's very experiential. It's what we say in
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Speaker 3: supervision even isn't as important as how I'm interacting with
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Speaker 3: them around supervision. So I'll model what I want them
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Speaker 3: to do more than tell them. There's in teaching they
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Speaker 3: talk about you can tell, teach and model, and we
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Speaker 3: really try to do the modeling of the experience that
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Speaker 3: so that they'll go in and do the same thing
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Speaker 3: rather than saying, okay, focus on emotion because that tends
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Speaker 3: to be more of the individual approach.
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Speaker 4: So within that, can you help me understand a little
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Speaker 4: bit more? You said you you don't like to hear,
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Speaker 4: or you're not interested in what the story is. Now
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Speaker 4: a lot of times we'll talk about how a story
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Speaker 4: shapes a person, how they get to where they are.
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Speaker 4: So I'm assuming within that it's not that you don't
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Speaker 4: want to hear the story. What what exactly do you
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Speaker 4: mean within that?
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Speaker 3: Yeah, that's fair, I would say, I think, I think
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Speaker 3: I do. I'm not interested in the story. I'm interested
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Speaker 3: in what the story does. So it's like C. S.
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Speaker 3: Lewis Chronicle of Narnia or or Tolkien's Lord of the Rings.
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Speaker 3: The story is interesting, but what it does is more
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Speaker 3: interesting to me. How it's moving the reader, the kind
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Speaker 3: of the myth of what's being talked about speaks to
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Speaker 3: kind of a deeper truth. And in families and in churches,
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Speaker 3: you talk about certain things over and over again. I'm
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Speaker 3: interested in what that does more than oh, that's a
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Speaker 3: fascinating story. Tell me more. There is approach of systems
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Speaker 3: where we look at the dominant discourse. It's called narrative
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Speaker 3: family therapy. That there's major stories that we tell. We
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Speaker 3: tell about ourselves, we tell about our spouses, we tell
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Speaker 3: about our kids, and we look at you know, maybe
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Speaker 3: that story has you stuck from new possibilities as a family.
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Speaker 3: So not in the church sense, but in the therapeutic sense,
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Speaker 3: we kind of deconstruct that story. We pull that story
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Speaker 3: apart and look for minor, minor narratives that maybe are
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Speaker 3: underneath exceptions, if you will, Like no one can do
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Speaker 3: everything all the time, and so we look for exceptions.
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Speaker 3: So you might say, oh, James is a bad boy, Well,
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Speaker 3: that's a narrative about antich nature, Like the essence of
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Speaker 3: James is bad. There might be a way of languaging
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Speaker 3: that of saying, oh, James made a bad life choice there,
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Speaker 3: or James made a bad choice to hit his sister.
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Speaker 3: And if we just in doing that, the behavior still
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Speaker 3: is the same. James still has done something. The story
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Speaker 3: is there, but the function of one is about his
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Speaker 3: self worth and one is about the behavior. And so
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Speaker 3: we look at like that. That's how I think about story.
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Speaker 3: It's what it does more than oh, I can't wait
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Speaker 3: to get to the ending. Well, the ending is the
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Speaker 3: function of the way it's happening, and so we can
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Speaker 3: play with the way that's happening to get to a
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Speaker 3: new outcome. One thing that really disturbs my students is
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Speaker 3: when I first meet them, I say, you know, people
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Speaker 3: come to me and say I have this problem and
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Speaker 3: I want you to solve it. And my response as
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Speaker 3: a clinician is, I have no idea, idea if we're
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Speaker 3: going to solve that or not, but I'm going to
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Speaker 3: help you respond differently and there'll be a likelihood of
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Speaker 3: a different outcome. And I think that goes to thinking christianly,
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Speaker 3: because if I could say you come to me and
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Speaker 3: I'll do something to you to get a different outcome,
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Speaker 3: that's very godlike. I'm not smart enough. Maybe there's some
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Speaker 3: therapists out there that are smarter than me and can
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Speaker 3: kind of promise that they can get that outcome for you.
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Speaker 3: For me, I understand, I'm limited. I can't get all
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Speaker 3: the pieces to James point. There's so many layers interacting
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Speaker 3: we can't know them all all the time. So we
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Speaker 3: approximate it and go, let's try something different to see
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Speaker 3: if we get a different outcome. And it's called second
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Speaker 3: order change. We're not going to change the behavior, We're
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Speaker 3: going to change the rules to the system.
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Speaker 2: How much so.
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Speaker 1: I came out of Biblical studies, my PhD's in Old Testament.
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Speaker 1: I did a lot with hermeneutics, and when we think
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Speaker 1: through hermeneutics, this is a lot of the way, in
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Speaker 1: the best sense of the term hermeneutics. I've been taught
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Speaker 1: to think about these things, right, you think about the
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Speaker 1: how you think about the actual process of interpretation. You
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Speaker 1: don't think about the destination, although the destination always matters, right,
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Speaker 1: But you don't think about the destination. You're thinking about
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Speaker 1: how do I go about this process? And I think,
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Speaker 1: as I've gotten older and just done more of it,
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Speaker 1: what I've realized is that some of the things like
13:30
Speaker 1: that I've read in Friedman or other places, this sort
13:33
Speaker 1: of relational component that you're talking about has an awful
13:36
Speaker 1: lot to do with hermeneutics. The negotiation of doctrine. Hashish
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Speaker 1: and I have actually talked about this offline, sort of
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Speaker 1: like that it part of the problem we see in
13:47
Speaker 1: the church. And don't only put words in your mouth, Hashish,
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Speaker 1: but part of the problem, at least I see in
13:52
Speaker 1: the Church is that we tend to get too narrow
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Speaker 1: right and stuck in a doctrine, so that doctrine functionally
14:00
Speaker 1: becomes what the Bible should be. You know, our interpretations
14:03
Speaker 1: start to rule things, or they become too broad so
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Speaker 1: that they mean nothing and there are no real guard
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Speaker 1: rails and we have no particular you know, boundaries that
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Speaker 1: we could set. And so then the way you're the
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Speaker 1: way you're describing what you do in marriage and family
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Speaker 1: therapy feels to me like what I'm trying to do
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Speaker 1: when I talk to two people in churches about look,
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Speaker 1: negotiate the boundaries, recognize that you may be off one
14:30
Speaker 1: way or the other, but then just admit that you're
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Speaker 1: off one way or the other and try to get
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Speaker 1: a little bit, you know, recalibrate.
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Speaker 2: Right, it's that constant recalibration.
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Speaker 1: So I'm wondering how you think about that or if
14:40
Speaker 1: you have any insight into you know, the hermeneutical moves
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Speaker 1: that that marriage and family systems might actually engender within
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Speaker 1: other fields.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, I think I think you kind of get right
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Speaker 3: to the heart of it there. One of the biggest
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Speaker 3: critiques in doing integration with marriage or family therapy and
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Speaker 3: Christianity is that it's not content based. So marriage and
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Speaker 3: family therapy is process oriented, and to the farthest extent
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Speaker 3: of it, it's a moral, but there's no morality to it,
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Speaker 3: like here's the best way to have a marriage, here's
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Speaker 3: the best way to have a family. There, and so
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Speaker 3: that can be kind of a challenge from the church
15:23
Speaker 3: side of things of well, there's right and wrong, and
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Speaker 3: I'm like, yes, I don't disagree there's right and wrong.
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Speaker 3: This tool doesn't determine right and wrong, but it provides
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Speaker 3: the way of accessing right and wrong based on whatever
15:37
Speaker 3: your foundational core is. So, if it's christ we have
15:41
Speaker 3: an understanding of what's right and wrong, and then we
15:44
Speaker 3: have this tool, whether it's a hermeneutical tool or a
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Speaker 3: marriage and family therapy tool, to help the process to
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Speaker 3: more and more approximate what we're looking at as an outcome.
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Speaker 3: As a clinician working in the regulatory body and working
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Speaker 3: in the community, not in the Christian community, but just
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Speaker 3: in the community in general, my job is to enter
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Speaker 3: in and look at how is a system not working,
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Speaker 3: how it's stuck. So I think you're talking about boundaries there.
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Speaker 3: How do we get unstuck? And the challenge is it's
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Speaker 3: not unstuck in that I think you should do it
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Speaker 3: this way. It's unstuck to see what emerges and that
16:24
Speaker 3: makes people uncomfortable, and I think it does both in
16:27
Speaker 3: family therapy and in hermeneutics. Of there's a desire of
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Speaker 3: take me by the hand, walk me, tell me exactly
16:33
Speaker 3: what I need to do to get there. Unfortunately, Yeah,
16:36
Speaker 3: like you're saying, I'm a lot older than you, and
16:38
Speaker 3: as we get older, we realize the more tightly we
16:41
Speaker 3: hold to trying to control that, the more we live
16:44
Speaker 3: for the fall. Right. I mean, that's what bond we're
16:46
Speaker 3: talking about. We've become the arbitrator of right and wrong.
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Speaker 3: We live in the place where God is living, and
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Speaker 3: it's seduction for us, as in I'm sure in seminary
16:58
Speaker 3: and in the church there's a there's a pull towards
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Speaker 3: tell me, just tell me, and there's a poll for
17:06
Speaker 3: young clinicians to just like, hey, can you fix this?
17:09
Speaker 3: And I'm like, that's why we call our company and
17:12
Speaker 3: our podcast with you is what we can promise is
17:15
Speaker 3: will be with you in this. We don't promise any outcome.
17:20
Speaker 3: I can't go, oh you do pre marital with me.
17:22
Speaker 3: I'll give you a stamp of approval that your marriage
17:25
Speaker 3: is going to last fifty years. Well that's that's you
17:27
Speaker 3: say it out loud, it's ridiculous, But actually underneath, that's
17:31
Speaker 3: the that's the precepts that we're working on. And I
17:34
Speaker 3: think that's for me. I think we're on the on
17:36
Speaker 3: the same kind of trajectory as you're talking about metis now.
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Speaker 1: I like the idea that emergence. The Knuffin framework is
17:46
Speaker 1: one that I've used. So I teach in the m
17:48
Speaker 1: A program at Wheaton College of the Leadership Program, and
17:52
Speaker 1: so I do the Biblical Yeah, yeah, so I do.
17:56
Speaker 1: I do a course called Biblical and Theological Foundations of Leadership,
17:59
Speaker 1: and part of what we addressed in there is the
18:01
Speaker 1: Conuffin framework, and it has this whole sort of idea
18:04
Speaker 1: that when you're in a complex or chaotic situation, what
18:08
Speaker 1: you're trying to do is manage back down to the complex.
18:10
Speaker 1: And then you know, in a chaotic situation, you're trying
18:12
Speaker 1: to manage back down to the complex and then allow
18:15
Speaker 1: the solutions to emerge from that complex environment. When you
18:19
Speaker 1: have that sort of simple like my tire was flat,
18:23
Speaker 1: so I changed it sort of one to one logic, right.
18:27
Speaker 1: You know, when it's a simple relationship, you can have
18:30
Speaker 1: solutions that are relatively straightforward, right, But in complex relationships
18:35
Speaker 1: or even complicated relationships, sometimes you have to let the
18:39
Speaker 1: system sort of solve the problem for you. Almost you
18:43
Speaker 1: have to wait for it. And I think that for
18:47
Speaker 1: aspiring leaders, that's a really helpful way of thinking about it.
18:51
Speaker 1: And then when they think about, okay, what is the
18:52
Speaker 1: biblical theological foundation for that, it's like, well, now you've
18:56
Speaker 1: got this whole set of dispositions and behavehaviors that you
19:00
Speaker 1: could actually implement in any given moment, but they may
19:04
Speaker 1: look very radically different depending on the time, and so
19:08
Speaker 1: you know, you can illustrate those through a number of
19:10
Speaker 1: different biblical characters.
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Speaker 2: You know, like you're telling me David.
19:14
Speaker 1: Never war armor into battle, or that he just didn't
19:17
Speaker 1: wear armor into battle when he fought Goliath, right, like
19:21
Speaker 1: that kind of idea, and it's like, there's something unique
19:24
Speaker 1: about that one moment that wearing the armor would have
19:27
Speaker 1: been problematic, whereas in all the other times it's not problematic.
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Speaker 1: And so we've got to get our heads around this
19:34
Speaker 1: idea that yes, there's a right and wrong, but that
19:37
Speaker 1: oftentimes it's also very situational and we're trying to implement
19:42
Speaker 1: and execute something that's appropriate fitting within that setting. But
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Speaker 1: I love that emergence language. I just think it's I
19:49
Speaker 1: think it's super helpful for people when they start to
19:51
Speaker 1: realize that, oh, the solution is just going to pop
19:54
Speaker 1: up somehow as long as I keep responding in an
19:57
Speaker 1: appropriate fashion.
20:00
Speaker 3: I was working with it. I'll tell you stories about
20:03
Speaker 3: all the skies enough that you know, good clinical item.
20:08
Speaker 3: But I was working with his family that came to
20:10
Speaker 3: me and they were frustrated with their son and he
20:13
Speaker 3: was not complying to the family rules. And I'm like, well,
20:17
Speaker 3: tell me about it, and they're like, well he was.
20:19
Speaker 3: He was misbehaving. So we took access to the car.
20:23
Speaker 3: He continued to misbehave, we took access to his phone,
20:26
Speaker 3: and so then he just hung out in his room.
20:28
Speaker 3: So then we took his computer, and his behavior continued
20:31
Speaker 3: to exist the same way. So we took his door
20:35
Speaker 3: because he was just locking himself in his room, and
20:37
Speaker 3: then we took his bed, and they said we finally
20:39
Speaker 3: came for family therapy because there was nothing, nothing left
20:42
Speaker 3: to take and they were trying that single tool, if
20:47
Speaker 3: he will hammer to fix it, and it was like,
20:50
Speaker 3: we actually have to look at what his behavior is
20:52
Speaker 3: serving for the larger system. So he's he's keeping you
20:56
Speaker 3: all engaged. So I was like, thank you, Billy for
20:59
Speaker 3: bringing your family in the therapy. You've been working really,
21:02
Speaker 3: really hard. To get everybody to the point, and U
21:06
Speaker 3: and the parents look at me like I'm crazy, But
21:10
Speaker 3: Billy smiles and he in some level he gets it right.
21:14
Speaker 3: His behavior isn't his own. His behavior is part of
21:18
Speaker 3: a larger system. And I'm like, what what if we
21:21
Speaker 3: responded differently? What if we change the rules of the
21:23
Speaker 3: game back to competition? Right, We're working according to a
21:28
Speaker 3: certain set of rules. Those rules developed over time and
21:31
Speaker 3: were necessary for that historical period of time in our family,
21:35
Speaker 3: in the Church, in the for the Hebrew people. Uh.
21:39
Speaker 3: And then context change. How does the how does the
21:41
Speaker 3: moral core stay the same? But the expression might need
21:44
Speaker 3: to change? And we call that systemic change. We kind
21:47
Speaker 3: of change change the rules of the game. We don't
21:50
Speaker 3: change the morals, but we change the rules. And I
21:53
Speaker 3: think it taps into the salvation story. If you look
21:56
Speaker 3: at the arc of scripture and you guys have gone
21:59
Speaker 3: to some you know this, but I'll give a quick
22:02
Speaker 3: quick telling of it. Of this is kind of how
22:05
Speaker 3: I talk about marriage and family therapy integrated with Christianity.
22:10
Speaker 3: We are created for intimacy in the garden. Whether your
22:13
Speaker 3: theological anthropology is relational, structural, functional, multi dimensional, We're created
22:20
Speaker 3: for intimacy, and God values intimacy. He pursues us. It's
22:23
Speaker 3: good for us not to be alone, to be in
22:26
Speaker 3: human relationships and in relationships with Him. We violate that
22:31
Speaker 3: and we get kicked out of the garden. He pursues
22:33
Speaker 3: us in the tabernacle, he pursues us in the temple.
22:36
Speaker 3: He pursues us. When we can't respond, He gives us
22:39
Speaker 3: the law of like. And the more we try to
22:42
Speaker 3: actually do the law, the more we were doing it.
22:46
Speaker 3: We're trying to reconcile the relationship which we can and
22:50
Speaker 3: we continue to be our own be our own gods
22:53
Speaker 3: rather than leaning into him. Then he comes in the incarnation,
22:56
Speaker 3: and in the Incarnation, Paul talks about the new covenant.
23:00
Speaker 3: It's a systemic change. The rules of the game have changed,
23:03
Speaker 3: and now there's a potential in responding to Jesus that
23:06
Speaker 3: we can have a different trajectory. It doesn't mean that necessary,
23:10
Speaker 3: depending on your theology. Everybody chooses that limited it. Tom,
23:14
Speaker 3: I'm not going to get into all of that, but
23:16
Speaker 3: there's a possibility because of the incarnation, life, death, and
23:19
Speaker 3: resurrection of Jesus, there's a new possibility for right relationship
23:23
Speaker 3: with God and then we see the end of the
23:27
Speaker 3: story in Revelation twenty one and twenty two, seeing God
23:31
Speaker 3: face to face and that deep intimacy again. So for me,
23:35
Speaker 3: the arc of Scripture is a relational rupture and repair story,
23:40
Speaker 3: and we can see the systemic change of at just
23:43
Speaker 3: the right time, there was a systemic intervention. What used
23:46
Speaker 3: to work wasn't working. Christ came in and changed the
23:51
Speaker 3: rules of the game that allowed for something new for
23:55
Speaker 3: me and for kind of those that I train and oversee.
23:58
Speaker 3: That's what I want them to see. We get to
24:00
Speaker 3: be christ Like, not necessarily in proclaiming the Gospel, but
24:03
Speaker 3: modeling that systemic change in the therapy room with families,
24:07
Speaker 3: with churches, with congregations. That that's the difference, which is
24:12
Speaker 3: very different than the individual psychology kind of way that
24:16
Speaker 3: they're doing integration. Sorry, I get excited, I get going.
24:20
Speaker 3: I'm sure you have lots of questions, but that's kind
24:23
Speaker 3: of what you stimulated in my head. James.
24:27
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's great. Can I jump off of that and yeah,
24:32
Speaker 4: maybe pinpoint some dynamics there that I find especially interesting.
24:35
Speaker 4: So kind of pulling together a lot of the strands
24:38
Speaker 4: you've been talking about. I find this very interesting, we've
24:44
Speaker 4: come to a place.
24:45
Speaker 2: I think.
24:47
Speaker 4: Clinical work has especially been important in helping us understand this.
24:51
Speaker 4: That we are unreliable narrators. We have a tendency to
24:56
Speaker 4: be very open to suggestion, especially when we are already
25:00
Speaker 4: you know, we can push back really well, we're good
25:03
Speaker 4: at that. But when we're comfortable with the situation, when
25:06
Speaker 4: we trust someone, or when somebody is able to speak
25:09
Speaker 4: in a way that is more amenable to our wants
25:13
Speaker 4: or desires or our ways of framing things, we can
25:17
Speaker 4: be very open to the suggestion at the same time,
25:19
Speaker 4: and so we end up having these forms of narration
25:23
Speaker 4: coming together in ways that may or may not actually
25:27
Speaker 4: be helpful to understanding how we get to the present.
25:30
Speaker 4: And now we throw in this dynamic of there are
25:33
Speaker 4: multiple narrations. So I think about the family environment of
25:37
Speaker 4: what you were just describing, where a parent might think,
25:41
Speaker 4: what are you talking about? You're crazy? Why would you
25:43
Speaker 4: describe things this way? Whereas the sun he smiles to me.
25:47
Speaker 4: That signals they both, you know, assuming one narration from
25:51
Speaker 4: the parents, which is probably not already the case, and
25:55
Speaker 4: one from the child. They're entering in this environment thinking
25:59
Speaker 4: very differently about how they got there. Yeah, and yet
26:04
Speaker 4: on your side, you know what you experience in that moment, right,
26:09
Speaker 4: you get the smile on one side, the frustration on
26:11
Speaker 4: the other side. How do you leverage both of those
26:15
Speaker 4: reactions at the same time in order for it to
26:17
Speaker 4: be a productive environment for both sides.
26:21
Speaker 3: Yeah, great question, and this will be you know you
26:26
Speaker 3: know me is she? So my answer would be it
26:28
Speaker 3: depends is the which I starting bank, But it depends
26:34
Speaker 3: because I'm going to think about how that system is
26:37
Speaker 3: actually working, and my response is going to be unique
26:40
Speaker 3: to how they're holding those narrations and those what those
26:44
Speaker 3: narrations are doing. So sometimes I might side with the
26:47
Speaker 3: parent just to depending on how things are working, or
26:51
Speaker 3: side with the child or you all are wrong. So
26:54
Speaker 3: there's a theorist called Salvador Manuchin. He did structural family therapy.
26:58
Speaker 3: He said every family he ever saw over sixty years
27:02
Speaker 3: of clinical work was wrong. Why they came into therapy
27:06
Speaker 3: because he said, if they were right, they would have
27:08
Speaker 3: fixed it, and so their stories, the way they were
27:11
Speaker 3: organized was off, and his job was to enter in
27:16
Speaker 3: and give them a different experience, which often meant he
27:19
Speaker 3: looked a little crazy because he was responding if you
27:22
Speaker 3: think about our interactions. We're always giving each other emotional
27:26
Speaker 3: bids to respond in a certain way. The way we
27:29
Speaker 3: frame our questions, the way we position where we have
27:31
Speaker 3: eye contact, how we position our body. Do we meet
27:35
Speaker 3: in shared location, do I meet with you in the church?
27:38
Speaker 3: Do I make you come to my office? All of
27:41
Speaker 3: those things, in a very subtle and unaware way shape
27:47
Speaker 3: our behavior. And as a family therapist, I'm going to
27:51
Speaker 3: listen to all those narrations. I'm going to feel I've
27:54
Speaker 3: done enough work and done this long enough. I can
27:56
Speaker 3: feel the polls in my body, so I can feel
27:59
Speaker 3: how a parent is trying to make me side with them,
28:02
Speaker 3: or trying to turn me against the child, or the
28:04
Speaker 3: child's trying to be really negative about the parent and
28:09
Speaker 3: get me to feel negative about them. I sense all
28:12
Speaker 3: those dynamics because I've had lots of reps, right, I've
28:16
Speaker 3: had a lot of iterations to see that, And so
28:19
Speaker 3: I'm going to figure out how do I position myself
28:21
Speaker 3: given all the relational play that's going on in the room.
28:25
Speaker 3: For a young clinician, for a pastor that's trying to
28:28
Speaker 3: do marriage or family work, they can have some basic skills,
28:33
Speaker 3: but pretty quickly if the system isn't flexible, they're going
28:36
Speaker 3: to be over their skis and feel stuck. And then
28:39
Speaker 3: when we get stuck, we start blaming. I'm going to
28:41
Speaker 3: blame the parent, I'm going to blame the child, I'm
28:43
Speaker 3: going to blame the system, I'm going to blame the
28:46
Speaker 3: pastor well, when blame happens, it's because we haven't figured
28:51
Speaker 3: out what are all those narratives, what are the polls,
28:53
Speaker 3: and how we can respond differently? Does that make sense
28:58
Speaker 3: as it does?
28:59
Speaker 2: Yeah?
29:00
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so it's hard for me to give like
29:03
Speaker 3: one answer of how to do that. It's a process
29:05
Speaker 3: and you can kind of track like it's hard once
29:08
Speaker 3: you start seeing things systemically, it messes with your whole
29:11
Speaker 3: world because I can see kind of from from an
29:15
Speaker 3: individual experience up to kind of geopolitical of what's going
29:18
Speaker 3: on now. There's lots of lots of bids and lots
29:21
Speaker 3: of different rules in ways things are organizing, whether it's
29:25
Speaker 3: right or wrong behavior. To get out of it, we
29:28
Speaker 3: have to realize what the game's being played, and it's
29:31
Speaker 3: not necessarily the outcome that we have to attend to.
29:34
Speaker 3: But I think in Western society we tend to be
29:37
Speaker 3: very outcome based kind of proverbs wisdom based, if we
29:41
Speaker 3: do this, then we'll have long life. If we obey
29:44
Speaker 3: our parents, things will go well with us, and if
29:47
Speaker 3: we don't, bad things will happen. Well, there's two other
29:49
Speaker 3: wisdom books. There's the kind of perspective wisdom books in
29:54
Speaker 3: terms of Ecclesiastes of saying, well, yeah, but really you're
29:58
Speaker 3: just vapor, you're heavil or getting to job where there
30:03
Speaker 3: was something bigger, talk about perspective, there's something bigger going on.
30:06
Speaker 3: His suffering wasn't a function of any direct thing he
30:10
Speaker 3: his family. It was a spiritual kind of situation that
30:14
Speaker 3: was going on of does humanity love God for who
30:18
Speaker 3: God is or only what he does? And God's response
30:22
Speaker 3: in the end of Job isn't to deal with his suffering,
30:25
Speaker 3: isn't to explain. He gives perspective like let's talk about
30:30
Speaker 3: inanimate objects. How much control do you have over that? Oh,
30:32
Speaker 3: let's talk about animate objects in people and animals and ostriches,
30:36
Speaker 3: and it's like, what is going on here? Well, God's
30:40
Speaker 3: kind of giving a systemic perspective of there's pieces here
30:44
Speaker 3: working that you have no understanding of, and you're part
30:47
Speaker 3: of this do you trust me? Do you love me?
30:50
Speaker 3: Do you believe I have the best for you even
30:52
Speaker 3: in suffering for me? This system's perspective fits within that
30:58
Speaker 3: wisdom literature and how I try to then help students,
31:02
Speaker 3: help pastors kind of enter into suffering and the narratives
31:06
Speaker 3: around that in different ways.
31:10
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's great, And obviously a major difference between the
31:14
Speaker 4: job dynamic and ours is that at least we can
31:16
Speaker 4: look at the framing of how God is asking the
31:20
Speaker 4: questions and say, well, God it, God can answer those questions.
31:22
Speaker 4: He's just posing him in our case, in the therapist's case,
31:26
Speaker 4: in your case. Right, it's you don't even have that benefit.
31:30
Speaker 4: So now you're sitting in the midst of sometimes subconscious
31:36
Speaker 4: or unconscious varying narrations.
31:38
Speaker 3: Right.
31:39
Speaker 4: I think part of that reality being unreliable narratives is
31:41
Speaker 4: we don't even know that we're being unreliable. So many
31:44
Speaker 4: things have suggested themselves to us and interwoven with our
31:48
Speaker 4: experience of an event that even after the fact, those
31:51
Speaker 4: can change. But then you've got the dynamics you're drawing
31:53
Speaker 4: in as well, that sometimes there's power plays, right, Yeah,
31:58
Speaker 4: And what I appreciate, and this is going to betray
32:00
Speaker 4: a bit. We're talking sports, so I may as well
32:02
Speaker 4: bring in sports. It betrays my my tutelage from the
32:06
Speaker 4: great Chicago Bulls coach Phil Jackson, who brought this up before,
32:10
Speaker 4: but he says he was very adamant in telling his
32:14
Speaker 4: team and convincing his team that yes, obviously we're trying
32:17
Speaker 4: to win a championship, but we don't get from the
32:20
Speaker 4: beginning of the season to the end of the season
32:22
Speaker 4: with merely that goal. It's about being attentive to every step,
32:25
Speaker 4: and it's a thousand foot journey or a thousand step
32:27
Speaker 4: Journey'd constantly be reminding them, and I think you really
32:30
Speaker 4: convinced them of it, and that's what made those teams
32:33
Speaker 4: so consistently good. And I, you know, maybe wrong source
32:37
Speaker 4: of wisdom, but to me, that's been an important lesson
32:40
Speaker 4: that I've tried to carry into everything. Right, you know,
32:43
Speaker 4: whether you're teaching a class. I've had the privilege of
32:47
Speaker 4: teaching several of the classes, some of the students in
32:50
Speaker 4: your cohorts with the marriage and family therapy, and I've
32:52
Speaker 4: tried to engage them in a way where I say,
32:56
Speaker 4: think less about where we're going and think more about
32:59
Speaker 4: how the actually matters, that the journey matters. So we're
33:03
Speaker 4: building here, and it seems to me like that's very
33:07
Speaker 4: much the mindset you're trying to bring into therapy, right
33:10
Speaker 4: that where we end up obviously does matter. You want that,
33:14
Speaker 4: you want that child and those parents to have a
33:17
Speaker 4: sense of togetherness, a sense of shared dynamic within their
33:22
Speaker 4: marital or sorry, their family dynamic. But also the steps
33:27
Speaker 4: they got to be attentive to pay attention to where
33:29
Speaker 4: they are, pay attention to how they're posturing themselves, maybe
33:32
Speaker 4: in ways that they do know, or maybe in ways
33:34
Speaker 4: they don't know. Is that fair to say?
33:36
Speaker 3: Yeah? And it made me think of to to certain
33:40
Speaker 3: I mean, I love Phil Jackson even though I'm a
33:43
Speaker 3: Pistons fan, so I love beat the Bulls. But that's
33:47
Speaker 3: a whole other conversation. But Phil has more Eastern philosophy, right,
33:52
Speaker 3: So you were saying, absolutely, Wisdom's He's much more from
33:56
Speaker 3: a collectivist philosophy if you look at that, if you
34:01
Speaker 3: look at marriage and family therapy. So I travel the
34:04
Speaker 3: world speaking to missionaries, churches, and different societal groups globally
34:10
Speaker 3: and get so much better recognition and understanding than I
34:14
Speaker 3: do here in the States, and it's the ruggeded individualism
34:18
Speaker 3: versus more of a collectivist. I think both cultures are
34:22
Speaker 3: really really important and we can learn a lot from them.
34:25
Speaker 3: But for instance, in Illinois, there are ten thousand licensed counselors,
34:30
Speaker 3: there are five thousand licensed psychologists, and there's nine hundred
34:33
Speaker 3: and sixty eight licensed marriage and family therapists. So one
34:36
Speaker 3: in fifteen our relational focus, and it's a market force.
34:40
Speaker 3: It's the idea we think very differently as Americans, as
34:45
Speaker 3: Western philosophy, that it's about me, It's about my personal
34:49
Speaker 3: relationship with Jesus, It's about my therapist and someone to
34:54
Speaker 3: be there for me. But I bet you a suite
34:57
Speaker 3: that talks about emotions being cultural creations. And most of
35:02
Speaker 3: the study is done from a Western mindset that emotions
35:06
Speaker 3: are mental internal and it's and essential, where the rest
35:12
Speaker 3: of the world, more community based relational base are. It's
35:18
Speaker 3: external kind of mine my emotions versus ours. So it's outer,
35:23
Speaker 3: relational and situational. Well, which frame we come from is
35:27
Speaker 3: going to be how we find our solutions. And for
35:31
Speaker 3: a couple example, I tell a married couple what would
35:35
Speaker 3: it be like if they're a Christian couple coming to me,
35:38
Speaker 3: what would it be like to love your spouse as
35:40
Speaker 3: an act of worship rather than what you feel they
35:43
Speaker 3: deserve or what you're trying to get from them. Because
35:46
Speaker 3: we have a lot of transaction in our relationships. I'll
35:50
Speaker 3: do the dishes and hopefully get lucky that night. Right,
35:53
Speaker 3: it's a it's a transaction. I'm hoping to do something
35:56
Speaker 3: for you so I get something. What if I just
35:58
Speaker 3: do the dishes because I want to honor God, and
36:02
Speaker 3: I do the dishes as an active worship, It's a
36:05
Speaker 3: very different It's a very different relationship, and it frees
36:08
Speaker 3: us up to respond differently. It's also thinking about parents.
36:15
Speaker 3: I think in the seventies, eighties, and nineties when we
36:18
Speaker 3: all grew up, the Christian parenting books were very much prescriptive,
36:24
Speaker 3: if you do this, your kids will turn out okay.
36:27
Speaker 3: I mean doctor Dobson started some of that with dare
36:32
Speaker 3: to discipline and if you just do it right, not
36:34
Speaker 3: only the individual, the church, society, everything will be okay. Well,
36:39
Speaker 3: that's a very mechanistic view. And I tell parents, I'm like,
36:43
Speaker 3: so we both believe that God is our perfect father? Right,
36:47
Speaker 3: God's our father. God the Father is a perfect father.
36:51
Speaker 3: How are his kids doing. So if we really think
36:56
Speaker 3: about our behavior and we have a perfect parent, then
37:00
Speaker 3: that blaming the parent has to stop. There's not a
37:03
Speaker 3: direct back to your point, James, a one to one connection.
37:06
Speaker 3: It's much more complicated. And so I want to free
37:09
Speaker 3: parents up of like do your best. I know, I
37:12
Speaker 3: know parents that have done the best, and painful things
37:15
Speaker 3: have happened. I know parents that have done horrible things.
37:18
Speaker 3: Almost at horrible parents, language matters, parents that have done
37:23
Speaker 3: horrible things and their kids can out find there's not
37:26
Speaker 3: a direct relationship. There's a probability if we if we
37:31
Speaker 3: live rightly as best we can. To scripture and relational science,
37:35
Speaker 3: there's a likelihood of positive outcomes, but there's no guarantee.
37:39
Speaker 3: And so then why do we why do we strive?
37:42
Speaker 3: Why do we live well? Our hope is that we
37:44
Speaker 3: have a God who loves us, and we're responding from
37:48
Speaker 3: that love place rather than some kind of extrinsic I'm
37:52
Speaker 3: trying to force something to happen, make something happen. And
37:55
Speaker 3: it goes back to phil like take the next step.
37:58
Speaker 3: You don't necessarily know where this jorney's going. You have
38:01
Speaker 3: a perspective of where you'd like it to go take
38:04
Speaker 3: the next step, because that's we only can control our response,
38:08
Speaker 3: and then we'll see what the next step is after that.
38:10
Speaker 3: That's a hard space to live because it means it's
38:14
Speaker 3: letting go and having having some dependency on that.
38:18
Speaker 1: It's it's been interesting over the years. So I worked
38:23
Speaker 1: with smaller churches out in New England for some time
38:27
Speaker 1: my current position, and one of the things we talked
38:29
Speaker 1: about was discipleship. And as we're talking about discipleship, you know,
38:35
Speaker 1: everybody wants to understand what that is, right, and uh,
38:38
Speaker 1: and and what's the goal here?
38:40
Speaker 3: Right?
38:41
Speaker 1: Like what are we what are we shooting for? And
38:42
Speaker 1: so you got some of the similar answers. And then
38:45
Speaker 1: we started talking a little bit about the persecuted church
38:48
Speaker 1: and and I said, what if we rethought the goal
38:51
Speaker 1: of discipleship as being able to maintain our convictions even
38:56
Speaker 1: if at some point down the road in the United
38:58
Speaker 1: States we don't have the religious freedom that we have today.
39:01
Speaker 1: Is there a way for us to prepare ourselves to
39:03
Speaker 1: be so resilient and so faithful that if persecution were
39:07
Speaker 1: to come, we remain uncompromised. And I think, as I
39:13
Speaker 1: look across sort of what you do in marriage and
39:15
Speaker 1: family systems. It strikes me that that's sort of part
39:17
Speaker 1: of what has to be I guess I'm wondering, is
39:20
Speaker 1: that part of what comes into the equation. So I mean,
39:23
Speaker 1: I'll give you the story. My daughter has done gymnastics
39:26
Speaker 1: for a lot of years and when she was younger,
39:29
Speaker 1: there was a meet where she fell off the beam
39:31
Speaker 1: and she cried and was really frustrated.
39:33
Speaker 2: Wasn't hurt, she was just really frustrating.
39:35
Speaker 1: Her coach went up and very sternly said, get back
39:38
Speaker 1: up on the beam and finish your routine, right. And
39:42
Speaker 1: I'm kind of sitting along the side just not right,
39:45
Speaker 1: because I'm like, kind of I don't really want my
39:48
Speaker 1: daughter to cry, and I don't really know that getting
39:50
Speaker 1: back up on the beam is the best thing, you know,
39:52
Speaker 1: Like I've got all these things circling around in my mind.
39:55
Speaker 1: And so she got up, she did it, you know,
39:58
Speaker 1: everything was good. And then it was a few years
40:00
Speaker 1: later she fell off the beam again and she laughed.
40:04
Speaker 1: She hop back up on the beam, finished your routine
40:06
Speaker 1: and was done. And I was like, that may be
40:09
Speaker 1: the most vivid and happiest moment within her whole gymnastics
40:14
Speaker 1: career of actually watching her fall off the beam and
40:17
Speaker 1: laugh and be happy about it and get on because
40:19
Speaker 1: I'm sitting there like it built a resiliency in her
40:23
Speaker 1: that is going to carry into other aspects of her life.
40:26
Speaker 1: And I think that's just absolutely crucial. And so I
40:29
Speaker 1: guess what I'm wondering is when you do marriage and
40:31
Speaker 1: family therapy, just to kind of connect the dots on that,
40:34
Speaker 1: do you think through you know, I mean, our context
40:38
Speaker 1: is changing. There's a lot of different pressures on us.
40:41
Speaker 1: There's a lot of you know more there's a lot
40:44
Speaker 1: more instability economically, politically, whatever. But there has to be
40:49
Speaker 1: a sense, right in which we respond to each other
40:51
Speaker 1: in such a way that we can build resilience as
40:53
Speaker 1: opposed to chisel away at it.
40:56
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, And would I would say in that story,
40:59
Speaker 3: you and her coach both loved her. It was just
41:02
Speaker 3: in different ways, right You were you were connected to
41:05
Speaker 3: the emotional part and wanting to soothe soothe the pain. Uh.
41:10
Speaker 3: The coach was interested in helping her work through the pain.
41:14
Speaker 3: It wasn't discounting it. It wasn't being cruel or being
41:19
Speaker 3: It could look that way from the outside because it's
41:21
Speaker 3: like emotions are tender and you know that that coach
41:25
Speaker 3: was a jerk, but it was really loving in a
41:28
Speaker 3: different way, loving to say the hard thing. But my
41:31
Speaker 3: guess is your her coach and she had a good
41:34
Speaker 3: relationship that enoughational equity was built up that he that
41:39
Speaker 3: the coach could say something that might come across in
41:43
Speaker 3: other contexts is really harsh, but was safe enough that
41:47
Speaker 3: she got up on the bean and did it and
41:49
Speaker 3: learned a lesson from that. That he was community or
41:52
Speaker 3: the coach, I don't know he or she, Yeah, she was.
41:57
Speaker 3: She was communicating your you have strength, this isn't going
42:02
Speaker 3: to break you. This is Yes, it's painful, but continue on.
42:05
Speaker 3: And you you were there like I just want to
42:07
Speaker 3: hold you. I don't want to be in pain anymore.
42:10
Speaker 3: Both are really important, but in different context it's going
42:13
Speaker 3: to have different outcomes. Systems wise, we talk a lot
42:18
Speaker 3: about homeostasis or kind of balances the way that you
42:22
Speaker 3: just like in your family probably say well, that's just
42:25
Speaker 3: the way you can that's a homeostasis. There needs to
42:28
Speaker 3: be enough pain in the system to try something different
42:32
Speaker 3: because we're going to go back to what's familiar comfortable.
42:36
Speaker 3: I think kind of with cultural, political religious things going
42:40
Speaker 3: on in the US. For the last twenty thirty years,
42:44
Speaker 3: it's been pretty comfortable being the dominant, dominant belief system
42:48
Speaker 3: and having having privilege of But as pain gets entered
42:53
Speaker 3: into the system of it's going to challenge us to
42:56
Speaker 3: respond differently. The question is are we Are we doing
43:01
Speaker 3: that now or are kind of Are we coaches in church?
43:04
Speaker 3: Are we coaches in our family? Do we have enough
43:07
Speaker 3: relational equity? Is there enough sense of safety and community
43:11
Speaker 3: and connection that then we can say the hard things
43:14
Speaker 3: and grow or if not, I mean that's that's what
43:18
Speaker 3: is key. It starts with relational safety and connection. Do
43:23
Speaker 3: we have enough? And I think COVID hit us hard
43:27
Speaker 3: because we all became a little more isolated, and so
43:30
Speaker 3: then the homeostatic balance became we just do our things
43:34
Speaker 3: on our own. We worship at home. Nothing wrong with
43:39
Speaker 3: worshiping at home. Uh. And yet that there's for me.
43:43
Speaker 3: The church is about embodied connection and their science is
43:47
Speaker 3: about embodied connection. That we're not meant to be an isolation.
43:52
Speaker 3: Isolation is a is a poison to the human existence.
43:57
Speaker 3: And yet that's what we were put through in lots
44:00
Speaker 3: of different ways, and that has become the default. I
44:03
Speaker 3: see it with students, I see it with couples. Everybody
44:07
Speaker 3: likes telehealth better than being in person, and it's there's
44:11
Speaker 3: more accessibility. I know all the positives, but the embodied
44:15
Speaker 3: part is what I worry about because I think that's
44:18
Speaker 3: the space that builds safety for us to then be
44:21
Speaker 3: able to build resilience. And so how are we thinking
44:26
Speaker 3: about our bodies? How are we thinking about a body
44:30
Speaker 3: settling bodies? As God or Tae talks about like coregulation.
44:36
Speaker 3: I can't just regulate my emotional system on my own.
44:39
Speaker 3: I need there's a power of doing it in community.
44:43
Speaker 3: Confession in church practice isn't just in my head to God,
44:47
Speaker 3: but it's about because He already knows all that I
44:50
Speaker 3: have to confess. My turning towards him is an act
44:53
Speaker 3: of intimacy. How are we doing that with each other?
44:57
Speaker 3: Not in terms of like shame or guilt or sick pleasure,
45:01
Speaker 3: hearing struggles, but being intimately connected. Yeah, so resilience is
45:09
Speaker 3: going to come from that foundation and then help navigate
45:12
Speaker 3: suffering struggles. Without that foundation, I think that's where we
45:16
Speaker 3: need to build. I mean, we can't have hard conversations
45:19
Speaker 3: of whichever end of the political spectrum you fall on,
45:22
Speaker 3: or whichever end of faith spectrum you fall on, and
45:26
Speaker 3: all the topics, all the kind of self identified topics
45:30
Speaker 3: that are out there. We can't have interesting conversations and
45:34
Speaker 3: struggle because if you don't agree with me, you are
45:38
Speaker 3: denying my personhood versus we are safe with each other
45:42
Speaker 3: and we can hold different ideas and we can still
45:44
Speaker 3: love each other. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's that's where I
45:48
Speaker 3: would have the systemic change is we need to be
45:51
Speaker 3: in community, We need to be developing safe connection that
45:55
Speaker 3: then we can do the hard work. But if we're
45:57
Speaker 3: trying to do the hard work beforehand, it's going to
45:59
Speaker 3: lead to fracturing. And I think that's what we're seeing
46:04
Speaker 3: in micro and macro perspectives.
46:08
Speaker 2: Do you go go ahead, ashiz?
46:11
Speaker 4: I wanted to pick up on some of these threads
46:15
Speaker 4: again where perhaps I'm miss hearing, and please correct me
46:20
Speaker 4: if i am. It sounds a little bit like some
46:23
Speaker 4: of these cultural dynamics that are sort of accelerants that
46:27
Speaker 4: at least from my observation, it seems like the gap
46:29
Speaker 4: between generations is much more exaggerated due to these cultural
46:35
Speaker 4: accelerants than perhaps they used to be. Is it would
46:38
Speaker 4: you say that's fair?
46:40
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean things are moving fat. Look at technology.
46:43
Speaker 3: My great grandfather, I knew, came over to the US
46:48
Speaker 3: and immigrated here and had a horse drunk cart, and
46:51
Speaker 3: I knew him that was the main technology. We've gone
46:53
Speaker 3: to that to where we have personal computers in our
46:56
Speaker 3: pockets as phones and they actually, you know, we're doing
47:00
Speaker 3: spiritual or anthropic is doing spiritual formation of technology, of
47:04
Speaker 3: trying to give a moral core, uh to technology. That's
47:08
Speaker 3: a huge in one hundred years, that's a huge development.
47:12
Speaker 3: And it's strange. We can't we can't even get to
47:15
Speaker 3: a homeostasis before the next change comes. And so this
47:19
Speaker 3: this amount of dysregulation and speed of that between isolation
47:22
Speaker 3: and technology. Yeah, it's putting a unique I would say
47:26
Speaker 3: it's putting a unique strain. I like the accelerant idea
47:30
Speaker 3: on society in a new way. We have to adapt
47:33
Speaker 3: faster and it's harder.
47:37
Speaker 4: Yeah, I wonder what that does for resilience. Now, I'm
47:40
Speaker 4: speaking completely off the top of my head at this point,
47:43
Speaker 4: I have no research to back it up. I want
47:45
Speaker 4: to be careful about making too hard of claims, but
47:49
Speaker 4: I look at I look at my kids, for instance,
47:52
Speaker 4: and I sometimes I get the sense that all of
47:55
Speaker 4: these different factors, as complex as they are, has has
48:01
Speaker 4: weakened the ability to work in them a kind of resilience.
48:06
Speaker 4: And I don't know if that's that's one of those
48:09
Speaker 4: I'm getting older and therefore I think, you know, it
48:11
Speaker 4: is much easier to be resilient. It was much easier
48:13
Speaker 4: to do this or that when I was younger. I
48:15
Speaker 4: want to avoid that, And what I really want to
48:17
Speaker 4: be concerned about is how do I develop them towards
48:22
Speaker 4: resilience without the sort of without a sort of emotional hardening.
48:28
Speaker 4: But I wonder if there are fresh challenges, at the
48:30
Speaker 4: very least, whether or not there is a less of
48:34
Speaker 4: a tendency to resilience or not. Are there fresh challenges
48:37
Speaker 4: and ways that you have had to develop to say generationally,
48:41
Speaker 4: there are new ways to look at the process of
48:44
Speaker 4: helping people become resilient.
48:47
Speaker 1: If I can piggyback on that before you answer. So,
48:50
Speaker 1: one of the one I was going to ask was
48:53
Speaker 1: somewhat related. I think what I see happening a lot
48:57
Speaker 1: with technology is we're trying to solve every problem. So
49:01
Speaker 1: there's the transhumanist movement, which I think there's soft transhumanism
49:05
Speaker 1: happening a lot of places. I think people are transhuman
49:08
Speaker 1: and they don't even know it, sort of. And the
49:10
Speaker 1: idea is that we're we're taking these technologies and we're
49:14
Speaker 1: saying this is the solution to this problem. But inevitably
49:18
Speaker 1: the revenge effects come back around and it creates different
49:22
Speaker 1: problems within the system that we hadn't thought of when
49:24
Speaker 1: we executed it. And so you get into all of
49:28
Speaker 1: these different aspects of like con road and I think
49:31
Speaker 1: it was in the seventies, you know, the tyranny of
49:33
Speaker 1: small decisions, Right, We're all making these little micro decisions
49:36
Speaker 1: without really thinking through the system dynamics. And so when
49:40
Speaker 1: we don't do that, then ultimately some of these things
49:43
Speaker 1: we plug in, they're going to have some there.
49:47
Speaker 2: I liken it to like a baby's mobile.
49:49
Speaker 1: You touch one side, another side is always going to
49:52
Speaker 1: move in generally in unpredictable ways.
49:54
Speaker 2: Then you could really understand.
49:57
Speaker 1: And so kind of to piggyback that into ashi this question,
50:00
Speaker 1: I think is, yeah, is my perspective on that accelerant aspect.
50:09
Speaker 3: So there's there's a lot here. I'll try to do
50:11
Speaker 3: it in two minutes and just an aside of there's
50:17
Speaker 3: a there's a scholar in Romania Rodica Mocan who's doing
50:22
Speaker 3: a lot with transhumanism and studying there. I forget who
50:26
Speaker 3: the artist was, but had had a cyber arm attached
50:33
Speaker 3: to him and then was on and gave access to
50:36
Speaker 3: the internet, so anybody could go on to the Internet
50:39
Speaker 3: and move this arm and engage with him, and it
50:44
Speaker 3: was anyway, it's fascinating to the collectivist idea and disembodied
50:51
Speaker 3: transhumanist kind of thoughts and what does that mean? How
50:54
Speaker 3: how much cyber input can I have before I lose
50:58
Speaker 3: my image bearing kind of amago day, Like, where does that?
51:02
Speaker 3: I think theological anthropology questions are super important right now
51:07
Speaker 3: as we continue to have technological assists, and so there's that.
51:14
Speaker 3: I think a regarding resilience, the starting spot is optimal frustration.
51:19
Speaker 3: So I think from what we were talking about, the
51:23
Speaker 3: systems perspective of resilience is how do we help our
51:27
Speaker 3: kids identify and us as well identify what optimal frustration
51:31
Speaker 3: is and how to navigate it. I think we're I mean,
51:36
Speaker 3: there's lots of things going on in my life right now,
51:39
Speaker 3: and I get lots of messages from friends about how
51:42
Speaker 3: to alleviate pain, how whether it's physical, dealing with death
51:47
Speaker 3: of a parent, all of these type of things. It's
51:51
Speaker 3: how do you make the pain go away? And that's
51:54
Speaker 3: not resilience, right, that's numbing. And the benefit of numbing
51:58
Speaker 3: it won't feel the pain. The downside of numbing is
52:01
Speaker 3: we don't feel, and so the absence of pain also
52:05
Speaker 3: means the absence of joy, the absence of love. And
52:09
Speaker 3: I feel like through technology, through messaging, through medication. I
52:15
Speaker 3: was a board member at a Bible camp and over
52:18
Speaker 3: ten year period, seeing how many kids went from not
52:21
Speaker 3: having any medication to everybody, we had to hire extra nurses.
52:26
Speaker 3: I believe it. I believe there's necessary. I'm thankful for
52:30
Speaker 3: medicine and medication. I just worry that we lean too
52:34
Speaker 3: hard to We want to treat the symptom, get rid
52:37
Speaker 3: of the pain, and we're missing the heart issue. Like
52:39
Speaker 3: if I have a pain shooting down my arm, I
52:42
Speaker 3: can treat the pain in the arm, but it's really
52:44
Speaker 3: the heart issue. And I think a lot of times
52:47
Speaker 3: around resilience with our kids in school system and families,
52:51
Speaker 3: we're trying to manage pain rather than fostering flourishing we're
52:56
Speaker 3: trying to manage the symptom rather than looking at how
53:01
Speaker 3: what are good ways of responding to suffering? How is
53:04
Speaker 3: suffering connected to love more than sin or equally connected
53:09
Speaker 3: to love and sin. So there's negative consequences for negative behavior,
53:14
Speaker 3: but there's also I know the potential of suffering is great.
53:16
Speaker 3: As a father and a grandfather, the love I have
53:19
Speaker 3: for those kids has the potential for deep suffering, and
53:26
Speaker 3: what I want to love them less, so I don't
53:28
Speaker 3: feel the potential for suffering. I think that's the navigation
53:32
Speaker 3: we've made as a society over the past couple of decades,
53:35
Speaker 3: is we were so good and creative, we're going to
53:39
Speaker 3: take pain away, But in doing so, we've taken away
53:43
Speaker 3: the resilient potential and the need for development with optimal frustration.
53:49
Speaker 3: And there's a beauty in coming together in painful things,
53:54
Speaker 3: like certain things won't have solutions, but I have a
53:58
Speaker 3: couple of friends that will enter with me in it
54:01
Speaker 3: and sit by the fire in the ash with me,
54:04
Speaker 3: And there's such a beauty in that. I can't even
54:07
Speaker 3: tell you. I get emotional thinking about it. So thinking
54:10
Speaker 3: about parenting, that's where I started, like, how are we
54:14
Speaker 3: navigating optimal frustration. How are we looking at the edge
54:17
Speaker 3: where it's good for our daughters to fall off the
54:21
Speaker 3: bar right the balance beam rather than man want to
54:27
Speaker 3: I want her to succeed. I want her to get
54:29
Speaker 3: a college scholarship that she needs to. I could put
54:32
Speaker 3: pressure on her to be on the beam, and then
54:35
Speaker 3: when she falls off, then I've added to the suffering
54:38
Speaker 3: versus life'sful little disappointments. The growth part is how we
54:42
Speaker 3: respond to them. It's how we respond, not why they happen.
54:45
Speaker 3: And that's the system's idea compared to individual psychology approach.
54:54
Speaker 4: Yeah, what I'm partly hearing in that correct me if
54:57
Speaker 4: I'm wrong, is that sometimes we MISIDENTI by resilience, that
55:02
Speaker 4: we we perhaps think that we're generating the ability to
55:06
Speaker 4: be resilient, or we think of ourselves as resilient, when
55:09
Speaker 4: really what we've done is we've walled ourselves off from
55:13
Speaker 4: those things that we need to be resilient towards. Is
55:16
Speaker 4: that a fair Yeah, not a challenge that you've given us.
55:20
Speaker 3: I would also say, don't pray for patience, don't pay
55:23
Speaker 3: pray for resilience, because what you're praying for is difficult
55:27
Speaker 3: times because those things. If you look at Paul saying,
55:31
Speaker 3: you know, perseverance leads to right, there's the pathway there
55:35
Speaker 3: of resilience and spiritual formation comes from how we navigate
55:39
Speaker 3: these things faithfully over time. And it's not about the
55:42
Speaker 3: lack of them. It's about how we go about addressing them.
55:46
Speaker 3: And as parents, we don't want our kids to suffer,
55:49
Speaker 3: but sometimes love is how do we come alongside them
55:53
Speaker 3: and not take it away, but give them the confidence
55:56
Speaker 3: that this isn't going to break you. The suffering that's
55:59
Speaker 3: going on for you right now. She's the suffering that's
56:02
Speaker 3: going on for you right now, James. It's not going
56:04
Speaker 3: to break you. God is with you. It's gonna suck,
56:08
Speaker 3: and it's going to be painful and it's going to
56:10
Speaker 3: be awful. Sorry about the language, but it's it's when
56:15
Speaker 3: when you see Paul uses a lot of gritty language,
56:18
Speaker 3: right scuba crashet of like there there is painful things.
56:25
Speaker 3: It's not going to break you. You have a community,
56:27
Speaker 3: you have a loving God, you have me as a
56:31
Speaker 3: therapist to come alongside you, to be with you. That's
56:35
Speaker 3: where resilience comes out of. It's not solving the problem.
56:39
Speaker 3: It's not alleviating the problem or preventing the problem. It's
56:43
Speaker 3: going through it together that we see the formation of
56:47
Speaker 3: perseverance and long suffering and the fruits of the spirit
56:50
Speaker 3: coming out of that, not only resilience, but I would
56:53
Speaker 3: say the fruits of the spirit spiritual formation.
56:58
Speaker 1: Well, David, this has been helpful and good, and unfortunately
57:01
Speaker 1: we're about out of time, and so really appreciate your
57:04
Speaker 1: perspective on this.
57:05
Speaker 2: I think I resonate so much with it.
57:07
Speaker 1: I think that system's oriented perspective is just sort of
57:10
Speaker 1: become part of the way I think about things, you know,
57:14
Speaker 1: whether it's org capacity and consulting, or you know, thinking
57:18
Speaker 1: through some of this stuff from a leadership perspective, and
57:20
Speaker 1: then obviously the marriage and family therapy. It just makes
57:22
Speaker 1: a lot of sense. And so we've had conversations about
57:26
Speaker 1: systemic sin, which is almost the dark side, you could
57:29
Speaker 1: call that the the uh, you know, de optimized suffering
57:34
Speaker 1: in the other direction sort of right, And so just
57:39
Speaker 1: really helpful and really insightful, and appreciate you being here.
57:42
Speaker 3: Man. Yeah, thanks, it's been fun talking with you guys.
57:45
Speaker 3: And I'm going to have to read up on hermanuticts now.
57:50
Speaker 2: Well, night Resources Oh, go ahead.
57:53
Speaker 4: You've learned from your students. You mentioned second order earlier.
57:56
Speaker 4: I've learned that what her minutation mean by second order
58:01
Speaker 4: and what MFT mean by second order are not the
58:04
Speaker 4: same thing. So go and be aware of that.
58:07
Speaker 3: Okay, that's a good pointing.
58:09
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, Well, everybody check out. The books come
58:14
Speaker 1: out in February, so we won't have links to it
58:15
Speaker 1: or anything, but hopefully David'll be back on the show
58:18
Speaker 1: to talk about it and then also check out the
58:21
Speaker 1: podcast with you if you're interested in more things around
58:24
Speaker 1: marriage and family therapy. But otherwise, come on back for
58:28
Speaker 1: the next episode of Thinking Christian. We'll catch you all
58:30
Speaker 1: next time.
58:30
Speaker 2: Take care.
58:31
Speaker 1: I just want to take a second to thank the
58:33
Speaker 1: team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on
58:35
Speaker 1: the Thinking Christian podcast. If you go to lifeaudio dot com,
58:39
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58:42
Speaker 1: They've got shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting, and more.