Theology that Heals Theology that Hurts

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign. [00:00:10] Speaker B: Life hurts or other people do. We can look for healing in a lot of different places. Sometimes those solutions help, and sometimes they end up causing further hurt. If you're looking for healing that doesn't come from just having more faith, then this episode is for you. I'm Kristin Mockler Young, and this is Becoming Church, the podcast where we discuss how the message and movement of Jesus is not just about becoming Christians, but about becoming the church. Each week, we explore the intersection of faith, culture, and everyday life through the lens of Jesus. Today, my friend Ike Miller is back to talk about trauma healing and how both can actually happen in the church. And once you get to the end of the conversation, be sure to click the substack link in in the show notes for one more bonus question where Ike and I talk about the unique wound of church hurt or spiritual trauma and how that healing can happen. These episodes here will always remain free, but because I'm so grateful for you being here, there's a special discounted rate just for listeners. If you want that extra conversation, just be sure to use the link in the show notes. Ike Miller, welcome back to Becoming Church. [00:01:19] Speaker A: Thank you. It is good to be back. I'm excited to be on again and just keep the conversation going. [00:01:24] Speaker B: Yes. We're gonna do it. We're gonna do it. I think last time you accidentally talked about, like, faith and laundry, you knew I was gonna say this, right? And then that became I didn't, but [00:01:33] Speaker A: I was like, what did I say? [00:01:34] Speaker B: Episode? And you were like, okay. Talking about doing our laundry. [00:01:37] Speaker A: Yeah, that's laundry. Well, it's still a part of life, so, you know, it's relevant. [00:01:41] Speaker B: Well, hey, I can't wait to see what you accidentally say today. [00:01:44] Speaker A: I can't either. Who knows what it's gonna be? [00:01:48] Speaker B: I love it. Well, you are here to talk about your new book, Theology that Heals. [00:01:54] Speaker A: Yes. [00:01:55] Speaker B: And so I thought, you know, this could be maybe a little bit of a heavier, more serious conversation. And so what better way than to start with, like, a light? We're gonna play a game. [00:02:04] Speaker A: Let's do it. [00:02:05] Speaker B: Okay. [00:02:05] Speaker A: Love it. Yep. [00:02:06] Speaker B: And I did not tell you what these Christian, you know, common phrases or practices were gonna be. So off the cuff, I'm just gonna say one, and you're gonna throw it out, and you're gonna say heal or hurt. Okay. [00:02:18] Speaker A: Do I get any nuance, or is it just one or the other? [00:02:20] Speaker B: You. The tiniest bit of nuance, because I know you're gonna want it. [00:02:24] Speaker A: For some of you, I will. Yep. But I'll. I'll try to resist. [00:02:28] Speaker B: All right, first one. Heal or hurt? Bible reading plans. [00:02:31] Speaker A: Ooh, God, these are gonna be impossible. It depends. Oh, my goodness. Bible reading plans as a legalistic practice. Hurt. Bible reading plans as an invitation. Heal. [00:02:50] Speaker B: Love it. Okay. [00:02:51] Speaker A: Small groups generally heal. [00:02:55] Speaker B: Yep. [00:02:56] Speaker A: Until it becomes manipulative and coercive. [00:02:58] Speaker B: Yeah. Fair. Deconstruction. [00:03:04] Speaker A: I personally think in a lot of cases, it is an important part of our journey. It is, but it can happen for a lot of reasons. But we'll dig into that later. Sure, yeah, absolutely. So. But I think it can be a part of our faith surgery that has to happen along the way. Yes. [00:03:24] Speaker B: All right. Christian conferences, church conferences, [00:03:31] Speaker A: Personally, they're not my thing. I think there are some great ones out there, but generally, I think the idea of let's put this person on a stage and idolize them is not good. [00:03:45] Speaker B: Fair. All right, Ike, how about Christian influencers? Hurt or heal? [00:03:52] Speaker A: Well, I don't know if my wife would consider herself a Christian influencer, but I would say she is wonderful. And so I have to acknowledge that there is healing even when there can be hurt from some parts of it. [00:04:06] Speaker B: Yes. All right, here's an easy one for you. Therapy. [00:04:10] Speaker A: Heal. [00:04:10] Speaker B: Yes. [00:04:11] Speaker A: Yes. [00:04:12] Speaker B: All right, how about purity? Culture? [00:04:14] Speaker A: Hurt. [00:04:15] Speaker B: Yes. [00:04:16] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:04:17] Speaker B: All right, last one for our little game here. [00:04:18] Speaker A: Let's do it. Faith podcasts, they are all healing well, especially the one called Becoming Church. [00:04:26] Speaker B: Yes. I was like, I'm gonna get him with this last. [00:04:31] Speaker A: Absolutely. [00:04:32] Speaker B: Well, thank you for playing. I think you're playing. [00:04:34] Speaker A: I love it. I love it. How will I know how I did? [00:04:39] Speaker B: How do you feel in your heart, how you did? You feel like you did? [00:04:41] Speaker A: Well, I mean, I feel like you could have come down on me a lot harder for not being definitive enough. So I feel like you're a gracious game host. [00:04:50] Speaker B: Well, CD I knew I basically, I just asked you to trust me, and I didn't give you any heads up at all. So I was like, there's got to be. [00:04:56] Speaker A: Honestly, it would have been worse if you had. I would have just thought about it and thought about it and. Yeah, so it's better this way. Okay, good, good. [00:05:06] Speaker B: All right, so we're going to get into your book. I have it right here, Theology that Heals. But I want to start with the elephant in the room, Ike. Okay. Which is. What is the difference between theology that hurts and theology that heals? [00:05:18] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. You know, as I. I have to acknowledge, as I was writing this book, I was sharing the idea with a friend of mine, Glenn packing his pastor out in California. And he said, oh, I love this. And he was like, the first chapter should be Theology that hurts. And I was like, that is brilliant. I wish I had come up with that myself. That is so good. But, you know, one of the things that I think is that there's. There's a few things that I name in the book that are core to this that I think we see play out in a lot of different ways. But the core things that I name are when theology is more. More committed to systems than people. So when it's all about, okay, the system has to be perfectly neat. We can't take into account people's individual stor stories where they're at in their faith journey. If God always acts this way, and if we say God acts any other way, then somehow we're not consistent and that becomes damaging because we lead to things like saying, well, that awful thing to happen to you, God wanted that to happen. [00:06:18] Speaker B: Yes. [00:06:19] Speaker A: And you're like, there's some difficult things. Yes. That God brings into our life, but also to name something that's evil as like, God doing that, I just can't reconcile that, you know, so that's. [00:06:30] Speaker B: One overlooks free will. [00:06:32] Speaker A: Yes. [00:06:33] Speaker B: Stuff just happens because people can make things happen. [00:06:36] Speaker A: Yes, exactly. Which leads to my next one, which is trauma. When. When theology is not sensitive to trauma, it can be hurting in particular. The reality with trauma, for example, is the fact that some of our brokenness is because of sin that was done to us. [00:06:54] Speaker B: Right. [00:06:55] Speaker A: As people who have experienced trauma. But when we're led to believe, okay, your path to healing is just. You need to repent without acknowledging the damage that's been done to us. What we end up doing is heaping shame on top of guilt. And so that was another one. And then the last one is when it's not careful to pay attention to the ways that our faith journeys develop. What I mean by that is I talk about kind of this idea of hitting the wall, which is connecting with deconstruction, where we find ourselves in a place where, like, faith seems to be not making sense anymore. The paradigm that we've been working with is falling ap and to ourselves or to people around us, it looks like we're losing our faith. [00:07:39] Speaker B: Yes. [00:07:40] Speaker A: Yeah. And. And we may even wonder, like, am I losing my faith? But a lot of times, I love. Pete Scazero talks about this in emotional, healthy spirituality, that sometimes God brings us to that wall because there's something that needs to change in our understanding of who God is. And the only way for us to change that is to hit the wall. [00:07:57] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:07:58] Speaker A: But when we make judgments on other people's faith journey because of an isolated period, we end up, you know, casting judgment when we only have part of the story. [00:08:09] Speaker B: Right. [00:08:10] Speaker A: So those are some things that hurt in theology. [00:08:13] Speaker B: Yeah, Well, a lot of that judgment, too. It's like stuff that we don't understand. [00:08:16] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:08:17] Speaker B: Because we haven't had to experience. And so. Yeah, it's. We'll get there. We'll get there. [00:08:23] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. [00:08:23] Speaker B: And that's why I threw deconstruction at you on purpose in our little game, because I knew we were going to talk about this. [00:08:28] Speaker A: Yes. [00:08:29] Speaker B: But I want you to unpack a little bit more that concept of hitting the wall and why you see this as a vital element of spiritual growth. [00:08:36] Speaker A: Yeah. So there was a book written called the Critical Journey, and in there, and there's been a number of these that kind of go through. These are the stages of faith. But the way that they describe it in this book is there's kind of this initial phase that is this coming to this life changing awareness of God. You discover God, you're awakened to understand God, you come to faith, and that moves into this stage two, where you're just learning, you're ravenous, you want to learn everything. You. You're listening to podcasts, maybe two or three at one time, you're listening to sermons, you're reading, you're in your Bible plan, like all your things. And then you move to like a stage three where it now becomes, okay, what does it look like to live this out? So you get involved in your church, you're serving, you're in a small group, all of these things, but then that there's this stage, and it's going to look different for all of us, but where something happens in our life. Maybe it is a loss of a loved one, maybe it is the loss of a job, maybe it is a relationship that ends. It could be we're wrestling with a sin even. But it's all different kinds of things. Where suddenly the paradigm of faith that we grew up with doesn't work for me. I hit this in sort of college, right after college, where I really had struggled with this idea of evangelism and what it meant to come to believe in Jesus. And seeing people who had made these decisions to follow Jesus in the day, it's like nothing ever happened. [00:10:04] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:10:04] Speaker A: And I was like, if somebody's encountered Jesus, I feel like it can't be that. The next day Nothing has happened. [00:10:10] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:10:10] Speaker A: And so I went on this journey of kind of wrestling with that, and I had to change my understanding of God in some ways. And I think God brought me to that. But the way that I describe this is oftentimes the way that we experience God at first is really powerful. It's formative. It informs how we see God. And so what we do is we cast God into this mold like a statue. And we say, this is what God is like. [00:10:36] Speaker B: Yes. [00:10:36] Speaker A: And God's like, no, I am not a statue. I'm a living being. And so then God's like, I've got to break out of this. And I know it's going to be painful, but there's only one way for me to do this, and it's going to have to go through hitting this wall. And so I think for many of us, deconstruction is what's happening in that. The unfortunate thing is because that has been judged, people end up feeling like, well, if I'm deconstructing, the church isn't a safe place to do it. So I got to go outside the church to do it. Which ends up we're outside of a community that can encourage us and help us walk along as we figure out what faithfulness looks like in a lot of contexts. [00:11:13] Speaker B: So as a pastor, you and Sharon co pastor at Bright City, how do you, what do you do at your church that allows people or tells people, like, hey, if you do feel like you're deconstructing, you can do that here. You don't have to leave, like, what are you doing to foster that? [00:11:30] Speaker A: So the biggest things that I do are, I try, especially in my conversations with people in our church, when they come to me with questions is to respond with a, what they call the non anxious presence, meaning when I feel an anxiety that I've got to answer your question, we feel like that's helpful to them because I'm solving this problem for them. But what they hear is, you don't understand what I'm wrestling with or on the level, or you're just making this thing seem more simple than it is. [00:12:05] Speaker B: Right. [00:12:06] Speaker A: And so instead, I'm often of a posture of kind of drawing out, asking questions, help me understand where did this begin? Kind of where the big areas for you, what are the big questions that you ask? And that way I'm communicating, hey, let's be curious together. As you're wrestling with this. I don't want you to feel like you coming to me with this makes me feel threatened. And so Trying to create that space. But also in my sermons, when I preach, I both try to be vulnerable about those journeys for me, when I've had questions, but also acknowledging the complexities of our stories and that we are in different places on our journeys. And the best thing that we can do as the church is be a space where you can come as you are. Because until we're honest with each other, we're just putting on masks, and we ultimately have to. At some point, it feels harder to be honest with where we're at. [00:12:59] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:12:59] Speaker A: Because we've put on one image and things are falling apart. [00:13:02] Speaker B: Right, right. Well, I think actually not giving people an answer is the more pastoral thing to do, because what can happen is we. If you give them an answer, it might work for a season, a time being, but eventually, most likely, they're going to get to a place or a situation where that answer no longer works. And if their entire faith is built on answers and then the answers don't work anymore, then what do they do? [00:13:24] Speaker A: That's exactly right. [00:13:25] Speaker B: That could be their deconstruction moment. [00:13:26] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, and they're. They're taught that, like, faith means I have the answers. [00:13:31] Speaker B: Correct. [00:13:32] Speaker A: When in reality, I think faith also has this component of when I don't have the answers, I can still depend on God's faithfulness to me in the past. The. The community around me helping me when I don't have the faith, I can lean on their faith, you know? [00:13:45] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:13:46] Speaker A: And so just seeing faith is more than just having all the answers. [00:13:48] Speaker B: Right, Right. There's a book coming out about that in October. We'll link that in the show notes, too. Well, Ike, if you, if people are listening, okay. And they're maybe identifying what, what stage of faith that they're in of those that you just described, maybe they're just kind of like, blindly going along. Everything seems to be good. And they've never had that, like, hit the wall moment. [00:14:15] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:14:17] Speaker B: Like, like, do they need to now be scared that it's coming? Like, do you think this is something that everybody will hit? [00:14:23] Speaker A: It's a good question. You know, I, I, you know, given my resistance to systems and, you know, I think there's a place for orderly thought. But I'm also reluctant to say everybody, X, Y, or Z. I think given the, the pains of life, the fact that we experience just the brokenness of our world, I think they are somewhat inevitable. I think what happens more often is not that somebody doesn't hit the wall, but the fear of going through the wall. Forces us to turn around and go back the other way. And it's safer to go back even if there's some part of us that knows we're not being honest about the whole picture. And that's not to shame anybody or to guilt anybody. It's just to say that can be one of our ways of coping with hitting the wall is to just go back rather than trying to go through. [00:15:22] Speaker B: Yeah, that's what I was going to propose too is I think that it's not that because I do. I think that probably everybody either hits it or has an experience that is then their turning point of like, okay, I'm going to lean into what I need to learn more about God or myself about this or. Yes. Am I going to just like turn the other way and not want to see it because it's easier to just. [00:15:46] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:15:47] Speaker B: Keep going as we're going. [00:15:48] Speaker A: Well, and that's what I love about that idea of sometimes God brings us to the wall. Is it. It doesn't feel as out of control in the sense that even if I am here, maybe there is something that God wants me to understand that I can't learn any other way. I mean this is what all of those wilderness seasons in the Bible were. These places of disorientation. But God meets them there anyway. And what's fascinating about going through the wall is that side of the wall. Often faith looks very similar, but it's very different in terms of its motivations, its purposes. It's much less external. How do I impress people with my faith? It's much more, I want to know God because it gives me peace. It gives me a sense of, of settledness in the midst of chaos. Our, our practice of our, our Bible reading plan. I don't know why I'm just going to come back to that over and over again. I love it. Or prayer. We're, we're, we're as serious, if not more about those things. But it's not about checking the list. It's because this is where we go for our spiritual nourishment and we want that. So. Yeah. Those are some of those thoughts on that. Yeah, yeah. [00:17:04] Speaker B: On the other side of the wall, like you said, I think a lot of times our beliefs don't actually change. But what I'm hearing you say is like, it's, yes, the motivation. It's the way we do them where we're not trying to seek out like the right answer. Or what does this Bible verse definitively mean so that I can like argue with people about it. What does this. How does this help me to understand God? [00:17:23] Speaker A: Deeper? [00:17:24] Speaker B: It's a lot more relational. It's a lot more. [00:17:27] Speaker A: I don't know. [00:17:27] Speaker B: It's more freeing. [00:17:29] Speaker A: It's so much more freeing. You know, one of the things that changed for me, going through the wall, as I look back, is I believed before going through the wall that Scripture was authoritative. Coming to the other side, I still believe it's authoritative, but on that side, it was because I could tell you all the reasons why Scripture was right or why it didn't have any challenges, or I could answer all your questions on this side of the wall. That authority is based on my conviction by the Holy Spirit that these are the words that God gives us to give us life. And you hold those very differently. One is very anxious. If I can't answer the questions, then I. What happens to my faith? The other side is. Is much more peaceful and rest and deeper rooted. So. Yeah. [00:18:16] Speaker B: Ike Miller, this is what makes you such a great pastor. I'm so glad that you run through the wall. Your people are so lucky. [00:18:22] Speaker A: Thank you. [00:18:23] Speaker B: So as we're talking about, you know, pain, and there's a lot of stuff. Right. That is just part of life. Pain, illness, wounding, a variety of things. [00:18:30] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:18:31] Speaker B: And sometimes it is at the hands of other people's choices. Sometimes it is unexplainable. [00:18:35] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:18:36] Speaker B: And so especially for people who find themselves there, what is your proposed solution for them to find healing from God? [00:18:43] Speaker A: Yeah. You mean we're kind of. Regardless of why they found themselves there? Yeah. You know, one of the things that I really tried to communicate in this book that really started in my last book, Good Baggage, which was really around, like, relational and emotional healing from our traumas is oftentimes we want healing to be instantaneous. That's one of the things that's been so attractive about the ways that we've talked about the gospel and sharing our faith is if we've promised this healing, that's almost instantaneous. The problem is people come to faith, and it's not instantaneous. It's not as all those things just went away as soon as I prayed the prayer. And so a major part of what I wanted to communicate in this book is that, yes, coming to faith is a part of our journey. It is certainly a part of our salvation. But healing is also a journey in itself. And that is not like God letting us down. It's just recognizing that the traumas that we carry, the pain that we carry, is not something that goes away easily as human Beings, we have developed coping mechanisms that we aren't even aware are functioning. [00:19:54] Speaker B: Okay. [00:19:55] Speaker A: And so it's not as though all of a sudden we're just going to stop because we know that's happening. We've got to go through the work of discovering, okay, maybe I need to invite the Holy Spirit in to help me do some self examination of why I end up in the same kind of relationship over and over again. It keeps breaking. Not that they don't have any fault in it, but what's my part, what's going on in me, you know? And so what I kind of make the case for is this idea that we've lost the ways in which salvation is this healing salve. I mean, it's in that word, salvation that it's something that you put onto your wounds and it begins to heal them, begins to soothe them, but that doesn't happen instantaneously. And that's a part of the beauty of it because there's things that we can only learn when healing is a process instead of instantaneous. [00:20:46] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's so interesting that you bring salvation and healing together and you do it really well. In the book, what do you think people are missing when they only see Jesus as savior but not as healer? [00:20:59] Speaker A: Yeah, well, I think for one, and I think this has probably been the most damaging, maybe is the wrong term, but I think we set people up to misunderstand God, but we experience that or the way that we, we experience that as God disappointed us. But really the way that I talk about it is that some of us aren't rejecting God. We're rejecting what people who spoke poorly about God have said. And so what I want to say is understanding that the whole of our Christian life is a healing journey and that is individual. In my own personal life, that is between me and my relationships with others. That is within groups of people, whether they are political parties or races or nations. And it is restoring our relationship with God. And those are all a process that we grow in as we walk through them. [00:22:02] Speaker B: I. How do we separate? You know, because, you know, there are, I think, a very common. I don't know, it's not a spiritual platitude, but it does feel like a conversation ender to me when somebody is talking about, you know, you said that we set people up to misunderstand God and then we end up being disappointed in him. Well, sometimes when people are unpacking or they're sharing their stories, right. Of like how they have found disappointment in God in church and whatever And a common response is like, well, God didn't hurt you, people hurt you. Or the church didn't hurt you, people hurt you. Which, like, yes, but also to your point. [00:22:40] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, what. [00:22:42] Speaker B: How do we maybe decipher the difference? If people are in that, how do they. How can they separate? Like, yeah, was it God or was it people? [00:22:53] Speaker A: So there's a couple things that I would say. I would say for me as an onlooker, hearing somebody share that the honest truth is it doesn't matter what I think it is in the sense that if I am sitting here trying to judge or determine what it is, I'm not actually like paying attention to what's going on inside of you. I think my job in that much more is how do I help? Ask good questions or listen and reflect back what I'm hearing so that I can communicate. Hey, more than me just answering our questions, I want to be a trusted journeyer with you on this because we're not going to fix this overnight. So I think that there's that piece of it. I think individually, personally, I think that if I am in that place of asking, okay, did God hurt me or did people hurt me? I think we first need to ask the question of what was hurt in me. Before we get to who's responsible, let's understand what hurt in me. So, for example, if I felt betrayed by a church, was that the church? Was that somebody in the church? I think there's still the question of what made it so painful. Was it that I have experienced betrayal in the past and this made it so much more devastating because it brought me right back to that place. And then we can actually begin to get to the root of the pain that needs to be healed, regardless of whether it was people or the church for us to be healed, that feels [00:24:38] Speaker B: like a very spiritually mature question to ask. Right? I mean, truly, I think it is so much easier, it's human nature to go, no, I'm hurt, hurt because of you. And I want to point to you or to someone else, like, how does somebody even begin to like find that self awareness? [00:24:58] Speaker A: So I kind of joke that I have these like mind tricks that I play on myself. [00:25:05] Speaker B: On yourself? [00:25:06] Speaker A: On myself. Yeah, well, and it's kind of a joke because I really believe them. But at first they can sound like you're just trying to talk yourself into it. But like, the example that I give with this is I think when we can come to genuinely believe, regardless of who is responsible, I'm going to be in a Better place if I understand why this hurt me so bad so that I don't get hurt next time, that is going to actually take me to a better place than figuring out who's responsible in my marriage all the time. Sharon and I could get into an argument about who is responsible all day long. But until I'm willing to do the work in me and say, this is what was hurtful, this is what was painful, or this is a part of me that was. That was triggered every time we find ourselves in a similar situation, we're going to be right back in that place of frustration with one another and anger. I'll give you a really good example. Maybe this is the laundry conversation. I don't know. But the example that I like to give is at one point in our relationship, I found myself getting really frustrated with how much Sharon was on social media and online and on her computer. And we'd be sitting there watching a movie or TV show, and she's on her computer, and I'm like, can. Can we just, like, just be together, just the two of us? You know, can we be present to one another? And the whole time I'm thinking, she's addicted, man. Like, this is. She's got a problem. I need to talk to her about this. And so at some point, I brought it up, and as you can imagine, that conversation didn't go great. [00:26:37] Speaker B: Well, she's a Christian influencer, as you said. [00:26:39] Speaker A: Well, yeah, I mean, she's got a job to do. But as I began to do the work of saying, okay, what actually in me hurt, like, what in me made this difficult? And it was. It was really hard to say this out loud the first time, like, and it still feels vulnerable to say, but really what it was is I wanted more of her undivided attention. [00:27:01] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:27:02] Speaker A: Yeah. And, yeah, maybe she could give that. But until I can say that calmly and name that versus making accusations, we're never going to get out of that cycle. And so that's what I mean by kind of getting to that what in me was hurt so that we can actually have that productive conversation towards healing. [00:27:21] Speaker B: Well, I think it's the question too, of, do you actually want to find healing, or are you somewhat comfortable in sitting in your hurt? We have to really ask that honest question first. Like, are we really trying to go forward, or is this what we just want to live for right now? [00:27:38] Speaker A: Well, and I think some of us don't even know. I mean, that's. That's how we've coped. Right. And that's just kind of how we've gotten through. You know, I talk about in good baggage, how there are some of us who are given to internalization, meaning when there's problems, pain in our life, we go into, what can I do better? What can I do different? What can I fix myself? And then there's others of us that more naturally externalize. This is everybody else's fault. And once they fix their junk, I'll be okay. [00:28:02] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:28:02] Speaker A: And the goal is not to figure out which one is right, but for us to find out how do I externalize in the right situations and internalize in the right situations. But for many of us who have always externalized, it's hard for us to say, I don't know what you're talking about. I'm trying to avoid healing. This is everybody else is the problem. [00:28:21] Speaker B: Right. It's never me. [00:28:23] Speaker A: That's right. [00:28:24] Speaker B: I am the common denominator, but it's never me. Well, you. Thank you for sharing that example. You were also really honest in your book about some trauma that you needed to heal from. So will you walk us through just a little bit of that part of your life? [00:28:41] Speaker A: Yeah. So this was early in the pandemic and kind of going through the journey of just navigating the challenges of being a pastor during that time. The number of decisions that just had to be made was they talked about decision fatigue during that time, about, you know, whether. Do you gather in person? Do you gather in person? Outside, inside? Do you do the radio thing into the cars? Do you wear masks? Do you not wear masks? All of those decisions then, you know, with the racial division in our country, the political division in our country, navigating that time was just as, you know, extremely, like, a lot overwhelming. And so during that time, I began to take some anxiety medication to kind of help just navigate that season, which I firmly encourage. I think it's really important to seek out that. But I began to misuse that medication. And a major part of it was because I found myself in a place where I had pain that was too difficult to name out loud, that I didn't want to even admit to myself. And that in particular was the fact that we were at home 247 with our kids. Sharon and I were splitting our days in half, so we kind of were managing the exact same thing. But I felt like those afternoons with my kids, I just was like, I don't know how to get through. Like, I'm going crazy. I've got to figure out a plan. If I don't have A plan they entertain themselves by picking at each other. And I'm like, I can't keep going through this. But I can't tell Sharon that because she's managing it fine. And so in my mind, I'm starting to wonder, like, am I just a bad dad? And it was easier to misuse my medication than it was to be honest and say, is that really what's going on? And so I shared that for a couple of reasons. One, I wanted to share that really healing can only begin when we're honest with ourselves about our pain. My father had an alcohol use disorder and could be very difficult and harsh with us. And I found myself doing many of the same things. And it was painful, but until I could acknowledge to Sharon and say, hey, a part of this is, I'm afraid I'm becoming my dad, that was the moment where she could actually say to me, you are not your dad. And it could actually begin to heal. And so one of the things I talk about in the book is how our healing journeys take a similar path, and they actually follow the path that Jesus took to bring our healing. We see in Philippians 2, where it talks about Jesus, you know, coming in the form of a servant. There's this dissension, there's this humbling that takes place that ultimately results in the ultimate humility of submitting himself to death, the ultimate humiliation naked on a cross. But that was necessary. That was the surgery. That was the painful thing that had to happen in order for us to begin to experience healing. And the same thing is true in our stories. Until we are willing to go to that place of utter vulnerability, ultimate humility even. It feels like humiliation. We're not going to begin on the upward swing of Christ's resurrection and the glory glorification that he experienced. We don't begin to feel the coming out of that in the healing on the other side. We stay stuck on this side in our pride or in our fear. And so we have to take that journey down into sort of the bottom of that in order to come out to healing on the other side. [00:32:17] Speaker B: What did that practically look like for you, Ike? Because I can't imagine that it was just like, hey, you have one conversation with Sharon. She's like, no, you're not your dad. And then you were like, great, I'll [00:32:25] Speaker A: definitely better, you know, so it meant, I'll give you the moment that a lot of this very, very much came clear to me. I was having a conversation with Sharon and our marriage counselor, and we're in this Conversation. And we're talking about some of the things that Sharon had experienced where I was secretive with my medication or things I didn't tell her about. And my counselor very gently says to me, that is addictive behavior. And in my mind, in my heart, I wanted to say, no, no, no. I got this under control. [00:33:06] Speaker B: Right. [00:33:06] Speaker A: This is totally. I. This is not addictive behavior. But the. It could have only been the spirit of God. Like, there is nothing else that could have given me this. But in that moment, I had the thought, who do you think's thinking more clearly about this right now? Your counselor or you? And obviously, my counselor was thinking more clearly about this. And so that moment of being able to acknowledge, okay, they're thinking more clearly about this. I have to be honest about that. Those are the kinds of moments where, yes, it is ultimate humiliation of accepting I don't have control over this. I do need help. Those are humiliating moments. But they are the necessary moments in order for that healing to begin. [00:33:50] Speaker B: Okay, well, I. I want to go back to. And again, I know we've already talked about, like, there's not always an answer. Yeah, right. [00:33:58] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:33:59] Speaker B: But I'm just thinking about the person that's listening, and they're going, okay, like, my wounding is because of, you know, someone else's choices, or it's unexplainable, or it's an illness. It's not something that I can actually solve or. [00:34:11] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:34:12] Speaker B: Or fix. [00:34:13] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:34:14] Speaker B: So how is finding healing in Jesus different from just telling someone to, like, pray more or have stronger faith? [00:34:23] Speaker A: Yeah. You know, it's interesting. This kind of goes back to the two sides of the wall. [00:34:30] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:34:31] Speaker A: In the sense that the. The praying more, the believing are still a part of it. But in my mind, it's not pray more. It's. You're going to have to learn to pray differently. [00:34:45] Speaker B: Okay. [00:34:46] Speaker A: Because I think a lot of times when we talk about prayer, what we're talking about is talking at God. Like, I need to go. You need to talk at God more. And when we hit the wall, suddenly, it's like, I don't have the words to say. I don't even know what to say. And so prayer looks much more like sitting in silence in God's presence. Belief doesn't mean, like, let me remind myself all of the reasons I believe this. It means trusting that even though I'm in the wilderness, I'm not here alone. Trusting that even if God brought me to this wall or God didn't bring me to this wall, that he hasn't Left me here by myself. And so I think that prayer, I think faith is still a part of it, but it's. It looks different. And that is something that we have to get okay with. That's a part of our journey, is learning. Prayer looks different, and that doesn't mean it's wrong. Yeah. [00:35:39] Speaker B: Do you think too, it's maybe adjusting what our definition of healing? [00:35:45] Speaker A: Absolutely is. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I. I think that goes back to the, like, healing as a journey. This is a part of, like. So some of the chapters in my book, the way that I lay it out, especially from the time of Christ, like the Incarnation. Let's talk about the. The Incarnation is the salve of Christ. I talk about the crucifixion as the surgical removal of sin. I talk about resurrection as the medicine of immortality. But then I separate and I say, there's that, but then there's sort of the resuscitation to new life that we experience where kind of new life is breathed into us again. But even that is separate from the rehabilitation that must take place in Christ. Right. Like you go in for a surgery on your knee and yeah, that's. That fixes the problem, but you still have to go through rehabilitation. [00:36:34] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:36:35] Speaker A: And that can be true for our spiritual lives as well, where there can be kind of a removal of the cause of the wound. But that doesn't mean there isn't going to be a journey out of it and recognizing, hey, that. That. That the fact that this is taking a while doesn't mean it's happening wrong. This is just how some of these things happen. Yeah. [00:36:55] Speaker B: Well, and I wonder even too, if, you know, because I'm thinking like, physical healing. I mean, even relational healing sometimes is not possible anymore on the side of heaven. [00:37:05] Speaker A: Yes. [00:37:05] Speaker B: You know. [00:37:06] Speaker A: Yep. [00:37:06] Speaker B: So I just. I wonder if we just have to get away from healing as being like a solution. [00:37:11] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:37:12] Speaker B: Or something that we. That we hope for, that we want. And I just. I wonder if we can begin to see healing even in just the way that we understand God. Maybe, like, if it's. If it heals the bitterness or cynicism of our situation. [00:37:26] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:37:27] Speaker B: Even if the situation is still present, like, if that can be a different kind of healing that maybe people haven't considered. [00:37:32] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, and I think that there's. The degree of what we're talking about here is not. I've reached the goal of complete healing this side of, you know, Christ's return, but more in the sense of, as with our physical health, it's always better to be Heading towards increasing health than not. Yeah. And so viewing it as that kind of journey, much less than just a destination that eventually we arrive at. Because you're right, there are certain things that we don't have the opportunity to heal, Whether because the other party involved is not willing to engage in the process, or they've passed away or whatever it may be, there's still work that God can do in us to help us. Yeah. [00:38:15] Speaker B: Ike, you and I are similar personalities. We're both the best. Enneagram number. Enneagram three. Okay. [00:38:22] Speaker A: Yes. [00:38:23] Speaker B: I think this is why we're friends. [00:38:25] Speaker A: That's right. [00:38:26] Speaker B: So what this means is we're high achievers. Right. We also want to be authentic. We are also prone to shame. [00:38:31] Speaker A: Yes. [00:38:32] Speaker B: And so I am very curious because you're. It seems to be very easy for you to talk about these very hard, you know, moments. But I'm curious, post healing, if you've struggled at all with, like, shame or. Or how that season maybe affected Sharon or your kids. [00:38:51] Speaker A: Absolutely. I mean, that's very. I mean. I mean, this. That is a very perceptive question. [00:38:57] Speaker B: It's because I. I would understand. [00:38:59] Speaker A: You're like, I am in touch with this. [00:39:01] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:39:02] Speaker A: So, you know, one of the. The biggest thing that was hurt in my And Sharon's relationship during that time was her trust in me. The sense that, like, she never had to check up on me. She never had to wonder, like, where am I? Have I stopped by a gas station and gotten something? Like, what is it? You know? And although our relationship has experienced tremendous healing in that, and I've done. Tried to do a lot of things to catalyze that, there are still moments where there's something that I'll do that triggers that response for her, and she feels that. And that shame piece of me wants to quickly be like, what can we move past this? Like, why do we have to talk about this? Like, I fixed this. We're good, you know? Yeah. Like, we're fine. Stop. You know, but then you're, like, blaming the victim, you know, for, like, having some trauma response when it's like, well, if you hadn't done it, you know? But, yeah. So I think that's the place where I experienced that the most, is there's the part of me that I think image management, the. Like, I want to be seen as a man of integrity. Those moments are really painful to acknowledge. Like, yeah, I under. It's legitimate that you feel that way, and it's. It's painful to acknowledge that, but I can't discredit that. So, yeah, okay. [00:40:26] Speaker B: See, when I. When I wrote this, I was thinking, like, oh, I. I was thinking, I think I would struggle with like the self forgiveness. I think I would get back in the shame spiral of I can't believe I did this and the pain that I caused and whatever. But then you bring up the image. What did you say? [00:40:42] Speaker A: Image management. [00:40:43] Speaker B: Image management. And I'm like, oh, ouch. [00:40:45] Speaker A: Dang it. [00:40:45] Speaker B: Yes. Actually, that makes a lot of sense too. See, I don't even think I would have recognized that. I think that's a place where I would just get defensive and be like, no. What? [00:40:56] Speaker A: No, I mean, that happens too. That happens too. Don't get me wrong. I am very much like it has been. It's a joke between me and Sharon now. [00:41:04] Speaker B: Okay. [00:41:04] Speaker A: Where like, she'll say something like, you know, hey, why didn't you take out the trash? And my response, I will joke now because it actually lightens thing. I'll be like, I get it, Sharon. I'm the worst husband in the world. Okay. You know, because it actually lightens the mood versus me going to this dark, brooding place of like, she thinks I'm terrible husband. [00:41:24] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:41:24] Speaker A: You know, so, yeah, I love that [00:41:27] Speaker B: you guys have figured out your. Your own way forward. [00:41:29] Speaker A: Yes. It's a journey. [00:41:32] Speaker B: It's a journey. Mike, as a pastor, what do you think that faith leaders are missing or what do you wish they knew about how trauma, you know, shapes the people in their churches? [00:41:42] Speaker A: Yeah. I think one of the things that comes to mind, and I think it was Bessel Vander Cook that put that said this in his book, the Body Keeps the Score. But he made the comment in there that our trauma doesn't have a sense of time. And I know he says it better than that, but his. What he's essentially saying is with our trauma, it is always immediate to us. It's not as though that happened 30 years ago. And so it's vague. Our response is as if it happened yesterday in many ways. And so what can happen, especially for us as pastors, as faith leaders, is people can come into our congregations and they come and there's an earnest desire to be involved and to just jump in. And we love that. But at some point we do something, and it may not have been even wrong that we did as a pastor, but there is. It connects with a painful moment in their story. And because we're not aware of the ways that trauma plays out, we end up blaming them rather than being able to see, like, there's a bigger picture here that I need to be able to take into account. And that's good for me as a pastor. Yeah. To not take it as personally, but it also allows me to have grace for this person versus just saying, they're a dirty rotten sinner. Why can't they figure this out? You know? And so I think that's an important piece of it is. Is understanding some of the ways that trauma impacts us. I think another thing that I would say is being willing to acknowledge as a pastor that we are not experts on trauma. [00:43:29] Speaker B: Yeah. Amen. [00:43:30] Speaker A: And therefore, being able to acknowledge this is going to look different for some of us. And that's an important thing to. To acknowledge, especially in our preaching. I think there can be this. This inclination towards definitive statements. [00:43:47] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:43:47] Speaker A: And I think if we can kind of pull back on that and say, this doesn't happen this way for everybody, but my story or, you know, this person's story, it makes it feel less shaming to people who maybe hear that and think, well, that didn't happen for me or it didn't work out that way for me. [00:44:04] Speaker B: Right. [00:44:05] Speaker A: So I think just having that ability to acknowledge it's gonna look different for all of us. [00:44:10] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, I think, too. I love. This is the second time that you've brought up intentionally crafting your sermons, which I love. I think not only does it kind of like remove shame from certain people, but it also then invites other people into the conversation. Because when we make definitive statements and we're like, you know, here's a formula, or here's whatever, anybody outside of that goes, oh, well, this doesn't apply to me. And it's like, well, no, it can. Like, we need to be able to. [00:44:35] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:44:36] Speaker B: Think about all the different people that are. You know, we don't want to just talk to the people who are experiencing trauma. We want to talk to the people in our congregation who maybe are accidentally, like, inflicting it on people. [00:44:48] Speaker A: Exactly. [00:44:49] Speaker B: Without realizing it. [00:44:50] Speaker A: Absolutely. Yeah. And we have to be able to speak to that, too. Yeah. With compassion. Because I think depending on, you know, the specific type of that. But, you know, I know alcoholism, for example, is one of those. Where I have walked through that with couples, and on the one hand, like, I want to be able to express compassion for the person who is wrestling with that disorder, but at the same time, there have to be moments where I can say, you have to deal with this. [00:45:24] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [00:45:25] Speaker A: That. That there is nothing that they have done that justifies this decision. And so walking that line of, like, I can have compassion. Because that was one of the things that was great as I became an adult, was coming to understand the complexity of my own dad's story. I thought for as a long time as a kid, my dad was just choosing alcohol over me. Yeah. And coming to understand. No, he had his own pain, his own things that he was dealing with. I think being able to engage those with compassion, but also a Holy Spirit firmness in the right moments is really important. [00:45:59] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, you end the book, Ike, with eschatology, kind of like the healing of all creation. [00:46:07] Speaker A: Yes. [00:46:07] Speaker B: And if I'm being honest, I do think that it's like this broad healing of the world that. That people struggle to believe in even more than like an individual healing. [00:46:17] Speaker A: Right. Yeah. [00:46:19] Speaker B: So do you have any hope that we can find healing, like as a nation, as a world, as supposedly one body of Christ, like before Jesus comes back at the end to reconcile it [00:46:31] Speaker A: all, you know, so another way of talking about sort of the healing of all creation is the arrival of the kingdom of God. [00:46:37] Speaker B: Okay. [00:46:38] Speaker A: I think that those are. That's a fulfillment of the kingdom of God. I think of that as one in the same. And one of the things that Jesus said about the kingdom of God is the kingdom of God is within you. And what I take from that is it begins in us, not that it is completely realized in us. And so my take on it is there is the seed of the kingdom in me that I have a responsibility to water and to nourish and to help it grow, just like the mustard seed that goes into the biggest bush. But right now you're like, it's a tiny seed that there is that responsibility in us to do that. Now I do think at the same time, there is no way for it to be fulfilled apart from Christ coming and fulfilling it, coming and bringing that ultimate healing. And there's a couple reasons for that. One of those reasons is just the reality that all of us as humans only see part of the picture. [00:47:45] Speaker B: Right. [00:47:45] Speaker A: None of us see it in whole. And so I don't even think the solution is we all agree on everything, because I don't think that's possible. What happens, though, is our brokenness, our sin, our fears creep in to how we then turn against one another. And that fractures and makes the. The growth of the kingdom more difficult. And so I think that. That we have a responsibility to work in that direction with the hope of it ultimately being fulfilled, but also knowing where we are in the story. Yeah, we are not to the conclusion of the story yet. [00:48:25] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:48:25] Speaker A: And that's okay. [00:48:27] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:48:28] Speaker A: As hard as that is to acknowledge, as much as we want it to not be true, that is the case. [00:48:33] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, like, that transitions very well into my last question for you, which is because the podcast is called Becoming Church, how can the people listening become the church? How can we bring that kingdom of heaven down, you know, for people around them? [00:48:47] Speaker A: So, in typical me fashion, I would say this is not the, like, everybody has to do this thing. But I will say what this has looked like for me. [00:48:55] Speaker B: Okay. [00:48:56] Speaker A: You know, I really wrestled during kind of 2020, 2021 with, like, if I have certain convictions, I need to post about them, I need to put them out there, I need to communicate them. And there are a couple things that happened. One, that's not my gift. Like, I am not gifted in that way. I'm also not someone that's like, I just want to jump into the fray, make everybody, you know, and start something up. What is my inclination is I want to work not on how do we come to an agreement, but how do we work together in spite of our disagreements? And so, as we've experienced the political division in our world over the last decade, but especially the last couple of years, I was trying to wrestle with what is my role in this and trying to stay away from both. Like, not just doing the same thing that the other side is doing, but, you know, I'm doing it on the right side of it, you know, kind of thing. What I've really leaned into was, I think, for example, I came to the conclusion at our church that people won't feel at home in our church unless they feel heard at our church. Now, that doesn't mean we have to agree. That doesn't mean I have to affirm all of your ideas, but if I can't even create the space to hear you, it's going to be really hard for us to be the church. And so we, a few months ago, started something that I call complicated conversations. And it is a slow discipleship process where I am trying and learning as we go how to disciple people into good listeners. [00:50:45] Speaker B: I love it. [00:50:46] Speaker A: James one talks about, you know, be slow to anger, be slow to speak, slow to anger. And he even goes, this is the thing that's so convicting. He's like, because human anger does not bring about God's righteousness. [00:51:00] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:51:01] Speaker A: And we're like, but I think it kind of does. And so we've got to learn to listen. And so essentially, what we did first week we got together, and I just invited people to Share their pain. And I said, you can't respond to each other. You cannot respond. Instead, what we're going to do is we're going to have a passage of scripture that when somebody shares, our response is, we're going to read this passage together. And we did it over and over again. Once. I felt like, okay, I think we're in a place where we can move to the next step. It was, okay, we're going to learn how to reflect back to them what we're hearing so somebody would share their pain. And the only way that you could respond, which was in a response, is to say in their voice, in their own spirit, with their own emotion, here's what I'm hearing from you. Here's your pain. This is what I'm understanding. Once I felt like we were getting that, then we moved to a place of, okay, now we're going to learn how to ask curious questions. Not interrogative questions, not like the question that's working to tear apart your argument, but curious questions, because we genuinely want to understand one another. And so then moving to that place of, hey, this is what I'm hearing. Tell me more about why that relationship with your parents is so much more difficult now that you're, you know, feel so divided, you know, and. And we still haven't gotten to the point where we're responding to each other, and we've been into this months, and it's because we don't know how to listen to each other. [00:52:28] Speaker B: So, anyway, same group of people this whole time. [00:52:30] Speaker A: Same group of people this whole time. And so I think becoming the church means doing some of that hard work that the rest of the world really doesn't want to do. [00:52:37] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. [00:52:38] Speaker A: And that's our opportunity to be different. [00:52:41] Speaker B: Oh, I love that. Like, that's so good. All right, friends, well, make sure that you grab good baggage back here on my shelf, as well as Theology that heals. Ike, thank you so much. [00:52:52] Speaker A: Absolutely. Thanks for having me. [00:52:55] Speaker B: Be sure to grab Ike's books, Good Baggage and Theology that Heals from the Becoming Church Resource list. And if you're looking for a resource that will help you let go of needing all the right answers. Answers, or that helps you move forward when your paradigm for religion no longer works, I'd love to help you navigate your faith journey. In my book, the Other side of how to Follow Jesus, When Easy answers no Longer work, remember to pop over to Substack to hear Ike and I talk more about what pastors should do and not do with people experiencing spiritual wounding. Until next time. Thanks for listening and keep becoming the church of the people around you.