Becoming Whole
Relationships and sexuality are areas of life that can be beautiful or confusing, life-giving, or painful. Becoming Whole is a conversational podcast for men, women, and families seeking to draw nearer to Jesus as they navigate topics like sexual integrity, relational healing, spiritual health, and so much more.
Becoming Whole
How Jesus’ Embodied Life Confronts Gender Ideology, AI Temptations, And The Epidemic Of Loneliness
Start with a simple claim that changes everything: your body is not an accessory to your soul; it’s where God meets you. We explore how the incarnation—God with us in a body—reframes three charged realities shaping our lives right now: transgender ideology, AI’s growing role in sexual temptation, and a culture-wide surge of loneliness.
If this conversation helps you rethink identity, desire, or connection, share it with a friend, subscribe for more, and leave a review with one practice you’ll try this week. If you have any follow-up questions, we would love to hear them.
Resources from this episode:
- Rise & Triumph of the Modern Self by Carl Truman
- Love Thy Body by Nancy Pearcy
- Psychology Today article
- Unwanted by Jay Stringer
Free Resources to help you on your journey to Becoming Whole:
- Email us questions! info@regenerationministries.org
👉Men's Overcoming Lust & Temptation Devotional
👉Women 21-Day Prayer Journal & Devotional - (Women overcoming unwanted sexual Behavior)
👉Compass 21-Day Prayer Journal & Devotional - (Wives who are or have been impacted by partner betrayal)
Hey, everybody. One of the things that we love to do, I love to do this time of year, uh, in addition to whatever the holiday things out there are, but on this podcast, we love to kind of circle around the topic of the incarnation. You may have noticed that. Uh, and if you haven't, you will notice it. Because what we do here at Regeneration, focus on wholeness, especially sexual wholeness, has everything to do with the incarnation. We actually believe that on an in on a deep level, you can't be sexually whole without the incarnation of Jesus. And so today I've invited James Craig and Aaron Taggart, who are stellar coaches here at Regeneration, to join me for a conversation around things that they've noticed or run across in their coaching here at Regen. And we're gonna talk about some like tough topics they're experiencing and how the incarnation speaks to those things, how the incarnation brings those together and actually offers us hope. And I brought my own tough topic. So we'll handle those one at a time. But before we get into that, guys, welcome. One of the ways I start coaching sessions often is by asking the guys that I'm sitting down with to uh to tell me how they're how they're showing up, how they're coming, like what's going on for them. So before we get into the topic, I'd love just to hear how you guys come in today. What's going on for you? James, could you start us?
SPEAKER_01:Josh, I feel tired after all the Friendsgiving apple pie last night. Uh gives you a little context of when we're recording actually before Thanksgiving, but feeling some tiredness in my body incarnationally, but also feeling some of the caffeine kicking in. And I feel a lot of excitement about these topics. So I'm excited to see how the incarnation uh meets us here.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. And just by the way, I love how dialed in you are to your body and the emotions connected to it. I think most men I know in that regard. Good model.
SPEAKER_01:I kind of wish I didn't have to, to be honest, but it's proved to be helpful.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, fair enough.
SPEAKER_00:Hey, Aaron, how are you coming? Yeah, likewise. Um a little on the tired side. Spent a lot of time this weekend uh working on some house projects and was up until about 11 last night doing some painting. So here we go. And but I drink a lot more caffeine than James. And uh we all do. And I could probably use some more, but yeah, very excited and energized by what we're gonna be diving into today. So I'm finding that already like very helpful.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. I'm likewise coming tired and uh I mean maybe it just is a part of doing a podcast on Monday morning. Maybe we need to rethink that strategy since we're all coming a little bit beleaguered. And I've also got some kind of cold. You could probably hear it in my head a little bit, which makes my head feel a little hot foggier than usual. And likewise, I'm kind of eager to get this topic, a little nervous too, because I think that there's something about the incarnation. I just mentioned this briefly before we started recording, how profound it is. And it is in many ways beyond comprehension. And yet it is central to Christianity and it is central to our faith and it's central to our ministry. So a little bit of maybe anxiety, like, oh, I hope we can do at least a little bit of justice to the power of the incarnation as it really speaks to and has a level of pastoral efficacy in addressing some of the problems we experience. So if you're listening, you're going, like, I don't even know what they're talking about yet. That's cool. Just hang hang on, just hang with us and you'll see. But before we get into some of the nitty-gritty, let's just do a quick flyover. James, Aaron, what's the topic? What's the pastoral, the cultural topic that you're bringing to bear today that we're gonna dig into?
SPEAKER_01:I I decided to go an easy route. So I chose uh the topic of transgenderism, which is a yep, not an easy topic, honestly. But uh, we're gonna be talking about how the incarnation, uh, how Jesus' physical coming to earth interacts with the way we view our body, including our sex, our gender. Whether or not we use those terms in uh the way everyone else in our culture does, we'll see. But yeah, how Jesus incarnation interacts with transgenderism.
SPEAKER_02:Good. I'll get to get into that. Fantastic.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I chose AI, and that is not Aaron's intelligence, that's artificial intelligence. Thanks for clarifying that. I don't know that, yeah. I'm glad you clarified. It's a big thing, but I chose this because honestly, it's starting to show up more and more in some of my coaching, and I think just it's everywhere in culture. You know, there's some really good things that AI can do, but then man, there are some really sort of deep dark corners of AI, and those are really picking up. And to me, that artificial intelligence is a total disembodied experience as we're talking about the incarnation and the embodiment. You know, uh AI really lends itself to just total disembodied.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. And we'll dig further there. I went the same kind of highfalutin route that you guys did, a very difficult, complex, academic, ideological issue of loneliness. So it's gonna maybe feel like a hard right, although I do think that there's some connections even between the three. So I asked each of these guys, listeners, to think about a topic that we could get into the incarnation, but really something that we're encountering in some ways, that we're rubbing up against when it comes to the work that we do here at regeneration. We want to help men, women, and families to learn and live God's design for sexuality. So we're gonna get into how each of these plays into our ministry in the area of sexuality. As you're listening, whether or not you recognize a gender ideology, AI, or loneliness as a specific issue for you, keep listening because I think that some of what you'll glean from these topics, whether these are right on the top of your mind today or not, I think you'll find some value. So run through them then. James, talk to me a little bit about how you run into this pastorally, and then we'll switch gears and get into the incarnation with it.
SPEAKER_01:So yeah, I just I want to start by asking our listeners whether you're struggling with unwanted sexual behavior, spouse who's experienced betrayal, or even a parent trying to figure out a parent through the sexual topics with children, whether young or teenage children. What do you think of the role of your body in any of those categories, especially those who are struggling with sexual brokenness? The reason I ask you to think about that is because Satan hates your body. Satan hates your body as a pure spiritual being. The main two types of sin that are accessible to Satan are pride and envy. Satan is your body, Satan is the place that humankind got to rule and reign over God's creation from an embodied place. From scripture, we can ascertain that Satan had that kind of pride-envy thing going on where he wanted to be the top dog in the universe. And so for God, who is actually in charge of everything, to then create humans, these embodied spiritual and physical creatures, angel Christopher West jokingly calls us both spiritual and physical. Satan resents that we then are given this place of authority and power in the world. And so when it comes to the topic of transgenderism, I think it's really important to recognize that your body, my body, our bodies are key parts, our physical bodies are key parts of our identity. Josh, you can bring me in. I've got a few philosophical concepts. I don't know. Um, my wife was asking me to explain some to her the other day. She's like, explain something to a sixth grade level. I start talking, and within like a few sentences, she's like, This is not a sixth grade level. That might be why philosophy is not offered to sixth graders.
SPEAKER_02:But Well, let me press pause for just a second. Yeah. Listeners, like, one of the reasons I think it's important to press in here beyond a sixth grade level is because whether we're aware of it or not, there's been some deep philosophical ideas that have kind of saturated the ground of our cultural imagination, our cultural idea of what reality is. And those ideas that are beyond a sixth grade level have taken root to such a degree that it's very difficult for us to even kind of untwist some of the roots of it uh for us. And uh, I mean, one book we'd recommend if you want to dig into that a little bit is uh, what's it called? I'll find out. Love my body by Nancy Pearce. Um that's a great one too, for sure. Uh I lost it. It's on my bookshelf somewhere. Okay. Uh oh, The Rise in Tribe for the Modern Self.
SPEAKER_01:That was gonna be my second guess, but I didn't want to make two guesses.
SPEAKER_02:Rise in Tribe for the Modern Self by Carl Truman. And he really begins by asking that question like how how have we gotten to a place where where we believe what we believe around transgenderism? And uh so James, before I hand it back over to you, we do want to just say one other thing. If you personally are wrestling with gender dysphoria, or if you personally have has embraced a transgender identity and believes that they are the opposite gender, we we want we definitely want you to hear that our aim in discussing this is in no way to knock down your son or daughter or to take a swing at you. The reason to unpack and the reason to bring truth into this topic is out of concern. As James said, that if your body is a key, fundamental, immutable part of who you in fact are, then transgenderism is a threat to who you are. Gender ideology is a threat to who you are. So uh we really want to share this with a heart of compassion. But anyway, so James, yeah, dig us in a little bit to the the some of the philosophy.
SPEAKER_01:I I actually really do wish I had like that C. S. Lewis intelligence where I could make these types of concepts actually, you know, sixth grade level. But basically, there are three major ideas of what is real. There's Plato's idea, Platonic realism. On the other side of the horseshoe, if you will, there's nominalism, just what is true in name is what's true. And then kind of in the middle is what you might call, there's probably a better name for this that I'm missing, but Aristotle's idea of realism. Just a really brief sketch that might have actually led some of you guys to stop listening, but just listen to this. Plato basically said that our ideas, that idea is that the spiritual part of us is what's most real. And there's actually disdain for the body for Plato. There's disdain for what is physically real. And you got to give him a little bit of credit. I mean, we suffer, we feel pain and suffering in our body. So it's not that surprising that a great abstract thinker like Plato was like, hey, what's really real is kind of this like heavenly spiritual body, right? And if you're a Christian, you might be like, wait, isn't that what Christianity is? That's actually not what Christianity teaches, and we'll get to that in just a little bit. But it's deeply influenced a lot of cultural Christianity, if you will. On the other side is nominalism. This was a guy, William of Ockham, about I think five to eight hundred years ago, somewhere in that range. And he basically taught that there's nothing really real, it's all just names. So, what makes an elephant an elephant? It's just because we call it an elephant. What makes a woman? Well, it's just subjectively kind of what we call a woman. Both of these are errors, kind of on two sides. I said like a horseshoe, they kind of get toward the same outcomes, they create some of the same issues. That's why I'm saying, imagine like a horseshoe. They're almost like opposite sides, but they're kind of near each other on the horseshoe. In the middle is what Aquinas really picked up. He's one of the greatest Christian thinkers, which is that Aristotle's concept that there is true reality, but we see it, we learn it from the physical. And this is such a beautiful Christian idea. What is true about manhood? What is true about the body? What is true? We learn it from observing Jesus. We learn it from observing our physical body. So for Aristotle, what he was doing, he was saying, let's look at the physical world. And this is not a Christian, by the way, but you can actually see a lot of the kind of Christian incarnational ideas embedded here. You can look at the person of Jesus, you can look at his body, and you can say, that's what a true man is. That's what God is like. You can look at Jesus' physical body, the way he engages. It's not exactly what God is like, because God is a spirit, but gives us the clearest representation, the perfect representation, as it says in scripture, of what the Father is like. And so this idea is so powerful for the transgender struggles in our culture because our bodies actually speak to real parts of our identity. Our bodies are not just something that's going to be discarded when we die and we can be off in heaven spiritual forever. And our bodies are not just something that male or female, we just kind of named it that. And that's it's just because we call it that, like uh nominalism teaches. But actually, our bodies tell us something real and true about us, both physically and spiritually. I recently heard Josh, a guy, there's that whole thing, like, earth is not my home, you know, there's some sort of like silly quote about that. And the guy actually throws it on his head. He says, Heaven is not my home. I'm just traveling through. Because what the Bible teaches is not just a permanent disembodied heaven for all eternity. The Bible teaches a new heavens, a new earth with new redeemed bodies. So I know I just took it to like the hundred thousand-foot view because I actually want to get at like the underpinnings of what has led us to think hey, I can be a man trapped in a woman's body or vice versa. And I totally have incredible compassion and empathy for those who might be struggling with these things. But there's actually these deep hundreds, thousands of year old philosophical underpinnings that have really fundamentally different ideas of what's the role of the body, what's real. And I think that actually, from what we see in scripture, we learn what's real through God's word, obviously, but on a physical level, we learn what's real by looking at the body world.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, beautiful, beautiful. I think so. Let's kind of drill down a little bit into the pastoral implications and how the incarnation then helps us with that. I mean, the incarnation, you're making a um the Christian claim, you're clarifying the Christian claim, that Christ's incarnation, the word become flesh, actually speaks to us and gives us a clearer picture of who we in fact are. One way to riff off that a little bit, maybe this'll I'll I'll come down to at least middle school, if not younger in my own. But that our you could say if the body doesn't matter, if it really isn't substantive to who we are, if it really isn't who doesn't matter if it's, you know, we're gonna be discard these bodies one day anyway, then God would not have become human. The word would not have needed to become flesh. The fact that Jesus became flesh is actually a pretty clear indicator how much our bodies mean to God. And that Jesus walked the earth with us, that he healed people's bodies. If they don't matter, then healing their bodies wouldn't have mattered. And he went to the cross and suffered bodily. If he went to the cross, if our bodies didn't matter, you wouldn't have why would he have bothered that kind of excruciating pain? And then he rose from the dead bodily, ascended to heaven bodily, we'll return one day bodily. All these declare your body matters to God, your body matters to God, so much so that he became embodied for the sake of your body. Yeah, what would you add to that, James?
SPEAKER_01:Um Yeah, and so what the enemy is trying to do through our culture, and he's been doing this clearly for thousands of years. Plato was, I think, maybe 2,500 years ago. He was BC. So this has been happening probably even before Plato, but he's trying to get us to not see the value that God puts into our bodies. I love talking to clients, Josh, about and Aaron, I bet you've seen this too, where it's like, yeah, you know, I sleep two hours a night, you know, I eat a hot pocket every day as my one meal of the day. And I just have no idea why I'm so tired all the time, and I just keep giving into sexual sin while I'm so tired. It's like, hey, our bodies actually really matter. God actually has set limits. And I'm currently part of a more charismatic tradition that values the kind of unlimited power of God, which is beautiful because God is unlimited in his power, but we're limited, and that's actually a good thing. Part of what it means to be a creature is to have our limits. And so I know I'm not talking directly to the topic of transgenderism at this very moment, but for so many of us, we miss the fact that our bodies play a huge role in what it means to thrive as a believer. And so, as the enemy is able to, especially in our culture that's so digital, Aaron's gonna get into that more, as he's able to basically convince us what really matters is just kind of your thought life and your inner feelings. That teaches us that our bodies are of secondary importance. And so when you mix all these big philosophical ideas with cultural stereotypes, with what a real man is or what a real boy is, is someone who likes to play with G.I. Joe. What a real girl is is someone who likes to play with Barbie. Uh, believe it or not, neither of those things are in scripture. We tend to really believe those things as like, and I don't want to actually completely discount stereotypes. There's actually some nuance to like learning what it means to be part of the community of men, learning what it means to be part of the community of women. And there's always going to be things, culture to culture, that men and women do that are slightly different from each other. But if a boy reaches for a doll or gets into his mom's high heels, this does not mean anything about his identity. Josh, you have a great story. You might have even shared in a recent podcast of a boy who you knew who, or maybe this is from Awakened, but he got into his mom's heels, his dad kind of just laughs at it, and he jumps out and runs off. Like this wasn't like this permanent thing, versus a similar story that you had heard of that child being called names by his parents. That boy getting into his mom's high heels and being called harsh names. That kind of thing speaks an identity that misses the true identity that our bodies tell us we are. So even if a boy reaches for mom's high heels or the Barbie, that doesn't mean that he's actually a girl. What that means is maybe nothing. It might just be what silly thing that they're doing that given day. But for so many in our culture, the reason I'm pointing these things out is so many in our culture, the moment that happens as a five-year-old, depending on the parent's worldview, they're like, well, I guess my boy might actually be a girl. And that kind of thing can be cultivated. And so when we don't realize that that child's body's actually speaking to their identity as male or female, we can end up falling into some of those stereotypical beliefs that if they like what the opposite sex seems to enjoy, that might mean that they were yeah.
SPEAKER_02:I think one of the greatest pieces of advice that I've heard related to kind of shepherding a child when it comes to their own gender identity, having a solid physically based gender identity comes from Nancy Pearcy's book, Love Thy Body, where she says, Yeah, look, if you don't fit the stereotypes, then forget the stereotypes. But don't neglect your body, don't forget your body. Reject the stereotypes, don't reject your body, because your body is who you are. I think one of the ways to think about it is simply, and by the way, this would have implications for all of us. I don't know one man who hasn't in some way experienced a sense that he is less of a man than other men in some area, some area of his life. And I think part of what we can do, and part of what you're inviting us to, James, and maybe more specifically, part of what the incarnation and what traditional Christianity invites us to, is a solid sense of dignity and affirmation of the goodness of who we are, male and female, based simply on the fact that God has created us as a man, or God has created us as a woman, that we can actually bank. On that.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And so what makes you a man is not the men in your culture pointing out specific characteristics of you and saying, well, that means you're more or less manly, or what makes you a woman, not what the culture says makes you more or less womanly, but the fact that you're created as a man or woman, that your body is male or female. And so what kind of man are you? Well, we at least begin there that you are a man and what kind of man you are and how you image God in your body and through your life is going to vary man to man, woman to woman.
SPEAKER_01:Josh, I just feel really compelled to speak directly to artists. I mean, so many men in our culture are taught that sports are what men do and arts are what women do. And I have no idea how that possibly came about because I have in front of me a little image of Michelangelo's uh you guys can see it. And if you're watching on YouTube, you can see it. It's the hand of God reaching out for Adam's hand, the strong hand of God reaching out for Adam's limp hand to bring power into Adam's body. This is from the Sistine Chapel ceiling painted by Michelangelo. I just think, imagine if Michelangelo thought only really women are into art. Were there sports back then, guys? I have no idea. In Renaissance, at least maybe there probably were, but imagine if he was like, well, real men play soccer or whatever the precursor to soccer was 500 years ago, we wouldn't have the kind of art that we have. And so I don't know, I just feel like that's just one small example of someone who is a deeper feeler, someone who expressed themselves through poetry or painting or whatever. And I guess I'm speaking primarily to men right now, but that says nothing about your gender identity. Your body is what speaks to your true gender identity. Your physical body says you are a man, and your interest in art or emotions or whatever awareness in areas that other men don't seem to be aware says actually nothing about um your true identity.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Or it does, as expressed through being a man or being a woman. Way of saying you are a male artist. There you go. Or a female artist. I mean, I my wife is a great example. She's an incredible leader. And when things get difficult, something just clicks in her brain and she becomes more decisive and clearer. I've seen it happen, and it is amazing. I think she literally saved the life of our daughters when she was younger and they were caught in a riptide because she was just clear in that moment. And I've often thought, man, if it were me out there, I might have brought greater physical strength, but I would not have brought the kind of clarity and calm that she brought to that situation. What does that mean about my wife? It means that she is a strong leader woman, you know, in water roar. You know, so hey, we've got for time's sake, we got to move on. But I hope listeners, you hear some imitation to you. In what ways has the culture's view of manhood or womanhood kind of seeped into some of your own view of the value of you? And maybe it hasn't. Maybe you're like, yeah, I feel like I'm right in line with what a culture says is a good man or good woman. Uh, in what ways might God want to expand that or deepen that so that you you know yourself as the self-giving um image of God that you are in your manuscripts, or your maleness or femaleness. So but for time's sake, we got to get into AI a little bit. So thank you, James. Aaron, get us into AI a little bit. Like, where are you? Let me let me start with let me ask you a question. Where are you seeing this in your in your coaching?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I would say the two places that I'm seeing it in coaching, and then I'll expand a little bit more to some other places, but uh I'm seeing this uh where you know guys are in some ways replacing visual maybe pornography for what I would maybe call word pornography or erotic forms of that. So writing stories almost like writing out their fantasies, and then sometimes you know acting out to those, or more recently, even creating sort of tailor-made images. Um, and so you know, to me, there's like this element of you know, as I think about you know our our topic and tying this in, you know, to the incarnation. I mean, we we are designed for connection and community. And you know, I think where where you know someone might feel lonely, like where can they go to not feel lonely, or where what can they sort of create in their mind, or in this case through AI to maybe meet some of that. No, you're gonna get into you know that topic too, Josh, of loneliness. So I I see this connecting, uh at least in the clients, you know, that I've worked with, uh, you know, where they you know legitimately are lonely. Maybe they're going through, you know, a transition in life, you know, divorce, or are single, you know, or whatever it might be, but there's a sense of loneliness. And I know that happens in marriages too, like this sense of being lonely, just you know, missing each other, kind of ships passing in the night, or your schedules are so busy that there's just this sense of disconnection, loneliness, and it's leading to this increased world of AI and these sort of new ways of kind of tapping into that loneliness so that they don't feel lonely. Because it feels different, right? Well, it's it's not porn, it's words, it's different, but in coaching, I'm like you're replacing one thing for another at the heart of it, it's still this deeply sort of disembodied experience. You're taking this loneliness and what you're feeling, even mixed with some good desire and things like that that do exist in us, and just sort of misplacing that desire instead of having that conversation, maybe with the spouse, to name these things and to work on them together, they keep this in secret and do this sort of on the side. So instead of the connection, there's the separation of that.
SPEAKER_02:Aaron, what do you think? Um as you and James, you get into this too, but are you guys seeing an acceleration of people using AI as a part of their unwanted sexual behaviors, part of their compulsivity? I mean, Aaron, you mentioned some guys kind of turning to narrative, creating sexual narratives that are quote unquote tailor-made. Are you seeing that? Are you seeing this as more of it, more of it something than you used to? And James, are you seeing any of that in your coaching too?
SPEAKER_00:I'll say I see this in a couple clients. So, in a way, over the last six to eight months, two clients where before that and coaching for a few years, there wasn't anything like that. So I'm starting to see it and I'm aware of it. I'm seeing even just signs of it and accessibility in places. I think a big place is sort of just even these chat bots offering sort of this false person that you can have a conversation with. And a lot of AI girlfriends are exactly. I mean, these are even on Instagram, like you can select you know, this sort of persona and engage in conversation. Um, so it's just the accessibility is wild. And then they have, of course, like separate, more kind of intense and probably erotic type apps and things like that for this, but at a minimalist form, I mean, it this is starting to pop up in some of these main places, social media, etc. So um, I think with the availability uh and the way that shows up, I wouldn't be surprised if we do see more of that.
SPEAKER_01:I haven't seen it come up too much yet, but I've definitely heard of especially mixing things like VR and I mean that these are ways to basically intensify the whether it's through AI, VR, or combination of different things, it intensifies the chemical release, but it still doesn't give the um the peace chemicals that are meant to come through physical union with another person.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. And listeners, by the way, if you find yourself kind of going like, oh, well, that's interesting. We all know how sexual addiction works. Like a new idea can sometimes add another layer of temptation. So, guys, let's dig a little bit more into like why this is to be avoided at all costs. Aaron, you brought up the reality that if we're going to these things to try to medicate loneliness, it actually makes loneliness worse in the end. One of the other things I'd add is there's something inherently twisted backwards about the use of AI when it comes to seeking what ultimately is a search for intimacy, a search for connection. Because AI can learn what you are looking for and adapt, or you can instruct it, you know, yeah, great, but could you make it a little bit more like this, a little more like this? One of the things that you're doing is you're training yourself sexually and relationally to oh man, maybe help me out, guys. Like in some ways, you're like, you're almost like it's almost like an illusion.
SPEAKER_00:I don't know if that yeah, I'm thinking about go ahead.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, you're training yourself against a real person because like a real person doesn't give you everything you want all the time. At least that's not what a real marriage is meant to be.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I mean, there's some this so both of those together, like the AI is out there somewhere. So there is an illusion that somehow this is other than you. And yet, because it's tailor-made to you, you're really turning yourself inward upon yourself and learning to seek out what you feel you need, what you want in that moment, which is contrary to love. Real love, real relationships will never work that way. I remember maybe as a parallel example, like I remember at one point in my marriage having a thought back to the kind of woman I always imagined I'd marry. And I realized that from childhood, I'd had kind of this picture in my mind of the type of woman I would marry. And it's not my wife. It's not what she's like. And I remember having this moment years ago in my marriage of thinking, like, did I miss out on her? And then followed quickly by two sound thoughts. One was, she doesn't exist. She was a figment of your imagination. Like, she's not really out there. But also followed with, like, that's not what I want. What I want is my wife. I want someone who is other than me, not someone who's generated somehow from my own mind. And that's harder, admittedly, in some ways, but also a heck of a lot healthier and helps me to become more of the man I want to be. But anyway, what else would you guys think of and kind of caution listeners, like, hey, here's where the danger lies in this, here's where this is contrary to who God's designed you to be. Aaron, what else would you say about that?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, well, I mean, to your point there, you know, I think it trains the heart towards control rather than communion. You know, it gives you this element of, well, I can, you know, I can dictate this. And we don't control relationships. That's not a relationship. So I think if especially like when Jesus was walking the earth and they would do Shabbat, you know, they would break bread together. You know, there's this embodied element of being with others, and we know that people experience different things and we can't control how they feel, how they respond, how they react. And we're not in charge of their emotions and reactions. Like those are all our responsibilities. But through something like this, like AI, it's giving you the sense of like, I can control what I want, when I want it, I can control the relationship. And you know, so if we start to train our heart that in a relationship, I can control this. This person is to be controlled. It just totally goes against that communion element and being with and living out together and that sort of mutual self-giving instead of one-sided consumption.
SPEAKER_02:I never thought about that reality before, but communion in the relational sense, communion even in the sacrament sense, uh, I'd like to think that it's just all peachy keen, smooth sailing, but you bring different people together, and you will have glory and good and laughter and joy, and you will also have conflict and difficulty and misunderstanding and friction. And I don't think I'd put those together. AI is this tantalizing, like you don't need to have any of that. I mean, it's it's kind of some of the same stuff we've talked to men and women about for years around the issue of pornography, why pornography is problematic, but just on steroids because of the kind of the ready adaptations that can be introduced into it. Aaron, say something about we've done a lot of work, you and James both, around helping guys unpack, untwist their fantasies and recognizing ways that their fantasies are attempts to either repeat or reverse to borrow from Jay Stringer uh wounds and trauma in our life. How does AI, if people are taking their fantasies and kind of custom making them, how does AI gonna just tie people up further then in in what their fantasies are trying to give them but aren't? Does that make sense?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I think so. I mean, I think of you know that the you know that Jay talks about fantasies as being roadmaps. This isn't like, hey, here's a roadmap, like get in the car and now go to these places. It's more of and I think that's ultimately what AI can kind of do here. And so it's more of like, all right, let's step back here, let's draw into our story, let's pay attention. You're going to AI to create these stories. What's going on here? Let's step into that instead of yeah, it's like this isn't a treasure map, it's a roadmap because it alerts us to a reality and gets us to tap into what's going on inside of us. It's not something that we're literally supposed to follow out, right? So it's drawing guys back into, hey, listen, like you're right, this is in some ways no different than pornography. You were taking these sort of different desires and things that were going on and directing them here and finding something. Now you're in some ways kind of creating something, and so I think that's the difference in the power of AI is in some ways, you're taking those fantasies and sort of creating with that, you know. Whereas before you were just searching, now there's almost a little bit more ownership in that because now you have more of a say. So I don't know if that kind of gets to what you were saying there, Josh. But that's what comes up for me as I'm working with guys and helping them to be attuned to what's going on inside of them and doing some of that story work. And where do some of these things repeat or reverse some of these power dynamics? You're feeling super lonely. Man, I get that this feels like a place that you can go to forget that loneliness. But at the end of the day, this is not a healthy thing for our bodies, our minds, and satisfied.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, literature or or pornography is similar to non-AI versions, where like you actually are going in part because you believe you're worth the pain of the aftermath, which is so subtle. And we could probably unpack that for an entire podcast. If we actually think about the pain that happens every single time we give in, we can recognize I'm not here just for the pleasure or distraction or running away. I'm actually here to double down on I deserve this pain.
SPEAKER_02:Wow. And just to riff off that for a minute, James, the other piece of that that strikes me is that one of the messages of an AI girlfriend or AI narrative that you're tweaking and training is that there's no one else can really love me in ways that I need, and I'm not worthy of a real human person's love and attunement. Maybe it's not safe for me to have another person know the depths of me. And so I'm gonna just create a mirror that I can throw things at and have it come back at me the way I want. And that is really, really subtle. But the deep message under there is this pain of isolation, this loop that I'm creating is all that I'm worthy of, which is a deeply shameful message. We want better things for people. So, Aaron, we got to get into how does the incarnation speak into this? How is it pastorally relevant for men and women who are maybe drawn towards AI as a source of temporary comfort or thrill?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. I mean, looking at Jesus' life and his model of intimacy and non-sexual intimacy, but that being with and the relational components that we find there. I mean, he opened himself to just the vulnerability being rejected. It says he came to his own and his own rejected him. They did not receive him. And so Jesus knows rejection. You know, Jesus knows what that vulnerability is like, he knows that there needs to be mutuality for intimacy to take place, and so there can never be intimacy with a chatbot. There can never be intimacy with something that isn't embodied. And so I think you know, just looking and drawing on his life and the way he modeled relationship and that being with, yeah, I don't know. That's just kind of where I'm drawing.
SPEAKER_01:Aaron, there's this importance of intimacy and independence whenever you're trying to connect with someone, including Jesus. Like chatbots always what you want them to be. There's no independence, they're not a real entity, they're not persons, like to use the old Trinitarian language. Yeah, they're not persons. And so relationship with Jesus, the incarnation speaks to I'll be honest, guys. I mean, sometimes when reading scripture, I'm like, I don't know if I like the way you're responding, Jesus. But if it was AI, Jesus, it would be doing exactly what I want it to do. But if it's a real person, a real God, it makes sense to me, as Tim Keller would say, that he doesn't do exactly everything I think he should do. He's independent of me, and yet that independence actually makes intimacy real. Like when we actually are connecting, I'm connecting with a real person with real desires, his desires being perfect, mine not. But the friction, like you're saying, is what actually creates the growth and the sparks and the beauty. Wow.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it makes me think of that path, the psalm. Eternal pleasures are at your right hand. So the God of the universe, He became flesh, the God is infinite. There is no end to His knowledge, to the joy, to the peace, to the goodness, to the virtue, to the love that He has for you. And He became flesh to draw your to borrow from Athanasius, to draw our eyes up off of earthly things, back up to heaven, to God Himself. And AI becomes this kind of inverted black hole of uh what seems to be infinite, like whatever I want. And not only does that mouth form us, because it, you know, like we're like little babies who are just spoiled and spoon-fed with whatever we want, but it also captures and traps our gaze on on this seeming I don't know, it's it's frightening, the mirage of infinitude that AI seems to put in front of the human being. And to borrow from Tristan Harris, like it's not just a matter of what it what it could do for us, it's a matter of what it's likely to do to us. And I think that there are ways that what you're drawing up here is what it's likely to do to us, both in the sexual realm, relational realm, identity realm, is uh is pretty devastating. Thank God for Jesus. All right. Well, for time's sake, we got to move on once again. So we were like, hey, let's hit on some of these really hot topics and let's just do three of them in one podcast. And I keep saying, for time's sake, when reality is, these could each be a series unto themselves. So, Aaron, you gave me a good tee off here. Uh, loneliness is the final one we want to get into and how the incarnation speaks to us in loneliness, which I also think is fitting because we're moving into the holiday season. This will air in the midst of somewhere in December. And ironically, the holidays are some of the times where human beings experience the most loneliness. An old boss of mine described how he used to drive home past an developed bookstore, not because he wanted to, but because that was en route to the apartment that his wife lived in at the time. And he said he noticed during the holidays that there were more cars parked out front. And he said, either they're running great holiday sales there, or it's speaking to something that they're looking for or some nerve that's being tapped during the holidays. So loneliness is fitting in this time anyway. I just read an article from Psychology Today online talking about the epidemic of loneliness. And I want to just read a few kind of highlights from that that I think will kind of unpack this for us. So you may or may not know by this point that the U.S. Surgeon General call loneliness a public health epidemic. Loneliness rates are higher than they've been. And it's true across age demographics. Seniors are lonely, especially adult married men. There's an endemic of loneliness among adult married men. And then with our teens, there's no mistake, especially those who are spending lots of time online are experiencing incredible loneliness. But he said that it's impacting our health, our physical health, as much as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. I don't know all the health ramifications about that, but that's pretty compelling. In one CD server CDC survey, nearly a third of adults said they feel lonely at least once a week. Among younger adults, that number rises to almost half. Harvard researchers found that 61% of young people and over half of mothers with small children report serious loneliness. And then the writer of this article, Whitney Colson, says this So, what most people miss about loneliness is that it isn't really about being by yourself. Being by yourself does not create loneliness. It's about being unmet, unseen, unheard, or unimportant to anyone in a meaningful way. That's where real loneliness comes from. And so whether you're by yourself or you're with a crowd of people, that feeling of no one sees me, no one's really hearing me, no one's really needing me, attuning to me in this space, that's where loneliness comes from.
SPEAKER_01:Well, well, Josh, I can't help but think of the transgender discussion that we just brushed the surface of earlier. But so many that I've heard with drawn into maybe I am in the wrong body are drawn by online forums where they feel seen as compared to their normal life, you know, at home or whatever, where they don't feel seen. They don't feel understood, they don't feel loved.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. And that could bring us right back into that. She did say in the article that among queer and trans people, loneliness is usually higher. And so I think it's important pastorally to be thinking like what you're looking for is good. Where you're looking is not going to give you the right prescription. The desire to be seen, the desire for someone to understand what's happening inside of me and to be able to relate with me there, whether it's a I felt that too, or it's a, I've never felt that exactly like that, but I felt this and I care for the way that you feel. I want to learn more. I mean, that speaks powerfully loneliness. Here's the other thing that I wanted to bring up from the article. She talks about how the body, so think about the implications of the incarnation, the body treats loneliness as danger. When connection breaks down, the nervous system shifts into self-preservation mode, fight, flight, or freeze. Cortisol climbs, sleep worsens, blood pressure rises. Over time, chronic loneliness increases the risk of dementia, heart disease, and early death. And the cruel irony is the lonelier we become, the more our body prepares for threat. And the more we prepare for threat, the harder it is to trust and to reach out to others. So we're living in an age of social media, of AI, of confusion about what it means to be a human being. Um we are more quote-unquote connected than ever before in the history of the world, but we are lonelier than ever before in the history of the world. I was listening to Jonathan Hait, the author of Um Hate or Height, I never know how to pronounce his last name.
SPEAKER_01:Height, I think.
SPEAKER_02:Author of Anxious Generation. He said what parents are doing today is exactly the opposite of what they should be doing. They're helicoptering, and so they're imposing limits on their child's play and exploration of the world where their kids are taking risks out in the real world. They're putting limits on that, and they're giving them free reign to the online world. He's the exact opposite of what we should do. And we should be putting severe limits on what our kids are doing online and giving them a lot more freedom to explore and risk in the real world. He's talking about living an embodied childhood and allowing our kids to do that. One of the things I've learned from you is the value of paying attention. You're talking about the speaking of a podcast, paying attention to our bodies, getting up, moving our bodies, stretching. I mean, Blake on our team, we were at a retreat with him recently, and he was, for those of you, I'll try to describe what I'm doing, but he was stretching his arms backwards and stretching them out and stretching them up. And I said to him, I said, Oh, what you haven't back problems? And he said, No. He said, I lived a lot of my life kind of with this trying to be smaller than I am, and kind of I didn't realize it, but I was kind of pulling my arms in and my shoulders down. And so as I grow up, I'm learning to kind of like be a presence and stretch myself out. And he's not talking about being intimidated, he's just talking about like being alive and being embodied. And loneliness requires human face-to-face contact.
SPEAKER_01:James, you cited something about the refresh rate on Zoom compared to Yeah, it's slower than what our brains refresh at when they're looking for that attuned connection. So our brains are incredibly fast and they're looking back at us. They're looking for someone to have a connection, right brain to right brain with. And Zoom does not refresh fast enough to quite get that, which explains part of Zoom fatigue. Yeah. Pre-COVID. And here we are recording.
SPEAKER_02:Over Zoom, three different places. God bless the opportunity to do video conferencing. And uh, this will not make us as connected as we need. Yeah. You see your faces. This will not meet the deep need of the human heart for being attuned to seeing, let alone touched, hugged. Someone I have a good friend who every time I see him, he gives me this really strong, long. And honestly, it's a little bit awkward, but it feels so good. And I feel so loved when he does. You know, and the awkwardness is just my own social weirdness, but he's a good man and he knows the power of touch. So loneliness, the incarnation speaks to loneliness in that when God saw our condition from afar, he did not send us a book as wonderful as the Bible is, he did not send us a podcast series, as helpful as I hope this podcast is. He sent us himself, he came in the flesh for human beings. Again, affirming the deep value of our bodies. And so, guys, when you read through the gospels, pay attention to the way that Jesus looks and listens and touches other people. Pay attention to the fact that he gets up and goes where people are. These are all expressions of the value he places on the material world and on face-to-face touch and contact with real people. One of the stories I've been meditating on recently is the story of the woman who's been hemorrhaging for 12 years who just wants to touch the hem of his garment and she believes she'll be healed. And she does, and maybe like our brother James here, Jesus senses something in his body. He's like, wait, power just went out from me. And he turns around. And whatever you think about the series The Chosen, I don't like how they did this because in the chosen, everybody clears away and she's just there by herself and he's looking around and saying, Who touched me? And it's just kind of this like, but there's a crowd of people pressing around Jesus. Peter's like, everybody's around you, Jesus. You're not gonna be able to find this person. But he insists on seeing this woman and for her ears to hear his voice saying, Your faith has made you welcome peace. Like there's there's this moment where it's not just enough for him to touch her. He, in his own way, wants to touch her.
SPEAKER_01:Isn't it funny too that all throughout scripture, whether it's go wash yourself in the river or I'm gonna spit and put mud on your eyes, like Jesus with a word can do whatever he wants. And yet he uses material world, he uses his hands, he uses his spit, he uses the rivers that he's created to heal people.
SPEAKER_02:Wow, great point.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I will say though, this Josh, I find this so compelling, but I'm also like, man, I wish Jesus was right here with me physically for him to give me a hug. You know what I mean? Like, how do you think about that aspect, Josh, when you think about meeting our loneliness needs in the incarnation?
SPEAKER_02:Yes, absolutely. Okay, well, so a couple things. One, the desire to feel Jesus, to feel his body is a holy and good desire that we ought to nurture. Our two major creeds, the Nicene Creed and the Apostles' Creed, both talk about Jesus coming again. Like we are gonna see him face to face and we're gonna touch his body, and we're gonna hear his voice. And you find yourself longing for that, keep longing for that. Don't extinguish that just because you can't see or feel or touch him right now. But secondly, I do wrestle with that myself, James. Jesus says in John, it's better that I go away so I can send you the Holy Spirit. And there seems to be a gap there in our own kind of understanding fully. And yet there is something I think of the heart of Jesus to express that his Holy Spirit, who doesn't, you were talking before about how created beings have limits. And I think there's something about Jesus' heart there to say, like, oh, I'm infinite. I can reach you everywhere, I can be everywhere you are. Like, and I want that. It's better for you that I go away, that I can send the Holy Spirit to be with you always. And it would be theologically incorrect for me not to also point to the body of Christ. There's a reason that the body of Christ is called the body of Christ. And I actually think that there's something that we downplay too much in the Western Church of the importance of what it means that we're the body of Christ. I mean, we use kind of in a cliche way, like, oh, we're the hands and feet of Jesus when we're thinking about evangelism. But what about, you know, embraces and taking time to look at each other in the face, face to face together? What about creating spaces where we just get together? One thing the Lord's been challenging me in recently as a I like to teach. I'm a teacher in some different places, but the Lord's been challenging me to lean into the reality that part of the good I bring when I go somewhere to teach is just being there, me being there, his spirit in me. I don't entirely know what that means, but I'm trying to lean into that. And if that's true, then it's true when I'm face to face in person with you, James, and when I'm face to face in person with you, Aaron. There's something about Christ that I get to encounter in you and through you and through your body. So that's my best stab at it, James.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I'm not entirely satisfied with it, to be honest with you, but I think there's something well, and yeah, we all have so much room to grow in this, especially since we've been so discipled by screens for over a decade now. Uh well, if you want to go back to TVs and stuff, you know, multiple decades. But I isn't that such an invitation, though, guys. Like, don't we need to be people who are growing in our ability to be incarnationally connected? You know, and I actually think that that's part of what maturity is. Like, if if infant level maturity is well, I need whatever I want whenever I want it, I'm gonna make AI images, I'm gonna satisfy myself all the time. Well, adult or parent or elder level maturity, according to this is from Jim Wilder, is this self-giving ability to suffer well and to be in those incarnational spaces means you're opening yourself to suffering. You're opening yourself to being snubbed, you're open, and I don't necessarily mean intense suffering, I'm just saying like pain, like relational pain or whatever. And yet, what a what an invitation like for us to be countercultural in that way. And I just think for the guys in Awaken that that I oversee, or the guys I coach, like one of the key things I'm always coming back to is hey, we're not your church. Like, I'm so grateful for what we are. And you need like a brother who's not just asking you about your sexuality, you're getting a meal with, who's hugging you like Josh's friend hugs him, who's like, you know what I mean? We need that kind of stuff. And it's actually utterly essential, I'd say, to recovery. Even a phone call, the voice of another is better than I'm gonna try to figure this out. Just me and God, as powerful as God is. I think, like you're saying, Josh, there needs to be his body involved more than we don't realize how important that is, perhaps.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, good stuff, James. I'll share one story and then I want to give each of you a one last word about either something you brought or one thing you heard in the podcast today that's kind of popping for you around the incarnation specifically. Yesterday, one of my friends was in the hospital. It was an emergency room situation, he's fine. But a few of us went to the hospital. We were pretty sure we wouldn't be able to see him, but we wanted to be there to pray. At one point, his wife came out, and again, the news at this point was all good. He was going to be fine. She came through the doors and she saw us. She knew we were there. She came out to see us. And when she saw us, she teared up and she said, I've been fine until I saw you guys here. And I think it just speaks to the power of incarnation. It speaks to something just primal in what we need and how we are comforted and how we feel loved. You know, we could all have texted her and said, Hey, we're praying for you. We did. She had already received those. But when she saw us, and I don't share that about her, I share that about me. I recognize in her response something in me when a friend sees me, when I show up or somebody shows up for me when I need there's just something different that happens there. And the fact that Jesus went that far too, and that he will come back and I will see him face to face and I will be able to feel his touch. I please, Lord, yes, come soon. Um, and Holy Spirit, so grateful you're here. Thank you for your body. So, guys, what about you? One last word about incarnation or something pop for you in this podcast, and then we'll close.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I'll start. This is from Chris Corsi from Thrive Today. He says emotions are signals for connection. We take our emotions so many places AI, pornography, transgender communities online, social media, but emotions are signals for real connection with God and his body, physical connection. And also, even when the body fails, which part of the reality, where we face the pain of the body not being perfect, God himself is never overwhelmed by our biggest emotions and he never misses our smallest emotions. He actually cares for us in those. These are all things I'm actually learning real time in this season. Get in your prayer closet with God, cry out to him, seek his face, and be with his body and recognize they're not going to do it absolutely perfectly, and you're gonna need God, and recognize he's not physically with you, and you're gonna need his body. Keep going back to these two places, loving God, loving people, but let your emotions be signals that you are looking for connection. Love it.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I just had a thought that God is not a code, he's a person. And um, you know, how fitting, uh obviously for the AI world, that personableness that we can have relationship with Him that you know, He made man so that He could be with man. And we talk about Emmanuel, God with us. That's just man, it's like a gong right now. I'm just hearing that so loud, and how beautiful that is, and how in turn we need others, we need community. We hear it all the time in this work that the opposite of addiction is community. Um, and so we need to surround ourselves with others, not just because it's helpful, but it that's because that's how we've been made.
SPEAKER_02:So good. You guys are bringing a mind while I'll close, which is um 1 Corinthians 6, which is a passage in a part of the passage specifically talks about sexual morality. The body is not made for sexual morality. It goes on to say the body's not made for sexual morality, but for the Lord, and the Lord is for the body. So, listeners, wherever you are, whatever your experience of your body is, whether you feel like hey, this doesn't feel right, I don't feel right in it, or it doesn't feel good enough, or it's giving me trouble because I have all these sexual impulses that just fly, or it doesn't seem good enough because it's letting me down and it's uh it's sick or tired or whatever it may be. The Lord crafted your body for himself to reside in, like a wealthy king creating the perfect palace for him to dwell in that he loves to walk the grounds, he loves to tend it, he loves to marvel at its beauty, he loves to sleep there, he loves to wake there, he loves to eat there. Why would the God of the universe create our bodies to dwell there? Jesus, thanks for our bodies, thank you for your body, thank you for your Holy Spirit who is in us, and thank you, Lord, for your soon coming return. We praise you, Emmanuel, we praise you in Jesus' name, amen.
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