The Life Challenges Podcast
Modern-day issues from a Biblical perspective.
The Life Challenges Podcast
"Acceptable" Addictions? with Mike Helwig
What if the most dangerous addictions aren't the ones society warns us about, but the ones it actively encourages? In this thought-provoking conversation with Mike Helwig, a pastor turned licensed psychological counselor, we explore the concept of "acceptable addictions" - those normalized behaviors that silently damage our relationship with God and divide us from our community.
Helwig brings a unique perspective as someone who combines theological training with clinical mental health expertise. He defines addiction clearly: compulsively engaging in behavior you're powerless to change alone, to the point where you ignore negative consequences. While society recognizes substance abuse as problematic, we often overlook equally destructive normalized behaviors like excessive phone usage, emotional eating, workaholism, and what was once called gambling but has been rebranded as "gaming."
The spiritual dimension of these behaviors proves particularly troubling. "Addiction is really rooted in sinfulness, and sinfulness divides me from God," Helwig explains. "When I separate myself from God, I also separate myself from the people who stand best positioned to help me." This division creates a dangerous cycle where normalized addictions flourish unchallenged.
Recognizing you have a problem starts with honest self-assessment, professional evaluation, or simply listening to loved ones who see patterns you've normalized. Helwig shares his own journey to sobriety and offers a transformative four-window wellness plan focusing on spiritual practices, emotional/mental health, physical wellness, and social connections – a holistic approach recognizing God designed us for authentic connection.
The path to recovery begins with confession to trusted Christians who respond with Christ's forgiveness, removing shame that perpetuates addictive cycles. This creates space to replace harmful coping mechanisms with healthy alternatives. As Helwig notes, "When you rid yourself of something, there's a cavity the devil wants to fill."
Take the first step toward freedom by examining what you've normalized. Have your "acceptable" habits become unacceptable barriers between you and authentic connection with God and others? Join us as we explore breaking free from the addictions we don't talk about.
SHOW NOTES:
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On today's episode.
Speaker 2:So addiction is really rooted in sinfulness, and sinfulness divides me from God, so that's harmful for me. But when I separate myself from God, I also separate myself from the people who stand best positioned to help me in my unwanted behaviors. So sin divides us from each other right. Lots of times these habits and these addictions become secret or private even the ones that get normalized.
Speaker 3:We're here to bring a fresh biblical perspective to these issues and more. Join us now for Life Challenges.
Speaker 1:Hi, welcome back. I'm Krista Potratz, and I'm here today with Pastor Jeff Samuelson, and today we have a special guest with us. We have Mike Hellwig. We have a really cool kind of special topic to talk about. I mean, I think it's cool, but we're going to be talking about addictions and different things too. But, mike, can you just start by telling us a little bit about yourself?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Thanks for having me. I had a very traditional 70s, 80s, 90s training into public ministry. I went to a ministerial education school, mlps in Prairie du Chien, got morphed into the prep system, went to Northwestern College, pastor College in Watertown and seminary in Mequon and graduated seminary in 97. And seminary in Mequon and graduated seminary in 97.
Speaker 2:During my seminary years I got married, started having a family and vicaried in Baraboo, wisconsin, and then for six years served as a pastor in Grand Island, nebraska, at a little church and school called Christ Lutheran Church and then for 15 years served as pastor at Crown of Life in Hubertus Richfield.
Speaker 2:For 15 years served as pastor at Crown of Life in Hubertus Richfield, not far from where we're doing this podcast actually, and in the later years, after about 20 years of parish ministry, I was called to teach seniors and juniors at an area Lutheran high school in Lake Mills, lakeside Lutheran High School.
Speaker 2:The second of the four years that I taught high school was the beginning of the pandemic and was also the beginning of my achievement of a three-year master's program in clinical psychology and clinical mental health.
Speaker 2:So by the end of the pandemic I was knee-deep in practicum, in internships with Christian Family Solutions and some other entities that were guiding me on a path toward licensure in the state of Wisconsin as an LPC, a licensed psychological counselor therapist, and so I'm very close to full licensure. I do have the master's program and I work in really two capacities at Christian Family Solutions. Currently I work as a therapist in one of our church partnership clinics, living Word Lutheran Church in Waukesha, and now my primary role at Christian Family Solutions is something that's called faith integration. So it's my role not just to do doctrine and practice within the organization but to help everybody, including myself, understand the integration of biblical truths in their entirety and not compromising when they get woven into evidence-based practices in the therapy world and not compromising clinical, evidence-based practices that are healthy and manageable tools for treating diagnosable mental health.
Speaker 4:So you've just moved forward and now you're just coasting in your career. Right, right People.
Speaker 2:I'm approaching 54 and people joke about what I'm going to do when I grow up.
Speaker 1:So yeah, Well, awesome, well, we're really glad to have you with us today and to talk with us, and the topic that we really wanted to dive into today is this topic acceptable addictions. This was something that Jeff had kind of brought to our attention to kind of talk about.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I just say you can't hear them, but there are quotation marks around the acceptable in this the idea that there are some things that many of us might have a problem with that we don't quite realize we have a problem with because society or our peers are accepting of it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, I think too, when we hear of addictions we go right to the big ones that our society has said oh yeah, those are really bad you know, just off the top of my head, society has said, oh yeah, those are really bad.
Speaker 1:you know, just off the top of my head I mean I think of drugs or the abuse of alcohol. But you know, as Christians we know, kind of like Jeff was saying too there are maybe some things that we are addicted to, that we need to face as well, that maybe aren't this big thing in society but maybe are still or can be a problem in our lives too.
Speaker 2:Right. So when you sent me the program notes and some of the teaser questions and I started to look through and think through how these unheard and unseen quotes are on the word acceptable, I got thinking about the word normalize. When we normalize something it's usually within a group of people. For example, in the Christian world we normalize what behavior looks like and that can be for good and that can be for bad. In a society, in a town, you go from one town to the next and some things are normal and some things are not normal.
Speaker 2:And in the very real world of addiction we unfortunately normalize and can be a very powerful tool to make something that's unhealthy seem normal to everybody around them so that they become accepted. When we normalize things, even if they're bad things, it's difficult to leave them because everybody else is doing it in that system. For example, we know that drug and alcohol abuse is an addiction and it's an unhealthy one. But in the state of Wisconsin overdrinking might be normalized and accepted by certain standards, in certain circumstances or in certain events. So it's okay to get drunk at the New Year's Eve party or the wedding. I don't do this normally day by day. That's normalizing something that's unhealthy.
Speaker 1:That's a really great point too, and you know, I just wanted to maybe also kind of just break down what we actually mean by addiction.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah. And talking just about what addiction is, maybe is when I compulsively do something that I'm powerless to change by myself, to the point where I ignore the negative consequences. So I see and know that there are negative harmful consequences and I compulsively do this thing habitually anyway. Really it there. It there morphs into lots of different other things. But think about it in terms of when I compulsively do something that's harmful and ignore the negative consequences, even though that I know what they are.
Speaker 1:Wow. So then how is that different than just doing a bad habit? Yeah, right.
Speaker 2:So bad implies that you don't want it right. So if I bite my nails, it's a bad habit. It doesn't have any moral or mental health issues tied to it the way substance abuse or pornography addiction or gambling or some of the other things that we think of as big, big, big ones. We think in terms of three or four major addictions that seem obvious to us. A habit can be a positive thing or a negative thing, and if we call it a bad habit, we've already identified it as something unwanted. So we start talking about unwanted behaviors. I don't want to bite my nails anymore. I want to lose some weight, I want to eat better, I want to exercise, and then that moves into this whole societal normalization of making resolutions at New Year's Eve after the bad drinking. Normalizing moves into what is acceptable to me as an individual, what is unwanted in me as an individual. If I already know that I want it, then it's probably something I want to rid my life of.
Speaker 1:So why will Christians in particular want to be on the lookout for addictions and addictive behaviors in their lives, or even in the lives of people around them?
Speaker 2:So two things really. It's very clear in the Bible your sin separates you from God and we know that theologically sin separates, divides me from a really good relationship with God. So addiction is really rooted in sinfulness and sinfulness divides me from God. So that's harmful for me. But when I separate myself from God I also separate myself from the people who stand best positioned to help me in my unwanted behaviors. So sin divides us from each other right.
Speaker 2:Lots of times these habits and these addictions become secret or private, even the ones that get normalized. I'm sure before the end of the podcast we're going to start talking about things that seem so normal and ready, like phone use and all of these other things that are not shameful to do in public. It's not shameful to be on your phone in public. It's shameful to look at porn on your phone in public. So those are two different things. I think we sense these things are unwanted when the people around us are divided from us when we do them. So habits unwanted tend to divide us from the people who stand best to want to help us.
Speaker 4:I think part of it, or I guess something that I've given a fair amount of thought to over the last few years is something that a lot of Christians in particular should want to appreciate is the connectedness of things. You mentioned pornography addiction.
Speaker 4:And it's fairly easy to imagine the married man, father of four kids or whatever, who has developed a pornography addiction and, whether he calls it an addiction or not, he thinks of it as just as his thing that he does in his own privacy. It doesn't affect anybody else, it's not public, and yet he does not realize how that connects to how he deals with his wife, how he deals with his kids, how he deals with women that he might work with or what he looks at on the TV when it's on and all these things. It affects so many other things and he thinks he has it isolated, but he doesn't. It connects with everything else and that's the kind of thing that as Christians, we want to be the whole person that God has made us to be interacting with everybody with love and care and service and everything like that. And when we appreciate that connectedness, I think it's a lot harder to dismiss something as just this isolated thing.
Speaker 2:That's a good segue into the second point. The second point is as Christians. It's more vitally important for us because the unbelievers are watching. For centuries we've known this right, that hypocrisy is very easy to fall into, like the world looks at Christians and goes you guys are supposed to be the ones stepping in line. And then look at all of you you're just a mess. And so when a Christian claims to be a Christian and then has behaviors that are not in line with Christianity and the Bible, then we stand to cause offense in the sense of we allow other people to believe that what we're doing is not wrong or is incongruent with their understanding of what Christianity ought to be, and then we cause offense that way. So it's vitally more important for us to draw clear lines and say this is what Christianity looks like.
Speaker 1:When we talk about, too, some of the acceptable addictions in quotations. Let's just kind of call some of them out. What are some of these ones? Like I said kind of in the beginning too, we know some of the bigger ones that I mean especially our society has said are not good addictions. But what are some that we're talking about when we talk about these acceptable addictions?
Speaker 2:Well, I mentioned gambling before. I think every Christian senses that there's danger there. And yet even our Christian society has normalized some risk when it comes to betting on the horses and having fun at the horse shows, or we even went from calling it gambling to calling it gaming. Right, it's fun, it's an entertainment and quite frankly, I believe there could be some debate for even a Christian pastor to say I know some of my members and maybe even myself that does that that that bets on the horses or all of these other things, and we call it gaming. But again, remember, when we normalize something that leads to danger, we normalize something that leads to danger and so there's a difference. So I think I mentioned, I mentioned phone usage.
Speaker 2:We we live in an incredibly important time to really think about our phone usage, and I don't mean, like even the evil things you can find on the dark web, I mean just the habit of it is something that I go to when I'm bored. It is something that I go to when I'm not bored. It is something that takes away time from me, and there's lots of research out there clinically, medically, spiritually, where our screen time, our phone usage, has totally damaged us. And yet look around you. It's everywhere. You can't go to a restaurant, walk on the sidewalk, see people in their cars and, as Jeff said before, when you talk about like I think it's only me, we don't think back and go. When I'm on my phone and I'm with other people, I'm dividing myself from that person and that's harmful. So phone usage, gambling, turning into gaming, eating, exercising there's a balance between exercising healthy and then over exercising to the point of harming your body.
Speaker 2:We can under eat, we can overeat. We can eat for the wrong body. We can under-eat, we can over-eat. We can eat for the wrong reason. We can eat the wrong things, right. And so again in our societies, when we normalize things and we do all of the ha-ha jokes about it, like what are the things people give up for Lent? These days, you get to Ash Wednesday, go, I'm going to give up chocolate for Lent. Super good, not anything sinfully wrong about that. But what are you really giving up? What are you really saying about what you want for yourself? And is that really an abandonment of a bad habit, or is that an acknowledgement that there's probably deeper things you want to rid yourself of?
Speaker 1:How do you know? Maybe that you have an acceptable addiction?
Speaker 2:Super.
Speaker 1:If it is just so normalized in our society.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 2:Three things, and the first two are connected. Anyone anywhere can get on the Google thing and Google am I addicted to my phone? And tests will come up. Am I addicted to drugs or alcohol? And a test will come up. Am I addicted to gambling? And a test will come up.
Speaker 2:There are oodles and oodles of tests out there and they can be found, and some of them are quite very true. If you want to do this in the privacy of your own home and say I think I use my phone too much, or I think I have too many drinks every night, or I think I'm addicted to XYZ, there are lots of tests. The second thing that's tied to that is our clinicians. Clinical mental health people are trained in how to use those tests, how to administer them, how to read their results, and so if you really want to help find out, it can't harm anything, anybody, I think. I personally think I'm biased a little bit, but I also go to therapy and I think everybody would do well to go to see a therapist and if someone's concerned that they think they are addicted to something, a clinician is trained in how to use those tests and help them see it.
Speaker 2:The third thing is ask the people who love you. They will tell you and if they don't, they're lying. But I think people who love us most. If a loved one came to me and said, do you think I have a problem with XYZ, I would probably tell them. And if they're telling you it's a problem, they're telling you that it's a problem for them and that's not good. And you might, like Jeff was saying before, I think it's only governing me, but it's not. And when people go, yeah, I think Mike has a problem and they're honest with you.
Speaker 4:That's probably the better test, not this is really what's going on with me. You know the various things that you do is, uh, I'll use the term self-medication I don't feel good, so I'm going to do something that makes me feel good. It may be just the momentary uh, dopamine hit you get from social media or video games or something like that. It may be I'm going to have a drink. No, no, I'm going to have three drinks, or whatever it might be, because you're solving a problem. I don't feel good right now. You don't quite see. Oh yeah, I've actually developed this more than a habit thing, where this is my go-to response to not feeling good and I can't really control it anymore.
Speaker 2:Super good point. I'll use sleep as an example In the clinical mental health world. When it comes to anxiety, sleep is a calming skill. When it comes to depression, sleep is an avoidance and it's a bad habit. So, like, if I'm depressed and I sleep too much, I'm just avoiding dealing with my depression. If I'm anxious and anxiety and I have sleepless nights, sleep is exactly what I need. We're not talking about, like the 22 year old coming home for Thanksgiving and sleeping until one when he's home for a break. We're talking people misabusing their understanding of a healthy, good night's sleep or sleeping away. So what you're talking about, jeff, is avoidance. I came home from a bad day at work and the only way for me to deal with this right now is to have three martinis Not true, but true in that that's exactly how that person is going to cope with that day. So if it becomes the coping skill, then the coping skill is unhealthy because you're not really, in the end, dealing with what you're really troubled about.
Speaker 1:So if you have identified that you have one of these addictions that we've kind of talked about, what's really the next step? Like, what do you do from there? I mean, I think you know, maybe some of us, if we're honest, are just like yeah, I mean, I really am on my phone too much, I mean, and I try to put it down or I try to just be like, oh, I'm not going to do it, and then I just find myself doing it again. So how do you really solve that problem?
Speaker 2:Right. So this is really the heart of everything that I would want to leave anybody with at any place in time. Number one it's in the Bible that we speak openly and honestly. We call it confession, confess your sins to one another. It's in the Bible. But there's a super deep reason why God would have us openly and audibly say to a friend in Christ I have a problem and this is what it is. Because then that offers that opportunity for that friend in Christ to say number one as far as the East is from the West, jesus loves you and has removed that sin from you. It removes all shame and guilt from you. And this is the place to start. That Christ loves me and he demonstrated that on the cross and in the empty tomb is the solvent to every problem.
Speaker 2:Every malady in life is deeply rooted in the fall. Either I did something wrong or something has caused harm to me and I found a harmful way to react to it and respond to it. So, number one finding a confidential Christian group of people. I call them Christ confessors, and I'm not just talking, just your pastor. If it starts with your pastor, super great. If it starts with your spouse, your best friend, your roommate in college, if it starts with your spouse, your best friend, your roommate in college, that you find someone to whom you can say anything to and you know the first thing out of the mouth is Jesus loves you, god forgives you, I forgive you. Let's start there and from there's avoidance for depression. There's also replacement skills for that avoidance. So we start talking about healthy skills in the mental health world to replace the unwanted habits with good ones. Right A long, long time ago in my first parish, one of my board of elders told me, pastor Mike, somebody I think his great uncle or somebody had told him, when you rid yourself of something, there's going to be a cavity that the devil wants.
Speaker 2:So when we identify what that thing is and leave it, the devil's going to want to fill that space quicker than I do. And so filling that space with wholesome. What does Paul say? Whatever is lovely, whatever is noble, whatever is. Think about such things that it's even biblical to say replace the unwanted behavior with lovely, noble, marvelous, divinely through the word of God, given things.
Speaker 2:And that gets built into these coping mechanisms dialectal behavior skills, cognitive behavioral skills, all of these things that we find mindfulness skills, and really some of it is just going back to our roots of God created us to be in his creation. God designed us to be with people. God us to be in his creation. God designed us to be with people. God designed us to have human connection. God designed us to be in worship with him. God designed us and I think a lot of the things that when we talk about the addictive world, they're very unnatural.
Speaker 2:And God says I've given you natural things to help you end your day positively. Take those and run. So that's a start I'm going to give you end your day positively, take those and run. So that's a start. I'm going to give you what every one of my clients gets eventually in session with me and is the close of every psychoeducational, faith-based presentation that I do, and I called it building your own wellness plan. Everybody can be well and the wellness plan has four windows or doors in it. The first window is spiritual. So what is my spiritual growth plan? And yes, home devotions, going to church, building a faith community, but I mean intentionalizing that to something that works. When I talk to pastors I say it's not enough to just be in the word for your sermons. What's your devotional plan to be with Jesus today, just you and Jesus. And who are the Christ-centered, focused people? Who's that Christ confessor group that's going to hold you accountable to your devotional life, to your talks, to how you're doing with your faith life? So, spiritual is the first door. Second door is emotional, mental.
Speaker 2:So do you have a hobby? Do you journal? Do you not like to journal? Do you go for walks? Do you take breaks? Do you know how to manage your day? First time I ever went to therapy my therapist the first thing that that person did was said Mike, give me your schedule, your calendar. I went what? Because what does that have to do with my mental health? And that person very clearly helped me understand that I was creating terrible work boundaries, terrible family boundaries, terrible family boundaries, terrible social boundaries, like my calendar was an absolute mess. It was no wonder I was so like calendaring and scheduling and blocking off your day and saying I'm going to work for 20 minutes on a project at work and then I'm going to take five and go for a walk. I'm going to work an hour on uh, this set or the other thing, and then I'm going to call a friend and call him up or I'm going to stop and text a joke to say, you know so, like governing your day mentally. I paint. I'm not super great at it but I love to do it and it takes me to a whole different world. I love the people who taught me how to paint. I love painting with other people.
Speaker 2:The third door so spiritual, mental, emotional. The third door is physical. So let's talk about addiction. Say I'm going to, I'm going to come full clean here, right on the podcast. I am sober about eight years now.
Speaker 2:So I realized at some point in time in my life that alcohol and myself is a terrible recipe and thank God and thank the Christian friends around me that I have lived a very happy, social, sober life. And so then we talk about the physical. We talk about what do you put in your body, what do you not put in your body? Do you take those walks? Do you exercise? I have a gym membership. I go to the gym not to be a bodybuilder, but I go to the gym to feel good about going to the gym.
Speaker 2:And that physical can also deal with sleep, like, oh man, we're supposed to get what seven, eight hours and who of us does that right? And to get what? Seven, eight hours, and who of us does that right? And the fourth window is social. So who are my closest friends? Who are my family? Where's my Christ confessor group? I don't owe the same emotional stuff to the mailman that I do to my wife. I don't owe the same emotional weight to the person in the grocery store that I do to my Jesus. Right? So we begin to understand that God built us to be social, not to everyone.
Speaker 2:So creating social boundaries that are healthy and good, maybe it's been a while, and I just need to say I'm going to tap into one of my really close friends that goes we haven't had coffee in a while. Let's do it. I don't care about work, work can wait, right. I haven't had a really nice dinner with my wife in weeks. It's about time. And not because it's of our anniversary or not because of whatever. We just need that husband-wife time.
Speaker 2:So all of these like healthy social relationships. Again, that's how God built us, right. So those four windows, and I guarantee you nobody is ever going to be perfect this side of heaven. But I guarantee you nobody is ever going to be perfect this side of heaven. But I guarantee you if you can be taught and held accountable to those four healthy windows day by day, by day, some of them I talk about an equalizer, like all four of those levels, will bounce around, but if you're giving attention to those four windows, people can beat addictions, they can stop bad habits, they can rid themselves of unwanted things in their life and replace them, mostly importantly, with Christ and with the people who are going to be Christ with them.
Speaker 1:And you said too these are day-to-day things. Yes, every day it's important to try to work all those areas each day.
Speaker 2:Yeah, indeed, I'm not perfect, but I can tell you for a fact, not a day goes by when I don't think of all, personally, my four windows. Where am I at spiritually? What was my devotional life like today? What is my social life today? What is my physical life today? Did I get my steps on my phone? Did I beat Rachel, my wife, in steps on her phone, and where am I? With those equilibriums? And I think if you and other people that love you are holding yourselves accountable to that, lots of even accepted addictions will start to go away.
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm. Yeah, I mean I guess too, just like kind of going along with that. Do you find that people with addictions does it just depend on the addiction as to which four of those windows aren't getting the attention that they need, or do you see one window that is constantly hard for people to maintain every?
Speaker 2:day. Oh, that's a really good question and I have two answers to that question. Number one in the clinical mental health world, this is one of the trickiest questions and and I'm always leaning on colleagues, on supervisors, on people smarter than I am when it comes to this question. Like, say, somebody comes with high level trauma because of a crisis, because they were a first responder, because they experienced a terrible thing, because as a childhood they were abused, whatever, whatever, and they're in an addiction, substance abuse. The big, like chicken or egg question in therapy world is do you treat the trauma first or the alcoholism first or the drug addiction? And some people in the world will say it depends, but lots of times we will say we need to get people sober first, then we can get to the ideal, because a lot of times the alcoholism, as Jeff said before, it's the symptom of a bigger root. It's really an abandonment of what's really wrong. The second part of that question is I don't even know for myself sometimes, krista, if, like, what caused my physical well-being to be off today Like super good devotion, had a great time with a great Christian friend this morning. I got to paint after supper, but when I look back on it. I ate terrible junk food. Today I didn't exercise Like, so my physical one dipped. I'm just now myself getting okay at guessing why that is, and I think again that's a good reason to see a therapist or have a Christian friend go. Yeah, why did you drop on that one today? Was it schedule? Was something else bothering you?
Speaker 2:Ironically and sadly, we can go back to quotes acceptable addictions. We can be doing seemingly good, normal things. We didn't get to this. But work right, workaholism Like I can be, I can be doing a 70 hour week and go. I was busy this week. Was that healthy? Was that good? For all of your other three areas, did you meet your goals? Why were you busy? What are you avoiding? And not going home from work? And, by the way, I just learned this at a workshop in La Crosse. The keynote speaker said that Americans work 200 hours more than the next society down, which is Japan culture. That's five weeks of PTO. Can Americans give up five weeks of PTO and say we're still just as busy as the busiest other organizations in the world?
Speaker 1:with the question as well is so many people think, all right, I mean I have this deadline at work or I have this big project coming up or something, and yeah, I mean that is just going to what's going to consume my life and I'll work out when I'm done, or I'll spend more time with my family when I'm done with this project. Is it healthy to live life like that? And I mean, if not, how do you kind of balance that a little bit when you're in this culture of having to meet deadlines?
Speaker 2:It's a really hard line. The sad reality is, most oftentimes what's speaking the loudest in that room is money. And what's speaking most often loudly and just as loudly are the people who believe that answering the money question will answer the other questions, that if we have enough money as a corporation, we'll be able to do what we really want to do as a corporation. If that corporation is like making the best soda and your mission is to make the best soda and you believe that you can make more money to make more soda, your practices in making the better soda is going to go down. It's just a weird thing. It's not sustainable. If I could wave a magic wand, I would collectively say to corporate America we're not helping our families be families. We're not helping our spouses be spouses, parents be parents. It's a hard balance and I think it starts with one person and that's you.
Speaker 2:I find myself doing this and my coworkers are probably going to hear this podcast. It gets to be three o'clock and I'm kind of done doing what I'm doing and I'm looking around the office building. I'm going. There's a lot of people here and they still have things to do. Do I look like a schmuck if I leave the office and I've stopped doing that. I do not guilt myself over that. I'm done for today and I have a wife at home and I have fish to catch in a lake and painting to do and then I know that's going to make me well and that's going to serve the people around me and the people I love well. It's okay to say that at corporate world, to say that at corporate world I'm done for today. If you can't live with that, you're going to have to find somebody else to do what I do for you, and that's a big leap of faith. But I think that's where it begins. That's what we have to do.
Speaker 1:So how can outside people help us? You kind of talked a little bit about that some accountability people. I guess I'm thinking you know more like pastors and other people as well, but how can our network really support us?
Speaker 2:I'm going to cheat a little bit. Can I tell your audience that I got to hear your last podcast.
Speaker 1:Yeah, sure, so.
Speaker 2:I know that one of the podcasts that's getting put out is like specific messages in pastoring, not just in sermons but in the kinds of things that the church does and that the church means to do, not in a socialistic kind of way, but genuinely being real about sin and grace in the specific lives of our people and offering them messages of certainty and hope in the very genuine, specific ways of their lives. Pastors having the opportunity to be that space where people can come and go. I think I can talk to my pastor about real things. I think I can open my heart a little bit and tell him that I'm troubled with lots of different things and he's going to be the man who's going to say Jesus loves you and so do I. I think the other thing that the church can do I talk about this with my own son, who's a pastor in Michigan is to avoid being the problem.
Speaker 2:Churches and church life families get very, very busy in the name of doing Jesus work and all of a sudden, the very, very hardworking people in America feel like they have to be hardworking at church, feel like they have to be on every committee. They've got to coach basketball for the grade school. They've got to volunteer at the Sunday school. They've got to be at. The next thing, they got to come to Arbor Day and the next thing, you know, the church has made our families even more busy than they can afford to be, instead of assisting them with ways to do home devotions, family nights you know what? This is the night you stay home from church. This is the night you stay home from everything and then be moms and dads and husbands and wives and children and grandchildren so the church and then people who are really struggling with the deep things.
Speaker 2:I think the stigma is dropping and we're thankful. I'm personally thankful that the stigma is dropping. People know that it's okay to ask for help. It's okay to see a therapist. It's okay to see your doctor about your I think I'm overeating. It's okay to see your doctor about I don't feel well, something's wrong and I don't know how to figure it out. It's okay to see a psychologist or a med check and see if you need some medication that will get you on the right track. It's okay to call a friend that you haven't seen since high school and say can we get coffee? It's really again, it's about being connected, but it's also about retraining the people who are in charge of our lives.
Speaker 4:And how might you? You've got someone in your life maybe it's your spouse, maybe it's your brother or sister, friend, maybe even somebody you're not that close to, but you're in a position to notice. And this is somebody that has one of these acceptable addictions, or else maybe one of the not so acceptable ones that they think they've got hidden away and isn't so. And you approach them and they're just like. You know, this is my thing, it's not really affecting anybody else, and besides which, it's just a bad habit. I can just say goodbye at any point. You know I can quit, I just don't feel like it. Or you know, I need it right now. If I don't need it tomorrow, that'll be the end of it. What is the loving, practical, Christian way to approach a loved one like that?
Speaker 2:I'm hearing two questions, Jeff, and they're both very good questions. One is how do I approach that person and help them? The other is how do I help them identify that they need the help? And those may seem very close, but they're uniquely different questions. First of all, it's important for every one of us to remember that if we're holding onto something that we think is just us, that it's only me.
Speaker 2:I remember way back to high school days and one of my good buddies smoking cigarettes was huge in the dorm prep system that I grew up in, and I remember one of the older mentor classmen saying it's my thing and it doesn't affect everybody else. Well, if you're smoking in the boy's dorm, it's affecting everybody. We now know that scientifically. But if you're hurting yourself, you're hurting the people you love. It's just a fact, right, and you kind of identified it before when we were talking about unwanted behaviors when it comes to pornography or whatever. Like I think I've got this. But it's also affecting my sleep, my relationships, my my ability to cognitively work through a day.
Speaker 2:I think the second part of your question, ironically, was just asked of me at one of my recent presentations, and it's such, I think it's such a vital question. It's like now it's now, I'm not. I'm not saying this is for a friend, and you really mean you. It is really for a friend like the spouse or the friend or the college roommate or the high school classmate that says my friend's really struggling, how do I be that person? It starts number one with journeying with that person in such a way that says I'm a safe space for you, you can tell me anything, I'm not a tattletale, I'm not a judgy. Judgy, I'm going to forgive you, I'm not going to think less of you.
Speaker 2:And the more you can, one by one, convince that person that you're a safe space, that you're a grace person, that you're a Jesus person, that you are Jesus to that person, the more they will learn. To lean into you and be honest with you is then the next step of taking them by the arm, maybe even literally, and saying walk with me, I will go with you to therapy, I will go with you to see your pastor, I will go with you to see a doctor. It's not just you have a problem and I think you need help. It's a long, loving, gracious, patient building of a trust with a person that speaks volumes at your person that they can trust to say anything to. And once you get to that trust, then you can start to say would you go to a therapist, Can I help you schedule the appointment? And then the accountability starts happening. When accountability starts happening, super good things are going to start happening.
Speaker 4:Okay, just real briefly. I want to turn that around a little bit. What if you are the person who has identified? I think I have a problem, but the people in your life that you should be able to turn to in the way that you were just talking about aren't there. Maybe your spouse is just very judgmental, or you feel that he or she is, or you know your pastor. You just have always had the impression that your pastor just is not somebody who can understand these things, not somebody you know you can talk to about these things. So the places that you think you should go aren't safe spaces and so you don't.
Speaker 2:It's okay. It's okay to say that's not a space. I can go to Number one. You can't change someone else and their observation of you. You can only change yourself, right. And so if somebody's really at that point where they go, I've got a problem and the people who I think probably are the people God has put in my life to help me, won't and can't and I don't feel safe with that space. Then again, it's okay to say I'm going to go get help and when I start to get help, the way I'm going to change and move the needle on their perception of me is by changing me, not them.
Speaker 1:Any final thoughts? I know we've talked about a lot of things here and stuff too, or just anything that you'd really like to leave people with.
Speaker 2:My generation 20 years ago. How many friends do you have? I would have said I've got 35 friends. I got 45 friends. I, to this day, am close with all of my high school classmates. We're weeks away from even having a dinner and getting together, If you talk to my grandfather, and the days of card clubs and family dinners and trading houses every weekend. Those are not all good habits happened in those societies, but they understood who their friendships were.
Speaker 2:Now, if you were to ask 18 to 25 year olds, you would. You would find that they, they don't have any friends or one, and and I I believe a lot of that it is not because of the pandemic, it is not because of covid pandemic resurrected the fact that we were separated from each other already into social media, into phone usage, into screen times, into things we believed to be genuinely real but turned out to be fake, and we can't get out of it. I think of the U2 song. We're stuck in a moment and we can't get out of it, and some of those people are just stuck in this moment and they can't get out of it, and I believe the only way out is to find one, and then two, and then three people that socially bring us out.
Speaker 2:We need as a society, as a Christian society, we need to band together and get back into groups. Some of the best churches that are growing and flourishing, if you look at them, are ones who have gotten people back into small group, are ones who have gotten people around a band of fellowship, of people who are openly and honestly speaking with one another about their true issues and their true problems and finding safe places for them to heal each other and to heal the brokennesses of our world. And we need to put our phones down. We need to make healthy meals, we need to go to coffee with one another, we need our families to be families again and not be divided up in the same home into different rooms with different screens and different things, and God created us to be genuinely humanly real with him and with each other, and so I think the only way for us to get out of this moment is to abandon all of the fake and get back to genuinely being real human beings.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you so much for joining us today, Mike. We really appreciate it.
Speaker 2:Thank you, thanks for having me on. It's fun. It was deep, but it was fun.
Speaker 1:That's right. That's right, and we thank all of our listeners, too, for joining us, and if you have any questions on this episode or any others, you can reach us at lifechallengesus.
Speaker 3:And we look forward to having you back next time. Thanks a lot, bye. Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Life Challenges podcast from Christian Life Resources. Please consider subscribing to this podcast, giving us a review wherever you access it and sharing it with friends. We're sure you have questions on today's topic or other life issues. Our goal is to help you through these tough topics and we want you to know we're here to help. You can submit your questions, as well as comments or suggestions for future episodes at lifechallengesus or email us at podcast at christianliferesourcescom. In addition to the the podcasts, we include other valuable information at life challengesus, so be sure to check it out for more about our parent organization. Please visit christianliferesourcescom. May god give you wisdom, love, strength and peace in christ for every life challenge. For every life challenge.
