Get ready to challenge your perspective as we tackle the often polarizing conversation of self-centric versus God-centric views in addressing the mental health crisis. This isn't your usual discourse, as we draw inspiration from Jesus' unique approach to dichotomous questions and explore the oft-ignored repercussions of our culture's push towards self-definition. A shift to a God-centric worldview may be the solution we need.
Join us as we delve into the nexus of mental health and spirituality, demarcating the lines between psychology and theology. Discover how adopting a God-centric viewpoint could prove more beneficial to mental health than its human-centric counterpart. Let's traverse the transformative power of prayer and the insights we can glean from studying the Trinity. Prepare to redefine familiar concepts like self-esteem and acceptance within the context of Christian discipleship. Let's set out on this exploration together, shall we?
Show Notes:
Get ready to challenge your perspective as we tackle the often polarizing conversation of self-centric versus God-centric views in addressing the mental health crisis. This isn't your usual discourse, as we draw inspiration from Jesus' unique approach to dichotomous questions and explore the oft-ignored repercussions of our culture's push towards self-definition. A shift to a God-centric worldview may be the solution we need.
Join us as we delve into the nexus of mental health and spirituality, demarcating the lines between psychology and theology. Discover how adopting a God-centric viewpoint could prove more beneficial to mental health than its human-centric counterpart. Let's traverse the transformative power of prayer and the insights we can glean from studying the Trinity. Prepare to redefine familiar concepts like self-esteem and acceptance within the context of Christian discipleship. Let's set out on this exploration together, shall we?
Show Notes:
Welcome to Church Psychology, a podcast of the Nagev Institute. We are mental health professionals looking at the intersections of social and behavioral science in the Christian life. Please connect with our free resources in our open community library at churchpsychologyorg. We would be grateful if you would follow, like or subscribe to Church Psychology wherever you are finding us, and also leave us a review As we start. If we are to love the Lord, our God, with all of our mind, it makes sense to work on our head space. Let's get to work. Welcome back to the Church Psychology podcast. My name is Matt Schuneman. I'm here with Dr David Hall. Hey David, hey Matt, we are back. We are back. What are we talking about today? We are talking about let me say this first if you're listening to this after listening to the first one, welcome back. Thank you so much. We are grateful to have you along.
Speaker 1:We talked about a lot of things in the first episode. We talked about our heart towards why we're doing this. One thing that came up that I think that I want us to talk about more is, in a sense, this is such a statement that needs more to it, but we are in a mental health crisis That is fairly, i think, recognized even from the non-mental health world. Wouldn't that be fair to you, david? A lot of things are going wrong And we as therapists, actually we feel it in the sense that the referrals that we get our case loads. There's a lot of things with that from our angle, but in my work in the church as well, we feel it. There too.
Speaker 1:The topic's a conversation that I don't think pastors have had ever Moments of losing clarity of. I can't believe that my body of believers, the people, my flock that has been following me, that I've been teaching for so many years, are starting to believe blank about themselves. So, in an attempt to start speaking towards this, we're going to speak from a couple different angles on this, but as it relates to the mental health crisis, i think we could put a dichotomy out there that I want you to speak to, david, is in a sense, there has been a self-centric model, whether that's from the church or from the mental health world, and then there's been, i think, a God-centric model from the church and, i think, more recently, from the mental health world, especially as we talk about the integration that we do, and so I want to lead off with that is, if you're posing the self-centric model versus the God-centric model, and maybe we discuss that a little bit, but why is this worth talking about? What would you say to that?
Speaker 2:There's an essay I wrote about this recently and the fun kind of academic words for this is theocentric, god-centered view of the world, or anthropocentric, a human-centered view. Is there a P in there? Is it anthropocentric?
Speaker 2:Yeah anthropo, yeah, po-centric, yeah, i thought it would just be anthropocentric, but then I looked it up and there's a P anthropocentric, but a God-centered view of the world or a person-centered view of the world. And it's interesting. This is something that in my journey as a therapist, i've recently you all have done a reshift on. One of my favorite books in recent years and highly recommend it being the show notes is Jackie Hopperi's Holier Than Now, and it's not a particularly long book, it's a very readable book, but it's a book about the holiness of God And in reading it, one of the things that really I felt convicted about was I could see in my own work as a therapist of moving out of a God-centered view of the universe into more of a person-centered view of the universe, because ultimately, the knots and bolts of what I do is working with people And it's not in so many things that there are going to be certain things and themes you're going to hear about And I talk about a lot which is there's going to be a lot of both answers.
Speaker 2:If you're looking for a lot of either-or answers, you're probably not going to get a lot of this, and I feel pretty good about the model for that. It's the other tension of it, the tension Every time. If you look throughout the Gospels, every time Jesus was challenged with a dichotomous question either-or question he always never answered it with one of the options that were given.
Speaker 1:He usually answered it with another question, which was super helpful.
Speaker 2:Another question. That was a surprising answer. It's all throughout where he was being challenged by different leaders in the community. Because this or is it this? He said should we pay taxes? Should we-this woman marries a man and he dies and marries another man Who's she married? Like it is the-and Jesus was always about throwing curveballs for what they were expecting, and I think that's part of this idea of we lose an attention.
Speaker 2:So this isn't about an all or nothing, but I identified it myself and I see it for a lot of people of that We began defining the world about ourselves And there's a lot as we talk about culture. There are lots of things in the cultural space we live in that feed into that And there are a lot of ways that I've seen that in fact, church culture of how we conceptualize and think about things. But we make it about this, about people, and it's worth talking about, i think, because one I think it lends itself, it leads into you an unhelpful and ultimately incorrect way of thinking, but not just incorrect in a detached, academic way, and it's practical implications in, i think, our own well-being When we see ourselves as too much of the center of the story. It sows the seeds for our own problems, so I think that's why it's worth talking about how we view the world.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so the problems occur and that's such an interesting thing because of the model of counseling that I've seen. I'm very much like you. I think even in my graduate work my professor would walk around and he would almost bless you with what you were. You were a psychoanalyst, you were a cognitive behavioralist or whatever And he was like you're a humanist to me And I'm like huh, i didn't know what that fully meant, but in a sense I think it really wrestled with the dignity of the person.
Speaker 1:But where that becomes self-centric is that you go too far down the path of. You are very special, you're the most important, the central piece of I am deserve blank, because blank I am my own. In a sense it becomes this place if you go too far as your own God And with the faith that we know that whenever, especially in scripture, when everyone became their own God, it fell apart, they removed the ability for that person to have a relationship with God because they didn't quote unquote need him, and so that's where I think that starts falling apart. And as we look at this, it's just, it's kind of core anduned to this. I'm keeping a dichotomy for a minute with you, david, but when you look at the mental health world and then you look at the church and how we've both addressed these things. What have they both gotten? right and wrong, as it relates to the self-centric versus the God-centric Or, as you say, the theocentric versus anthropos-, anthropos-.
Speaker 2:Anthropos-, anthropos-, anthropos-.
Speaker 1:Let's retire those words for a minute, let's retire.
Speaker 2:We'll start with the mental health perspective.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Let's say you're taking a completely secular view of mental health And I'll go define that even more precisely of a materialistic view of the world. And what I mean by that is that would be the view by a lot of pioneers in modern psychotherapy Freud, skinner, ellis. if you don't know who those people are, wikipedia.
Speaker 1:But it's fine, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 2:But the idea that reality is simply the, what is material. There is no spiritually transcendent, there's no afterlife, there is no this is it. There were people that, from a non-Christian viewpoint, would challenge that people, carl Jung most famously, which did have this idea kind of more mystical. But yeah, in the main state it was a lot of secular, materialistic views of the world, and so take that for a basis. It makes sense why you get into the alleviation of human discomfort in this world is the highest priority, and so that's a lot of a lot of the challenges of religion.
Speaker 2:Albert Ellis, who he was the founder or one of the founders of cognitive behavioral therapy in the 50s and 60s, but he talked a lot about kind of that religion would saddle people with unnecessary guilt and hang ups about their sexual desires or other behaviors. And yeah, and if your view of the world is this is it, then let's live it up, and so that kind of drives it. But here's even the critique I have from that. Let's say that perspective of the world is true. I don't believe it is. But let's just say for a second, humans are amazingly inconsistent, and so this idea of building a correct view of the world, on myself on the anthropocentric, the human center view of the world. You don't have to scratch very hard to see how fickle that is. And let's say it's not just about one person, about what my desires or what my opinions are, whatever.
Speaker 2:Let's say we go broader when we talk about society. What does society think about? any number of things, and does truth? this gets into philosophy. Is truth a popularity contest In any number of societies throughout the world? there are propositions you could put forward, not just the everyday person, but the most learned individuals, the most educated individuals in the society about. Is the earth rounder flat? What's the effect of-.
Speaker 1:Let's not go down that road anymore, okay, yes, let's keep that one boxed away. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, our leeches effective in balancing your humors to cure disease. We can go endlessly about the phrenology, this idea that your intelligence was affected by the shape of your skull. That was really popular 100 years ago. There are things that we not only find incorrect but that we find offensive society. Things like eugenics, this idea of kind of racial hygiene or racial purity, we find a society very offensive. The problem is when you take a human-centered view of the world and that just becomes about a vote. Are you upvoting or downvoting ideas? You can look historically and look at our ancestors making not just incorrect decisions but ones that we would say in our current view are morally transgressional.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But then what happens next? Is it just about what we develop a consensus around? Because we know historically there's so many consensus. We've created consensus around things that we now find incorrect or offensive. You don't have to think very much on this, even denying the existence of God, you just can scratch a little bit and you see how brittle that is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. And so that creates a lot of inconsistencies, i think, a lot of confusion in regards of what is truth. This is part of and again I don't want to go too far down the philosophy rabbit hole of this, but the idea of relative truth has become. I think it feels good in the moment to say this is my truth, but then, as it hits other truths, there's this chaos ensuing. So the self-centric mindset then is I can believe what I believe, you believe what you believe, and then there's no truth to balance it. Then it breaks down all societal boundaries.
Speaker 1:But even with and again I said I wasn't going to go down it but the morality piece of this then becomes even more so Is if there is no, if it's only self-centric in nature, then we know we don't have a common morality. Even if you don't necessarily believe that there is a God, but morality says that there is something higher that we're all like looking to is yeah, we all believe that killing someone's bad, except for the people that do it, and we all look at them as they're broken somehow, they're crazy, whatever. But most of us are like, yeah, that's bad, but how do we define that as morality without some type of higher?
Speaker 1:thing, Yeah, there has been something transcendent.
Speaker 2:Yes, lord, and you're hitting it right now is what CS Lewis talks about in mere Christianity as the law of human nature, that we all have something that kind of. Is this innate moral compass? Now I would say from a Christian worldview that we have a compass that is malfunctioning and we could talk that's the fall, that's lots of different things and then there's a whole lot to unpack there. But Lewis would argue, and I would agree, that there is this inherent sense we have of kind of a moral direction. But if the highest order of authority becomes people, it doesn't work. Just logically, from a philosophical, logical perspective, it doesn't work. We need something transcendent. But ultimately to put humans at the center of the thing, it's too small of a thing Because as soon as we start trying to build the world around ourselves as individuals, the insufficiency of that becomes clear.
Speaker 2:And if we widen the circle by degrees, it's just about my family or just about what I see as my kind of community or my country or whatever it is. We make it that's the highest level of thing. It gets slightly bigger. But when you have an infinite size, whole, anything finite will not fill it. That's right. So the only thing logically that can fill an infinite gap is an infinite presence, indefinable, transcendent sort of thing, and this is where bits of philosophy, i think, is it.
Speaker 2:But so you see that in the world of psychotherapy and mental health, that when the human being becomes the highest order, then it's hard to make it all stick together. You talk about, if it's just about my truth and I'm a post-modernist when it comes to my work at the therapist, and that I do believe in relative, the nature of relative perspectives, but as a Christian I also believe that's subordinate to an ultimate transcendent truth. Church psychology is a production of the Negev Institute, a research resource and teaching initiative that aims to provide Christian communities with practical education and consulting to faithfully speak to our needs in mental health, relational science and human habit and behavior. A great way to support Negev is to start a free membership in our open community library at churchpsychologyorg and then stay connected with our email newsletter to hear about new classes, publications, live forums and in-person events. Again, you can find all that at churchpsychologyorg.
Speaker 1:There's a difference between perspective and truth.
Speaker 1:And I think that in the work of a counselor. we want people to recognize their perspective and even call it out and to like even my work with couples checking perceptions or perspective perceptions. either one, like checking that with your partner, actually is a good practice of like, how do we? I've seen it this way, but I don't know if that's actually what you meant. right, the sense of if I hold on to that holistically without checking it with you, then I identify that as truth. He hates me because he looked at me this way, but if I don't check the perception, then it's no. he looked at me that way because he had a terrible day. So there's that I want them to, yes, talk about their perspective, their perception with their partner, but they can't hold it as ultimate truth, because that's where it breaks down.
Speaker 2:So the mental health without a spiritual foundation does not have the ability to transcend simply the avoidance of distress, and even that has issues, because not all distress is harm. So live in a culture that talks about the use of the term harm and damage very widely, to talk about psychological things that oftentimes, i would argue, does represent true harm, but there are a lot of other things that just represent discomfort, and so it's from a secular, humanistic standpoint. It's a very shallow definition and it's constantly moving and it's hard to create instability with that. That's the problem for the mental health stuff. And the other half of the question is where's the church getting right around them? It's done both. So from a, you just need God, you just need scripture. Have you prayed about it? If you've done something? we see a lot as insufficient answers, is prayer transformative? I believe so.
Speaker 2:However, there is this the difference, i would say, between psychology and theology. Psychology is the study of the soul, the human soul, of way of being. Where's theology is the study of God? Is that? is theology a higher discipline? Yes, i'm not going to dispute that. But it also becomes. There's a practical level of where do we apply these things? We can talk about maybe the nature of the Trinity And that in studying the nature of the Trinity, that can maybe give us insights about the nature of relationships that we can apply to our work with families or couples or lots of different.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but part of what we believe is Christians about God is that God is fundamentally different than us. We are made in His image, but He is not made in ours. Even that is a fundamentally, because oftentimes when we talk about like God, we're made in the image of God. When we have too much of a human-centric view of that, what we often mean is God is made in our image versus the other way around, and that we are like God but God is not like us. That's right, And so to understand human, what it is to be human, we will get inside about that through studying what it is to be in relationship with God.
Speaker 2:But even the narrative, even the arc of Scripture I think Scripture is about try to say this concisely, how I would describe Scripture is the story of an infinite God and his interaction with these finite people he's created. But it is not. But it's specifically about that, about our relationship with God, and it touches on our relationships with one another, but it's not exhaustive for that. That's not the main. That's not the main, john. And ultimately, scripture calls us to be, to be students, to be patient, to learn, like. Ultimately, i think that there is so much that Scripture will direct us to, but it's much more of a direction versus like, a broad direction, versus a step-by-step direction. I know that I'm called to grow in the fruit of the spirit, but if I'm supposed to grow in patience, it doesn't explain to me in that Scripture precisely what are all the things that do that can make me more patient.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the step-by-step.
Speaker 2:Step-by-step thing And, as mental health providers, that's what our science is to study. What are the things that bring out patience? As far as I know, there isn't a lot of detailed instructions in Scripture of a lot of agricultural practices, but here are all the steps of planning a successful harvest, or here's how to, and it's spoken to but it's not. I think it's this idea. It's not that Scripture is insufficient, but it's this idea of taking it to be something that's not supposed to be. A classic example There's no instructions in Scripture for neurosurgery. That doesn't mean neurosurgery is a bad thing. So I think on one side of the Church has either been too dismissive of it's taken in this high view, this 30,000 foot view of people, but that's a very different view than what happens when you're face-to-face with somebody. I think it's left people ill-equipped to close the gap between. This is what your life should be. It should look like this You should be okay. You shouldn't be sad about the loss of your parent because of the truth of the resurrection. I believe in the truth of the resurrection, but I think oftentimes we'll shortcut the processes that even Scripture calls us into. So it's not even necessarily that Scripture is incorrect. Is that as humans we approach Scripture, we like singular answers. We want to be able to say this one thing One of my great mentors in mental health would talk about that proof texting is not theology.
Speaker 2:For those who aren't familiar with the term, proof texting is where you find the single Scripture verse to justify your perspective And you could find that for most things. True theology is this holistic thing. And to finish up, my answer is that historically, where it has an engagement with mental health. But this other trend I see is there's been this interest in mental health from certain church circles, but it's oftentimes taken beliefs about mental health and mental health culture wholesale without really being critical in examining it in the context of Christian discipleship Concepts about self-esteem, let's say Should we be kind to ourselves and other people?
Speaker 2:I believe so. I believe that's scripturally consistent. I believe there should be an honoring of that. But in Western culture we've talked about self-esteem as this kind of fourth godhead Do you love yourself enough, do you accept yourself enough? And we've even talked about acceptance as being this thing of acceptance without sanctification isn't necessarily a very kind process to ourselves or other people. I'm not a very good person. Left to my own devices, i need transfer. It's missed in all those places and I don't believe that I have the answer to it all. You might have the answer to all that. I don't.
Speaker 1:But I do believe, as we sit, i'll wait till a few episodes down to give you all those answers. But in the attention?
Speaker 2:how do we record? How do we hold this together? There's truth that God wants us to live in. That comes through the traditions of the church, through the revelation of Scripture, through all that. And there's this humdrum of how do we learn of the okay? How do I listen better? How do I exercise kindness? How do I exercise self-control? I know that self-control is a part of the spirit, but if I'm in the throes of addiction, how do I start bridging the gap? Be I just praying harder?
Speaker 1:And there's. So I think about this, and I don't know if I'll say it eloquently, so I apologize But I think in the work of counseling that keeps God at the center, although it doesn't dismiss the self. Because I think in some ways, as you mentioned, that example of my spouse died. So I'm getting counsel from my church. I don't know if a church does this, but like I'm getting counsel from my church that says you don't have to be sad because of the resurrection. Yet we have also in Scripture a moment where Jesus knew he would raise Lazarus from the dead, yet he wept in front of his sisters. Why? Why do that? He could have equally been like. You know what? You all stop crying. Look what I'm about to do. No, i got this.
Speaker 2:No, i got this, don't worry about it.
Speaker 1:He was still center of the story. Jesus was center of the story. Mary and Martha were not center of that story. Even Lazarus was not center of that story. The story was in a sense incorporated by Lazarus because he was the one raised from the dead, but Jesus was the author of all of those things, yet he still wept. And so there's this commonality where and again, this is not eloquent, but God still has to remain center.
Speaker 1:But ourself is an important piece of understanding, that, and it's that self that relies on God, that it's aligned underneath God. That, i think, is where the tension lies between these two parties. Whereas maybe on one side the church has been too dismissive of the self, i think in later days we've swung the pendulum too far and we've been too, like you've said, too focused on the self. Where we and that's, i think, to some level, where the prosperity gospel has come from There's all these things of blessings, and God's going to bless me, and I have to say this prayer and he's going to do this for me, and it's all putting yourself at the center of the story.
Speaker 1:And so how do we come back to this alignment of and this is why is this conversation even matter, david is. I think it's because and I would love for your input on this too but I think it's because we have to align. Well, we don't remove ourselves totally from it, because we are souls created by God for a purpose, but we can't be on top. We can't, we're not even a lot like side by side. We are aligned underneath, but we're still part of that, and so is that alignment that speaks to me.
Speaker 2:I would agree with that. It's this I think there's wisdom that comes from study, from experimentation, from so many different things about how we as people interact with others and ourselves. That is not separated from how God's created us and our relationship with Him, but it's a different part of the story. It's a side story sorts of things, but it's still subordinate to the main story and to the pendulum swings in these wild directions. But I think when we can see God in the correct place, it allows us to then move towards a greater wholeness in our own mental health, our relational health, in our behaviors. And an example of this I love comes from an interview with the singer Bono from the band U2. It was an interview he did in the early 2000s Rolling Stone magazine And he was talking about gospel in the blues as musical genres And he said I did not experience attention in embracing both of those music because he saw those two musical styles as opposite sides of the same coin, because both of them fundamentally have God at the center.
Speaker 2:That gospel music is this adoration towards God, and he would talk about the idea of adoration of even things that don't call themselves God necessarily. But when you speak well of good things, of self-sacrifice or romantic love or things like that. It is a turning towards the divine, even if you don't understand exactly what it is. When God has created good things and we turn towards those good things, there's a turning towards God. And in the blues there's a turning away, whether it's out of sadness or frustration, and you could see things like heavy metal, thrashed, angry sorts of things like this, but it is the turning away, the similarities that God is at the center of both. Bono's quote was something like God's at the center of the j astronomy and things like that. We know, not because we've actually seen the stars, but we can see the gravitational pull of things around them And so we know that because things are aligned in a certain way that means there's a mass there in the middle.
Speaker 2:And you can't take no-transcript in the way. That is much more constructive and healthy.
Speaker 1:They are far away from it. But as an encouragement, as we're wrapping this time up, I thought there would be an encouragement for those listening of what we do from here. If we look at this dichotomy of self-centric versus God's century, how do we encourage the people listening to find that alignment, Or what would be I may be another way to say it is what would be challenges and ways to assess your own alignment? Think there's this.
Speaker 2:That's good to go back over the broken record bit. Is there willingness to live in the tension, part of one of the signs that shows us that we are trying to make ourselves the center of the universe, whether our little universe or the larger universe is? we want to get to a place of conclusion. We want to be able to understand it all. We want to be able to put it in a box to say this is what needs to happen. It's the end of the sitcom moment where everything gets wrapped up And even as we're trying to do, what's coming on me as we're talking about right now is how do we put a bow on this And I don't know if you can.
Speaker 2:I think there's this idea of that. We deal with these different gravitational pulls. I think it is to study and to practice on, as Matt and I do, as a profession. The interactions and behaviors and impulses of humans can be a good thing if subordinate to a high view of God's view of us. And this isn't important to hold on to, because there's any number of people I don't only do counseling with Christians, i have a large portion of people I work with that wouldn't identify as Christians, that it doesn't represent their life, that they don't come to me for Christian counseling. They come to me for the mental health box as a psychologist But and I'm not necessarily saying let's open up our bibles to I'm sorry it has to come with that accent.
Speaker 1:I am Southern so I can justify it, you have rights, i guess I have rights, i have rights.
Speaker 2:But that's not going to work. But it is helpful for me to have this view, even if I see them in a way that they don't see themselves. But I don't get to be in charge, and I think that's the fundamental sort of thing. Our ultimate pitfall that we fell into at the very beginning of the human story, when sin entered the world, is that we could be like God, knowing fully both good and evil, and our knowledge of those things is always lacking. We do not have the capacity, as great and finite beings, to know as God knows. We're called to faithfulness and obedience, but I think that's a constant journey of seeking it out. So I guess the question is, or the answer, the best I can think to answer it as I'm talking around it is how do we seek true obedient humility and realizing that we're always adjusting in that, because we slip out of it constantly and they are in back?
Speaker 1:Those are two words that are cringe-worthy, i think, for a lot of people obedience and humility. And, with all compassion, they felt that way to me, and we're even talking about the concept of aligning with God, and so, even if those words felt hitching the step of things, maybe they're pointing to places, to where you feel your life as the center of the story and how we can continue to shift the focus, and it's not a flip of the switch where it's all of a sudden we're locked into God as the center. It is a slow fade into focus, but I think the only encouragement I would add is that you continue to at least wonder who's at the center of my story, or the story in my life. Is it me or is it God? Because when I see things, it's not that you can't feel sadness, anger, grief, hurt, all these fear, but it brings a different meaning to the suffering that you have, and so my encouragement would just to be to look at your lens and what's the focus and see what that reveals in you.
Speaker 2:I have a final thought as we're wrapping up And it's unpacking one of my favorite words that's used a lot in church culture but it's very misunderstood which is repentance. We have equated the repentance as apology or feeling sorry for something. Do you repent? Which means I admit I was wrong and I'm sorry for it? That's not what it means.
Speaker 2:It's much better to understand repentance in the sense of a nautical term. It's this idea of changing direction or correcting direction. If you're in a sailing vessel without satellite GPS and things like that, you're crossing an ocean, you're constantly making adjustments in your direction. Sometimes it's huge adjustments, sometimes it's slight, but you're always moving off course because of the currents and the winds And you take a reading and stars and compass and things like that and you're constantly adjusting. That's repentance. Sometimes our repentance is a huge turnaround. It's a 180 completely different direction And sometimes it's these slight adjustments. But the reason I like and think about it nautical terms, particularly over a long distance you can be only slightly off, but over time that widens the gap And repentance I believe in Christian life is a constant process.
Speaker 2:It's a constant resetting the helm And you kind of ask the question who's the center of my stories I'm living in now We're going to tell you something here. If you're breathing and you are not the incarnate son, you will constantly be shifting God out of the world, god out of that center. Put something else there. That may be a person in your life, it may be a romantic interest, it may be an institution, it may be something that, in its correct place, is good. Oftentimes what we make God's in our lives are good things. They're just not God.
Speaker 1:It could be our church community.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it could be our pastor, our church community our spouse our kids. But if you put any of those things in the place they're not supposed to be, it will both destroy them and you. But we are constantly changing it out, We're constantly in repentance. Is this constant process?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's good And yeah, that's my final thought It's a good one And we want to thank you all for listening to us and coming back to engage this process with us and live in the attention. We will talk to you soon and until then, farewell. Thank you again for being a part of our latest episode of Church Psychology. If you have enjoyed it, we hope that you will share this episode with others in your life, and please do remember to follow, like and or subscribe to Church Psychology wherever you're finding us, and leave us a review. We look forward to connecting with you again soon.