Welcoming God
Hey spiritual seeker! My name’s Sarah Haykel and I’m the host of Welcoming God, a podcast for spiritual seekers.
In this podcast, I’ll be sharing the goodness of Welcoming God back into my life after years of rebelling against the God of my Catholic upbringing and years of honest seeking on a personal spiritual path. I’ll share my consistently evolving understanding of God and what I’m learning on the path, to help create a God accessible to the every day person.
We’ll have honest and sometimes hilarious conversations about how to go from being a “spiritual” person to a God-loving person. Understanding God as a benevolent guide. What does it mean to have a relationship with God? What does it mean to surrender to God? Cultivating a spiritually mature understanding of God. Learning how to discern God’s truth and will for our lives. How to cultivate the most important relationship you’ll ever have, with God, on a daily, moment to moment basis.
Come along on this spiritually rEvolutionary journey where we get to know God.
This podcast is marked as explicit because there may be swearing or content appropriate for mature audiences in some of the episodes.
Welcoming God
Navigating Christian Confusion
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Have you ever found yourself shocked by the beliefs of people who follow the same faith as you? That jarring moment when you realize someone reading the same Bible has arrived at conclusions that seem completely foreign—or even extreme—to you?
I recently experienced what I can only describe as a "veil-lifting moment" after attending a Bible study where I encountered perspectives that felt extreme compared to my understanding of Christianity. This led me down a rabbit hole of research where I discovered an even wider spectrum of interpretations than I could have imagined. The experience left me questioning not just others' beliefs, but my own approach to sharing my spiritual journey.
What struck me most was how we all engage in the same behavior—trying to convince others our interpretation is correct while dismissing views that don't align with ours. Yet Jesus's central message couldn't be clearer: love God completely and love your neighbor as yourself. He even said people would recognize his followers by their love for one another. So why do we spend so much energy arguing and judging instead of understanding and loving?
This episode invites us to create space between receiving information that doesn't resonate and immediately reacting to it. I share my personal struggle with this challenge and invite you to consider how you might approach differences with curiosity rather than defensiveness. What might happen if, instead of jumping to correct others, we paused to invite divine guidance into our conversations?
Whether you identify as a Christian or follow another spiritual path, the question remains the same: How do we honor our own truth while making room for others to honor theirs? And, more importantly, how do we allow others viewpoints, those that resonate and those that don't, to continue to grow, heal, expand and mature on our own spiritual journey?
Join me as we explore these important inquiries together, seeking not to win arguments but to embody the love at the heart of Jesus's teachings. Subscribe to receive the free Welcoming God ebook at WelcomingGod.com and continue this journey of spiritual discovery together.
Music by Song Channel Music. Listen at SongChannelMusic.com
Go to WelcomingGod.com to subscribe to our email newsletter and receive updates about all things Welcoming God.
Tempo: 120.0
Speaker 1Hey everyone, sarah here, just to let you know. Sometimes I do use swear words in these episodes and we may at times discuss adult content. In case you happen to be listening around, little ones or people that won't appreciate that. Thanks so much for listening and let's get right into it. Hi, and thanks for joining me on Welcoming God. Hey everyone, sarah Haeckel here. Hey everyone, sarah Haeckel here. In this episode we are going to talk about Christian confusion.
Speaker 1I have recently had a veil-lifting moment around Christianity and call it naivete, call it ignorance or denial. I really have been in a cloud of my own world over here and really did not realize the depth and breadth of beliefs within just the Christian tradition, within just the Christian tradition. I recently was invited to a Bible study and in that Bible study I learned that some people in the group had very what seemed to me extreme views about certain things that I don't have, and I felt surprised and shocked by that. And then, as I walked away from that and had some email interaction with the Bible study leader, further sharing about my thoughts or questions and hearing from them about their beliefs, I started doing a little research online and realized that even somebody that this person was recommending, who I thought had some more extreme beliefs that I don't necessarily have at this point in my journey or life. There are people out there that have even more extreme beliefs than this person and I made me wonder, contemplate, wow, what is this all about? And felt really surprising, unsettling, confusing, and I thought here I am trying to share my opinions and thoughts about what I think is right with this person. They're trying to share their thoughts and ideas and perspectives and opinions about what they think is right with me. What are we all really doing here? Arguing with each other, arguing with each other, fighting each other, trying to persuade each other into different viewpoints that align more with ours, with what we think are the teachings of Jesus, which, with what we think are the right things to follow in the Bible, the right interpretations of the Bible, etc. It just, I felt really confused and it has helped me to see myself in a new light as far as sharing my own thoughts, beliefs, opinions about what I currently believe as far as spirituality and God and what's going on here, which is very little that I really understand at all, if I really understand much of anything, but just sharing the things that I've learned to help me in my life as I've opened my heart back up to God, which I mean when I say that the all that ever is was and will be the one true source of life, of it all.
Speaker 1In your journey of spiritual seeking, what do you do when you confront different people with different beliefs, with different ideas and perspectives, some of which may seem or feel very wrong to you or extreme, some of which might totally resonate, some which might feel totally beyond where you're at and weird and uncomfortable and scary? How do you deal with the broad, wide spectrum of your spiritual or religious tradition? Even if you're not Christian, I'm sure you can probably relate to this in some way, shape or form. If you are in a different spiritual tradition, maybe not, but I have an assumption that there are certain traditions that might also have a wide variety of viewpoints as well. So what do we do with these wide variety of viewpoints? How do we process the truth, the reality that others see things so differently than we may see them?
Speaker 1You know, when it comes to the teachings of Jesus, I'm no expert, you know. I'm just really getting to know who Jesus was on earth and the teachings that Jesus shared with us through the disciples and what ended up in the book of the Bible that we call as Christians. So you know I'm no Jesus scholar. I mean, could I really say with any real authority like this is what Jesus, you know, came here to do? And yet I do know and understand that Jesus taught us how to love. That was the gift of Jesus and that is the continued gift of Jesus. Jesus is still actively working through all of our lives.
Speaker 1If we choose to listen to Jesus's teachings and follow what he said. As far as the most important commandments that we can follow and I'm paraphrasing here love God with our whole being, our mind, heart, soul, spirit, body, our whole selves. To love God fully and to love our neighbor as ourselves. I mean, jesus said those are the two most important commandments. And he also said that people will know my followers by how they love, by how they love each other, by how they love others. Paraphrasing again, totally, just go back to that.
Speaker 1So if I'm here to learn how to love, to truly love myself, to love others as I truly love myself, because I am a part of God heart, body, soul and spirit and by truly loving me I can learn to love others, make space for others, be able to hear their different viewpoints without just reacting and trying to shame them or blame them or change their opinion. You know, I walked away from that Bible study wondering gosh, I wish I had a little more space there to just ask more inquiring questions than just speak my opinions or share where I was at. I felt bad about that. But I learned something in that experience and I'm still learning. I'm still processing this because you know it's like, yeah for sure, I think that my way is the right way, but others do too. So where does that put us? It kind of puts us at a standstill.
Speaker 1But if I am able to just create a little space, just have a little breath or breathing room in between receiving information that does not seem right or land well with me and then speaking from a place of God's truth, being God-led like, even just having space enough to say, oh my God, please help me in this moment, how do you want me to respond? And then truly just listening to God's guidance, feeling it, because God's guidance comes in many different ways. It doesn't just come from inside of me, it comes from around me too. I could be receiving a signal or a sign around me as well. How do I just have just a little more space, just a little space to not just react to what I'm hearing or seeing or experiencing, but to let God in, say, okay, I'm not in this alone, god is with me, god's with all of us, god's working through us. How do I allow space for this?
Speaker 1So I'm curious how will you allow some space when you hear something about a religious tradition that you follow or you are a part of or you believe in? Or you hear something you know that doesn't quite resonate or land, even if you're not in a spiritual tradition, but you hear something and you go, whoa, that's not what I believe. How do we not just get into arguments with others or try to assert our own opinion, to change people's minds, but also try to understand where they're coming from, so we can have maybe a more guided intellectual debate about something, as opposed to just a full-blown shaming, blaming argument that creates more fracture and more division and more division. I am actively wondering these same questions myself and I just invite us all, including me how will we be gentle with ourselves and gentle with others where they're at, on their journey? I mean, I know there are times where, in the Bible, jesus got really mad and angry and surprised people by his wrath.
Speaker 1And his wrath, his anger, was coming from and through the Father. That's what Jesus, at least in the interpretations we have of the Bible. That's what Jesus at least in the interpretations we have of the Bible they say you know Jesus kept referring to you know, following the words of his father, that his father was speaking through him, or his father was telling him to do these things, or his father was telling him what was going on. So you know, how do we show up in a way that creates more space for, ultimately, love, which is what I believe. Jesus was here to teach us all how to truly love, and not just like in a Pollyanna way, but in a real, deep, true way, to love God with all of our hearts and souls and to love our neighbor as we love ourselves fully and wholly, because we are what God made us to be. So I will leave us with that for now.
Speaker 1Thank you so much for joining me here and remember that you can sign up for the Welcoming God email list, where you'll receive a free copy of the Welcoming God ebook. Just go to welcominggodcom and sign up. You'll see a couple of spots on the webpage at welcominggodcom right at the top of the page and then a bit lower down past the podcast listening page information To sign up for our email newsletter. You'll receive that free ebook. That's a companion to the first season of the Welcoming God podcast and I look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Take care everybody. Aloha nui loa and God bless.
Speaker 1Therapy or professional help I am not a trained therapist. I also have not studied theology in a formal setting. This podcast is purely for educational, inspirational purposes, to share the goodness of welcoming God back into my life and all of the things that I'm learning on this journey. So thank you for joining me here and I look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Thanks for joining me on another episode of Welcoming God. Please subscribe to this podcast wherever you listen and consider leaving us a review, as it helps more people find and benefit from this show. Music by Song Channel Music. You can listen and hear more at songchannelmusiccom. Until we meet again, aloha nui loa, take care and God bless.