RELIGION SUCKS - Going Deeper with God
Welcome to Religion Sucks, the podcast that explores what it means to have a real relationship with God—not the empty promises or endless demands of man-made religion—but daily, authentic intimacy with your Creator, in a relationship based on His unchanging character, not your performance.
Hosted by Pastor Rich Lasinski and his wife, author and speaker Kirsten Lasinski.
RELIGION SUCKS - Going Deeper with God
Facing Disappointment While Holding On To Faith
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What if you did everything “right” and still ended up with heartbreak you can’t pray away? We sit down with author and leader Joanna Meyer to talk about the gap between faith and reality—where singleness stretches for decades, infertility closes cherished doors, and a pastor’s family breaks apart. Joanna doesn’t offer quick fixes. She invites us to strip faith to the studs, set down performance, and meet a Savior who knows suffering from the inside.
Across this conversation, we unlearn the myth that a faithful life always trends upward. Joanna shows how American ideals of constant progress can distort discipleship, making us equate God’s favor with outcomes. Instead, we turn to the older, deeper path of lament—naming what is broken, turning toward God, and choosing hope even when circumstances don’t shift.
If this conversation met you in a hard place, share it with a friend who needs company in the tension. Subscribe, leave a review, and tell us: where are you learning to lament and still hope?
So it's forced me to really think more deeply about like, how do you deal with disappointment? And also, like, how is God present and good when everything you thought you needed or would happen in your life hasn't.
SPEAKER_00:Welcome to Religion Sucks, the podcast where we ditch the religious performance and get real about what it means to actually know God. My name's Rich. I'm here with my wife and co-host Kirsten. You may know that verse in Psalms about delighting yourself in the Lord and He'll give you the desires of your heart. Yeah, we've all heard that one quoted at us. But what happens when you're faithful, you're praying, you're doing everything right, and those deep desires just don't happen.
SPEAKER_01:Today, we're talking with author and speaker Joanna Meyer about living in that brutal tension between faith and honest-to-god disappointment. Because let's be real, sometimes it feels like God lets us down. So what do we do with that?
SPEAKER_00:Well, welcome Joanna.
SPEAKER_01:Or Jojo, as we like to call her.
SPEAKER_00:Well, let me briefly introduce you to our listeners. Joanna serves at the Denver Institute for Faith and Work as the founder and executive director of Women Work and Calling, while also hosting the Faith and Work podcast. She has an MA in social entrepreneurship from Bakki Graduate University and graduated Magna Cumlada from the University of Colorado Boulder. She's also the author of Women Work and Calling. Step into your place in God's World.
SPEAKER_01:Welcome, Joanna. Thanks. It's great to be here. So glad you could come. So we always start the show with the same question for our guests. What is your earliest memory of God or your earliest experience with religion?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, because I grew up in a home where my dad was a pastor. I was literally born the week he graduated from seminary. So church has very much been a part of my life. Um, and religion has been part of my life from an early age. Probably, oh, you know, I think is one of the best examples. It might not be my earliest memory of God, but I have a little note that my mom saved that um I went into my closet when I was about seven and actually made a little a decision of my own to put my trust in Christ when I was that age. And I always thought that was so unique because I remember being at um Sunday school at church a couple weeks before, and they had been having this conversation about if you wanted to have God in your life, this these are the steps that you could take. And I remember thinking, no one is gonna push me into doing this. Even then I'm like, I'm not doing it just because people say I should be doing this. I love that.
SPEAKER_00:Second grade obstinate, yeah.
SPEAKER_03:That's awesome. Yeah. Um, I even felt like that like years later as a teenager, when I felt some pressure, like, you know, if you're following Christ, you should get baptized. I was like, no, the way you guys do it around here is cheesy. You can't push me into getting baptized. So I waited a few years until it felt right for me and then I did it.
SPEAKER_00:I felt the same way when a worship pastor tells me to raise my hands.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_01:Just because you said to do it.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, but I have a little note. I remember uh taking some time to think about it for myself and then going into my closet as an early elementary schooler where I liked to hang out. I just loved climbing the shelves of my closet and just hanging out in there. Um, and I knew what I needed, needed to do, and so I made a decision um to invite God into my life, and I came out with a little note poorly spelled. Mom, I just accepted Jesus in my heart. And my mom gave it to me a few years ago, and I have it framed, and it's just like a really helpful reminder to be able to point to like, oh, a day and a specific date and say, wow, like faith was real and personal for me starting at that day. And more than 40 years, which is kind of amazing to think about.
SPEAKER_01:It is amazing. Okay, so we we know where your faith journey started in those early years. Did you have any any ideas about what your life might look like or any dreams you had for yourself?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I don't know if I had a lot of um, you know, like a lot of kids, I may have had like ideas of what jobs you wanted to do. Like I would have uh drawn little pictures of me as a chef or me as a florist or something like that. But I don't think I had a very clear picture of what I wanted my life to look like. Um but I remember in high school getting clearer pictures of what it looked like. I think in high school, I always assumed I would get married and have kids. Not like it was uh this sole thing I was building my life around. I just always assumed that it would be part of my life and it was something I was looking forward to. I never imagined that it wouldn't be part of my life. So that's been a little bit of my journey of figuring out what life and faith looks like, of is figuring out, oh, like what happens when that path you thought is inevitable doesn't happen. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely. Actually, I feel like that's a good segue. Um, we have titled this episode When God Lets You Down. Because I think feeling let down by God is a fairly common experience for people that we don't generally talk about in Christian circles. Looking back over your life, do you feel like at different points you had expectations of God?
SPEAKER_03:I think I definitely had expectations or I had a framework that I thought was normative for what it looked like as a Christian. And I didn't have a lot of um, I didn't have a lot of ideas about what that looks like when that doesn't happen. Um and it can come in different ways. Like for me, marriage and motherhood were a big part of it. Uh I was talking to some younger um women I know about so I'm I'm 51 and I was talking to some younger women, um, some professionals, and asking, like, hey, what are your thoughts on marriage and motherhood? And it was really interesting because there are a lot more questions on whether that would be part of their life. It was a real generational difference. I I know your two daughters, and in some of the conversations I've had with them, they're like, they even realize, like, oh, there's been a generational shift in um the inevitability that some women, especially women of faith, feel about the need to get married and have kids. But for the generation that I'm a part of, it was just assumed that that would be a part of your life. Um, and it wasn't like anybody had to convince you, it was just such an established pattern for how life worked that it was kind of like, oh, well, that's just what everyone does. Um, and so I assumed that that would be a real part of my life too. I was like, oh yeah, eventually it's gonna happen. Um, I'm gonna get married and I'm gonna have kids. And that will be the primary grounding relationship and identity that will give meaning to my life.
SPEAKER_00:Well, how would you describe your relationship with God as a young person?
SPEAKER_03:I think early on, I confused my own uh kind of drivenness and need for perfection with um things of faith. Like I was hanging around in communities that had were very like visionary and goal-oriented. Like when I was a college student, I was involved with an organization that had um a really strong and compelling mission of serving students and introducing them to Christ, helping them grow in their faith. Um, really, really good stuff. But there also was a lot of drive associated with that vision. And so I quickly associated um walking with God with being driven and pursuing a noble goal. And it made it really hard to have like healthy boundaries or to think about what grace looks like. So I think my understanding of the gospel of God very confused with what what um performance or accomplishing a worthy goal looked like. It took me a while, I would say probably till my early 30s, to really wrestle with um a grace that is offered through Christ that is free and unearned and not based on your performance. Yeah, and generous. So it took, I think it took exhaustion and kind of the the illusion of some of those frameworks and cultures that I was in falling apart to be able to say, like, oh, maybe this isn't how um life with God works. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So that was your mid-30s before you figured that out.
SPEAKER_03:Early 30, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:What do you think the age was that you made Christianity your thing versus just your parents' thing?
SPEAKER_03:I think those college years, because I was going to a school, I went to the the University of Colorado Boulder, where every day I was reminded in class that Christianity wasn't widely accepted on that campus. And so I had to wrestle with questions of can is Christianity trustworthy? Who is Christ? What does it mean to follow him? And so that season of my life was just a critical time of really choosing for myself that I wanted to follow Christ.
SPEAKER_01:You know, you talking about um performance issues versus grace, which I think is huge. Yeah. I mean, I I don't know if it's internationally the same, but at least in America, I think that's in an evangelical America, that's pretty standard to struggle with those things. But do you feel like you had expectations of God that were kind of focused on like, well, I'm performing, so I should be receiving. You know, like, yeah, because I've done XYZ and I've been this good Christian and whatever, I should get what I want.
SPEAKER_03:I don't think I had a sense of um receiving at that stage. Um, I think what I had was a fear of what would happen if I didn't perform. Yeah. Like I don't think I had an understanding of of God that was gentle and offered rest. I mean, we think about all the descriptions of Christ. Um, Matthew 11, um, 28 is really helpful about his invitation to come and learn from him, to find rest. And even the metaphor that verse uses is of a yoke, um, being yoked together with Christ, and that there's a place of learning from him, of experiencing his gentleness and humility. And it's really interesting that there's a metaphor of work, of a farming instrument, of a yoke, um, that as we are yoked and working alongside him, we experience all of those wonderful qualities about him, which to me is just a counter of perfection. Yeah. But it took me a while. I remember in those years, probably all the way through my 20s, um, I would work to the point of exhaustion, and then I would kind of fall apart a little bit, experience grace, and then I get back right up and start working again. And I remember even saying, like, why can't I get this grace stuff to stick? It's like I get it. It's wonderful and experience, and then it goes away. And it didn't go away, but I think my own like mistaken assumption of what life with God looked like made it difficult for me to truly stop and sit in grace.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. When did you first start to feel like, wait a minute, this isn't how this is supposed to go?
SPEAKER_03:Well, I think a couple of things. Um, I think there are probably two like really defining experiences in my life. One was when I was around when I was 30, um, my folks got divorced. And that was one of those watership shed events, especially, you know, because my dad was a pastor. And so there was this illusion of like, oh, good Christian families function a certain way. And one of those was to be married. And so when uh my dad filed for divorce, it was, I often use the metaphor, it was like the um skeleton was ripped out of my life, even though I knew things of faith were the true like foundation. There was a whole lot of like family structure of what faithfulness looked like. And so when that model of goodness and what the Christian life should be chose to act against what I knew to be true of Christianity, it was like it pulled that skeleton out. And so I had to really spend a number of years rebuilding a framework for life and faith that was based on scripture, not just the normal see of what family life looked like. Um, and I think even in the last 10 years or so, I've had a very pronounced like journey with being single, of realizing like, wow, I kept having this like hopefulness of like, well, maybe this is the year that I'll get married and I do do the right things, you know, I'd look cute. I wore a ton of high heels in my 30s till I'm. I remember that.
SPEAKER_01:And you did look cute.
SPEAKER_03:I was working it, you know, like I was living in the city, I was wearing heels, I was going to a church with lots of cool guys, and you know, I was doing all the things that I thought were the right thing to do to produce the outcome that I desired and that they just didn't. And so with that journey came um some health challenges that meant losing, I mean called losing the ability to have kids, which was a huge part of that journey where you kind of go, wow, this was not this was not in the roadmap for life. And so it's forced me to really think more deeply about like how do you deal with disappointment? And also like, how is God present and good when everything you thought you needed or would happen in your life hasn't? Yeah. And that's in the midst of other like amazing things happening in life. Like aspects of my life are bigger than I could ever imagine them to be, and also more painful and empty than I can ever imagine them to be too. Yeah. Yeah. And I think one of the challenges for me was, you know, the the journey of singleness has stretched on, you know, I'm 50.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:And so I, you know, like I can think about like in my late teens, I was thinking about like, oh, maybe I'll get married. And so you think about that, and you're like, that's been a 30-year journey for me of figuring out like, how do you maintain hope? How do you proactively do practical things that put you in the spaces where God can work? And how do you pick yourself up when it doesn't that desire doesn't get met, or sometimes it gets just blown out of the water, um, like not being able to have kids. So it's been a really interesting journey because I feel like I've tested um I've tested a lot of strategies that have been offered by religion of how you deal with that disappointment. And I started, as we were preparing for this conversation, I started making a list of all the things that haven't worked or all the perspectives that have not been helpful or have not been found true on this journey of disappointment.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I was gonna say, I'm curious, like during while you were in the thick of it, were you still going to church? I mean, were you still doing the Christian things?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. Um yeah, but I think in my inner life, I was really quiet. Like I was really quiet with the Lord because it was exhausting. Like trying to trying to manufacture hope was really hard. Um, and I think one of the things that was surprising that I didn't know what to do with, but it might be helpful to verbalize, was that it reached a point in my mid-40s where I couldn't manufacture religious activity that would make it feel better, if that makes sense. And um on a list of things that were weren't helpful, I want to be careful in how I say this because it could, and how I say this, I don't want to inadvertently mislead somebody who might be listening, but let me see if I can take like a run at it. And hopefully, listeners, this won't be too confusing. But um, one of the things that was challenging in that season of real disappointment and pain was that um friends of mine and loved ones who had been rooted in a tradition where continuing to do the religious activity that represented faithfulness, in this case, like finding specific like Bible verses and applying them to my pain, to the dis disappointment I was feeling. Um, it reached a point where it was no longer helping me. Like I needed to be able to like stop working at managing my grief and just let myself grieve. And I want to be careful in in how I say that because I don't want to lead somebody astray and have them think like, oh, reading God's word isn't helpful in times of suffering, because I think it is, but I think we have to be careful that we don't equate religious activity as the perfect solution, like do this and it will stop hurting. Yeah. Um, and so I had to really wrestle with that in a season where I just was exhausted. Like I couldn't just keep performing and doing religious activity to try and manage the disappointment or pain that I was feeling.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Hopefully, listeners, that's it.
SPEAKER_01:No, I think they get the next of it.
SPEAKER_03:Because it becomes very formulaic. And I think that's to be honest, I think that's part of the mystery of God, is that God promises his presence in our life through um the risen Christ, through the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit, and that can be apart from religious activities in those moments where you are experiencing such disillusionment and doubt. And that doesn't mean that you're falling away, it just means that you're like throwing yourselves into the arms of God and saying, like, I can't verse this away.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, absolutely. Was there anyone who you felt responded well to your grief where it was helpful?
SPEAKER_03:You know, I think the people who were most helpful were people who could sit with ambiguity. I think one of the challenges of the Christian faith is that when we really like strip it down to its most essential things, they're eternal and unshakable and small in number, if that makes sense. Like it's um the Trinity and what the three expressions of God mean, uh the reality of the cross and Christ's resurrection as the hinge point of all in human history and God's abiding presence in our lives. Like outside of those things, like it's up for grabs in a lot of ways. There's a lot of gray areas. There's a lot of gray areas, and there can be a lot of ambiguity. Um, I think we probably all know people in our life who have experienced tremendous suffering that doesn't make sense, that lasts longer than we think it should, that it's breathtaking in its complexity and depth. And so there aren't easy answers for why God allows that to happen. And so we're better served by sitting in the ambiguity of those moments and sticking to the core, core things that we know to be true of God and who he is, and helping people stay in that place rather than building on kinds of like suggested activity or platitudes or trying to help them manufacture ways of feeling better about the situation. And so people that were able to sit with ambiguity or had experienced suffering themselves were much better companions. There were certain people I just learned over time where I'm like, this person isn't a good companion to me because they don't have the spiritual maturity to handle the unsolvability of the situation I'm in.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I feel like the older I get, the longer I walk with God, the more I realize how much of the Christian life has to be lived in tension. Mm-hmm. Yeah. That's you just have to get comfortable with it. You know, that there aren't easy answers where everything is going to be resolved this side of heaven. Yeah, it's your is there's just attention you just have to learn to live with.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. And I think one of the you know, every culture, place and time in the human experience has some unique idols that they worship or ways that the culture shapes their experience of what who God is and what the good life looks like. And I think in modern American life, we have this idea that the goodness of God is expressed when life is comfortable and moves forward in a linear forward direction. Yeah. Amen to that. Like you could use the metaphor of uh of a successful company's stock progress, their metrics, if you put them on a little chart, are always going to be up and to the right. That's a very like American energy towards life. Like we think, like a good Christian life, one that God blesses, should have the progress going up and to the right, always, always progressing, always increasing. Um, and that's just like the antithesis of the gospel. It it also helps. You know, I was a history major, so I think a lot about people's lives and other points in the human experience. And you realize, like, oh, for most of human history, people didn't have that much choice about the direction that their life would go. Like, if you think about being born into a family of agricultural laborers in China 200 years ago, like you had very little choice about the direction that your life took. And so what faithfulness looked like was not always measured in the sense of economic progress or prosperity. And so you go, okay, if that isn't the measure what for of what a faithful, successful Christian life looks like, then what is? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if it's true for all of humanity, then we need to step back and say, like, okay, then it needs to be able to play. Our thoughts, when I say it, I mean our thoughts about what the Christian life looks like, it needs to be able to play at any point in human history. That strips it down to some pretty simple truths.
SPEAKER_01:I would love for you to talk a little bit about what it means to lament because I think that's not even a word a lot of people know these days. Um like how did you find you could stay in relationship with God and yet be brutally honest about when something hurts?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. So I think the contrast to what I was describing of this like false expectation that life moves in a progressively improving, more prosperous direction, is the reality of life in a very, very broken world. And that is the reality that we live in as Christians. You can look at any area of life from relationships to the ways community functions to the ways our body decodies decline over time. Like every area of life has been damaged by sin and the brokenness of a world that isn't the way that God intends it to be. And so the task of the Christian is to understand what does it look like to live with hope in the midst of the brokenness of life? Or the two words that have been most helpful for me are beauty and brokenness, like the gospel and the eternal attributes of God, his goodness, his truth, his kindness, his empathy, his faithfulness. The list could go on and on. Um, how do we hold those to be true in the midst of the brokenness that we see every day? Like you can't pick up your computer or a copy of the Wall Street Journal and miss the deep brokenness in every area of life. And so we have to figure out how do we actually see and experience that brokenness, not attempt to ignore it or to offer false solutions that make us feel better about the situation instead of just sitting with it the way we uh the way it is. And so lament is a big part of that. And I think what lament is, is it's a healthy expression of authentic emotion. Um and to be done effectively, it means that we turn to God in the midst of that suffering. We um invite God into our suffering, and um we uh look to God in hope, even if the circumstances don't change. And so lament is not about trying to paper over your feelings or get yourself into a better headspace. It actually is just throwing yourself in the arms of God and saying, in spite of all the experience, I choose to trust in you. Um, and you see that reflected all over scripture. You see that in the writings of David in the Psalms, of how many times he just was cursing his circumstances and acknowledging the pain. Or Christ is a perfect example of lament on the cross. He's saying, Oh God, why have you forsaken me? You don't talk about being like at the depths of despair. He wasn't um offering, you know, clinging to religious platitudes as he was dying of suffocation and pain on the cross. He was just saying, This is awful. Why am I here, Lord? And so I think lament is a part of a healthy part of the process.
SPEAKER_04:Good.
SPEAKER_03:At some point in everyone's life, you'll experience something that will um shake our faith. And listeners, if you haven't hit that yet, just know it'll be part of your life. It's coming. Yeah, death is, I mean, every one of us will experience the death of a loved one in our life, and that is a natural time to experience lament. And there are many, many other reasons why too.
SPEAKER_00:Aaron Ross Powell So in the midst of all that pain that you've described and and just suffering over the years, what are some specific ways that you experienced God's grace in the midst of it? So his beauty, his faithfulness, some of those things that you're unearned.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, not based on your performance.
SPEAKER_00:Right. What did that look like for you?
SPEAKER_03:I think the thing that has been most helpful is to recognize that Christ is familiar with suffering. Like there have been moments where I've thought this doesn't make sense. And my idea of how my life should have turned out, it doesn't, it wouldn't make sense that my folks would get divorced. Or in my case, you know, I had medical, a medical condition in my 40s that stretched on over years that resulted in a surgery that ultimately ended my ability to have kids. And there were a lot of moments in that process where I was like, this just doesn't make sense. You know, I don't would have been a great mom and would have loved to have that be part of my life. And so what helped me was realizing that Christ didn't have to answer the why. He offered himself in his presence. And so being able to cling to Christ as a person really helped um when nothing else made sense. Because there wasn't an answer, you know, why a loving God would allow that to happen. But I knew that Christ had experienced suffering. And so you look at him described in scripture as being um acquainted with grief and familiar with suffering. And so I could say, like, if nothing else makes sense, I know that you understand this and you are present.
SPEAKER_00:I hate to go here, but what would have looked like for you to walk through that experience without God?
SPEAKER_03:Oh, I think if if you don't have God in your life, you end up trying to manage your emotions with the things around you. Whether it's circumstances and just Yeah, whether it's food or drowning your emotions in streaming content online, or becoming fanatical about exercise or um cursing God and walking away. There are lots of ways that you can choose to manage it, none of which will change the reality of what you're experiencing. And so, um and you see that. I mean, just look at the lives around you. And heck, I have turned to some of those things too, to try and um manage the emotions rather just than sitting in just the fierce reality of a very broken world and the amazing gift of Christ in the presence that he offers. It's kind of a if I'm being honest, it's a very searingly real place to sit.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:And that's such a contrast because um so often in our faith communities, we aren't comfortable with those realities, and so we offer really cheap substitutes. Um and even your friends may be deeply uncomfortable with the discomfort they see in your own life, and so they'll try and offer all kinds of things that are intended to make you feel better, but really don't help at all. Yeah. I mean, it's it's not fun to sit with questions or to look brokenness in in the face. And so, yeah, it's a it's a journey.
SPEAKER_01:It is, but I just looking back on my own life as much as it sucks because it does, those times of grief. Um looking back, I can see change. I can see honest transformation and areas of healing that I wouldn't have had without the Lord. Yeah. You know.
SPEAKER_03:And you know, if you're walking alongside a friend that is experiencing suffering, that is a big question to be asking yourself of am I actually helping them sit with Christ in this season, or am I offering a bunch of things that really won't be helpful? Yeah. Am I offering a Christian platitude? And trust me, even in very faithful circles of friends, like there's some really crappy advice out there that isn't biblical, isn't pointing somebody back to Christ, but it's kind of like a Hallmark card version of like hopefulness. And the biggest thing Christ that God offers us is Christ Himself, yeah, a suffering savior. I mean, that's that is an amazing invitation to just lean into that. And we try everything possible to avoid it because it's really uncomfortable. I would say, yeah, I mean, that's it, that's part of the experience. And that's part of being in Christ and being um doing life with Christ is that we're acquainted with his life and his sufferings. Um, and so it's an invitation, even if we haven't experienced it personally, to look to him and be cons you know, be aware of the suffering that he experienced.
SPEAKER_01:So if you hadn't had to walk through all of this, what would you have missed?
SPEAKER_03:Oh my goodness. I I mean, I think my faith life would have been focused on external expressions of measuring up to a standard of like shiny, happy Christianity. I don't think I would have um been I don't think I would have been invited to kind of strip my faith down to those studs. And that can be a really healthy exercise. It makes me even sitting here, I kind of go, maybe I need to strip it down the studs a little bit more. You know, I have a lot of other it's you know, that's just the reality of the American experience, like life crowds in. Um, and so you forget kind of what are those foundational core things of of life with Christ.
SPEAKER_00:This is a random offset of that, but what is stripping it down to the studs versus deconstructing these days?
SPEAKER_03:You know, I think I from what I can see about deconstructing, I guess I'd have a couple thoughts. One is uh I have a lot of um sympathy for the life experiences that have led people to want to dis deconstruct. I think the disillusionment is real.
SPEAKER_00:Aaron Ross Powell Never owning their own faith, just depending on somebody else's.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, or the ways they've been disappointed by how um things they have been taught or Christian systems haven't carried the weight that they needed to in the circumstances of daily life, or even false offerings, platitudes or um false offerings. If you do these things, your life will be happy, and then life isn't happy, and what do you do? So I I think the journey of deconstruction um is not to be scorned, but it's to be handled carefully, um, you know, in accompanying people. When I say strip it down to the studs, the studs didn't change. And I think that's an important part of this process. But um, but a lot of the exterior layers of Christian culture or um beliefs that were common in the circles that I ran in um had to get stripped away so that I was just focusing on some like core essentials.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, like being anchored in the gospel that doesn't change.
SPEAKER_03:And that doesn't mean that I was like suddenly like playing fast and loose with moral convictions that I had, but it was just this idea of like, boy, there are some things I've been disappointed in that I thought were just part of the normal Christian experience. And when that hasn't happened or when I've been disappointed, what do I have left? And what I had left was Jesus and God's word and the presence of the Holy Spirit in my life. It got really simple.
SPEAKER_00:I think I'm gonna start a new initiative instead of deconstructing, I'm gonna just stripping down to the studs.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, thank you for finishing that sentence.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, and I my hope would be, you know, for someone that is really navigating the disillusionment that often goes with deconstruction, um there there would be an invitation to keep those main things, those main anchors of the Christian faith, allow them to stay in the picture.
unknown:I love that.
SPEAKER_03:As you negotiate everything else around it.
SPEAKER_00:Maybe they're angry, maybe they're hurt, um, maybe they're about to walk away from the from from the faith. What do you want to say to them?
SPEAKER_03:Sit with the reality of who Jesus is. This idea that all of human existence, all of eternity revolves around the person of Christ, his life and his death and his resurrection. And so I'd say, if nothing else, can you sit with Christ, a suffering savior who understands your experience as a human being, who has suffered himself, and just allow yourself to sit with him and to say, Jesus, I I there's I have nothing else to hold on to. My life raft is gone, but you are you are here. You're the only raft I have. And just throwing yourself on him and clinging to him. Um and allowing you that may take time, you know, it it's not a quick fix, but allowing his presence in your life um to gradually lead you forward into a new way of experiencing faith. You know, I um I think a lot about um people in scripture who experienced Christ and were just utterly dependent on him. Um, we haven't mentioned a lot of scripture, but I think it's helpful to mention a couple. Um, you know, part of my health journey was I bled a lot over many, many years, um, sometimes just catastrophically like hemorrhaging. And so the woman of Luke 8 um is someone who is really she appears in the other gospels too, but um, it really stands out to me. It's a woman who had been afflicted by bleeding. And her act of faithfulness was to approach Christ from behind and just to reach out and grab his cloak, just like it was this desperate grab. And I think that, if nothing else, like for our listeners, that may be that maybe what they can do is a desperate crab where you just like are coming from behind and grabbing Christ's cloak, and if that's all you can get, that's enough. Or I was thinking about I'm forgetting the passage of what the exact reference of it is in the gospel, but it's at the pool of Bethesda. There is a man who was um physically disabled, and he had been laying at the pool for for 38 years. Um, and the idea in that day and age was that um occasionally an angel of God would stir the waters in the pool, and whoever was the first person to physically get in the water after that that movement by the angel would be physically healed. And so you can imagine this man who's disabled laying there for 38 years, hoping he would be the one who could get in the water and be healed. And it really struck me when I thought about the length of time he had sat with that relationship of disappointment and hope. And in Luke 5, um, you see Christ coming to him and saying, Do you want to get well? And I think that almost feels like an unfair question to ask. Like, do you think you want to get well? He's been here for 38 years, hoping he could get well. Um, and the man replies, he says, Hey, I have no one to help me when the water gets stirred. Like someone always gets in ahead of me. Like his experience was one of disappointment. He had never hit it just quite right to get healed. And Jesus interacts with this man, steps into his life and heals him and allows him to walk again. Um, but I think that question of longing and disappointment of Jesus saying, Do you want to be healed? Um, is a powerful one and keeps us clinging to Christ in in those seasons where we're navigating between hope and disappointment.
SPEAKER_01:Would this be a good time for you to share some of the things that you found that were not helpful? Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:So I started making this list I mentioned earlier. Um, a couple things that I have found that are not helpful, either in the life of an individual suffering or if you're a friend of person that's suffering. Um, the first would be not to be quick to assign a reason to the suffering that you are experiencing. Like I think we can sit with Romans 8, 28 sometimes, which talks about God causing all things to work together for good. And in our desire to like escape the pain of that moment, often we're quick to say, well, look at the good that's coming from the situation. Um, and it can be incredibly spiritually damaging to do that. One is that you can short circuit um the longer-term work that God is doing in a person's life by being quick to say, Well, um, hey, if you just believed the good, if you saw the good, it would hurt less. Um, and you can get in unhealthy patterns of um of emphasizing the reason for suffering. Like I think about in my own life, like I've had very fruitful professional life in the last few years, and it would be very easy to say, like, God was allowing, God was delaying marriage and motherhood, so you could have this fruitful work. And I think it can get really distorted that can lead to overwork, shutting down your emotions, and actually keep a person from leaning into the Lord, which is the best thing that you can invite them to do in that season. So it can actually turn people away from God's love when we're too quick to try and offer a reason why someone's suffering. You can make up all kinds of things that people would say that'll be like, cheer up, let's put a little Christian sunshine on it. Um, and realizing like you actually want a person to experience a Christ who sits with them in suffering, not offering like lukewarm tea instead of the reality of Christ. And so the platitudes don't help. And a positive one is we have to wrestle with the reality of longing in the Christian life. I think that's different than having false hopes. I think longing is real. We see that reflected in the writings of David and the Psalms. Like, longing is a good and healthy thing. Um, and it's part of having a heart that is alive and connected to God, but boy, is it an uncomfortable place to sit. And so that's an invitation of saying, like, hey, something that isn't helpful is stuffing your emotion or trying to control it to a degree that you can put on like a healthy or not healthy, uh, a positive Christian outlook on it. Like, it's okay for things to be a little shaggy and Desire and longing to be out there and unresolved. But figuring out how to navigate that, uh, it's hard, especially if it doesn't always feel like it's socially acceptable. So that would be a positive invitation to really wrestle with God. Because I think that's a good thing. Wrestling with God is very healthy and normal. Um, we just have to figure out how to actually do it.
SPEAKER_01:Man, that is such a good point. Uh I guess it's about time for us to wrap up the show. But thank you, Joanna, for coming on and telling us your powerful story. Thanks for the invitation. And thank you to our faithful listeners for hanging with us to the end of the episode. Hey, if you haven't yet, be sure to go visit our website religionsucks.co. There's really cool stuff there. You can sign up for our email list, get some free merch. Uh, do it today. We'll be back soon with more interesting interviews. But until then, take care of the event.