Episode 257 - Dr. Dan Allender, “Healing Sexual Brokenness”

"Nothing affects the human heart more than our sexuality.” - Dan Allender

How do we begin the process of healing from past sexual abuse? How do we deal with the pain, the hurt, and the emotional brokenness that has taken hold of our lives? How are we able to move on?

Dan Allender says in his book, The Wounded Heart, “The journey involves bringing our wounded heart before God…”

We’re pleased to feature Michael's conversation with our good friend, Dr. Dan Allender. Dr. Allender pioneered a unique and innovative approach to trauma and abuse therapy. For over 30 years, the Allender Theory has brought healing and transformation to hundreds of thousands of lives by bridging the story of the gospel and the stories of trauma and abuse that mark so many.

On this edition, Michael and Dan Allender talk about topics such as: 

• Why every one of us is sexually broken, whether or not we have experienced sexual abuse or specific sexual harm. 
• The major difference between man and woman, male and female, as we are made in God’s image. 
• The category of lust as “desire gone mad” and why it’s crucial to understand lust in terms of relief and revenge.

Dan also co-hosts The Allender Center’s weekly podcast with Rachael Clinton Chen, which has had over 2 million downloads. 

*Today's conversation was originally recorded in November 2020*

Transcript

Dan Allender: 0:12

Sexuality has always been, I think the primary means not the exclusive, but the primary means that evil uses to distort, to damage to in many ways degrade the nature of what it means to be made in the image of God. So, if that's accurate, then sexual brokenness needs to be seen in the larger purview of of what it means to engage God as human.

Brian Beatty: 0:40

So how do we begin the process of healing from past sexual abuse? How do we deal with the pain, the hurt and the emotional brokenness that has taken hold of our lives? And how are we able to move on? Dan allander says in his book, The wounded heart, the journey involves bringing our wounded heart before God. Welcome to restoring the soul, a podcast dedicated to helping you close the gap between what you believe and what you actually experience. I'm your producer Brian Beatty. Thank you for listening. We're pleased today to feature Michaels conversation with our good friend, Dr. Dan allander. Dr. allander is a pioneer of a unique and innovative approach to trauma, and abuse therapy. Now for over 30 years, the allander theory has brought healing and transformation to hundreds of 1000s of lives by bridging the story of the gospel, and the stories of trauma and abuse that mark so many. Now on today's edition of restoring the soul. Michael and Dan discuss such topics as why every one of us is sexually broken, whether or not we've experienced sexual abuse or specific sexual harm. We'll also talk about the major differences between man and woman, male and female, as we're made in God's image, and the category of lust as desire gone mad, and why it's crucial to understand lust in terms of both relief and revenge. Dr. allander also co hosts the allander centers weekly podcast with Rachel Clinton chin, which has had more than 2 million downloads. The link for the podcast is in the show notes. So Now without any further delay, here's your host, Michael John Cusack.

MICHAEL CUSICK: 2:45

Dr. Dan Olander, thank you very much for making time to talk with me today. Welcome to the program,

Dan Allender: 2:52

but delight to be with you, Michael,

MICHAEL CUSICK: 2:54

our relationship goes back, I counted the years, 29 years since we first met in Akron, Ohio at one of your wounded heart conferences. And then, two or three years later, I was gifted with studying with you and then training under youth. So it's really, really good to be talking with you.

Dan Allender: 3:12

Thank you for aging us both.

MICHAEL CUSICK: 3:15

Yeah, indeed, you've devoted, you know, over 40 years now as a minister, as a psychologist and as a theologian to really working with writing and teaching about how people change and transformation. And at the end of our conversation, I want to get a little bit more into how you've evolved in your thinking to include inner healing in warfare and things like that. But would it be fair to say that, that most of your career has been around the area of sexual brokenness and the soul?

Dan Allender: 3:48

It has? I think that in one sense, the more particular way of putting it certainly has been sexual abuse. But I noted right from the beginning, that evil seem to delight in bringing about harm to our sense of what it means to be a man or a woman, and that nothing, nothing affects the human heart more than our sexuality. And so in that sense, sexuality has always been I think the primary means not the exclusive, but the primary means that evil uses to distort to damage to in many ways degrade the nature of what it means to be made in the image of God. So if that's accurate, then sexual brokenness needs to be seen in the larger purview of of what it means to engage God as human to engage others as human. So in that, yes, absolutely. Brokenness has been at the core.

MICHAEL CUSICK: 4:49

And though you've worked with sexual abuse, especially in your practice, and in your teaching, and in fact, the very first time I met you was that a sexual abuse seminar in Gosh. 19 Eight be nine when I began to enter into my own story, and my life was forever changed by that. But you also talk about because I've heard you say this dozens of times that we're all sexually broken, you don't have to have experienced incest or molestation or other kinds of sexual violations to be among the sexually broken.

Dan Allender: 5:20

No, I mean, let's just state it as bluntly as possible. Our sexuality is always deviant from what God intended now, how severe that struggle will be, there's always going to be an element to which our inner and outer world struggles with the reality of conformity to his righteousness. So that's accurate. Again, nothing touches the human heart. I mean, we know from research currently, that, you know, when sexual images of any sort are put before male or female, the brain lights up in a way that it lights up for nothing else, I mean, nothing else, it doesn't light up for winning the lottery, it doesn't light up for the, you know, the return of, of your dearest friend that you haven't seen for years, you know, any level of of exciting excitement of the brain, nothing parallels the role of sexuality. And if that's the case, then it's back to that simple premise that our common struggle opens the door to a deeper conversations with one another.

MICHAEL CUSICK: 6:35

So how do you respond to the man and also I'm sure the woman but but probably more often men who comes to you in your office? Or who you're just having a casual conversation with? And they say, Well, what do you mean, I'm not sexually broken? I'm not addicted to porn. I don't, I haven't had affairs.

Dan Allender: 6:54

Well, you know, if your comparison is another human being, you always have the opportunity for some form of decimation or some form of self righteousness. I mean, you know, you're in a, you know, let's just, again, be very blunt, the bell shaped curve pisses me off. You know, I mean, it's true with regard to height, it's regard to intelligence. And in some ways, I think it's rather true with regard to even this whole concept of, of maturity. And most of us are pretty much in the middle, and maybe one standard deviation above the norm. But that leaves a lot of people who are a lot lower a lot higher than whomever wherever we are. But we compare ourselves not to one another, we compare ourselves to Eden, we compare ourselves fundamentally to Jesus. And when that comparisons made, everyone shows a significant well realm for maturity. Let's go back

MICHAEL CUSICK: 7:59

to the question of what exactly is sexuality because I've always taught that sexuality is not about what set of genitals we have, or what kind of chromosomes were assigned, but rather, this idea that you referred to about the image of God, right? In Genesis 126, and 127. God says, Let us there's the plurality of the Trinity, right? Make make man in our image, and then let us create the male and female so there's something inherent to our sexuality that's deeper than Gen natality. Can you comment on that?

Dan Allender: 8:36

Well, yeah, I, I would agree with you so fully that, you know, where we returned to is the foundation of our very creation, and that God has pleasured himself to create difference, and different stats fast. And not just fast, male versus female, but vast within this whole realm of what it means to be a man and what it means to be a woman. And, you know, in some ways, let me deviate from perhaps where you were going, but, you know, we've got so many cultural in many ways, suffocating points about what it means to be a man what it means to be a woman from, you know, women wear makeup in a particular way, men don't wear makeup, and I'm not commending that men begin wearing makeup. But I also would would press to say, even that category is so culturally constructed, that what we conceive as male and female never gets fully defined in the scriptures, never. In other words, we've got to do theological work that isn't culturally bound to do the work of determining what's the nature of what it means to be male and female, but whatever it means He meant for there to be a difference. And that difference is meant to give a taste and fragrance to the complexity and richness of a God who created us in His image.

MICHAEL CUSICK: 10:13

And so remaining true to the biblical text. And yet in a pluralistic postmodern culture, how do you speak about maleness and femaleness and that vast difference?

Dan Allender: 10:26

Well, I think honestly, this is an arena of have a lot of change, even in the last five years for me, thinking in terms of how I might have named it, I probably would have felt that there was something about the nature of strength that was there, with regard to maleness, and something of tenderness that was there with regard to femaleness, and I still hold that to be true. But I know, so many men whose tenderness exceeds what many women tend to offer, and I certainly know strength and women that exceeds what often is found. So I would say both are meant that strength and tenderness are meant to be part of both of who we are as male as female. So in that sense, I would go back to the category that there is one core uniqueness, and that is women give birth, men don't, which means that there is a difficult beginning category is to say, women are more like God. Women are more like God in they have the capacity to create in a way that a man cannot. And that is to create from the very literally snooze, right from the cellular standpoint of there being which is why I think there is so much misogyny, so much. And again to say the word hatred of women is not untrue. But what I would say is envy of women, envy of the of the intimacy, envy of the creative power, and the imagination, and the tenderness so that when we begin to name that a woman, for good lord for millennia, have been abused in the way that, you know, we're seeing currently in the the the hashtag me to the Weinstein, and that you start looking at almost this long history of powerful men, the idea that women are far more susceptible to abuse. And I don't think that can be simply called lust, I think that has to be seen as more violent than just desire gone mad. It is desire gone mad, with a vengeance against. And that's been part of my work over many, many, many decades is is again, just to ponder, why is there such misuse of women, far more than their so called misuse of men?

MICHAEL CUSICK: 13:14

You're so I'm so glad you brought this up. Because especially in today's culture, where every day we're reading in the news about another man or another handful of men dropping like flies. And of course, my story is one of sexual exploitation of women and sexual harassment of women. And the antidote is, is really humility, and stepping into and through shame, which I definitely want to talk about. But so many men, since we're talking about the misuse of women, and misogyny don't know what to do about that. And at best, oftentimes, in the Christian community, we use euphemisms, like working on your purity, or, you know, someone had a moral failure, which of course can be, you know, not serving the poor is a moral failure. But yeah, but how do we, how do we stepped beyond, quote, working on purity, and step into our stories and our brokenness in a way, where not only we would be transformed and restored, but that that would be part of the restoration of the world and the kingdom come?

Dan Allender: 14:26

It's a beautiful question. And the question itself, is so indicative of the nature of the work that you do with people, and that is the assumption that there's more to our struggle than the fact that we struggle with lust. And again, I've tried to say that I think lust is desire gone that is a kind of consumption, a rage to fill, that core emptiness that exists within all of us. That's I never want that to be minimized. That's always a factor. are in our exploitation, not just of women, but our exploitation of ourselves, our exploitation of the Earth, I mean, all forms of misuse, rather than honor. So if we contrast misuse violation to the word honor, why are we dishonouring? ourselves, others, the earth, and ultimately God? Well, I always come back to the second category of anger. So Jesus talks about sin in the category of lust and anger. What's the anger involved in pornography? Well, it's the joy of degradation. And that is a very mean, we're at least as a culture, closer to being able to acknowledge the powerful role of lost. But we're still deeply reluctant to face that there is a part of us that wants to make someone pay. So in that sense, as to, to make a shift that will feel too severe for most people, but to say no, I mean, for a man to face, the way he misuses women, requires him to deal with his first woman. And that's not your first date. It's not your first sexual encounter. It's your mother. So when we opened the door to the complexity, particularly of a boy with his mother, that, you know, the pushback I get to this day, it's like, Don't you mess with my mother? You know, I mean, you can look at war films, and see men dying on the battlefield. Seldom, and maybe never do they cry out for their fathers. And so the relationship we have with our mother, is intimate. It's complex. And it's highly Oh, my God, highly defended. So to begin that process to say, No, every man engaging pornography is to some degree. And again, that's back to the bell shaped curve, to some degree, some way less, some way more. But everyone on that continuum, is addressing something with regard to their mother. And so that warfare, that war of what will I do with the younger parts of me, that feel embedded? Feel in many ways a meshed or feel lost and abandoned with regard to my relationship with my mother, that becomes the place where you begin with misogyny in the first core relationship. And that's Mother Son.

MICHAEL CUSICK: 17:49

Yeah. Wow, there's so many questions and directions, I could go with that. But the first thing that comes to my mind is that, why in the world would we begin to face that unless there is a good and merciful God, that's better than we even imagined, with whom we can come before and say, I misuse women, or I have been misused by a man or another woman. And I can bring the very worst of who I am my shame, even this joy in degrading others, which is a brutal, brutal truth to admit, right. But that's the paradox of, of Christianity and the heart of God is that when we when we face the ugliness, we see who we really are, and we see who God really is,

Dan Allender: 18:43

well, again, I don't carry a gun. I don't know

MICHAEL CUSICK: 18:48

any more, right?

Dan Allender: 18:49

Well anymore. You know, somebody cut me off on the road the other day, and I sort of put my face up against my window and mouth words that if it had been a, you know, if had been captured by an iPhone, or something of my current work would be highly questioned. I'm going What in the name of God is going on? Like you got inconvenienced for three seconds, and you're willing to virtually risk your reputation and your presence in the kingdom of God for what? And in some ways that that level of I wanted that particular car and driver to pay. And it wasn't just for the insult or for, you know, the mere small threat that they pose by cutting me off. In some ways it was the volume is rage, I've not addressed over scores. have smaller, bigger insults. Just again, go back to one core category, we all know we're angry, how angry and particularly white males angry. And so when you begin to frame that, and to say, let's that take the awareness of what Scripture says and what we know about ourselves into the realm of exploitation of, of women, it becomes a very, as you put it brilliantly humbling. But again, shame divides, but eventually, shame exasperates to a point where you literally have such a deeply divided inner and outer world, that I think that sense of you are far from whom you were meant to be and who you were most meant to be with. I think in some ways, shame is what drives us back to God.

MICHAEL CUSICK: 21:00

I'm saying this not to be funny, as you talk about those, as you talk about the road rage. I'm going yeah, I get that. And then I want to say, Gosh, Dan, I, I thought you would be beyond that by now. And I say that, because it's so cool to hear you, you're 60 to 63 years old.

Dan Allender: 21:20

What I wish I'm, I'm well into my 65.

MICHAEL CUSICK: 21:25

Okay, congratulations. So we all have this illusion, that someday, you know, as we get older, or something, that these core struggles inside of us, especially the things that we don't seem to have any control over our reflexes, our impulses, that that, you know, think God is an ongoing process, so that the pressure is not on us to have to somehow resolve that. But how have you come to a place where you're both horrified at what you've done in describing it now? And yet, there's a non judgmental acceptance and a compassion that I hear about that as well. How do you walk that line?

Dan Allender: 22:04

Well, I think, be it well or not, I've done a lot of pondering of myself and others. You know, my job is pondering, reading, I get to read a lot. People pay me to read people pay me to write and think. And that sense, I get to just sort of do what a lot of people don't have the privilege to do. And that's to sit back and go, What in the name of all that is good, true and holy, would provoke such a response in that context. And it's not excuse making by any means. It's a willingness to say, Look, I get cut off. Look, driving in Seattle is not a piece of cake. So it's not like it's rare. Why would this in this moment provoked me? And seldom is it the event itself. It's more what stored what stored from that hour before two hours that day, several days. And a lot of it, at least for me, has to do with entitlement, which is I think the understructure for all forms of narcissism, a kind of I've done what should be done and look at what my life still does. Why am I not richer? Why am I not more famous? Why am I not more happy? Why does my world not work? And that is naive, and perhaps, as immature as it may seem, and I do believe it is, there's a part of me that feels the same as you to go at 65. Having been in Jesus, literally, for a little bit more than four decades, I would never have thought that my wars would be as broken as they are. So that standing back and being able to go now there were two or three things that had happened that day that I had not addressed. And I can argue because I was busy or because many things were intervening. But it basically boiled down to, I'd taken some blows that I didn't feel like were fair or honorable. And I didn't address them well, in the moment or after. And so, you know, the poor person who cut me off, got my face of rage, got the cumulative work of that day, in a way in which I don't even know if they saw my face and I'm grateful that at this point, I'm aware that anyone videoed me, but we do live in that world or you go I don't know how even mature it is that I struggled as much as the thought that oh my gosh, if this had been in a more public setting, and somebody had taken my rage and put it on to a camera People be doing just what I'm doing right now shaking their head going, I knew he was such a fake such a poser such. And it's like, and that moment, it's worse than being a poser I'm I'm a, I'm a contradiction to what it is I want to be. And yet I'd go back to the framework of grace. I'm also revealing what it is that Paul put words to when he says that he's the chief of sinners. And I make no claim to be the chief, but I'm not far behind him. Given that, then how will I tenderly? Because I don't believe Jesus engages my rage with rage? How will he tenderly engage those very, very young broken parts that really want the world to be magical and and resolvable and an on my side? How will he tend to that will I let him tend to? Well, I named that I need him to tend to those young parts of my heart, that that I think, begins to change rather than just to flagellate myself for being so foolish, or to further blame. Seattle drivers to self justify, I mean, those are really, ultimately our only two passages, blame others or blame ourselves. And when we choose to mitigate blame by at least saying, I need help, I need help right now. I think that changes the flavor of what our hearts are available to and certainly change how Jesus is free to engage.

MICHAEL CUSICK: 26:50

Can we go back to this idea of dealing with our wounds from our mother. And last year at the restoration of the Heart Conference that you did with your buddy, John Eldridge, you spoke pretty vulnerably? What Not pretty, very vulnerably, about your relationship with your mother and the wounds. And I heard you speak about some of that 2925 20 years ago, and yet you had gone to a whole new level in your own life, of understanding that. So for the man who is kind of on the edges of dealing with their story, can you talk a little bit about your process of what you've had to do to deal with that relationship and how that's affected you today?

Dan Allender: 27:38

Yeah, and let me start by saying, my mom died this last March. And it it was, as all death, it is an aberration and a violation of what God intended. So in that sense, there's always a sense of something is wrong in death itself. But we're, my mom and I had come to be, it was once that said, it can also be said it was a good death, a death in which, by the finish of my mom's life, there was much that we had talked through much that we had engaged a whole lot that was left for only what eternity can enable the two of us to be able to engage. So I'm not wanting to overstate it. But I was able to deeply grieve and honor and let go and surrender. My very deeply broken mom and to name a sentence or two about that relationship. My mom dependent upon me, as her soloists, her source of strength of I was for confidant, in many ways, I was her lover, far more so than what was true with regard to my stepfather. So the reality of being a what I refer to and others referred to as a triangulated relationship, I was in an intimate bond, in which I was more her surrogate spouse than I was her son created massive complications, particularly given that my mom fits with our audience has a sense of what I'm saying without going into great detail. She she fit very well the term borderline personality disorder. But without the specific specifics of that to say she was highly seductive. In some way, she was a very young little girl, very sexualized little girl, and on the other hand, could be brutal, cruel, and deeply distancing. So and that could all be in two minutes. The it the nature of that kind of unpredictability of arousal, of punitive violence, but also of weeping that requires me to hold her and, and soothe her and comfort her. Let's just say that there's a whole lot of people hearing this, who would say, Oh my God, that sounds awful. It's nothing like my mom. And that's part of the complication of my story. Sorry, it's a lot of extremity in many areas. The reality, however, is that all of us are in a war of intimacy and individuation. I mean, just to put it in those blunt terms, the more intimate we are with others, the more we seem to give up individuation. And what I mean by individuation is the capacity to choose and be who you are. But the more we choose that, then there's That's right, on the other hand, of a loss of, of connectedness. So, you know, you can be who your mom wants you to be and be pretty close to her, but you lost your soul, you gained your soul, but you lost your mom. So that that's the tension I was in at a very volatile level, pretty much every second, let alone minute. Most people are at least hour today. So in that sense, they're at a different level of, of extremity. But But in that the weight of pressure of baring her soul, and the sense of what do I do with the amount of arousal and need, I feel for her, she feels for me, parallels oh my goodness, to the nth degree, the effects of sexual abuse, grooming, touch, relational engagement, that feels powerful, and yet also nauseating. All that's going on. And, you know, for me, being able to go, Oh my gosh, in some ways, I've I can say with incredible integrity, I have seldom ever struggled with pornography. And, and people kind of come back and said, but you, you say you're sexually broken. You don't struggle with pornography? And the answer is no, not much. Because, you know, as a loving 12 year old boy and my mother took me first to a strip club called the Moulin Rouge, and to far darker strip clubs than that. And I saw my mother in various stages of undress through most of my life. I remember hooking and unhooking her bras at seven, eight year old boy. And that sense, pornography always provoked in me a sense of being erotically arrayed in the presence of my mother. So, I mean, it's heartbreaking to say that, but on the other hand, she has always been a kind of prophylactic against, you know, the power of a visual eroticism? So, as you begin to name, what's the nature of the relationship? And how did sexuality get played out? I always go back to this core assumption, unless there was true love between your mother and father. True Love, meaning true delight, true honor, and the capacity to be restored to one another when there was failure, unless there was love, then you can almost be assured there was a drainage of some of the war with intimacy on you as a child, or at least someone in your family as a child. So the issue of triangulation is huge across the border, in most, most families, because most families do not have a mother, father, a husband, wife, who love one another with true delight, honor, and great capacity for restoring rupture. So all that's accurate, then we go back to that fundamental point, that we are at war with the CO hor first woman in our lives.

MICHAEL CUSICK: 34:27

And that's been an ongoing process for you. Thank you for sharing all that. By the way. That wasn't one therapy session that wasn't reading your own book. And some, somehow, you know, figuring it all out. That is that is a process of tell me what that process has been like over what span of time? Well,

Dan Allender: 34:48

I would say minimum Lee. I probably didn't even begin to address some of the implications of this until I first met Larry Crabb back in about 1975 76, but yet, the rage, and then the intimate resolution of that rage with my mom, I mean, it didn't take a lot to open the door to the reality that this is a pretty screwed up relationship. But then to actually take that and to say, it shaped how you engage women, that took a lot longer. But I looked at the track record of my very broken sexual history with women. And it wasn't, it didn't take a lot of labor to basically take that one little flashlight and begin to go, Oh, my goodness, what heartache got lived out here, with violence got lived out here. But then the harder work, even though it sounds so on one level pathetic, was it actually shaped something of your inner world, it actually shaped something of your own identity, your sense of who you are in the world and actually shaped how you engage God. I mean, it's still affecting who I am in a way in which my heart cries out Maranatha, come quickly, Lord Jesus, may there be and there will be one day for complete glorious restoration. So that framework is an evolving, put in a little bit more technical terms. It's an evolving hermeneutic. It's an evolving way of reading oneself. And hermeneutics, as you know, is the study of how we read, how we study, what we're reading. And that process of going. You know, as my daughters are, two of them are now in their 30s conversations we're having now, you know, decades later about me as a father of them as young teenagers and teenagers. Oh, my gosh, it is a humbling gift to have children who are articulate and honest about the reality of how the shadow of my mother played out, even in my fathering of my children, one can be suffused and shame, or one can somehow be immersed in the goodness of what it means to be forgiven. But in being forgiven, we don't erase the harm, we come to engage with new eyes and a far more tender heart.

MICHAEL CUSICK: 37:46

So I want to just summarize what I hear you saying maybe to address the question I'm imagining, somebody might be asking, especially a man who's dealing with pornography, or sexual sin, or some kind of sexual brokenness that's hidden, or that maybe it's just come out, and they're not sure they want to plunge into this pool, you know, they just want to bounce their eyes and get more accountability. Why bother? And what I'm hearing is that our story that's broken, that initial, first relationship with the woman or mother, all the ways that that plays out, as well as all of the other wounding that comes to us in life and all the warfare and all the lies, that if we don't deal with that, we will be diminished and inhibited in our capacity to flourish as we were meant to. And to be able to only use a very evangelical term, glorify God, and receive love from God and to live beloved, and to be able to have our soul rest.

Dan Allender: 38:55

Amen, amen. If we can just say it, as well as what you just put words to, I don't want to have to grow any more than to be able to make my world work. But when I realize my world is not going to work, if I'm as mature as Jesus, because his world did not work, as we would normally use that phrase, no one was more mature. And he still is despised and provokes rage and literally goes to the cross. Yes, there's a redemptive purpose, but in the way he loved prior to that called for something from others, that simply goes beyond what what any of us feel is reasonable, or applicable to living a so called real life.

MICHAEL CUSICK: 39:51

Last year, Dan, you wrote a new book, you have been a prolific author, author, and 30 years ago, you wrote the wounded heart and The book profoundly touched me and helped me heal. But you wrote last year healing the wounded heart. And I regularly recommend that book, even to to men who have not been sexually abused in their traditional understanding of I've not been molested, etc. But the book is so helpful to understand sexual brokenness. But what why did you write not just an updated version of the wounded heart, but a whole new book on healing sexual abuse?

Dan Allender: 40:30

Well, we know about in many ways, the life of our lives, is our wives. And Becky was the one who said to me, you're the one who has been teaching for 25 years. Material that isn't, is not fully adumbrated in in the wounded heart. Why don't you write a 25 year retrospective? And I? I just didn't, I just didn't want to do it. It was like that, that books find the way it is. And yeah, there's other material. But she she was kind and and relentless, and basically said, you, you have changed with regard to your understanding of warfare, that alone would be the basis to encapsulate new material. And she said as well, you know, the neurobiology of of abuse is much more clear than it was when I began writing in the mid 80s. So with all that, yeah, I eventually relented to her wisdom, which probably one of the great areas of my life is even questioning for a moment. But I do so over a recent couch we bought and, you know, the 25 year old couch, we had seemed like, look, we probably only had another 10 or 15 years on? Why do we need another one. But having purchased a new couch, and written a new book, I will say, seldom is my wife wrong.

MICHAEL CUSICK: 42:15

What's the big idea that you'd want someone to get from reading, healing the wounded heart, a man or woman and by the way, you wrote a chapter just for men in sexual abuse, there's so little written about men and sexual abuse. Thank you for including that, but what would you want somebody to take away?

Dan Allender: 42:33

Well, that our brains need to be honored. And that when we address the issues of our trauma, to ignore that trauma, even trauma of our own shame, meaning, my own sin creates trauma for me. And and that trauma doesn't excuse doesn't become a justification for sin. But it has to be taken into account in the restorative process. So to understand what trauma is trauma of having been abused, or the trauma of my own harm of myself and others, needs to be addressed. That, to me is a very important chapter, particularly how trauma affects our body and our health. So I think that's one key issue. Certainly thank you for mentioning about men. That that's a very important section. And it was a critique, literally, within months of the publication of the wounded heart back in 1988. And that was, you know, you don't deal with men. And it's like, well, at that time, I have not worked with many men. But what I had found to be fairly consistently true with regard to men, and women and abuse had enough parallel but no, there are crucial things that need to be said, uniquely for men. But I think maybe the thing that I'm most desirous for people to get from that is the reality that evil intends, from the harm of abuse, to create certain kinds of internal and external wars. And to the degree that we do not see and name the work of evil, we are far more susceptible to the continuation of that harm. So bringing that back into conversation, while bringing that into conversation, I think is a very important part of the book,

MICHAEL CUSICK: 44:27

in the groups and weekends that we do for men, restoring the soul, the phrase we use, and I might have gotten this from John, but that, that there is a living presence that hates our soul, and his name is evil, and to realize that has so many implications, not that there's a devil under every bush, but that the reality of it is real. And to understand that can help us to put our story in a context, but also it's To help us understand shame better, because so much shame comes from the evil one. So talk about shame. There's been this kind of Renaissance or maybe for the first time, a new discussion Brene Brown, Kurt Thompson, I kind of consider you a patriarch of writing about shame, all the way back to the wounded heart and in your teaching, in in your book, the cry of the soul. But with all that conversation, just give a couple statements about what you see, as important to understand about shame and how it specifically plays out in sexual brokenness and sexual compulsion.

Dan Allender: 45:37

Well, and not that many would care about I my doctoral training was with what I consider to be the true patriarch, a gentleman by the name of Gershon Kaufman. So early on, in my work, I had that privilege of having shame as a primary focus of the therapeutic process, and certainly of understanding the nature of our pathology, but our brokenness. So really, I think there are two things that I would underline and it's there. You know, Kurt Thompson is just, I think, a brilliant writer and one that I read and profit greatly from, and Brene. Brown, absolutely, as well. But so the first is that shame is public. To me, it's a huge, important category, most of our effect, can be public, but it's often private. Meaning you don't generally feel shame in private. Unless you imagine somebody seeing you doing what you're doing, I felt shame in the car. But only because I was imagining if somebody were to record that, and then I'm to see myself in the presence of how others see me. So in that sense, it's one of the most God given emotions. And one sense what we can say it's the first emotion we see in Scripture, Adam and Eve, experience shame. And in that shame, the natural response is hiding. So if we start with the assumption of almost all, if not all our efforts, to pose to hide, to portray something about ourselves, that's not true. It's shame based. So as a public effect, it's what in many ways, clothes us to hide, what we know will bring us some level of approbation as a result of, of that experience. So if that's number one, number two is just what the Scripture teaches, our rage comes out of our shame. So the violence of misogyny isn't just because of some broad hatred of women. It's far darker than that. It's, it's a shame based response to make a woman pay for the vulnerability. And the neediness I feel in the presence of. And so in that sense, I'm going to turn against the one who feels like they have brought or exposed my shame. So if we can hold those two things together, we've got enough to be able to do great work in our marriages, to be able to say, every marriage, I don't care how mature it is, has some degree of hiding, and some degree of blaming, if we can erupt and disrupt that reality, that erupt, meaning bring it to name so that we're actually face to face with our own effort to hide and our own effort to scapegoat, then we're in a far better position to actually be humbled. And you know, it's just it's a theme that you've struck several times in this interview. And I know by your writing in your life, you know, you didn't want to be humbled, but you were humbled. And in that humility, you actually found a level of relief of honor and joy, that would have come by no other means, but in that sense of surrender. So you know, I mean, the testimony of your work and your life is that it is in rest, that we will be redeemed. That is the image of Isaiah 30. Isaiah 31 You would not rest there when you kept running, and you will, in one sense, be destroyed by your own efforts to reclaim yourself. I mean, the paradox that so much of our own suffering is because we are our redemption. We are our own effort to cover ourselves versus being covered, you know, again in the alien righteousness of Christ, to be covered by his claim of us that we aren't. This is old language. But it is so fundamental to how I addressed, you know, my road rage yesterday, and how it is that, you know, today's young. I mean, this is an early morning conversation my day spans many other conversations today, and will there be failure? Has there been failure? Will there be failure? Of course. So how will I continue to participate and that humility to say, I need help? And I need people to help, because I'm not going to find that, that help, essentially, and only in my relationship with Jesus, I need Jesus, and whom Jesus appoints to be part of that process. Yeah, isn't

MICHAEL CUSICK: 50:51

it so much easier sometimes just to kind of do Jesus and us, as if we could have our quiet time and read the new devotion and then not have to be vulnerable and community. You know, as you talked about, in thank you for referencing my story. And I would agree wholeheartedly that the humiliation, the humbling the brokenness, the pain, that that has all been, at this point, a gift. And I wouldn't necessarily wish it upon others or choose it for myself, but the gift has been not just experiencing the fruit of, of having gone to that place, but everything we're talking about. And this is one of the reasons why I came to study with you a couple decades ago, was I was wrestling with the question, How in the world do I connect what's broken in me with this thing called the gospel. And when we do plunge into our story and our brokenness, and we make that conscious decision, what you and I have experienced is, is that Jesus in our in our faith goes from being this add on, or something we believe, to something that is as essential as an oxygen tank to a scuba diver, you know, it's literally a necessity, or we can't make it through. And that's my passion is to invite people into their brokenness and even even pornography struggles, because it's a window into, you know, connecting with God and knowing him and reflecting him in a in a way that's otherwise impossible.

Dan Allender: 52:27

Well, again, it's where we both need to nuance, but we both know this is true, that that addictions of any sort, at least are a passion. And, and in that they are high levels of lost and anger, which means the person's in movement, and, and it's a movement toward death. But at least it's movement. What what I fear more than that level of brokenness is a person who's living and essentially good life, but ultimately self satisfied. Ultimately, like the life itself, watching Netflix, going out on a weekend, drinking a few beers, watching the End of the World Series. going on vacation for a couple of weeks a year, you know, the essence of what a good middle class life generally holds for the Christian community. You voted for the right candidate, you send your kids to the right school, you drive the right car, you get it serviced you, you even floss. And then to go, you know, put good on you. May you live a good life, but I don't see generally in that kind of person. The ache, the sense of I'm lost. I mean, I am lost. And I must be found today. You know, and I can hear at least a few, a few good Christians saying, Yeah, you sound like you're lost, and you need Jesus. And the answer is, I am lost. And I need Jesus desperately today. At least as I'm aging, I'm getting clearer and clearer. I need him. I need him at levels that feel so deep and intimate. And yet at the other hand, so sweet, so sweet, that I'd go look, if the price of being lost is knowing something of its sweetness, then let yourself be a lot more lost than you seem to be but particularly the population you and I tend to work with. Already have a pretty keen sense there last Yes. And that's where I think the two of us are lazy. Because we'd we'd prefer to work with the people who are asked them to help those who are not discovered that they are. And I take that as, as a compliment to us both. I don't have the patience or maturity, to work with people who don't know that at some level, they are lost. And, and in that when we are found and further found, because it's not lost to found, it's lost, to further hurt, further seen. And, and as a result than were brought back to that point of going, Gosh, this is what it means to know Jesus today. I cannot wait I cannot wait to see what I know of him tomorrow.

MICHAEL CUSICK: 55:42

Salvation is coming to Christ. And that way that we talk about getting saved is really just kind of the the trailhead of the path that takes us to the door to walk into the abundant life of restoration. And there's, you know, as you as John is, so many other people say that there is so much more. Dallas Willard called at a reduced gospel that we settle for, Hey, before we wrap up, because I know that your time is limited. I want to come back to to one thing and then a final question. You said that shame is a God given capacity. And and I want to make sure I understand that, that it's a capacity that God gave us, but that God is not the one who shames us. He's well, in the crosshairs not shaming us.

Dan Allender: 56:28

No, in one sense, yes, you're you're cutting into the complexity, theologically of you know, is shame. Shame is primarily used by evil, right to to shut us down, silence us and separate divide us, internally and externally. But But Adam and Eve felt shame, even before the first encounter with God. And I think in that sense, shame is an awareness of something within us that is destitute that that in that in their sin. They knew at levels that ontologically we can't even begin to name because we were net, we have never been pure, we have never, in one sense been fully righteous in and of ourselves in the way that Adam and Eve were. So we have no clue what the transition is between otter holy righteousness. And our unconditioned. We know what Adam and Eve felt after. But we don't know what that transitional experience would be, we can only suppose. So at least to start and to say, but their experience of shame, awaken in them a level of how empty and destitute and violent and dangerous they are, and work. And so in that light, shame was a gift as to you know, an engine without oil ceases and shuts down. That's not how the designer built the engine to cease, he built the engine to run with oil, but the absence of oil brings about a byproduct. And that byproduct is indeed I would call a gift of God. But now, it's also the tip of the spear for what evil uses to actually separate. So when we hold that complexity, then what we can do is to be able to say, Well, Jesus took our shame. I mean, that can be said so quickly, but to let ourselves have that awareness that that he took our shame, he took it and fully, which means he became shame on our behalf. That means that we as even post fall again, in a way that Adam and Eve didn't have the privilege. They had the privilege of having shame engaged, they didn't have the privilege of having shame consumed by the one who is our Creator and author. So in that sense, what I would say is shame today. Our experience of shame today is always contrary to what God desires.

MICHAEL CUSICK: 59:26

That's, that's such a helpful clarification. Thank you. So final question. And neither one of us are guys that say, here's the three or five steps, but you wrote a book called The healing path. And you wrote a book called to be told and so many others that spell out how to engage this process for that man who is standing around the edge of their story in their brokenness, just wanting to to modify their behavior. What are a couple of practical macro things to do to get started

Dan Allender: 59:59

you Well, I one of the first things would be write your story. And you can do that on so many levels, you can do kind of, you know, in the year 1970, I experienced this sexual event, in 72, I did, you can do a bit of a, you know, a lifespan orientation of, of your own sexual wars, just by having it even on, you know, a decadal, let alone year by year, you begin to name certain things. So we're back to this word name, you can take a story and write six to 800 words, just a story, one story of where you knew sexual violation, where you knew something, someone or something did harm to you. What we find is, the research, particularly about writing is when you put things on to paper, something changes in your brain, right. So that naming process is huge. A second factor is it needs to be read. It's not just writing, but it needs to be read to at least one other human being. And I would prefer that human being be you. A person who has done has a calling to enter into brokenness, with wisdom, with strength, with Audacity, and yet confidence that comes not by a commitment to a methodology, but to the goodness of the One who created us. So you need to read with another, and that sense of Third, you need the engagement of the story you've not told. So when we tell a story, there's almost always inevitably the unset. And as we began to explore what was said, but also the unsaid, we begin to get a clearer picture of our lives. First of all, that's a huge investment, time, money, but far more, it's the fear of what I'll discover. And this is where as much as all of us are afraid to be discovered of how bad we are. The more significant fear is really how beautiful we are. And that for the person on the exterior, just on the border of thinking about all this has to be viewed to some degree is a kind of therapeutic bullshit. We just go, oh, how interesting. No, that's not me. But the reality is, we are all far more afraid of facing the beauty within us, then indeed, the brokenness, so inviting people to hold, now you were written to reveal the very name, the very, very being of God. Now, will you let us explore in your life, how your life was uniquely meant to reveal something of the goodness of God, I think become beautifully terrifying. Humbling, but holy. That's that's the task. Do you know that humility will take you to a holiness of joy? Well, if so, then whatever you're doing, I don't care if you're a multimillionaire or you literally sweep floors. There is such a life ahead for you that you couldn't even begin to imagine. Come join us.

MICHAEL CUSICK: 1:03:33

Amen. Dan, thank you for your, for your time and your heart. conversation with you and hearing you speak is always incredibly stimulating and provocative. And I'm going to have to go and unpack this and spend some time in solitude. This is going to encourage so many people. Thank you. And we'll talk again,

Dan Allender: 1:03:53

Michael, of course, love being with you again. Thank you so much. Bye bye.

Brian Beatty: 1:04:00

So we've wrapped up another episode of restoring the soul. We want you to know that restoring the soul is so much more than a podcast. In fact, the heart of what we have done for nearly 20 years is intensive counseling. When you can't wait months or years to get out of the rut you're in our intensive counseling programs in Colorado, allow you to experience deep change and half day blocks over two weeks. To learn more visit restoring the soul.com That's restoring the soul.com