Episode 323 - James Bryan Smith, "Integrating Faith and Psychology"

Welcome to another episode of "Restoring the Soul with Michael John Cusick." In today's conversation, Michael sits down with James Bryan Smith to dive deep into the beautiful interplay between faith and psychology. Throughout this dialogue, they explore how spiritual formation and mental health are more intertwined than ever. You'll hear powerful anecdotes about moments that resonated deeply within church communities, the impact of transformative phrases, and the widespread acceptance of mental health tools like the Enneagram.

This episode also touches on significant topics like the integration of neuroscience, the evolving views within the Christian community towards therapy, and the importance of addressing sin and forgiveness responsibly. Smith sheds light on the growing acceptance of psychological insights in spiritual practices and the upcoming Apprentice Gathering Conference that aims to integrate these realms further.

Transcript

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Welcome back to the Restoring the Soul podcast, everyone. I'm talking with my good friend James Brian Smith. Hi, Jim. Hello, Michael. How are you? I'm well. You have, like a hundred thousand frequent flyer miles on the Restoring the Soul podcast. And it is an honor. It is such an incredible podcast. I'm a listener, so the fact that I get to be on it is wow. I'm super honored. That means a lot coming from you because I have a lot of respect for your Things above podcast and the listenership that you have, and I think you have some of the best guests around. I'm so excited. And also you. Thank you. Your guests are. Yes, I'm excited to talk with you because we're going to be talking in this episode about spiritual formation and mental health and. And how those two are crossing over and how spiritual formation is more and more informed by mental health and vice versa, hopefully. Although there's not maybe as much happening of how spiritual formation is influencing mental health. But this all got launched in my mind because of the Apprentice Gathering next year. I just finished my fourth Apprentice Gathering, which is the annual conference that the Apprentice Institute that you run at Friends University, also where you run different programs with certificates and degrees in spiritual formation. But next year's lineup. You want to tell me about it? Next year's lineup? Well, our headliners include Michael J. Cusick. So let's just start with the first person I went to when I was. Was picking the. The plenary speakers. So. Wait, what? I'm invited? Really? Oh, yeah, right. You were. You were the. The centerpiece of it. I thought, okay, we gotta have. Michael, you got your new book coming out, which is fantastic. I loved your book on every single level. Was honored to write an endorsement and read it and study it, and it's so incredibly helpful. But so I kind of knew, okay, Michael's books coming out. And then it was like, well, you know, Kurt was here a few years ago. He's great. Kurt Thompson. Andy Kolber. I've wanted to have be a part of it. Allison Cook. I've just more recently discovered her work. I think I heard her first on a John Mark Comer podcast. And I was like, holy cow, she's really great. And then looked into her work. And then Ian Morgan Cron, who's, you know, your good friend, and I've listened to his podcast, and so it was like, here's the dream team. Like, this is the Fab Five. If I can get these. These people to be our main stage speakers, we are. We got something Going, so. But. And I think this is important to our discussion based on your. Your little preface there. Here's. Here's the theme. Okay. Spiritual Formation and the Healing of the Soul. An Integrated Approach to Discipleship. Let me say that one more time because it's important. Yeah, I'd love it. I worked really hard. I worked hard on this title because I really wanted, for reasons I think we'll probably talk about Spiritual Formation and the Healing of the Soul Colon, An Integrated Approach to Discipleship. Because I think what's been happening, the emergence of soul care, therapy, mental health, has been so significant, particularly in the last 10 years. Your work and others work. And I thought this is time to bring these together. And yet Christian spiritual formation has its own kind of history and writers and ethos and the people who come to the Apprentice gathering. Now, this will be our 14th, I think, coming up, or 15, maybe this will be the 15th. I think we just did the 14th. But people who are interested in the field of Christian spiritual formation are the ones who have been, as you mentioned, the frequent flyers of that event. So I thought this is a time to kind of introduce some who maybe aren't as familiar. And we also have Todd hall coming and his wife Liz. Todd hall from Biola, who wrote Relational. Spirituality, Phenomenal book, and his wife Liz, who worked with him on that book. And she's done great stuff. She's done some more recent stuff with Kelly Capic and has a book coming out as well. But anyway, so it was like, this is it. I was blessed to get everybody together. And sadly, in a way, we're 2/3, almost 3/4, sold out. So it's an odd problem to have in. I mean, you and I are talking here in November. Right. Which is crazy. So we've sold out the last two years, six, seven months in advance. So it's going to sell out again. And so I'm sad about that. We can't hold more, but the venue is what it is. Yeah. About 600 people, maybe a little under that. And two thirds of the way sold out is really significant. So one of the reasons why I wanted to get you on now is so that listeners of the Restoring the Soul podcast, with that incredible lineup of me, yours truly, Kurt Thompson, M.D. kolber, bestselling author of Try Softer and Strong Like Water, Allison Cook of the Best of youf podcast and Boundaries for the Soul and I Shouldn't Feel this Way is her newest book. And then. And then Ian Cron. That is a lineup of people that are really writing deeply about transformation. So if you're listening to this podcast, Jim, what's the website for the Apprentice gathering? Is it apprenticegathering.org? Apprenticeinstitute.Org I know that's a long one. Apprenticeinstitute.org and then you'd click on the Apprentice Gathering. It'll take you right there for signing up. Great. So if listeners want to hear that entire panel in two and a half days, I strongly recommend it. Restoring the Soul features a booth there. And it's just a wonderful, wonderful, relational, laid back time where you will not regret coming. And then most of the speakers, even the keynote speakers, do some kind of a breakout workshop. I have been doing them last past couple of years, a half day intensive where I do an offering in the morning and then repeat that in the afternoon. This year, Brian Becker, my colleague at Restoring the Soul, we did one morning and afternoon on Thursday, I did a breakout on Friday. So it's a great, great chance to be exposed to probably what, 20 other at least workshops and breakouts. Everything from embodiment to spiritual direction, to group spiritual direction, to all kinds of cutting edge topics. So let's jump in. What do you mean by this integration and healing of the soul? Well, you know, Christian spiritual formation. Let's. So let's start out with a basic truth. Everybody's getting a spiritual formation. Everybody, as Dallas Wilter said, everybody's getting an education in the remotest parts of the world. Like, everybody gets an education. People teach you how to live, how to speak, how to think, how to behave. Right. Everybody gets an education. Everybody gets a spiritual formation, meaning our inner life is being formed. So unintentional spiritual formation. And that's happening to a lot of people. But when you talk about Christian, that is different. Christian spiritual formation is now I'm intentionally wanting to be formed into Christ likeness. So I want to make that distinction because some people think that it's, you know, some mysterious thing that happens to a small group of people. Everybody's getting formed all the time. All of our habits, all of our what's going on in our minds, our communities, we're a part of everything is shaping us spiritually. The inner, the soul of the person. And so what's happened, I think is in the last. Well, I mean, I'm going to dial it back. Okay. Can I do a little history, Michael? Is that okay? Just a brief one. I remember when I was in seminary and that seemed like 100 years ago, but I remember like reading Carl Jung and going, what is this guy about? Like, is He Christian is this. Can we, can we make Jung Christian? And then suddenly I'm reading. Of course, Henry Nouwen was really crucial in my own journey. And Henry was also trained in psychology. So I'm like, I'm seeing, okay, wait a minute now. And then Larry Crabb is writing and I'm reading his books. And so you saw this kind of emergence in the 70s, 80s, 90s, Thomas Moore's book, you know, Care of the Soul. Do you remember that book? Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I mean, and it was a huge multi million selling book. Not Christian in my view. It was. Well, I won't be critical, but I, I was, I was hoping for more in that, no pun intended. But, but that showed something, right, that people are interested, like what's the soul? I mean, how do we care for the soul? And so these things started moving along and then you got. People are entering from a sort of scientific place. You've got Gaber Macha, you've got Bessel Van der Kolk, you've got Kurt. Comes, comes on the scene, your work, Michael. And then people you mentioned, Andy, Allison, Ian. I mean, so it's just kind of, it's in the, it's in the atmosphere now, these ideas and then last piece of it, spiritual formation, Christian spiritual mission. Writers are integrating it in yours truly. Right. Because I have my experience with you that was so formative and led to my writing the good and beautiful you to which you are one of the people dedicated. The book is dedicated to yours truly and others, I think it's fair to say. Anne Voskamp has been pretty open about saying she's been helped by Kurt and she's integrated some of that language into her writing. So it's just kind of. I'm going to kick it back to you, but that's my brief kind of history of how the integration has begun. What do you think? So thank you for the kind of overview historically of that. I think that's a good summary and it does. I like how you said it, that mental health psychology, counseling perspective, scientific perspectives as it relates to human transformation. It really is in the ethos. And it feels like more recent than just 10 years. It feels like this happened during the pandemic in an accelerated way when people had more. I don't know if people had more time or if there was just more of a demand to understand information about anxiety and depression and, and grief and suffering. But it feels like social media is one of the places where we're most seeing this ethos. And I've used this phrase in the past and maybe I've used it with you. And I know this is a dangerous statement, but it feels to me, and this may sound self serving, it feels to me like right now, Christian mental health people who have put together a sense of deep integration, that they have a prophetic element in the body of Christ today. And what I mean by that is they're actually helping people to understand grace more deeply, to understand a far more healthy, holistic, merciful experience of God's heart and his character. And also that there's a prophetic element about how change happens for many people whose brokenness has stood in the way of experiencing God's love or release from shame and guilt or permission to leave spiritually oppressive or outright abusive context. And so there's this body of information that's coming in that doesn't necessarily contradict Scripture, but it's not internal to scripture, it's extra scriptural. And I guess what we're talking about, this whole conversation is really begging the question what is integration? Yes, but I'm just very, very grateful to be 60 years old, not at the end of my career, but definitely in the last stretch of it and to be living in these times where it's really exciting to see people having accelerated growth and real experiences of breakthrough in their relationship with God. I love how you put that, Michael, because yeah, I remember one time, as you know, for years I was Dallas Willard's TA teaching assistant and there were so many things that he would just sort of drop and I, and I. And with Dallas you sort of tried to like soak on it, like think like stew on. What does he mean? But one of the things that he said was for some people, the classic practices of the spiritual disciplines, classic Christian spiritual form, like our go to, like what, what do people in the Christian formation world say? Here's what you need to do, here's our prescription for you to get better. He said there are some people that they simply need healing and some therapy, like. And he just sort of dropped that. And I remember asking him later, what did you mean by that? And he, he said essentially there are people who like, if you tell them just you need to read the Bible more or you need to have more solitude or you need to pray more that those things are not going to work, that they're, they're in a place where they need genuine therapy, they need some kind of, they need that person who's trained to help them get over something that they're not going to get over or Restoring their soul to use, you know, your language, that it ain't gonna get restored, like, without that kind of thing. And I remember I. He said that somewhere in the 90s, and I just remember sort of putting that back in my mind somewhere. So that when I got to the place where I was stuck, and I thought, you know, Dallas did say that, like, it's not a bad thing, because there was a little bit of a stigma, you know, for years, certainly back when I started, like, oh, if you. If you go get therapy, you're. You failed. Like, you know, you're not the holy person you're supposed to be. And so seeing that. That kind of. That breakthrough helped me understand that we need this integration to bring the two together. I think integration is the key word because we're really working at the level of. Of anthropology, like, what is the nature of the human person? Right. And theological anthropology, that's what a Christian will do, is say, I'm not just approaching this as from a secular view. I believe in a God. I believe in the spiritual dimension of the human person. So, like, not Freud, like, religion is an illusion, God's an illusion. But no, from that perspective, theological anthropology, I think that's the place where the two come together. Yeah. And it seems like there's still a lack of counseling and mental health programs that call themselves Christian or are in seminary context, where you take the mental health courses and then you go take the theological courses, and you're kind of left to your own to integrate, you know, that. To develop a Christian anthropology. And I say that after teaching in three different graduate programs and guest lecturing, you know, at a dozen seminaries around the country, and I may be overstating that, so if there's listeners that are saying, hey, that's not fair. I'm saying that as a generalization. I want to come back to this idea of what Dallas said. And by the way, I was going to take bets at the beginning of the program of how far into the conversation, how long will it take until we drop the D word? Dallas the dwarf. It's hard to do when I'm talking with you because he so profoundly influenced your life and indirectly has influenced mine. But that's a really important statement to come from him because even though his wife was a marriage and family therapist. Right. Integrated deeply her work. Yes. And would you say that she had a significant influence on Dallas? No question. No question. Yeah. She was. He was learning from her as she was training and learning. And I witnessed it. I witnessed some of the conversations that I had when we were all together. So what I love about his statement to you is that it's so gracious because the context in which I grew up, it was like, nope, psychology and mental health, at least in the Christian culture that I found myself when I was 16, when I had my conversion and found a personal relationship with Christ, it was Christian good, counseling unnecessary, psychology bad. And my experience. And I want to kind of see what you sense with this. This may be my own bias because, you know, if. Let's say I'm an oncologist and I say, wow, there's a lot of people that I meet that have cancer. No, an oncologist. Everybody has cancer. But it feels to me, even as I'm working with senior pastors and lead pastors and parachurch workers, that more and more people that one might not expect to be the kind of person Dallas was referring to, who are saying, it doesn't work for me to just read my Bible or just to pray. I'm looking for something more. It feels like that number of people has grown exponentially in the last five, 10 years and especially again since the pandemic. And you're nodding your head, yes, Nodding my head, absolutely. I think part of it is the stigma is pretty much gone. I think we now have gotten to the place where we understand the value and importance of therapy, and that whole, you know, you're weak, if you need it sort of thing is gone. I think hallelujah, and amen to that. I think that's a part of it. And I think a lot of the people who are in ministry who are saying, I'm sort of stuck, I need that kind of help is continues to grow. So I think you're right. It's kind of in the zeitgeist, as you mentioned, like, the time is here. Which is partly why I wanted to do the conference about this, because I think it's important to bring these two together. Look, Dallas, another. Here comes another Dallas quote. He told me to stop quoting him. He said, if it was any good, it came from the Holy Spirit, so quit quoting me. James. He would say, but reality is what you bump into when you're wrong. And that's just a really profound thing to say. Reality is what you bump into when you're wrong. And if the teachings, the insights, the breakthrough understandings that come from the field of mental health, soul care, therapy, if it's true, then it's from God. We need to know it. So if it's internal family systems or attachment theory or Jungians, Unconscious, whatever. If it's true, then it's going to bless us, it's going to help us. But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't be uncritical and be careful, which is something that I think is worth also you and I talking about, like, how do we learn how to be appropriately critical of something that just comes. I mean, the Enneagram for me is a good example. It's a tool, right? It's a tool. Some people then just wholeheartedly think, I can't not frame all of reality around these nine numbers. But maybe we need to pause and think, did God design the human person with nine types and that's all there? Is this the answer for all time? Or should we see it as a tool? Which I do. I look at it as a tool. When I think about what I've learned about myself from the Enneagram, it helps me repent. Like, I want to work on being a healthy three. You know, like I want to. I want to think about. Okay, I kind of see why I do that. This helped me see some of my behavior. And then I want to work through it, not use an excuse. Well, I'm a three. That's why I did that. But, you know, to work on it and think through it. So I think, like anything, it can be a tool. Myers Briggs, you mentioned strength finders. There's so many things. If you see it as a tool, I think there's ways to integrate it. But if you think this fell from the heavens, God somehow kept it from us for 2,000 years. And now Christians have just said, here it is, and we know we have wisdom. I think that's why it's a good question to think through. And so I just want to come back and say my response may have felt like it invalidated that process of questioning. I would also differentiate between the importance of identifying a tool like the Enneagram or the Myers Briggs or even the seen sooth Safe secure four S's in my book, or attachment theory in general. And Andy Kolber's statement that I don't think any longer is controversial. She said, all theology is attachment. I mean, it's all, I am the vine, you are the branches. Everything else is commentary. That's me adding to that. So it's important to differentiate between the tool and then how people use it and experience it. And, you know, it's like breathing techniques. That's another thing that if somebody were to raise the question, and is it great that people are sitting around doing this? Yes. And Say, what do you all think of breathing techniques? Because I heard a person in ministry, not a pastor, say, you know, all I ever hear about anymore is like Christians talking about breathing techniques. Like that's all you need to do, right. And what about Jesus? Like we forget about reading his Word and serving him. And of course, if all you're talking about is breathing techniques, that's fine. But if you're using it as a tool to center yourself and learn to be present to yourself so that you can be present to God and to others, then that's a tool. But if it becomes the actual thing, and I think we see that as long as I've been around evangelical Bible believing faith, I've seen that there's fads and trends that come, that people are always putting something out there. Yeah, absolutely. And I think it works the other way too. I think in the field of mental health and psychology, they are also rightly critical of things that happen within the Christian world. Did that they ought to be able to look and say, wow, that was, was that the right thing to tell that person that they need to forgive that person? You know, Jesus said forgive everything. Like maybe they're not ready to forgive. And so there's been some forgive me malpractice in pastoral counseling as well. That you just go, wow, I don't know that I would, I mean, and that's why for me personally it was, I, I, I didn't randomly choose you, Michael. When I wanted to, to do an intensive, I was like, this guy's pretty orthodox Christian guy. Like, I knew you came from a faith perspective and that was important to me. Not that I couldn't have been helped by a non believing therapist, but for me, I wanted to be with someone who had the same worldview and that was helpful for me. And so, you know, it's a good question. I think, I think it's worth thinking through. I think another side thing is, and this is, this moves more into Kurt's area with neuroscience. I think also there's a tendency to want neuroscience to prove God, like, you know, to prove prayer. Because you neuroscientists would go, wow, when you pray, this happened to your brain and it's great and it all fits. I haven't seen anything that doesn't, it certainly doesn't negate what I know about theological anthropology and God and Jesus, you know, but I think if we were like, oh, the neuroscientists are going to prove it. It's a mystery, a lot of it. Yeah. And I've Heard of a podcaster and author who I really respect who talked about how if you attach the word brain or neuroscience to something that in our culture, especially with Christians, it just kind of takes it up to another level of authority. And ultimately that's a question, too, is what is our authority? And I have a very, very high view of science and neuroscience in particular, and psychology as a field that even where it's not empirically validated and a lot of psychological theory can't be that the questions that psychology is asking are very helpful questions about the human condition and existence and transformation. So it's a whole field devoted to that. But if it becomes my authority to define who I am, then that can be problematic. If it be. If it defines my thought, if it becomes my authority in terms of saying, this is what a human being is, that becomes problematic. Yeah, I agree. When it. When it integrates nicely. Like, for example, we talked about Todd hall in his book Relational Spirituality. He talks about how neuroscience has discovered that when. When we sing together, when Christians sing together, something's happening, happening neurologically, that's binding us together. And that's true. Like, I feel like when I'm in worship with other Christians and we are singing Blessed Assurance, Amazing Grace, I feel like there's a bonding that's happening. So when you go, oh, neuroscientists know this. Like, they can show you this is happening. Well, it is happening, and I love that it's happening. I'm glad that neuroscience affirms it. And then Rebecca Letterman, who was at the Apprentice gathering, and she. Her. I believe her PhD was in embodied spirituality stuff. So she's. She's all about the body. And she made this point that I'm still kind of. I love this. She said, when Christians are singing together, our breath becomes in sync, because when you sing in unison, you have to breathe in and breathe out the same, and eventually your heartbeats align so your hearts are literally beating the same. Yes. That's cool to me. Like, when someone shows me this from a scientific perspective, I think that's great. I kind of knew it because I feel connected to people when we're praising. I guess it happens at a Taylor Swift concert, too. So just to be fair, but certainly as we're praising together, as Todd says in his book, we're weaving our story with the big story of God. And your story, Michael, and my story and the big story all come together when we're singing. Oh, cool. Like, that's the kind of thing I really love in terms of integration. Yeah, I have to tell a story about the singing together. And a lot of people might have heard the word om and how people in yoga and certain Eastern meditation do that. And, you know, I have to confess, I probably way back heard that word, and I was like, ooh, that's not a Christian word. Then I was with Ian Cron, and we were both speaking at Mako Fujimura's Culture Care Conference at Fuller Seminary in Pasadena. This was about six years ago. And Ian was doing the closing ceremony, and it was a Eucharist ceremony. There's probably 300 people in the room. And he did this, by the way, for the Gospel Music association with Bill and Gloria Gaither. With 6,000 people, I think it's the only other time he's done it. And he said it was absolutely transcendent. But right before the celebration of the Eucharist, there's a couple worship songs, and then he gets up with his guitar and a very simple song. He has people take the word shalom, right? Shalom, well, being, wholeness, deep sense of peace that Jesus used all throughout the Beatitudes. Blessed are. That word is shalom. And he had us sing it together, singing shalom. And then he broke the. He broke the group up and began to sing around like, row, row, row your boat gently down the stream. And then another group comes in and goes, row, row, row your boat. And so part of the half the group would say sha, and then the other would say lo. And it was just this back and forth and around, and it went on for about. It felt like five minutes, and it was probably one minute, and the room was vibrating, and there was a deep, deep sense of peace, just repeating this word shalom, probably in the key of C with the guitar just gently back and forth, and then acapella. And it's one of the most sacred moments that I've ever experienced. And what I would say is that monks have done that for millennia, right? And none of them were saying, hey, I read this article online that what happens if we get together at three in the morning and call it matins and vibrate our vocal cords, that we'll experience this oneness? But in fact, what's happening there is an embodied experience of Ephesians 1 where Paul is saying, God's purpose in the whole universe, according to his good pleasure, is to bring everything together as one. And we have that embodied experience there for that moment. And it was particularly poignant because of celebrating the Eucharist, where voices are in sync and eventually heart rates are in sync. And that's a taste of eternity where everything is aligned as it ought to be, and it's just beautiful. So the point of what you're saying and the point of what I'm saying, it's not that neuroscience is discovering something new. It's that neuroscience is unveiling the science and the structure of what has always been and the brilliance of God through scripture and the tradition of church practices to give us things like singing and gathering together and recitation out loud of psalms and make a joyful noise and dance and movement and liturgy and all of that, that now neuroscience is coming along and saying, ah, this is what's actually happening. And what's happening is that there's something bigger happening than what's actually in the moment. Yes, exactly. And when it affirms that and integrates it together, it's a beautiful thing. And I just love when that happens. And that's a beautiful story, by the way. You know, and I quoted earlier, the Dallas quote about reality is what you bump into when you're wrong, but reality also is what sets you free when you're right. Like when you hit reality. And it's true and it's right. It's a beautiful thing. And I believe it's from God. And so your book, Michael, when I was reading through so many highlights, so many things, you obviously quote a lot of scripture and tell stories that are related to faith, faith practices and all sorts of things. But as I was reading, I was going, this is true. Like, this is true what he's saying. And that's what sets us free when we connect to that which is in accordance with reality and it's right. It's freeing. You know, like when I was with you and I was sharing things and you were coming from a perspective and you were, I think, I mean, in hindsight, look, you know, I'm a note taker. You may remember in our intensive, I was, you know, feverishly taking notes, but as I look back over the notes, oh, he was teaching me attachment theory like you were. You were. You were using that tool, that understanding, to help, to help me see some things I wasn't going to see any other way. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank you for that. And that, by the way, is what I meant in quoting Andi when she said that all theology is attachment. What I mean by that is not that God, you know, has notes from a lesson with Dr. James Bowlby or any of the other attachment theorists, but rather that God is 100% connection, that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Trinitarian Reality is the ultimate definition of attachment, of a secure attachment. And so, you know, you've shared this publicly, so I'm not telling tales out of school, and you've even shared it on the podcast, but I remember you sharing your story and me saying to you, jim, I'm just so moved and struck by your integrity and you being kind of blown away. Like, why would I say that that's the last thing you were expecting after you shared your story? And that's an attachment perspective, an attached perspective sees the heart. It sees below the surface, and it looks for what's going on under the surface, that any of our struggles are our very best attempt to make life work in a way that makes sense for us. And God is not wringing his hands at any moment going, you better change that. He's the God that guides us on a path of rightness, as Psalm 23 says. And he's there taking us forward. And there's just something so gracious about that perspective. So let me throw this out. I've often heard in the last couple of years, and I've actually heard this for many years, people that are not necessarily open to a mental health perspective and who may be pastors or theologians that are frankly, a little bit threatened by counseling, feeling like it's encroaching upon the church's space. I've heard them say things like, well, all counselors ever do is talk positive, and they never talk sin. And Jesus died on the cross for our sins, and we need to take sin seriously. Please push. How do you respond to that? Both like, how could that be true and how could that not be true? Oh, yeah, Well, I get it. I literally get that pushback myself because, you know, in the good and beautiful you. Well, and the good and beautiful God, I mean, in both of those books, I'm talking about God loves you. To the old Brennan Manning, God loves you as you are, not as you should be. And I believe that's true. I believe God's love is not dependent on our behavior or action. And. But when I've said that, I've had. I mean, there's literally, with a group of pastors, I don't know, eight, nine months ago. And I could tell this guy in the front row was mad. Like, he was like, you're not talking about sin enough. You're not telling. You can't tell people. God loves them as they are, not as you know. And so I know that pushback. And I mean, I believe sin is a real thing. Right? But I don't think it deters God's love. And so I was never able to convince this guy in a three minute exchange from the stage to his seat. But he was mad about that because he wanted, he wanted me to say, you've got to tell people that they're terrible so that they repent or turn to grace and that sort of thing. And that's just an old model. That's an old model of evangelism that goes back to the late 19th century. It works. Get people feeling shamed and turn to Jesus. It works and then it cripples people. So I've kind of experienced that the hard way as well. But I do think it is important to talk about sin. I mean, the sin is real and it's something we. And I appreciated that about you, Michael. And in your book, I mean, you don't shy away from that. Not just your current book, but in Surfing for God as well. I mean, you address it head on, like this is, this is brokenness and we have to work through it, not by gritting our teeth. Yeah. And I'm really honest about talking about the reason why we should take sin seriously is that it causes so much pain both in our own lives, in the lives of other people. And I had to write the chapter in the new book Sacred Attachment on evil. And some people were like, wow, you'd write a book on attachment and you have a, a chapter on evil. What's that about? And if I can just introduce the idea that all throughout the book there's this repetition of this phrase, love has you. And at one point we entertained calling the book love has you. And for a variety of reasons that didn't happen. But evil exists to say love doesn't have you. You can't trust love. You shouldn't be vulnerable to love, you shouldn't open your heart. And frankly, if you can't trust love, then you better get busy and take care of yourself. That's really what evil does. That's what evil proclaims in all of its forms. And if you take that out on a trajectory, it will begin to cause harm to people and harm to oneself. And it's responsible for every other evil in the world. Is all of the outflow from that statement, love doesn't have you. So if we don't have the understanding that there is a force and a reality that's working against us saying don't trust love, love doesn't have you, then we'll never deeply internalize or experience the fact that God actually loves us. It just Stays in our head and therefore it's ineffective. Absolutely right. And, you know, this became clear to me when I was working on a curriculum for Christ likeness that became the good and beautiful series of books. I tried and failed for about four years to create a curriculum that I thought would help people become more Christ like and thank the Lord for failure. Right. Failure are. Is just steps toward getting it right. And so I was, I was wrong. And I kept analyzing, why is this not working? And then I realized when I was listening to people that their God narratives were terrible. And I just thought, you know, if I can just get them to do the spiritual disciplines, they're going to be great. They're going to be so. They're going to be just like Jesus in 30 weeks. And they weren't. Some of them got worse. And then I went, oh. And that's why in all of the books in the, in the Apprentice series of books, I have false narratives, true narratives. You know, God is an angry judge poised to punish me. True narrative God is like a loving parent who, you know, and I'm aligning it with scripture. But what I'm doing is mental health. Like your view, that view that God is an angry judge poised to punish you, which is like 4 out of 10 Christians on some studies, that's toxic, that's mentally unhealthy. And so again, aligning it with truth and, you know, within the good and beautiful you, I say you are a divinely designed, deeply desired, lavishly loved, fully forgiven, sacred story of grace. Turns out that's true. But people don't think that. They don't think I'm an accident. I'm not divinely designed. I'm not deeply desired by God. I'm not lavishly loved by God, not fully forgiven by what Jesus did on the cross. I'm not a sacred story of grace. They think those. So they're working with that which is not true and not. And they bump into it. There's the reality and it goes badly. So I accidentally backed into doing mental health when I was writing these spiritual formation books. And so when I come across when I first met you, and you're like, oh, yeah, the good people. God's really helped people. In my, in my experience, I'm like, hallelujah. Like, I'm not strained in therapy, but I sure know that narratives are crucial in formation. Yeah, thank you so much for bringing that up. That you were doing mental health work just like clinicians and mental health people are doing theology work. And so let's come back to the basic idea, psychology, psyche, is taken from the Greek word psyche, which means basically soul. Right. And in the Greek, mind, emotions, will, the Hebrew, the body, the mind, the emotions and the will. And so psychologists started out as doctors of the soul. And so there's this natural overlap that I think for all of the problems in the church today, whenever anybody says that, the problems in the church today, that's a 2,000 year old statement. So none of those problems are New Corinthians. For all the problems, I'm really encouraged because I think there's a kind of revolution happening with this very integration that you're trying to create conversationally and by having speakers at your conference, that this integration is really opening up space for people to know the God that looks like Jesus and who says to them, I'm the vine, you're the branches, just remain, just stay this way, just stay connected to my love, and it's all going to be good. And then the question is, well, what are the best ways to do that? And then you go and read your books and you read my books, hopefully a lot of my books. And you go from there. Yeah, exactly. Hey, you've hit it. Here's a question that you can tell me to go jump in a lake, but I hope at the conference next year at the Apprentice Gathering with this lineup of speakers, that there's an opportunity to do something that you did. I think it was the first year I was there and Emily P. Freeman and you hosted a podcast and you had all the main speakers on stage. So whether it's a podcast or not, I think it would be super fun to have Ian and Andy and Allison and Kurt and myself to basically, even if it's over a dinner, to chime in on some of these questions and just to record it, to have an audio of it, to see what the different perspectives are. Because one of the things about each of these speakers, and I know I've never met Allison, though we've talked on the phone, and I know Andy fairly well. Ian's my best friend, Kurt's a close friend. They all deeply love God and have a very high view of scripture and a passion to help people know the God that looks like Jesus and to live in that grace, mercy and love. And so to bring that kind of mental power and intellectual power, the deep work of their writing, but also their theological backgrounds and training, it's just so, so rich. And I think I'm more excited about this year's conference than ever before. I am, too. I am, too. I'm Very excited. And, you know, I love your idea. And we are kind of toying with doing something on Friday night that might bring us all together to do something. So there isn't currently a plenary talk that night. So we thought, yeah, what could. Could we do something that gathers folks together for a more informal kind of discussion? And I thought, yeah, that talk about people who all have their own podcasts and know how to talk and think about these things. This group talks pretty good, so I think we could. Could have an informal dialogue. So close us out. Will you direct people to where they go to sign up for The Apprentice Gathering 2025. Yeah. September 25th through 27th. Here's the. Here's. There's your mug right there, Michael. There's your picture with all the other crew. Beautiful you and Kurt and Andy and. And Allison and Ian. So, yeah, the Apprentice institute, or just apprentice institute.org is the. Is the website to go to. And they can. Can fill out that. It's pretty easy and quick and they can sort of pick what they want to do and. Yeah, but I would say get signed up because I pretty sure it's going to sell out. Way ahead. As always, Jim, you're a dear brother and friend and it's always great to talk with you. And I'm going to go back in this interview and will you say it one more time? You said it at about 49 minutes. The narratives from the good and beautiful you. That's. It was very rhythmic and full of light and truth. Will you close us out with that? Yes, yes, yes. Yeah. And I literally, Michael, have this on a mug. We sell this mug at our church because I said this. I had it on a slide in a sermon on the good me to you. And I. When I was. When I was preaching this weird phenomenon, I looked out at the audience and this slide was on the screen. And all of a sudden I saw this. Everybody had their. They were taking a picture and. And afterwards the senior pastor said, you hit something there. And so he refers to it as a divine download because I just sort of said it. I don't. I don't say the exactly this way in the book. It's like I. It's pieced together, but. And then he goes, we got to put this on a mug. And literally, I'm not joking. Like, thousands of these mugs have been distributed around the world. So it hit a nerve somewhere. But on the mug, and I'll get you one. When you're here, you get this mug. It says, I am a divinely designed, deeply desired, lavishly loved, fully forgiven, Sacred story of grace. Wow. Beautiful words to end, Don. Thank you, Jim. Bless you and your family and the Apprentice Institute. Thank you, Michael. Love you, brother.