Episode 337 - Michael John Cusick, "Sacred Attachment, Part 2: How We Close the Gap In Our Spiritual Life"

Welcome to Restoring the Soul with Michael John Cusick. In this engaging episode, we dive into the profound themes of Michael's latest book, "Sacred Attachment: Escaping Spiritual Exhaustion and Trusting in Divine Love." Joined by A.J. Denson, Michael explores the deep-seated gaps between what we believe and what we actually experience in our spiritual lives. Delving into the concept of "Delta," he discusses both the distance and potential union between these gaps, drawing from personal experiences and spiritual wisdom. With references to spiritual giants like Dallas Willard and employing rich imagery of rivers meeting, Michael illustrates how healing and genuine connection with the divine can transform our lives. Additionally, this episode uncovers the often rigid boundaries between religious practice and true spiritual intimacy, offering listeners encouragement to embrace vulnerability with God. Whether you're on a journey of spiritual deconstruction or looking for ways to deepen your connection with God, this episode promises insights and encouragement for every soul seeker.

Transcript

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Hi, everybody. Welcome back to Restoring the Soul. Today we are delving deeper into my new book, Sacred Escaping Spiritual Exhaustion and Trusting in Divine Love. And I'm back in the studio with my friend A.J. denson. Hi, A.J. Hello. Hello. Good to be here. Are you ready to jump in as we go into chapter two? Man, I am so ready to jump in. Beautifully titled chapter Delta. I'm just going to hand it off to you and let you go into explaining that concept. Yeah. Thank you. The. The delta is about closing the gap that. That I experienced in my faith from very early on and through my entire life. This gap between what I've believed about God and believed about Christianity and what I actually experienced between what I was told the Christian life would be like in terms of love, joy, peace, happiness, freedom, and what my life was actually like. Andy Crouch has said, and we used to use this line to open the Restoring the Soul podcast. He said there's two questions that haunt every human life. The first question is, what are we meant to be? And the second question is, what keeps us from being all that? He described that gap there. And my passion in life has been to help people close that gap. So in the first chapter, I really tried to delineate that gap. And then I went deeper into defining how we begin to close that. And two different kinds of gaps. So in Greek, there's the letter delta, and it's symbolized by a triangle. And I remember back in college hearing engineers talk about this. And in science, that triangle, or delta, represents. Represents the distance between a goal and an outcome. So if an engineer at NASA were to shoot a rocket into space and they wanted it to project at a certain amount of speed, but it didn't, there would be a delta between where they started and what actually ended up. It's this gap, it's this lack, it's this deficiency, but it's actually a unit of space. So that delta represents for me how I became a Christian, how I did all the right Christian things, how I memorized scripture, I went to Bible studies. I tried to lead people to Jesus. I was a youth minister with Young life. And yet I was still dealing with the shame of sexual abuse, which I'd never told anybody about. I was living with this lie that if anybody ever knew about that part of my history, that they would think I was absolutely disgusting. I was living with the lie that there was nothing inside of me that any girl or woman could ever want and see as worthy of being in their presence. So I never dated, although I was attracted girls, I Just was kind of a gal pal and funny and a friend to a lot of women when I was in high school and through college as well. So this gap really became something that started to define my life. And this word Delta has been in my mind for a long time to represent that gap. And then as I start to think about writing the book, I realized there's another kind of delta, and it's not about a gap, but the coming together of two different or separate things. And that's like the delta of the Mississippi, the delta of a river. And in the Mississippi, it's where the fresh water or the brackish water meets the salt water in two different things actually become united and one. So this gap can represent the pain and the distance and the disconnection between what I believe and what I experience or what I've been told and what I actually live in. Or it can be, as we somehow tend to and steward, this distance, this disconnect, this gap, this pain. It can be the coming together, the healing, the making of something new. And that's how I like to think about this. Dallas Willard. Somebody asked me where I read this, and I had the privilege of interviewing Dallas Willard and spending a couple of hours with him back in 2009. And during that interview he said that most Christians are stuck between brokenness and ceaseless striving. And then in classic Dallas fashion, there was a period and a long pause and he said, but is there another way? We're stuck between brokenness and ceaseless striving. But is there another way? Is there a third way? Well, the second delta is that third way brokenness is. I'm abused, I'm burnt out, I'm struggling with my faith, I have self image issues, I hate myself, I've got medical suffering, illness, whatever it might be. There's something that isn't the way I want it to be and it's causing me pain. And so the only other option is to get busy, to strive to make life work. And for me, and I think for many people that I've talked to and counseled, there's the sense that if I strive and if I work hard, I'm going to discover in scripture or maybe God will give it to me a key, a golden key that turns a lock in this door, that if I can open that door, I'll walk into the life that supposed to have. The problem is that all of that depends on me. And so I'm either living with incredible pressure and spiritual exhaustion, or if I'm able to do that it leads to a kind of self sufficiency. We might call it pride. Like, wow, I really don't need God and others. And that's not a spiritual life. That's a religious life because it's a new kind of law. It's a sophisticated form of law, which is, this is how I will live my life. And these are how I will accomplish things to close the gap and to tend to my own soul, to make sure that I'm okay. And it's so subtle and it fits in so well with a nice Christian life. Oh, absolutely. Can you dive deeper into the difference between the religious aspect of that and the actual spiritual life? Sure. I think that the spiritual life, in contrast to the religious life. Now, I'm not one of these people that goes around saying, you know, God hates religion or religion is bad. All religion is in some way, shape or form our attempt to connect with the transcendent. So, you know, people may use, and I may even use from time to time things like, you know, God doesn't want religion. He wants relationship. And in the first podcast, I think I said that relationship overrules. But when I'm talking about religion here, I'm talking about this essential idea that there are certain rules and behaviors that God wants us to follow. And if we follow those, then somehow we are acceptable to him. Somehow he is pleased with us. And therefore he is not disappointed with us, frustrated with us, disgusted with us. One of the things I regularly do in counseling and therapy with people is I'll ask people to fill in the blank. God feels blank toward me or with me. God feels blank toward me. And I would say 80% of the time the answer to this is God feels frustrated with me. Disappointed, disgusted, fed up, annoyed. One person said, like, I'm not a good return on his investment. And naturally, you would not be surprised to hear that that person had a financial background as an investor. Wow. I'm not a good return on God's investment. Wow, how tragic. Now I understand that completely. There's no shame, there's no judgment from me about that. But how tragic that so often how we speak of the Christian life and how we speak about the person of Jesus and discipleship, it leads to a reinforcement of the lies that come against us anyway. And so religion is about striving. It's about, at times, a kind of legalism that's transactional. If I do this, then God will do this, which does not require faith and trust and the spiritual delta of the two rivers coming together. That's really about surrender, those two distinct elements of fresh or brackish water and salt water coming together, in contrast to the gap delta happens when I come to the end of myself and I say, God, I've got no game, or, God, I'm sick and tired of ceaseless striving. Or if I say, like I talked about in the other podcast as well, God, if this is all there is to Christianity, then I don't know if I want to be a Christian. And I remember when I prayed that prayer, I thought there was something horrific about me that I was praying that prayer. Like I. You know, it was almost like I was, you know, renouncing my faith and saying I was going to become some esoteric religious person. But in many ways, I think that was one of the most honest prayers that I prayed because God wants our heart. I love Matthew 15, where Jesus is talking with the Pharisees and they're saying to him, you know, why do your disciples not wash their hands when that's one of the religious rules? And Jesus is saying that, you know, it's not what goes into you, it's what comes out of you. And he says these words to the Pharisees. He says, you honor me with your lips, but your hearts are far from me and your worship is in vain. Wow. Now, that's not. I wouldn't want to hear that. Yeah, yeah. That's not a lightning bolt of smiting and judgment, but that is pulling back the curtain on the professor in the wizard of Oz who's just this pathetic little man pulling levers, and everybody thinks that he's the great and mighty Oz. Pay no attention to the curtain. I mean, that is some serious exposure that Jesus does to them. You do everything right, you say everything right, but it's not what your heart is doing. And therefore your religious life, your worship life, it's in vain. And I guess what Jesus is saying there is. It doesn't matter. He's not saying to the individual or to the collective people, those Pharisees, he's not saying you don't matter. Because a human soul, Teresa of Avila said, is the most precious thing in the universe because it's the dwelling place of God. So what Jesus was saying didn't matter was their heartless obedience. So back to your question. What would surrender look like for those Pharisees? That wasn't your question, but, you know. Well, it was going to be my next one. So you read my mind. I think that surrender would look like first, maybe silence, not having a response, not having words to Say, you know, there's so many parallels between my marriage and my relationship with God. Marriage has been a really rich teacher to me. And so often when Julianne has something hard to say to me or even a simple request that through my negative interpretation, I hear as she hates me and doesn't want to be married to me, I, most of the time, just should remain silent. And I think she'd feel like she was really being heard and understood. And I think that surrender would have been just taking in what God said and maybe taking a big, deep breath and a heavy exhale, like, yeah, Jesus, you nailed it. And then Jesus would look them in the eye, probably, and they would immediately move from feeling shame to feeling seen and feeling compassion. Because Jesus would know that beneath their ceaseless striving was this fear, in a sense, that they were not worthy of love and that they could never be loved or accepted or embraced. Like me, the little boy in the cloister with the nuns being embraced when I was on the wrong side of the grill. And Jesus looked into people's hearts, but to get to their heart, he needed to expose what was there. Is that, guys, you're disconnected from your heart. You're just going through the motions, and you think this is what impresses me. Therefore you have a completely wrong understanding of who I am. The law is just to align yourself with my heart. And ultimately, it's your heart that I want to align with my heart, O Pharisees, not your lips that honor me, not your feet that obey me, not your hands that are clean or unclean. It's your heart. And so what it would look like, ultimately, is to say, well, God, here's my heart. You're going to have to teach me how to live from my heart. And I think he would rub his hands together, you know, making that sound like friction, and just say, here we go. I'm ready. Are you ready? Here comes the work. Yeah. What would you say? Because I would. I also feel that there's a group of people out there that are hesitant towards being honest with God, not wanting to hurt his feelings or spark anger. What might you breathe into that of a way to be honest and vulnerable with Jesus? I would say to start small and to say, God, I want to be honest with you. I'm not sure how to do that completely. So let me start with this. And rather than to be honest about a sin or a behavior or something that you wish you were doing that you weren't, or something that you were doing that you wish you weren't, that may not even be a sin. Maybe start small with a feeling. And I was just talking to a couple today that's here for a couple of weeks at Restoring the Soul and great, great pain between this couple. Really good people with good hearts. And I just helped one of them to see that beneath a lot of their intense feelings, that they were just really scared. And so I think a beautiful thing could be to know that the God that looks like Jesus. And we see that in Colossians 1, where, for those that may not have a Bible background, what do I mean when I say the God that looks like Jesus? Well, St. Paul tells us in Colossians 1 that Jesus is the visible image of the invisible God. In Hebrews chapter one, it says that Jesus is the exact representation of God's glory. So if we were to ask the question, you know, in some big theological fashion, what is God's glory? It's the person of Jesus in skin, walking and talking in a body with dirty feet and sandals that are worn down. And he needed to eat and go to the bathroom and sleep, and he needed friends to stay awake and pray with him when he was in the Garden of Gethsemane. That's the glory of God, if, in fact, Jesus is the exact representation of God's glory. And then to top it all off, in John chapters 13 through 15, Jesus says these staggering words that ultimately got him killed. He says, if you've seen me, you've seen the Father. And of course, the religious people just said blasphemy. You know, it just pushed their buttons and set them off. That was unthinkable that holy God could be a man who was just a normal person who loved people profoundly and deeply to the point of sacrificing his life. But Jurgen Moltmann said that the glory of God is the crucified Christ. So we have to look at understanding God the Father through the person of Jesus. So I know this seems like a sidetrack, but it's actually now the front burner point that if somebody's listening to this and they haven't read the book yet, I just want to say that whatever images you have of God, whatever history you have of God being unkind, unavailable, inaccessible, distant one who would not embrace you because of your difference, because of your failure, because of your shame, that's not the God of the Bible. That's not the God who looks like Jesus. Wow, Michael, beautifully said. Can you come back to just the. When you were talking about just a small honesty with God and baby steps into that. Yeah, thanks, A.J. for bringing me back to that. That was a little bit of a rabbit trail, but it's so close to my heart, was a good one. So that God that looks like Jesus cares about the smallest things in our life, and this is also part of his glory and his holiness is that he created the whole universe and he is sustaining and running the universe, and he cares about the small things. So that person who's scared to be honest with God, perhaps the most honest faith filled prayer that, that they could pray would be God. I'm scared to be honest with you. And God knows that there's a story attached to that, right? Because Elie Wiesel, the Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate, said that God made man because he loves stories. And God is a story and the scriptures are a story and human history. That's why we call it his story. But God knows that there's a story underneath that Christian that's afraid to be honest. And so, you know, maybe what it would mean to develop a prayer life is to imagine, and I've actually seen people do this, but for that person to go, God, I'm scared. And now I'm just going to listen and see what you think about that. And in the eyes of their heart, they might see Jesus, or they might see a warm light, or they might see a statue of the Holy Trinity, or they might see themselves, you know, walking on a mountain trail with God or a park bench, or they might see nothing at all. And there's any number of reasons for that. But what has begun in that process is a seeking and a surrender and a willingness to offer their heart that is afraid and probably afraid for the good reason that when they were growing up, somewhere in their story where we all need to be seen, soothed, safe and secure, they tried to be honest. They tried to bring forth their good heart. And they were shamed, disappointed, hurt, punished, hit for being honest or sent to their room. And maybe they were honest about something they did that was a shortcoming. You know, they, they stole, they, they hit someone and they were shamed. Or, or maybe they were simply honest about being needy, about having a desire for more, being in a home where compassion and loving attention wasn't there of, mommy, I want a hug. And when someone is told that, don't you know how much I work all day and I gave you a hug yesterday or I have three other children to take care of, when you hear that, it begins to shut something down inside of you and see the God that looks like Jesus knows That in our story, and because he's the author of our story, he not only doesn't judge that or shame it, but he's writing a new story saying, you weren't seen, soothed, safe or secure. But with me, I'm inviting you to come and to experience that I see you, that I'm a place and a person where you can find soothing, where you are safe, where your soul is safe. And see as we talk in these terms, for all the familiar theological ideas when we look through the lens of attachment, think about Psalm 27, for example. Through the lens of attachment. The Lord is my light and my salvation. Whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life, of whom shall I be afraid? And I used to pray that. And I'd say, lord, this is what your word says. And so I believe it's true. But how come I'm so afraid? And I know that you're my light, my salvation, but how come I'm so afraid? Why do I still have this knot in my chest? Why can't I ask the girl out to homecoming or to the prom? And why don't I show up for the final exam in my Tutor Stewart history class in my third year of college? I just flunked the class because I was afraid to go and take the test. But I knew that he was my light and my salvation and the answer to that question. And this is not giving people a pass to live a bad life, but it is giving people permission to understand their story and the brokenness that's in their story. Is Jesus revealed through community, through some great preaching that I was under, through a lot of books that I read, through some therapy. Michael, you've been so afraid. You've been so paralyzed in an embodied fashion because of your trauma and because of your abuse. But miraculously, you're bringing your heart to me in little bits at a time. This is why it's so beautiful in John, chapter five, when Jesus walks up to the man sitting by the pool of Bethsaida. And the scripture, the text itself is ridiculous because it makes a point to say Jesus knew the man had been sitting there 38 years trying to be healed. And then he asked the next question, do you want to be healed? That's like a fireman going up a ladder looking into a burning building, mother with a baby in her arms and saying, would you like some help? I mean, it's pretty odd now that you think about it. The text is very clear. But he wasn't asking the question, as is so often the case for Jesus because he wanted information. He was asking the question because he wanted relationship, and he wanted to engage with this man's heart. Wow. And of course, his story laying there is, God, I'm powerless. People beat me down there. I don't think he was making excuses. I used to preach that, well, this guy's just making excuses. Well, that would lead then to, he has to try harder to get into the water before everybody else does. But I think he was saying was, I want to get well, but everything I've tried hasn't worked. But he still doesn't answer Jesus question because hope had died in his heart. And I think that maybe as hope died in his heart, it was too difficult for him to take that small risk and to say, ah, Jesus, I barely even believe that I could ever be well. But are you that guy that I've been hearing about that's actually healing people? And I don't recall if the chapter said that that man at the pool knew of Jesus or not, but do you hear the courage and the hope and the faith it takes to say, oh, Jesus, yes, I want to get well. I mean, that takes a lot of faith to allow hope to rise up, especially after hope has been dashed so many times. Proverbs 13 tells us, Hope deferred makes the heart sick. And I know three or four people in my life, and I cannot explain their narrative. They love the Lord and they seek him, but time after time after time after time, hope is deferred. Their heart is disappointed, their dreams are shattered, and, gosh, it would be so easy to blame them, but it's not their fault. It would be so easy to tell them to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, but they don't have any boots to pull themselves up by. But Jesus always comes and he sees our heart, and to each one of us, he asks a different question that's particular and intimate to our specific situation. Wow. Yeah. So you could say, correct me if I'm wrong, Hope is healing through honesty. That's a beautiful statement. Yeah, let's work backwards with that. That honesty allows for healing to happen because the honesty is some kind of statement about even if we don't have hope, that's a kind of hope. And even if we don't have faith, to put words to the fact in an honest way for what's real, that's trusting. Right. So if I tell you, you know, aj, I didn't want to do the podcast today because I didn't feel prepared and stuff, that would be being somewhat vulnerable with you, although disappointing because we've worked so hard to make this happen schedule wise versus just, hey, I'm not going to do it today. And you might wonder, did you offend me? Or does Michael have to go to the emergency room? Or does he just not care? But there's an honoring of the relationship where you're trusting me and I'm trusting you by having that former kind of conversation. So I just can't say enough about honesty. And this pushes one of my buttons because I read an article maybe five years ago in Christianity Today and I subscribed to that magazine for as long as I can remember. As a young Christian, as a professor, I was kind of a nerd of following the magazine. And I love some of the directions that it's gone more recently as it's tried to be more socially relevant and contemporary. But this five years ago, there was a whole issue dedicated to whether we should be angry at God. And they had different people take positions. And I just thought it was the most ridiculous question and dialogue in the world. Because here's the thing, and I hope that this is refreshing and gives people permission. Whether or not I should be angry at God has nothing to do with whether I am angry at God. And if God put a 67th book in the Protestant Bible that was called don't be Angry with God, that's not going to change on any given day. If I'm angry with him, or if it's don't feel this Emotion was the 67th book of the Bible, that's not going to change whether I feel that emotion or not. So it's as if, wow, if we could nail down what the truth of what's right or wrong is, then somehow people won't do that. So there are not many hills that I would die on. There are some hills that I would die on for truths about who God is, but one that doesn't have a chapter and a verse attached to it, but I think is a theme of all of Scripture is that God wants our heart. And if my heart is filled with rage toward God, then that's what God wants. If my heart is filled with fear toward God, or fear toward intimacy with my spouse, or shame or disgust, if my heart is filled with doubt, that's what God wants. So let me throw out a word that I did not use intentionally in Sacred Attachment, and it's the word deconstruction. And I didn't use the word deconstruction because I think the word has become almost meaningless in how we talk about it, and it's become a combative conversation. But here's the secret about this book. I wrote this book for people that are deconstructing or who have deconstructed who. Their old way of faith and their old way of living life is no longer working for them. But they have not yet fallen into or settled into a new way of being with God. And I believe that the deconstruction process can be an absolutely beautiful thing. And it's not new. We are meant spiritually to constantly be shedding skin. And I wrote this book for people that have been told in the past that their struggles, that their failures, that their lack of whatever spiritual maturity or vitality or superhero ness should have been there, that it's because they're backsliding or regressing or they somehow lack faith. And what I want to say to listeners and readers of the book is, is that what feels like backsliding, regressing, or losing your faith is actually a growth spurt. It's actually a transition into something new. I remember when my kids went from being infants to toddlers. It was a growth spurt. They acted differently initially. Even after their first steps, they walked awkwardly. And then when they became preschoolers and they started to run, and my son had a Wiffle ball and a Wiffle ball bat, and we'd throw it in the yard years later, he would swing that very differently from how he did when he was a preschooler. I could go on and on about developmental and maturing aspects to our humanity. And we often don't think about that kind of development spiritually, although there are many people that have written about spiritual development. But what I want to say is you're not losing your faith. You're not your deconstruction. You're in a growth spurt. You're not deconstructing because you don't believe in God. You don't believe in the faith that you've been given. And you need to make it your own so that the God that you actually long for in your heart actually is as good as you believe and think he is. He's as good as you need him to be. And somebody might go, okay, that's heresy. I'm done listening to Cusick. But I'll stake that in the ground that God is as good as you need him to be. And then way, way, way, way more. Because God is there for our deepest needs. God is there to meet us, to come for us. So I know, AJ that we've waxed eloquently and perhaps ineloquently on subjects in and beyond the book. But I'd love to pick this up next time. Absolutely. Sounds good. We'll do it. Well said.