ASM016 Confession, Deconstruction, and Dealing with the Past

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confession deconstruction and dealing with the past all that and more on this week's episode of ask sciencemic

[Music]

welcome to ask science mike a weekly podcast where i answer your questions about science faith and life this week i've got some exciting news we're planning an event called belong with allergists and i'll talk more about that at the end of the program so stick around i'd love to see you there lots of great questions this week and i'm looking forward to it so what do you say let's get it started hey mike um first of all thanks for all you do you're awesome and secondly we hear about your story about your massive deconstruction and there are other people out there in terms of faith talk about having to deconstruct one's faith before one can actually build up something new and possibly more beautiful i guess my question is do you feel like in order to experience this new faith that you always have to deconstruct and get rid of everything or is there a natural growth that can occur just from changing your mind about things thanks deconstruction is absolutely a way to a new and more beautiful understanding of god one possible way i mean deconstruction is also a way to become an atheist and not believe in god at all it's not like a faith tv dinner deconstruct and and pull a better god out of the microwave it's not it's not how it works but for me certainly the way i understood god before had to get taken apart completely before i could know god in a new way it's not the only way that people come to know god better or to have a more beautiful experience with god there are a lot of people in my life whose faith i really admire who have never been through a significant period of deconstruction my own mom is one of those people you know my mom is is probably pretty conservative theologically but her understanding of god's grace through her theology leads her to approach all people with a desire for reconciliation for hope for grace for forgiveness for compassion for empathy and it's interesting to me to watch my mom continually grow closer to god now interestingly enough in mom's life she has faced adversity she's faced pain and she's faced difficulty she's suffered and those things have brought her closer to god now if i look for a common thread between my story my mom's story it's that in the times that seemed the darkest those were in fact the times that we grew the closest to god for me that meant watching god die for my mom that meant something different i've got another friend bradley and he struggled with drug addiction and became closer to god as he recovered and then his divor his marriage fell apart he got divorced and that period of suffering brought him closer to god there wasn't deconstruction there wasn't doubt like i had for either bradley or my mom for them it was a continual process of leaning on and trusting god ultimately the common theme and all those that i see is circumstances push back on our assumptions they push back on our comfort and we have to learn to humble ourselves and rely on god on something greater than ourselves you know that was really difficult for me not believing in god to rely on god i think probably there are some advantages to the continual growth and ongoing love for god that i see in in other people in my life but i i don't think deconstruction is the only way there i think it's certainly a common way to a new faith today i think that the vast amounts of information available on the internet the global communication the scathing critiques of theology and apologetics available online certainly are encouraging a great season of deconstruction unlike many people though i don't see that as the end i don't think that religion is on its way out or even that christianity is on its way out of culture but instead i think we're in the beginnings of a reformation that christ church on this earth is adapting to the times as it has done for thousands of years and it looks post-denominational to me it looks post-institutional and what really excites me is how many people i know who are personally in love with jesus christ and i know i sound like a a fundamentalist preacher to a lot of my secular friends and listeners to the program i apologize just gotta call it like i see it here but people who in their life really love jesus but the way they express that love for jesus is serving others and by meeting people where they're at and i think that is beautiful so deconstruction is one way that people arrive at a new faith but i certainly don't think it's the only way [Music] our next question came in from the email box at asksciencemike.com and it reads science mike i have a question about prayer and the power of suggestion i recently read a memoir where the author describes his doubts and his faith he comes to a point where he feels faithless when a friend asks him to lead a bible study he initially declines then the friend asks him to commit to praying about it every monday for four weeks boy that's oddly specific the author was still reluctant after the first monday of prayer but inevitably by the fourth week he felt a peace and accepted the leadership of bible study now this got me thinking i've had lots of experiences where people ask me to do something then say pray about it and i end up doing it but if i'm honest i end up doing it because i don't want to let the other person down and the times i really haven't wanted to do it a friend asked the more i pray about it the more comfortable i feel about it now when i end up doing what is requested of me the friend always says something like see prayer works or god always comes through huh my question is what does science say about this is this the power of suggestion i believe in my experience it has been because when i look back on the decision i feel crummy and dishonest this of course has led me to become skeptical of other stories of their prayers for direction i start to think well you prayed about becoming a missionary for three months so it's no surprise you felt comfort about it you got used to the idea still being in a church setting i fear the next time someone asked me to pray about serving somewhere in the church or leading something i fear mostly saying no and looking like a jerk partially because i think people ask us to pray about such things because they themselves believe the lord told them i'm supposed to lead this or serve there of course i would also feel like i couldn't trust my decision anyway with my skeptical view based on my experience i guess part of this question is just a prayer question and part is a faith community sociological question is there a healthy posture to take when asking someone to lead or serve somewhere due to the power of suggestion should we just ask people to think about it logically then bring a power word like prayer into it please science mike help me sort out my brain oh man well that's a long question but that's a good question i'm really tempted to punt to pastor betsy again uh but it's wednesday night and the episode's got to get recorded for you guys to hear it so i don't i don't have time to do that man there's so much to unpack here first i thought it was going to be a question about intercessory prayer uh and so that's what i like i took my little two minutes of uh of question prep and totally set up for intercessory repair and that's not even what the question is about so i am completely this is an off the top of my head answer everybody there's there's no notes for me here uh first of all i think prayer is most useful when we think of prayer as a way that we connect to god and by doing that align ourselves with the same energy that created the universe a creative force we co-create reality with god and prayer is a mechanism that we do that and i pray about everything believe it or not mr non-theist mystic prays about everything um with the assumption that there's a personal god listening rattling around in my skull somewhere and i find that to be incredibly comforting but that's because i don't really factor in the expectations of other people when i pray i have learned that there is a profound power in saying no to things i don't want to do that i'm not gifted to do or even things i'm gifted to do but aren't related to the mission of my life my friend rob bell always says you can't say no to anything until you said yes to something so if you don't know what it is you were put on this earth to do of course you just weigh and consider opportunities brought to you by other people and there's nothing wrong with that but i think that there's that we were made to live missional lives so i know that the mission of my life is to help people know god in an age of science so any opportunity that comes my way has to further that goal so does does recording ask science mike and taking hours out of my week to make this program fulfill that absolutely does working with the liturgists and michael gunger fulfill that mission absolutely does my blog does my book the speaking events absolutely does getting in my email box and spending hours a week replying to hundreds of messages from strangers fulfill that mission absolutely that's why i do it it means i also turn down a lot of great opportunities that i'm qualified to do because they don't fulfill the mission and sometimes people are upset they want you to do an appearance they want you to serve on a committee or a board of directors or whatever and i don't do it because it doesn't fulfill the mission so i would say the first thing you should pray about and you should study is what are you here to do what has god put in you that only you can do what is the story that only you can tell what is the community that only you can help think in those terms and stop worrying so much about what other people want you to do now let me let me be clear for churches to work people have to volunteer and in most churches a very small number of people do all the work but what i'm saying is it's best if people do the work in the church that's missional for them and aligns with their giftedness now there's there's a whole category of things you might do that aren't missional it doesn't help people know god in an age of science when i have dinner with my family it doesn't help people know god in an age of science when i get up in the morning and drive to work and set up a network for an ad agency those things aren't missional but the ad agency does put food on the table and i like the people there so it it becomes a fundraiser becomes a support for the work i do and it also becomes a way i get fed socially i like seeing the people i work with if i just sat in an office at my house all day i'm an extrovert i would get super lonely when i sit down with my kids and my wife at the dinner table that is life-giving that prepares me to do the work that i'm here to do so i think this is actually less of a prayer question absolutely i think you should pray about these things but it's more of a you need to know who you are and what you're here for so that you are not manipulated intentionally or unintentionally by other people now is there some suggestion power is there psychological pressure when someone uses prayer in a leadership position totally absolutely is confirmation bias probably at play a lot in the way that we interpret the outcome of prayer absolutely i still like to pray and it it still helps me get through the day and that rhymed [Music] hi mike i have a question about confession i know that confession is important for christians and is a part of sharing our lives with each other what's the science behind confession why is it so difficult for us as humans to confess to each other but so relieving when we do thanks i love your work well confession is hard because it exposes us we fear the consequences of revealing that which we confess confession is tied to ideas of sinfulness of transgression of guilt and of shame right and we're a social species and we have an instinctual drive a deep deep drive to get along with others to look good to our peers and to have the best social standing that we possibly can and so we're afraid of exposure that's why we don't like to confess things but it's so cathartic isn't it well here's the deal most people are neither honest nor dishonest most people are a little bit dishonesty a little bit dishonest and meaning if no one is looking most people will cheat the system a little bit for example most people won't take money from a jar but people will absolutely take a pencil from the office even if the even if it's a dime and a pencil and they're similar monetary value nobody minds stealing the pencil from work they really don't even consider it stealing we are totally terrified of being thought of as bad and we think of ourselves as good and whenever we do something that goes beyond our normal level of comfortable dishonesty we feel guilty and that's the things we tend to confess people don't confess to to stealing the pencils because they still view themselves as a good person when they do minor actions like that we do something greater when you go wow what the heck you really you do something incredibly dishonest you feel guilty about it and that guilt even though whatever you did may have offered you some success uh you probably wouldn't have done it if there wasn't some potential upside by the way that guilt creates uncertainty because you don't know what's going to happen if someone finds out about your transgression so as long as you're hiding this guilt and shame it's a constant stressor it's stealing your brain's ability to be certain about reality and your brain loves certainty man do human brains uncertainty so once you speak out and confess either to a friend or to a clergy depending on your faith tradition or lack of faith tradition you know what the consequences of your actions are because they happen and you no longer fear discovery so even though you may have potentially lost some social standing what you've actually gotten is what you've gotten some certainty and by the way a lot of times confession asking for forgiveness and reconciling creates greater intimacy and greater social security so it's even a behavior that humans often reward now dan ariely who wrote the honest truth about dishonesty and i'll link a video of his uh in the show notes on ask sciencemike.com for this question he started talking about the mechanisms psychosocially about why confession works based on some research and data that he did it's it's really quite fascinating one of the things that confession does is remind us that moral codes exist and research has shown that when you're reminded of a moral code for example if you ask an atheist to recite the 10 commandments in an experiment and then give them the opportunity to do honest or dishonest behaviors statistically that atheist will be a little bit more likely to be more honest as will believers you know but the whole point of being reminded of a moral code has been shown to reduce dishonest behavior so there's this practical effect that confession really does make you behave better for a little while but when confession produces more lasting change it's a different mechanism and that confession effectively resets your life it wipes the slate clean and it gives you this psychological fresh start it fosters an environment where we can ask for forgiveness and that leads to that feeling of reconciliation and that greater social security which is an incredibly powerful motivator for a social species like this we don't want to mess up our clean slate that we get from the act of confession it's really quite fascinating the truth about dishonesty is a terrific book it's a great read and uh will help you understand some of the cognitive psychology around how and when humans tell the truth and uh when they when they cheat and by the way which has fantastic implications for uh financial reform politics uh and and the way we create social incentives so the truth about dishonesty uh linked in this week's show notes great question thank you [Music] hi mike my name is alex and this is a question that i previously asked on twitter but i wanted to clarify my meaning as 140 characters wasn't really helping me um i asked you a question about experiences in your childhood that you've addressed such as bullying um issues of self-worth and um feelings about yourself i'm wondering how it is that you dealt with those issues how you find you can process them in a way that is constructive and realistic an issue for myself would be that there's there's issues of self-worth and how i value myself that i feel it would be easier to ignore because to expose them feels almost overwhelming and it's much easier just to accept my view of myself just to accept that i'm always going to have these problems and to build an image of myself that i just defend um and so i'm wondering if you could comment how it is that you've dealt with issues in your own life and if you could give any advice on how the best way to do that would be thanks i actually answered this question uh for this week's blog post and i'm doing it again on the podcast because so many people emailed me today saying that that blog post helped them i'm really fortunate and that people take the time to email me and thank me uh for specific work that i've done and tell me what it meant to them um but even with that incredible environment of generosity i'm surrounded with all the time that you guys encouraged me so much this post was really exceptional in the amount of emails i got so i figured it was probably worth a double shot between the blog and the podcast because we've all got souls that are full of shame all the traumas all the rejection all the pain in our past shapes are present tremendously especially in the west here's why i was going through therapy a couple of years ago because i was leaving my faith community i was in the process of a spiritual divorce and those days i was uh i was writing and speaking like i am now but still an active member of a southern baptist church and it just didn't work for me to write about marriage equality and evolution and all the topics that people want to hear my voice on being part of a faith community that did not believe those things and it was just a really painful thing for me it was leading to some depression you know making it hard for me to just get through the day so i i sought help i went to see a professional and um i can be a a pain in the butt in a therapy setting because you can imagine science mike and therapy i tend to imagine what school of psychological thought the advice is coming from and deconstruct what my therapist is doing as my therapist therapizes and then i kind of bumped around to a couple of different therapists until i found one who could help me and this therapist really leaned on me one to quit trying to take apart her toolbox and two to talk about things that i thought i didn't need to talk about so she kept wanting to talk about me being bullied as a kid and i didn't want to talk about that not because it scared me but because it bored me uh in my mind i've already dealt with that because you know a critical thing in dealing with the past is forgiving people and i knew that and i had forgiven all those people it's what allowed me to function as a whole human being it's the reason there aren't news articles about me being a school shooter in the 90s it's because i forgave those people but she still wanted to talk about it so i could describe to her any event from my childhood i could tell her all about getting you know pushed over having softballs thrown at my head or um you know the ways i was i was genuinely tortured as a kid you know i remember telling her with dry eyes about uh someone um giving me purple nurples until i actually my nipple actually bled and then i got made fun of for having a red spot on my shirt you know just that kind of that kind of brutality but it didn't bother me to talk about those things and then my therapist asked me how those things made me feel and that was a difficult question because when i tried to recall the feelings of those events it was as if i was i mean i used a door as an analogy in my blog post that you know you're walking through your house and suddenly there's a door in the hallway that wasn't there before that you'd never noticed which is startling but then when you move towards the door it's as if there was just this pressure emanating from it i remember talking about the time it just felt like a toxic red-hot bubble in my psyche and i started to have kind of a panic attack in the in the therapist's office which really confused me so like simultaneously i'm kind of starting this panic attack my uh higher consciousness my prefrontal cortex i suppose is actually deconstructing the event as it happens this is why are you freaking out there's nothing to freak out about so then that led to us talking about why i don't cry i do now but why i didn't cry then i taught myself not to cry as a defense mechanism to not be bullied so much but i couldn't i couldn't go into that that room i couldn't open that door in my life i couldn't explain how i felt it was too hard it was too hard to remember i couldn't do it so for a few weeks in therapy my therapist would gently guide me back towards my childhood and i would get near that door again and i could not move any farther which frustrated me because you know i'll be honest i'm used to through a lifelong pattern of self uh self-imposed cognitive behavioral therapy of being able to feel what i want to feel when i want to feel it and process through emotions uh relatively quickly and this i couldn't i was on the phone one day with my friend bradley he's been mentioned twice in one episode he's gonna love it uh but bradley and i were talking about my experience in therapy and he asked me what i would say to the seven-year-old mike if seven-year-old mike was sitting across from me and as i tried to imagine what i would tell myself who i knew when i was that age how miserable i was and how even as a grade schooler sometimes i wanted to die i broke that door opened up and grief just poured out grief over the childhood i could have had over the friendships i never had and it it wrecked me i was in bad shape for a long time family was out of town and i'd been sitting in my oldest daughter's room for some reason having this conversation that was tough but the next week when i went into therapy as i talked about how i felt i was able to tell my therapist and this time i was still crying but i wasn't sobbing hysterically and i could actually talk and i was able to tell her about how i felt and how much it hurt and how much it still hurt and then week after week we would go in and we would do this again and each week it was a little bit better now this annoyed me because my thought was once i'd opened that grief well it should be over but it wasn't and the fact that i couldn't figure out why these feelings kept bothering me um i mean i couldn't actually deal with the feelings i don't know if you've noticed i have a tendency to want to know the why and the mechanics how this works so i did some research some brain research shocker and i found out that when you remember something your brain goes into a state that reflects that event so if you think about your mom and you know your mom and you have a great relationship your anterior cingulate cortex is gonna activate the part of the brain does compassion and empathy and warmth and uh a lot like if your mom was actually in the room your brain makes it real if your mom used to beat the crap out of you your amygdala is going to light up the part of the brain for fear and anger and if mom's uh relationship with you is complicated maybe your anterior cingulate cortex and your amygdala are going to light up right the point is the thing in the past in human consciousness becomes a real threat in the present your memory can affect you just like the original event but here's the promise of therapy and of processing things the grief when you recall something your brain modifies it the memory changes a little bit so if you recall painful things and painful settings if you're abused and you're in a pattern of abuse those associations with fear and anger get deeper but if you're in a safe place with safe people and you talk about pain in the past guess what the association with fear and anger gets weaker a little bit each time and so by forgiving other people that's step one and step two by processing grief with safe people you can move through the hurts of the past until those wounds are just scars and not gaping holes in your soul anymore which means now when i talk about how i can not only talk about what happened when i was a kid which is what forgiveness offered me i can talk about how i felt as a kid which is what grief offered me i've integrated those moments in my past into my present and they no longer hold power over me which means what i'm able to accept the gifts that those things offered me because i was bullied so bad as a kid i'm actually a really independent person that doesn't need a lot of approval i'm pretty happy just doing what i want to do i'm okay being a nerd i don't need to look cool i'm okay saying really dorky things on this podcast you know i'm okay laughing at my own jokes alone in my office that then tens of thousands of people here in a few days and all those things i'm just completely comfortable with because i was bullied but if i don't deal with that pain avoiding those wounds warps me so before i grieved and before i forgave i had some toxic behaviors learned i like to entertain people and i like to be on a stage but by being on a stage i amassed enough social capital that nobody could bully me and i controlled social interactions i became so popular that no one could put me under their thumb it was a defensive reaction because i did care on some level about validation i was afraid that all this newfound approval people offered me was temporary i tended to invest myself in unhealthy romantic relationships because i was looking for some validation some some sign that i really was worthy of love so even though it's difficult to dig into the past even though forgiving people who have hurt you is hard work and even though grieving the hurt and loss that comes with abuse and trauma is painful i believe it's worth it and i believe that psychological science supports that that's the best way to be a whole healthy satisfied person who can do good work in this world and who can have healthy relationships so may you learn to forgive those who have hurt you and may you be able to grieve the wounds that you are given [Music] man good questions this week you know it's tough for me the weeks where like there's a lot like this is just going to be my opinion i really like it better when i can use some hard science and you know because sometimes i'm not convinced i have i have anything of value to say so i just i just give you guys you know the best thoughts i have on what you've asked i hope that's okay so i mentioned the beginning of the program we're planning an event with the liturgists uh if any of you don't know who listen to this show i do another podcast called the liturgist podcast the guy named michael gunger van gunger and we make spiritual art and experiences for the spiritually homeless and frustrated so we do a podcast we also make these liturgical releases these uh basically worship experiences in a box that you can get on itunes and we also do live events well now we're doing something different it's going to be a very small conference it's going to be in atlanta june 15th and 16th it's called belong and it's a it's a conference all about making room at the table for everybody so if you're having trouble finding a faith community that will accept you as you are or you're afraid to talk openly about what you believe or don't believe about god this is the place you can do it or if you are the kind of person that likes to create and organize spiritual communities maybe your church staff person maybe you're a church planter and you want to learn you know what we've learned about a safe spiritual community that's what this event is about so michael gunder and i will be there you're going to hear some familiar voices from our liturgies and from our podcast as well and i just think this will be a great time now it's limited to only a hundred people uh it's a relatively small space we also want to keep these intimate we want to make sure that people have an opportunity not only to hear what we have to say but to have discussion and uh here's the deal you're going to hear this podcast monday may the 4th if you listen the day it comes out this registration for this conference is going to open up may the 5th and when the 100 tickets are gone they're gone so i'm trying to get the word out for people who might be interested east coast kind of folks keep an eye out at the liturgist.com or at the liturgist social media or i'll retweet this stuff and share it on my facebook page as well but may 5th is the day so we'd love to see you at belong now for ask science mike man these are great questions keep them coming you can use the hashtag asksciencemike on twitter soundcloud or youtube not very many people do that though it's much easier to go to asksciencemike.com and you can record a voice message there right on the website super easy you can even do it on your iphone or you can put a text question in you can type out a question and you can put questions anonymously that way of course ask science mike is listener supported you guys are the ones that make this show possible and every single dollar helps i've been blown away by your generosity thank you to all of you that are participating that are making the show possible i i deeply deeply appreciate it i don't even honestly know how to thank you but for those of you who haven't yet you can cancel or change your pledge at any time i understand money gets tight never feel bad about that if you've over committed by by all means reduce your pledge okay i'll i'll live i'll be fine um now people who who pitch in get early show access they pick show questions they can add their own questions they can have their name mentioned on the air and if money's tight you can still help the show by rating us on itunes that lots of people have done that by the way i read all those reviews and i can't stop smiling for like two hours when i do that because you guys are so kind and i'm not by the way when i say something like that that's not a throwaway like it's a real thing the degree to which this community of people is a blessing to me all of you listening all of you that take the time to rate on itunes to share the show on twitter or facebook leave comments send me nice emails all that stuff it makes it possible to do this because it does take a lot of time and energy but you guys keep me going and of course our show is produced by greg mourdin one of those people that keeps me going as well he does a great job and our theme song is by jim bodiford if you'd like original podcast music for your own podcast jeb can help you he's brilliant and as a baldness he's the size of a bear so if you need somebody roughed up you can do that as well links to them on the show notes at sciencemike.com as well as resources for every single question hope you've enjoyed this episode and i'll see you guys next week