#33 UNDERSTANDING THE SANCTIFICATION GAP + Ryan Bohm AMFT

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Welcome everybody to Biblically Speaking. My name is Cassian Bellino, and I'm your host today. Now, I am so pleased to have a return guest,

Ryan Baum. I'm so sorry. I had this prepared. Adult marriage family therapist.

Yeah, yeah. Associate marriage and family therapist in California. Associate marriage. Yes. In California, you've got your

Master's of Science in Counseling Psychology from California Baptist University. You also have a Master's of Divinity from Talbot School of Theology.

So you have this very unique sense of what it takes to lead a church while also what it takes to cure a mind and understand the mind.

So it's this really fine culmination of who we are as people and how we need to be led, not just how the

Bible tells us to be led. So I'm really grateful to have your perspective on this podcast, Ryan. Thank you so much for coming back on.

Yeah, thanks for inviting me back. I'm happy to be here. This is kind of a lead off of our last conversation.

If anybody hasn't heard it, our last conversation was on religious trauma. And I think you painted a really good picture on what it can look like, what it can't look like, all the factors that cause it.

There's not really any one type of religious trauma. But right when we hung up, you're like, man,

I could have kept talking. So here we are talking a little bit further and going into the idea of something that you brought up that I personally have never heard, which is why

I want to learn more about it is the sanctification gap and just kind of like the deeper levels of religious trauma and what that can have on us.

But kind of like where we left off before we get into all of that with religious trauma, did you have any residual thoughts or things that you wanted to follow up on or things that maybe you experienced since our last conversation that have spiked?

It sparked this conversation of like, oh, yeah, this just happened to me. We just spoke about this.

I mean, there's probably a number of different angles we could go. Maybe jumping into the sanctification gaps is a good idea.

And as I was thinking at the end of our episode, the end of our chat, you know, there's like those very obvious ways people can be traumatized in religious settings.

And so when we think of religious trauma, we tend to go that way. But when you look at like the individual experience of someone who's in the church and has been harmed or abused or struggling to integrate or wanting to leave, that element of like the experience, the individual experience is such an important thing, but that's so nuanced, so subjective, it can be so hard to really understand.

But we recognize too, and this is in my work as a pastor and then my work as a therapist, just the nature that words and ideas have tremendous healing power, but they can also be incredibly damaging.

And so there is this very kind of subtle, often pernicious idea that how things have been communicated and concepts have been communicated can actually be really damaging to people and run adjacent to this idea of religious trauma.

And so it's far more subtle, but I'd be very happy to explore it and chat about it with you. Absolutely.

I mean, it sounds very obvious that any sort of verbal abuse is going to have a very physiological and damaging effect on you.

But in terms of sanctification, I mean, let's back it up. Sanctification to me is something where it's like the changing of yourself.

Like me going through this podcast is a very sanctification process where I no longer want the things before God is sanctifying me to come closer to Him.

How would you define sanctification? Yeah, the basic idea is the process of being made holy.

The tricky part of sanctification, though, is we recognize it's something that God does to us.

God does this for us. We don't cause it. We don't cause it. We can't do it.

Galatians 3 is a really good example of this. If you're familiar with the book of Galatians, Paul's writing to a congregation, and in all of his letters, he starts off with a lot of praise and thanksgiving for the church.

This is the one letter where he's pretty annoyed with them, and he just comes out firing. He talks about this idea is that, hey, you guys have begun this process in the power of the

Holy Spirit. In essence, what you've recognized is you can't save yourself, and you recognize now it's the work of Christ on the cross, and the

Holy Spirit's transforming work. He's like, excellent job. But then what happened is there's a group that's called the

Judaizers that they came in and said, yes, you need to put your faith in Christ, thumbs up, but also you need to submit to the

Old Testament law as well. And so then the church adopted some of these practices, and Paul's annoyed.

He's saying, guys, if you began this process in the power of the Holy Spirit, do you think then you can continue to do the process now in the power of the flesh by submitting to the law and kind of working hard and giving yourself to these traditions?

He's like, that's not how it works. We continue the same way we begun. And that's kind of like the crux in chapter three.

And so what we see played out in a lot of churches today, a lot of preaching, a lot of teaching is this idea of like, hey,

Jesus died for you. Great. You put your faith in him. Now, because he's died for you, you need to go be good.

And if you don't, we're going to do a lot of finger wagging, and we're going to make you feel bad because he died for you. So get it together. The problem is we cannot perfect ourselves.

We cannot sanctify ourselves. We cannot complete this process of being made holy. So it's almost like a continuous dependence on the

Holy Spirit that we start with the Holy Spirit. And then even throughout this process of like, well, it's not a crutch. Like it is a continual, you know, take a cross every day kind of thing where it is like the, yeah,

I think the biggest realization that you just kind of came to me was that sanctification is not from the self.

So this isn't something where like, I did really good, so I'm doing good. It's like, well, the Holy Spirit enabled you to be as good as you were.

So unless you are acknowledging that, then you're not really like going on the right path and you're just doing it your way.

Right. I want to kind of jump a little bit more concretely into the sanctification gap, but can I be a grammar nerd for a minute here?

Absolutely. So there's a couple of examples in the

New Testament of this where Paul uses, I think Peter has one example of it too, but Paul uses what's called the passive imperative.

And so if you like grammar, it's this idea that it's an imperative, so it's a command.

You must do this, but it's in the passive voice. So it's not an action you do, it's an action that happens to you.

So my favorite example is Paul talks to Corinthian congregations and says, do not be drunk with wine, but be filled with the

Spirit. That phrase, be filled with the Spirit, is a imperative passive.

And so you must do it, but it must happen to you. You cannot force it.

My brain is breaking. You cannot force this action, but you do have to do it, but now it has to happen to you.

And so when we think of Christian sanctification, it's presenting ourselves to the one who then transforms.

Like giving space for it to happen. So when we talk about the sanctification gap, it comes from this idea that the

Bible talks about ideals. It talks about what we ought to be, the kinds of things we need to be, what it's like to live in light of the kingdom of God.

And so here's this really high bar, this really high standard, and this is what the Bible talks about.

The problem is we are somewhere down here, and we see this, and we hear every

Sunday, this is the kind of thing you need to do, these kind of people you need to be, right? Love your enemy, love your neighbor, be hospitable, be gracious, be compassionate.

And then we show up to work on Monday, and we see that one person we can't stand, and we go,

I know I'm supposed to love, I'm supposed to love, I'm supposed to be hospitable, and things leak out, and we say something nasty, we have kind of a bad thought.

We're a little greedy, we can be a little manipulative, and then we go back to church, and we go, ah, I got it wrong, I got it wrong.

Okay, I'm going to try harder, right? Because here's where I need to be, I'm going to try harder, I'm going to try harder, I'm going to try harder. We can't close that gap on our own effort, because that's not how the kingdom of God works.

And then we just get so down on ourselves for this concept of failure that wasn't even ours to control to begin with.

This is pretty gracious. What can happen when we look at typical trauma responses is a concept of learned helplessness.

If I've been abused since I was a child, maybe a caregiver, right? We talk about complex trauma.

It's not just a one -time traumatic event, but trauma that occurs from maybe a caregiver or someone who's close in our lives, and it happens repeatedly.

Then one of the elements that can happen is learned helplessness. I am powerless to take care of myself.

I am powerless to protect myself. I am powerless to get out of this situation. So imagine now, every

Sunday morning, we come to church, and we see the ideal, and we recognize we're down here, and we try, and we try, and we try, and we try, and we cannot close that gap.

Then one of the experiences I've seen so often in church, and I even know some of my clients, of well, then the

Christian life's not meant for me, because when I think of the Christian life, I'm overwhelmed by guilt and by shame, and I'm out.

Or those rivers of living water that these other Christians seem to experience, well, that's not me, and so I'll still come to church.

I'll still show up, but this isn't for me. And there's a sense of learned helplessness that kicks in.

There's nothing I can do to grow, to mature, because I've never experienced it. And when that learned helplessness is paired with guilt and shame, what we can recognize is, yes, this is not physical abuse.

This is not sexual abuse. This is not those classic trauma -type instances, but we mirror now a similar traumatic response of helplessness, of physiological reactions.

When we go to church, we go, that's not for me. I can't do this. Or when we try to act differently, we're just so paralyzed and experience our own helplessness.

So it's very subtle. It's very different. It's not like that classic type of trauma we might expect, and yet, it mirrors, it runs parallel to kind of these classic trauma responses.

I didn't even want to interrupt you, because I just didn't want you to stop that train of thought, but a couple of things.

It sounds like learned helplessness in the positive frame, like the opposite end of what you just said.

It's like, it sounds like that's the mentality we have to take when we go to church of like, there is nothing I can do.

This is all on the Holy Spirit, while also taking into account of like, but that process of sanctification can't happen unless I open myself to it, kind of like that passive imperative.

But also, you're just shedding so much light on a conversation that I had with an atheist on a plane recently.

And he was like, he saw me editing my podcast on a plane, and he was just like, what is that?

Like, what are you doing? And we started talking, and he was, you know, it was a really illuminating conversation that I was like, this is what the

Holy Spirit's preparing me for, is to evangelize on a plane. And it did not go that way at all. I think he,

I scared him away, because I was like, God loves you. And he was like, no, he doesn't. I spent so long in the church.

My whole life, I was where you were at. And then as soon as I left the community, went to college, everything disappeared.

And I feel so much better. And I was like, okay, well, like, I can't change your mind. Like, it was a horrible conversation.

I was like, gosh, I need to practice my, you know, whatever. It sounds like he has that learned helplessness of like,

I tried it didn't work. There's nothing I can do. No reason to go back.

Am I understanding this correctly? Yeah, I think so. And as it relates to this guy, I'd be so curious to hear more of his story.

And I imagine there's so many layers to the story about what worked, what didn't work. But yeah, there can be an element, as you talked about this, where someone says,

I see where I need to be. I can't get there. The answers I'm given don't help.

They just make me feel worse about myself. I try, I try. It's not for lack of effort. And I never conquer sin.

I never feel closer to God. I never experienced these kind of rivers of living water that Christ talks about.

This is not for me. And then when you have leadership in a church that maybe there's an element of like hero worship, or they don't do conflict well, they really kind of abuse power, and then all of these things feed into them.

I'm gone, or I'll stick it out. But clearly, I'm not getting this. There was something you said, too, about there's this element of like, there's a helpless feeling, and yet we don't want to be in this kind of powerlessness either.

And I think that's such a great, great insight and a great awareness is we want to engage in the right kind of powerlessness.

And we want to engage in the right kinds of actions. Like a submissive type of powerlessness of like a trusting

God, knowing that there is no power on earth that can do what he needs to do for me. And I just need to be open and willing and trusting that it'll take place on his terms, not mine.

So I'm not going to be frustrated pushing this rock up uphill, when it's like, sure, only God can move.

And oh my gosh, my mind is spinning. Am I going in the right path here? Or am I distracting the point? No, I think

I think we're on the right track. So maybe start with this idea of like, what are the right kinds of efforts?

And I remember doing, talking about kind of the sanctification gap with I remember with a lot of folks in their 20s and young 30s.

And it was really fascinating, because they're like, Ryan, I've heard my whole life that the Christian life is about discipline and about pleasing

God and about trying really hard and showing up to church and saying your prayers and reading your Bible and food at food banks and doing all these kinds of things.

And now you're saying it's not really about effort. Well, what gives? And it's like, okay, you know, just like when, you know,

I don't know if you had this experience. But I remember being in, I think it was pre calculus in high school, and I was not good at math,

I had to like work really hard. I was getting tutoring. And I was starting to kind of learn some of the concepts.

And I remember learning this one concept and feeling so satisfied, I put so much work into it. And then the teacher told us like the next week, okay, now that you learned it, sorry, we actually have to unlearn it.

But that was just the foundation you needed to now get to do the more advanced stuff. And I was toast at that point. And so there's a little bit of that like bait and switch that happens here that these students were reacting to is like, we learned it.

Now you're saying we have to unlearn it. But we think about like the right kinds of effort. We kind of hold this idea that when you're a kid, we're teaching a biblical worldview, we're teaching kind of this wisdom perspective, right?

This is like the book of Proverbs here. Hey, if this, if you work really hard, then likely it's going to pay off and you will have a good job and you'll succeed in life.

But we know very obviously that lots of people work really, really hard. And they're just met with frustration and suffering and difficulties.

And we also know lots of people who don't do much and they sort of just ended up in a scenario where maybe wealth was passed down to them and they're doing great.

And we go, wait a second, we learned that if you do the right things, then the right things will follow. But the world doesn't always work that way.

But it's a general rule. And so with kids, when we're teaching them theology, that's often the approach is, if you do the right kinds of effort, these kinds of things, then it's going to pay off.

If you say your prayers and read your Bible and show up to church, your faith will grow. And that's great for someone who's a kid.

That's great for an adolescent. But as they mature, they start to see, wait a second, the world doesn't always work this way.

And now a different kind of effort is going to be required. Similarly, if you want to be a great football player, you can get a lot of tutoring in chess, but it probably won't make you a great football player.

So now we have to think, okay, what is the right kind of effort? What is the right kind of submission? What is the right kind of powerlessness?

And it always comes back to, I am always able to present myself to Christ. I am always able to go to the foot of the cross.

That's the beauty of Christian freedom. I don't have to do anything to show up. In like pagan religions, for example, we would have to appease the gods.

We would have to sacrifice. We would have to kind of do something. And then the gods had space for us.

In Christian theology, it's, I always have the freedom to come to the foot of the cross. So when we talk about the effort, the effort is an effort of presentation.

The effort is I'm free to come. The problem is that the experiences of guilt and shame often prevent us from doing that.

They can be so significant. Go ahead. I think everything just clicked. So thank you for explaining that again.

But where would the guilt and shame, is that just like an external part of the human experience, or is there a part in that submission process where that guilt and shame is introduced?

Yeah. Guilt and shame is so core to the human experience. If you have nieces or nephews, have you done any babysitting?

I felt shame before. Yeah. Once or twice? Okay. It is that relearning process of like Christianity is being a good person, not a bad person.

And so you like down pat, got it. And then you get in and you're like, it's actually nothing. It's actually just submission.

And nothing you actually do matters because it's all through God, like nothing you could ever do on earth.

So that part kind of clicks. I don't mean to go back over it, just kind of restating it. But with that guilt and shame, you get to that process of like, yeah,

I guess my question is, how does the guilt and shame play a role when you get to that state of you said something that really forced submission or that effort of submission?

That's what your effort is. When you do your good works, that's you submitting. It's you doing nothing but submitting.

I think this is where it can get pretty tricky in practice. You have people say like, hey, I serve at my church.

I spend time in scripture all the day. Every day I'm praying, I'm doing

X, I'm doing Y. What do you mean these don't count? These are all the things I'm supposed to be doing.

They're wonderful things. Obedience is not negotiable in Christian theology, but those aren't the things that transform you.

Those aren't the things that make you now holy. Yes, those are valuable, but they don't actually transform you.

The only transformative process is the Holy Spirit's work and the love of God that is transforming.

I'm building a lot on Dallas Willard here, John Coe, Jim Wilder. This is a lot of their ideas.

This is a lot of what they've taught and the theology that they've really done such a fantastic job in their writings and their talks.

If people are interested in this thing, hey, I want to hear more about this. I definitely recommend those three authors. Then James Bryan Smith, too.

He has a wonderful series, the Good and Beautiful series, where he talks a lot about love. Here's the problem.

We think of, okay, so I'm free to come to Jesus, right? Great. But what happens when we do something wrong?

What happens when we experience sin? I need to go into hiding.

I need to cover. I talked about this, I think, last time guilt at its core is this recognition that I've done something wrong.

Shame at the core is I'm a bad person. If people saw me, they would reject me, and so what happens then when we sin?

We go like, wait, I'm supposed to show up to the cross? No, no, no, no, no. I've done something wrong.

God will punish me. I'm a bad person. God's not going to accept me, so we go into hiding.

We go into clean -up mode. This is what Adam and Eve did at the fall, right? They went into hiding.

Don't let God see us. What would it have been if Adam and Eve said, Lord, we know what you said.

We screwed up, but we know you're gracious. We know you're good, and so we're coming and presenting ourselves before you.

No, we don't do that. We hide. I've heard this so many times.

I think one of my favorite examples in working with a lot of young men where they struggle with pornography addiction, and they'll say,

Brian, I'm struggling with this. I don't know what to do. I've tried everything. I say, okay. Immediately after you look at pornography and you feel guilt and you feel ashamed, go to prayer right then and there, but I can't.

Why not? Well, I've sinned, and I can't come to God and sin. Christianity is kind of about that.

That's the key element of Christianity is we can go to God even though we are sinners.

That's when it starts, actually. Yes, but everything in our experience says we will be rejected.

Everything in our experience says we are not safe. In our human experience. Yes, and that's the only experience we have, right?

So as it relates to God, we think, well, he's going to do the same, right? So often how we are parented is going to impact how we view

God. Our experiences with people is going to impact how we view God, right? These are all training us to say, well, this is how people respond to these kinds of things, so therefore

God will be like this too. So when we talk about the effort, our effort is always about coming to God.

Lord, I know you're gracious. Lord, I know you're good. I know you're transforming. I know I need to obey. I know I want to obey.

Do I want to obey? Maybe that's a separate conversation, but this idea of I get to come to God in an open and honest relationship, that's the kind of effort we're engaged to do.

And that's the only way to close the sanctification gap. Exactly. Present ourselves before God.

Romans 12, of living sacrifices. Lord, here we are. I can't do this on my own. Yep, here

I am again. Yep, I've struggled with this for seven years. Here I am again. I thought I'd be better.

Nope, here I am again. This is the beauty of the foot of the cross. It's pretty releasing to know, because I think there is this concept that at least

I was raised in, and maybe others have been too, of once you repent, no more, never again. Don't even touch it again, where it's like, but I did.

I did many times. That thing that I said I'd repent, oh gosh, happened yesterday. It's like, well,

I guess I'm screwed. I guess I'm screwed, but it's like, well, this is kind of the onus of Christianity, is that you're kind of expected to screw up, but you're also, you'd be

Jesus, and you have that ability to, you have the option to come before the

Lord of like, hey, I still can't do it without you. Yeah, absolutely.

And the hope is that in presenting ourselves to Christ, we will start to organically experience this transformation, this very slow, kind of gradual work.

But sometimes the question comes up is like, well, what if it's not happening? And I think the question,

I had a New Testament professor, the transformation's not happening the way I think it should. A New Testament professor, he asked me this question.

He asked the class this question. He says, is God powerful enough to instantly transform you so that you would never sin again?

And we're like, yeah, of course he could. So then why didn't he do it the second we became a

Christian? And I was like, I don't know. I mean, I guess he's going to do it, you know, a new heaven and a new earth, but why not now?

I don't know. And he kind of just watched the class struggle for a minute, trying to work through it, and he said, it seems to me that God is more glorified in us coming to Him and the process of the relationship than instant sanctification on earth.

And that forever changed my perspective. It was like, oh, the relationship matters.

Oh, my sin is actually forgiven because God still cares for me enough to allow me to struggle with Him.

Like the value of the sanctification is in that continual renewal process that we go through with Him versus keeping this streak of goodness as long as possible.

It's the continual tumbling that he finds that we're transformed and that our relationship is deepened.

It's almost like, I don't know. I'm pretty fascinated by that guy on the plane who was like, I was so deep in my faith.

And now once I left, it was no longer there. It just like, if it was real, it would have stayed. It would have been stronger.

It would have existed outside the community that I was raised in. And of course we can't know because he's not here.

And that was like a five -minute conversation. But to me, it sounds like it was almost lacking that continual tumbling of him falling, coming to God, him falling, coming.

And like having the data points of, oh, this relationship is real because every time I fall,

I still can have this relationship with God. Even when I feel distant, I can come to God and he can renew it.

Like that transformation never took place enough for him to stay within his faith up until now.

And who knows, maybe he was transformed recently, hopefully, but it almost is the value of that.

I want to just say tumbling because I have this vision in my head of just like falling and getting back up with God. Just this continual tumbling is what makes that relationship real and tangible.

Yeah. And that's where I think there's such a high calling for leaders is to be able to model this process as well as teach this process and then live it out with people.

And this is like what you were saying last time. Yes. Where it's, hey, you've sinned, you're a bad person.

Hey, you sinned. Why can't you get this right? Hey, you sinned. Come on, get with it. Everyone else seems to have it figured out.

And after a while, this is a type of emotional abuse on someone when leaders kind of just crush their people by just dumping guilt and shame upon the already naturally occurring guilt and shame.

This three strikes you're out mentality is so earthly. Yeah. Wow.

Oh my gosh. This is actually really freeing to hear that the failure is kind of the crux of a successful relationship with God.

Maybe. I mean, is that too far of a reach? It's funny because I don't wake up in the morning thing like, can't wait to sin because God's going to cover me.

And here's kind of the beauty. If you look through the book of Romans, it's a really fascinating, really solid, like logical progression or Paul's.

He talks like in chapter three, you write this idea that everyone has sins and that sin is a thing.

And it's kind of this vicarious, vicariously through Adam. But if that's the case, that it can be this transformation through Christ and that we are also now able to then enjoy the peace with God, like a little like, you know, like war and peace kind of peace with God because of the work of Christ.

Like we are now at peace. We are no longer at war. We can experience this. This is how amazing the cross is.

And then in chapter six, the beginning of chapter six is this very like obvious logical progression.

Because the idea is like, wait a second, if I was in sin and now because of Christ and what he's done on the cross and that vicarious experience,

I'm no longer like guilty of the consequences of sin. Sweet. I can do whatever

I want. But then Romans chapter six says, should we continue on in sin?

May it never be. Paul recognizes that the obvious conclusion of Christian theology is the thought that I can do whatever

I want. And Paul goes, no, that's not how it works. That's indicative. If that desire is there, it's indicative that there's something of the flesh that's still there.

What Paul is saying is you are gonna sin. This is part of the human experience, part of the Christian experience.

It's part of it. We don't wake up thinking, sweet, I get to do this. This actually is hurting me. Lord, show me the ways in which it's hurting me.

Expose my heart. Show me where I'm missing it. Show me where I'm not understanding it. But I get to come to you constantly in freedom.

This is like the treasure chest, like the hunt in Christianity of like, you think you opened the Bible and you're like, just don't sin, go to heaven, repent of my sins from before this moment, good to go.

But it's actually, he died on the cross for all my sins. So I'm actually good as long as I love Jesus and go to church every

Sunday. And then like, God pulls out that uno reverse where it's like, I'm actually going to change you.

So you don't even want to sin anymore. And if you still kind of want to sin, there's more work to be done.

I experienced this first hand with the podcast of like, I love going out. I love staying up late. I love partying with my friends.

And then I just like slowly saw myself stay in more. And for a long time, I am getting old.

I'm getting so lame. I don't want to go out. I don't have fun going out. Like I don't enjoy it even when I did it.

And then it kind of hit me one day. I'm like, oh, sanctification, it's happening.

Cool. Love that. I love that this is actually God being like, I don't want that for you.

And no, I don't want that for me. Whereas like, I would like really fight to like, okay, I'll stay up. And I'm like, it's nine o 'clock, gotta go to this.

Yeah. That's a cool experience. When we start to see our desires transformed and it's formed by this loving attachment.

And I don't know if this is maybe a segue. There's this idea too, in kind of Christian circles, that this idea that if we just teach you the right things, if you have the right information, that is sufficient to transform you.

And that is just like not how people were designed. It's not even close to how we were designed.

That's how the church thinks is if we hit all the right keynotes. Yes. You'll leave saves.

Right. And you'll leave with the information to sanctify yourself. And that's just not how it works at the core.

That's not how God designed us. Jim Wilder talks about this idea of wordless attachment and how it contradicts so often kind of the model of the church.

So model the church's idea of if we have the right information, it'll inform our will.

And then we will choose to do the right thing. We'll do what we need to do, but we need the right information and that will motivate the will.

But it's funny, just like at a very cursory glance, like people have information about all sorts of unhealthy things in life.

We have a lot of information about what foods to eat, what not to eat. Should you smoke or don't smoke?

But people, they have the information. They know how much exercise they should get.

And maybe you're driving home from working, like, I know I need to exercise. It's important because it's going to cost me years of my life. And you sit down and you don't get up because that's how fickle the will is.

We just like knowledge and the will are important, but they are very fickle. The Christian attachment is rooted in this idea of love, but it's so hard to communicate.

What is the actual transitional properties? There's a subjective element to it.

And so it feels often safer and easier to go to effort and knowledge because we can measure those.

But how do you measure that wordless attachment? And one of the analogies that Jim Wilder uses in one of his books, he talks about looking at a parent and a child or even about a married couple.

Maybe they're 20 years in marriage and there's that experience where they're maybe in a party. It's a loud room and maybe the husband's on one side of the room and the wife's on the other.

And they kind of just give that look to each other and they immediately know what they're thinking. Oh, it's time to go home together.

Or hey, let's go talk to that person, whatever. There was no words. It's hard to objectively say what happened, but that's what happens when we are just attached in relationship to someone.

We start to now think and understand on this very kind of subtle level. So when we talk about this idea of presenting ourselves before God and how does the sanctification occur in a loving relationship, we start to kind of just know how

God is and what God is doing. And it happens. It's hard to measure, but it just sort of happens.

So as you were talking about this, am I just getting old and I don't want to go out and party? Maybe, no.

This is just as you're attaching to the Lord and spending time talking with God's people and spending time in the

Word and being curious. When did it happen? I don't know, but it started to happen where you're now just kind of seeing and understanding and being connected with God.

But in so many churches, we want program, we want metrics, we want growth model stuff. This is anti -that.

How do you measure this? It just happens. How do you measure the connection of a child with their parent?

It just sort of happens. And for kids, it happened years before they even learned their first word.

It's a mom holding their kid, kind of those little coups, a little baby talk, taking care of needs, changing diapers, feeding.

And so a bond, an attachment is formed long before the child even can speak their first word, before they have language develop.

And similarly, when we think about this idea of the sanctification gap, is we need to close this gap.

It's not about getting the right words, saying the right things, doing the right things. It's just showing up and saying, I'm present.

Yeah, it's almost like everyone has this invisible KPI within their Christian faith of like, when

I reach this metric, then I've made it. But it's actually like a feeling that you can't quantify.

It's not an action that's like, it's an achievement that marks a milestone in your Christian walk.

It's just an ongoing, everlasting process that when you get there, you can't deny it.

It's a feeling that you can't ignore. And it's not even a choice. It's already happened.

You're existing in the room and you didn't even realize you walked through the door. I definitely felt that way. It's not like there was a moment where I like, yesterday

I wanted to go out and today I don't. It just happened that I realized that I was already there. Yeah, the choice is in presenting yourself to God.

The choice is in saying, Lord, here I am. Whoa, say that again. What? The choice is in you saying, here

I am, Lord. I'm showing up. Here I am. I'm talking with your people, spending time in your word.

I'm open. But we don't get to control what happens with that choice. That's the

Lord's timing. That's the Lord's work. But we do get to show up. And so that's part of this. Yes, obedience is not negotiable.

It is important to love my neighbor. It is important to love my enemy. It is important to spend time in the word. It is important to pray. I do need to do those things, but that doesn't actually fix me.

And so often it's like, well, I read my Bible today. Why don't I feel better? Cause that's not how it works. You could do all of those things and still like within that Christian faith, kind of present yourself to the

Lord of like, I'm doing these things and I'm here. But like, if there is a change or there's a step forward, it's not going to take place unless God wills it.

Absolutely. And I think one of the things that's so valuable for Christians, and I found so much freedom in this, but it's such an awkward thing to come to the

Lord in prayer and say, Lord, I don't really want to pray right now. I'm bored of prayer right now.

Or maybe I'm angry with you, Lord. And so much of my childhood was like, you're not allowed to say those things.

Well, God knows my heart. He knows it's there. He sees it far worse than what my words can communicate.

But that's the irony of, I don't want to do this. I'm here. What is this? I don't know.

I don't like it. I'm frustrated. I'm angry at you. It's in the act of showing up.

And at that point, I don't longer think prayer is the thing that's transformed me. But prayer is the means

I can show up to God and be what I am and who I am. It's the act of being willing to be vulnerable in that aspect of like,

I don't want you, God. And I'm willing to say it for the purpose of being transparent, not to hurt God or slander

His name, but to be like, listen, if we have an open and loving relationship that lasts forever, I should be able to tell you when

I don't like you. And God can handle that. God can handle that. God created a world where the worst possible things we humans can fathom exist.

I think He can handle somebody being like, I don't feel like praying today. Yeah. And so that takes the pressure off of,

I pray, so therefore I'm transformed, versus I pray as a means to connect with God. I don't have the expectation that this is going to do anything now.

I just show up. So with that, there can be so much freedom. And I know you didn't ask this, but this is almost like kind of the implied question that I'm finding myself curious about is, for the kind of person who's experienced abuse or trauma in the church and the sanctification gap has been kind of one of those things

I've been missing, this can be so healing and so therapeutic for them, right? Obviously for the person who says

I don't want to come back to my faith, I've been burnt out like that guy on the airplane, this probably may not land for them.

But for the person who's like, I still want to be a Christian, I still want to go to church, but I'm so hurt, and I feel so powerless, and I have no idea what to do, walking them through just kind of a good spiritual theology and to help them understand these concepts is so liberating and so freeing.

I've experienced it myself, I've seen it with people in church, I've seen it with Christian clients who are curious about this experience, and that's pretty neat to watch, pretty neat to see of how they get to work through the guilt and shame and just be with God and connect with God, and in turn start to feel and see transformation, however slow it might be.

Well, you're really good at this, Ryan. I mean, you're able to really walk them through the process and the concepts of it.

I'm thinking next time I'm on a flight for 30 minutes, how do I wrap this up? But it is a process, and I think that you do it with a lot of patience and understanding and really good framing as far as it, but yeah, once it clicks, why would you say no to that, that a

God that wants to grow closer to you through your down and your shortcomings because you're not

Christian, they just get such a bad rap of like, huh, I gotta be all pious and high and mighty.

It's like the opposite, actually. There's no other way but to be human through this, and unfortunately, that's not pious at all.

Yeah, when we see ourselves and see the depth of the sin, it's pretty jarring.

It's pretty frightening to say like, wait, that's who I really am, and yet God accepts the sin that, you know, it's funny is

I would like to believe that all of my friends, they are my friends because of all of my positive traits, and there's probably an element of truth to that, but they are also my friends despite all of my negative traits.

They see them so clearly, right? Just as I can see someone else's negative traits like that, they see mine easily, and they choose to stick with me, and like if people can love me despite my many flaws and be patient despite my many flaws and choose to be in a relationship with me, how much more so can

God do that, and God has the actual transforming power. My friends are helpless to transform me just as I'm helpless to transform me, but God can.

And so a human analogy I've always found to be, for at least me, just helps center me as like, can

God really handle me? Well, if my friends can and I see their flaws, yeah, definitely

God can and is doing something in that, but I just got to show up to him. I can't run from him.

I can't say my own hubris is going to clean me up, and then God's now going to accept me. Yeah.

That contradicts Christianity at its core. Whoa. Wow.

Oh, so good. There's one concept here that we kind of flew over, so please let me know if this is going too backwards, but it's something that I just don't know, so I'm really curious about it.

You talk about contempt for Christianity through religious trauma.

Yeah. What is that? Where does that come from? Is that related to the sanctification gap, or what do you mean by it?

I think if we had a good concept of the sanctification gap, it creates opportunities to reduce that contempt, but what

I've seen, and I'd love to hear your experience too, is someone comes into the church, and they are really diligent to do what they've been told, and they submit to leadership, and they kind of do all the right things, and all they see is abuses in the church, or arrogance in the church, or just faulty systems.

They see brokenness. It's not that far -fetched for them to go, this doesn't make sense.

This can't be true, because none of this is playing out in my life. None of this is working for me, but I'm just told that I'm wrong or I need to do better, and so a very obvious response to that is contempt.

You mean like someone is doing the right, the works? They've done all the things they've been told to do, and it hasn't worked.

In fact, what they've seen is their own failure and the failures around them. They've seen broken systems, faulty churches, damaged leaders, abusive leaders.

They read it in the news. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense that they would look at Christians with contempt. It makes a lot of sense that they look at the whole structure with contempt.

Are you saying this is from internal Christians or external looking in? I think both. Yeah, absolutely,

I think both. There's been so many times where I've heard a news story, and it's like, how can this be?

How can this be real? If Christianity is true, then how can these people be this abusive, this harmful?

I can think of very notable religious leaders. There was one who wrote books. I heard him talk, and I loved his works, and when it came out what he was engaged in after his death, it was absolutely crushing, and there was a lot of that,

Lord, I don't understand. I'm upset. I'm scared. I'm furious. Now, fortunately,

I had a number of other experiences where I can see God's love and God's care. That's okay, Lord. I'm not letting this one person define the religion for me, but nevertheless, and I've been hurt by Christians.

I've been hurt by leaders. I've been hurt, and so with it can come a, well, if this doesn't make sense, I've been told

I'm the problem. Well, then screw these people, and I'm going to look down upon it, and so when there's a sense of Christianity is about morality and about just doing the right things, and then you'll get the right effects, it makes a lot of sense that contempt will be a reaction when it doesn't work, and there's not someone to walk someone through this and with this and humility and grace and love, and I recognize just because you have maybe a better spiritual theology and you're able to be really gracious and really gentle to shepherd people, they still may walk away from their faith.

They still might not buy in. It's not just because, hey, here's this thing I'm talking about. It's going to work 100%.

Of course not, but the hope is that at least someone will walk away without a contempt and hatred towards Christianity, and I don't know if that's the goal, but it's something

I've seen. Yeah, I think we all collectively as Christians need to realize,

A, there's not one human on earth that's getting it right, so even your pastor or this leader or...

I love my pastor, but I've spoken to 30 people in this podcast, and I don't say this to contradict the

Christian faith, but nobody agrees, and I don't think anybody's right, and I don't think anybody's wrong. I think everybody's experiencing

God in the best way that they have possible, and all of them are valid and true and well -researched and well -educated inputs, but I think if somebody on earth was doing it right, saying the right words, pulling people through sanctification, getting people closer to God, that person would be a billionaire.

We would know that person, but we're all doing our best, and I think at the end of the day, we have to understand there's not a foolproof method to get closer to God, so when you fail, it's not the fault of the church or the fault of your leader.

It really is like, this is the human experience, and you need to continually seek God. I remember having that prayer for years.

I would say 20 years of my life, I prayed, God, I don't want you, but I want to want you. I don't want you, but I want to want you.

It looks like being set on fire for the Lord is a very cringey experience based off what I see online, but it also seems like a very fulfilling life, and I want the best life possible, so if this is what it's meant to be,

God, make me want you, and here we are. I have my own testimony for it, but I think it is, just because one person failed you, leading you to Christ, you have to recognize it's not a point of failure.

It's a point of understanding that we're human. Right. I think you talked about, is there a foolproof model?

I think the Holy Spirit is the foolproof model for the Christian, but yes, people will fail you, and I recognize that I have studied, and I believe what

I am sharing, but I also recognize I could be wrong, and I also recognize that others who are very devout, who love the

Lord, will disagree with me, and that's always a fun conversation. I enjoy that, but I think one of the things that's helpful in this is, and this was when

I was doing my research methodologies classes, and those kind of things. How do we know,

I guess, how do we view and assess research, and one of the models that I've subscribed to, and I know others will disagree with it,

I know there's other views, but this idea that truth does exist out there.

There are true things. I just may not be able to know it, and so I'm always hesitant to say there's no such thing as any sort of truth, because I feel like that becomes pretty self -defeating when we fall like a logical progression, but I also recognize -

Right. Might as well give up. Well, it's like, if I say there's no such thing as truth, do I believe that?

Absolutely. Do I believe that? Is that a true statement? If it's a true statement, then there is a truth, but to hold this idea that, yes,

I think there's true concepts out there, but I also recognize my own human limitations, and this is the value that I think of.

Why do we have a church? Why does God tell us to pray together? So we can discern together, so we can challenge each other, so we can correct each other, so we can shepherd each other, so we can bumble and stumble and fumble together, because one person may not fully have it, but as a church, we have a better shot, but even in that, humility is key, and even in that, we're gonna screw it up, but it's okay.

How amazing is that? Yeah, we don't need to find the right website or have access to the right membership.

Right now, we have access to the Holy Spirit that will guide us to God, that will translate the wonders and worries of our heart for God and pray on our behalf.

Absolutely, and I always value the idea of learning, and so to any listener here,

I just think if anyone's listening to this, they probably already have a learner's mindset, which is fantastic, but this idea of curiosity, the idea to learn, to grow, those are so essential.

Yes, even though we'll stumble, I still hope people always walk away with a sense of curiosity and wanting to further learn, and I think of one of those quotes that have been so inspiring to me.

This is a Neil Peart quote for the musicians out there is, what is a master if not a master student?

And so if someone wants to say, hey, I want to be a master of something, then you've subscribed to a lifelong process of learning.

You've never figured it out, and in the Christian life, I've never sanctified myself.

I've never perfected myself. I never have it sorted out. I'm always coming to the Lord, always can.

Success, failure, doesn't matter. I just show up. That's where I'm experienced. That's where I'm known.

That's where I'm loved, and that's where I'll start to be transformed, and that's where we find healing when there's been abuses in the church.

That's where we find healing when we've been hurt. That's not the only way. I talked last episode about the value of a meaningful community, and therapy can be valuable, and what are some of those red flags to look out for if going to a church that could be healing or potentially therapeutic for you.

So yeah, there's wisdom, but yeah, there's so much freedom. I get to show up. I just need to come.

I just need to be a student. I just need to be open. Yeah. A lot of this episode has been focused on the self and the personal experience and journey towards understanding and accepting the sanctification gap.

I guess we could say that. The gap will exist, because it's not really in our hands. It's submitting to God, everything we just said, moving forward.

Let's say we're good, and we want to love others. I think that on the vein of trauma and loving somebody, you mentioned something like somebody that might have that contempt.

You say lovingly questioned dissent is something that we discussed offline, and how do we as somebody that does feel aligned with the

Lord, is okay with tumbling and fumbling? I like how you said that. How do we turn external and help others next to us, our brothers and sisters?

Yeah. Part of it's going to happen organically if you've seen your own mess, if you've seen the depths of your sin and found

God to be gracious, it becomes much easier to be gracious to someone else's story. To the degree to which you are harsh and judgmental,

I would say that's the degree to which you now need to go to the Lord, because there's more junk in there. I find it's way easier to be compassionate to others when

I just take a look inward and see my own junk. Jesus essentially teaches as much in the

Sermon on the Mount, right? Don't get the plank out of your brothers, I get the plank out of your eye first. There's this calling of when you see yourself, you're going to see someone else better.

And so I think of the ways Jesus showed up with people, and he was really harsh with one people group, the religious leaders and the abusers.

He was very loving and very compassionate and very gentle with the sinners and the tax collectors, and so that's our model.

And I get the sense that if Jesus was just dropping these, like, hey, you need to repent or you're going to be cast out, they wouldn't have kept showing up.

They wouldn't have kept hanging out with him and having meals with him, because the little I know about people, and I say that kind of facetiously, is they don't like being judged and harped on repeatedly.

They'll take off. And so when there's people who have been hurt or questioning or there's dissent, show up with love, show up with curiosity, hear their story, ask questions, understand.

What they decide to do in their life is not your job to transform. You can't transform yourself.

You're going to now transform someone else? Just show up as Jesus did. Well, but yeah, I think we all go in and become crusades for Christ when we're like, well,

God enabled me to point out all the wrongs of you, and I need to collect as many souls that go to the altar.

I don't know, weird game that people play sometimes, but very well put. Don't get me wrong. You know, 1 Peter talks about have the defense for the hope we have in Christ.

And I'm always happy to share why am I a Christian? Why am I Christian despite suffering in the world and pain in the world?

And you know, I'm in California, right? Where I'm at right now, we had wildfires for the last week. How can a loving

God exist if there's fires? And so I've worked really hard to have responses for those. And that if someone is willing to say, hey, how you're a

Christian? How do you navigate this? I'm happy to share. But my guiding principle is someone's hurting or someone's angry or someone's wounded,

I'm happy to listen to you. My job is not to convert you. It's never been that. But I am happy to be

Jesus in the flesh, to love, to be interested, to be curious, to give a defense for the things that I believe. And if you decide to walk away and say, this

Christianity stuff, that's not for me, I will still treat you kindly. I'll still treat you compassionately.

If we have a hobby that we share together, we'll go do the hobby together. I'll be in relationship with you, because I don't get to decide timelines.

Maybe 10 years down the road, that question comes up again. I would like to be ready for that as well. Yeah. And so I think that's, we talked about this idea of if people have been hurt or abused, and then now there's dissent or contempt, just show up and be loving.

I love the way you say it. We don't have to be a crusader for Christ. We don't have to convert people.

I've never converted anyone. It's never been my job. It is my job to love my neighbor and my enemy and everyone that I come across.

Wow. I am genuinely curious what your defense for your faith has been, because I think that's the biggest struggle.

That's where I immediately went to when I was on the plane with that guy, where I was like, what is my defense?

Holy Spirit, give me the words. I wasn't prepared for this moment. In my head, I failed. And the conversation did not go well.

I mean, it was just like, oh, we just weren't seeing eye to eye. And I think I just kind of was like, right before we got off the plane,

I was like, listen, I'm not going to convert you, but I just want you to know that God misses you.

You were in the church and then you left, but God's love, even if you don't think he's real,

I think he misses you. And that's where I left it. And I hope that that planted a seed or just let him know that he was loved and not being punished for leaving the church, because I don't believe

God would. But I absolutely agree with coming forward with curiosity and love. And we've done a lot of episodes recently on homosexuality and transgenderism on the podcast.

And I think that the core part of the podcast purposes were just to understand biblically what does the

Bible say about it? And where's the origin of that understanding and that teaching? And, you know,

I think my guest does a really good job in just being like, well, based on the cults back then, like this is what was going on and this is what happens.

And but I think just in a modern sense, I don't think that anybody that's like, well, as being gay as in, it's like,

I just want to get, I just want to be curious about your experience. And I have had a couple of friends that are like into BDSM this,

I like, don't even know if I want to share this. I might cut this out. But, but it was a moment where I, I don't,

I'm not in that community and I don't know anybody in that community, but then I met somebody who was and I think my previous response would have been like, that's not me.

And like judgment, that separation, huge wall. And in that instance,

I was just like, why? Like, don't you feel endangered? Tell me more.

How do you feel safe? Why do you think this is okay? To me, this just feels very unsafe and you shouldn't be doing that to yourself with strangers.

And she was able to explain her reasoning and how she's like, it's actually the most safe community because of this.

And because of my past trauma, this is how I feel the most safe is only through this community that is overtly communicating.

And before where there was boundaries overstepped. So in a normal relationship that actually feels the most dangerous to me.

And I was like, oh, my eyes are open. That makes so much sense.

Not that I'm going to go join the BDSM community, haven't converted me there, but now I have a deeper understanding in you and everything, like it makes sense.

And I think that while we don't condone as Christians, homosexuality, we can understand their experience and their reasoning and love them through it.

I think, I come from a perspective of my central tenet is to present myself to Christ in order to experience his transforming love.

And then I get to now go be in a community and then reflect the love that I have experienced.

And I'm always happy to share. Here's what I think the Bible says on topic A, topic B, I'm always happy to engage in dialogue and thought.

But my central tenet is I need to show up before the Lord experiences love. And then that's going to start to reflect back.

And that's hard because it requires a lot of introspection and it requires a lot of sitting in my own stuff and going to Lord and saying, ah, again.

But in that love, it becomes really easy to start to love other people and to be curious about their stories. I don't know.

I guess I'll talk about, we were talking about climbing earlier. So I'll use that one. It's a classic example of if someone's correcting maybe some safety system you have, how easy it is to dismiss them, even though they might technically be right.

But if I have a relationship with them, I'll listen to them differently. And so as I think about the story on the plane,

I've had conversations with folks where I just, I want to get the right words across. I want to say that really brilliant thing.

I want to be so clever. And often it feels like that's just to make myself feel good.

I just want to feel clever and smart and like I've done a good job. What's so much more valuable is to sit and just hear someone's pain, to hear their story, to care for them.

And just maybe they'll say, wait, are you into this? Are you a

Christian? Or tell me about yours. Tell me. And then there's an opportunity. But that groundwork has been laid to say,

I hear you and I legitimately care about you. I'm attaching with you. Once again, it's that wordless attachment that can develop.

And knowledge and the right words doesn't do that. But presence, curiosity, asking meaningful questions, those will.

And when we take the pressure off of ourselves to go change the world, we actually get to show up and be with people and listen to them, hear them well.

I interviewed a rabbi a while ago, and I was like, so what's the best way

I can love my Jewish brothers and sisters as a Christian? He was talking a lot about the Jewish faith and the fulfillment of prophecies.

But he's like, by being a really good Christian, by loving God so well and being evidently transformed by that, that people look at you and they're like, whoa, what's going on there?

I want some of that. And it's not shaking your finger at them. It's by just loving God and letting people,

I guess, letting people see that you just love God, not that you're trying to... You're right. There's a very prideful moment of like, okay,

I'm going to say the right things here. But it's like, I just want people to know that I love God and God will do the rest.

Absolutely. Absolutely. I hear often from a handful of people, kind of like, not like close friends, maybe acquaintances, and they talk about just how we can't be a

Christian anymore publicly in California, and there's no tolerance for that. I found that's not my experience at all.

I have a number of friends and people I do hobbies with that they are pretty anti -Christian, and they all know

I'm a Christian. They knew I was a pastor, and they'll ask me questions all the time.

We'll talk about faith. Sometimes they'll tease me and make a joke at my expense. That's okay.

I can make a joke at their expense. We have a good relationship. But no one's bothered that I'm a

Christian, and I think it comes back to the fact that I've really tried to love you, and we've had some meaningful conversations.

We've had some challenging conversations, and they've disagreed with me, and they've disagreed with me pretty like staunchly.

I'm allowed to share my ideas. I'm allowed to share where I disagree, but I've really said, Hey, I want to love you.

I think one of my goals, too, is I want to do that with a wider swath of people, and I'm grateful that there's a handful of people that I got to experience this.

I want to experience that more. I want to just be someone who people go, that guy's got capacity for us. That guy loves us.

That guy will hear us. To make room then for the ideas. But I have found, yes, when you show up,

I have seen a handful of people who don't like Christians and don't really like Christ. They've had a conversation with me, and so that gives me hope that as Christians, we can continue to be that and show up for that and show up for people in that way.

We can be Jesus in the flesh, and I recognize, yes, some people will be jerks.

There will be persecution. There will be these kinds of things. Yes, but inasmuch as it depends on us, let's try to avoid that.

Let's just try to show up and be good people, be curious people, be loving people.

And God gives us quite a bit of leash when it comes to interacting with sinners and non -believers. He's not like, don't touch them.

Don't go near them. He's like, embrace them. Invite them to dinner. So our faith enables this exact type of interaction, and I think for a long time, and this could have been a lot of factors, but don't interact with sinners.

It's like, what? Where does that come from? I'm one of them. I'm so aware.

Or maybe not even sinners, but non -believers. Don't touch that. It's going to be contagious. They're unbelievers.

What is going on? Oh my gosh. I'm so aware of just my own sin and my own just kind of where I just want to be in rebellion, where I want to live in the power of myself and decide and be autonomous.

And God knows that, and he's like, yeah, go out anyways, but you've got an extra thing in your pocket that they don't have that they should just see, and then walk away.

That's it. Wow. This was an amazing conversation, Ryan. I really appreciate time on a Saturday. This is great for me.

This is like the best way to start a weekend for me. We talked about in the other episode, but I'm sure a lot of people are trying to get your number right now to book a session with you because you're such an insight.

So how do people get connected with you in California? I understand that they have to be in California. Yeah. Newharborcounseling .com.

I'll link it in the show notes. Wonderful. Yeah. Or they can send me an email, arbome at newharborcounseling .com.

Any events, books, speaking engagements, cool events that you're hosting, milestones you want to share?

No, not that. I think this was it. This was the big milestone. No, just in investing and just my clients.

So cool. Yeah. Do you do telehealth or is it all in person? I do both. Yeah. Cool.

Love that. Love telehealth. Well, thank you so much for your time on a Saturday. This was an amazing conversation. I feel like it shed a lot of light on things just aren't set.

They're obvious. I don't think any of this was new to an extent, but sometimes it's just nice to sit in it.

And thank you for guiding us through that and sharing your wisdom. So always welcome back on the show next time we find an excuse to get back on.