Thinking Christian about Mental Illness and Suffering: A Conversation with Chris Morris

The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that deny God. As such, we need thinking Christian to become as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian podcast. I'm Dr. James Spencer. Through calm, thoughtful theological discussions, Thinking Christian highlights the ways God is working in the world and questions the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions that hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ. Now, on to today's episode of Thinking Christian. Hey, everyone. Welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian. I am joined today by Chris Morris. And Chris is the author of a book, Resilient and Redeemed, Lessons about Suicidality and Depression from the Psych Ward, as well as a number of other books. And so I'm excited to welcome Chris here today to talk about faith and mental illness and probably a variety of other topics. You all know how this goes. So, Chris, welcome to Thinking Christian. Really great to have you here, man. I'm so glad to be here, James. Thanks for having me. So talk to me about just maybe how you got into this whole topic of mental illness and faith. What's been your journey into this topic? Sure. So I am what you call a lived experience expert, which is a fancy way of saying I struggled with my mental health my entire adult life. And I've been a Christian since I was 15. So trying to really the reason that I have battled through and tried to understand some of these things is first and primarily to help myself to figure out, hey, how does how does my faith in Christ reconcile this constant struggle that I have? Yeah. Yeah. So when you were saved at 15, right, you said 15. What kind of upbringing did you have, man? I mean, what was your what was your faith like at 15? Okay, so I was raised in a in an amoral environment, you know, not anti-Christian, but definitely not Christian. Like my parents, you know, both before and after the divorce. I remember them saying things to me like, hey, if you want faith to be a part of your life, you got to figure it out. So I had, you know, you can't when you're 10 or 12 or 15, get your that stuff out. Right. I sort of landed in an agnostic slash atheist sort of place. Yeah. Yeah. And then ultimately came to faith and at 15, how did that look for you going forward? I mean, I know, you know, my sort of journey. I was raised religious, but then I came to faith in college and even figuring that kind of thing out in college was challenging, had a whole different set of challenges. So how did you grow in your faith from 15 up to, you know, maybe your early twenties or so? Sure. So I I felt a call to ministry shortly after I accepted Christ and I went to a Bible college. So it was kind of easier to grow in my faith on a Bible college environment than in a typical university. Yeah. Yeah. So those three years are really foundational to me and helped to establish some really positive growth patterns in my life and helped even to I think part of these partly because the thrill of the new, you know, I even had a bit of a reprieve from a lot of my mental health challenges during that time. Really? Okay. What Bible college did you go to, if you don't mind me asking? Sure. It's gone through several name changes now. When I went there, it was called, hold on, let me take a breath because it's a long name. Southwestern Conservative Baptist Bible College. It's now Arizona Christian University. Oh, is that right? That's fantastic. Okay. Yeah. I'm familiar with Arizona Christian. That's great. Very cool. And so what years were you there? I was there from 94 to 97. Very cool. And you still live in Arizona? I do. I do. Yeah. All right. So when did you start? I mean, you talked about having a reprieve from your, you know, sort of the struggles with your mental illness during Bible college. Where did you see that tension come back into your life? Like, how did that, how did that reenter as something that was more prominent in your experience? So I got married right after college. So I, and, and my wife had a, had a two-year-old. So it was like instant family, just add ring. And I, and I think the, the stressors of, you know, just trying to raise a young family and, you know, trying to be a dad when I didn't have, you know, I didn't have preparation for that really. And I didn't have a good model growing up to, for being a father. So I started trying to figure a lot of that out and then just the, the challenges of, you know, when you're young, you're often broke. We were broke. So there were a lot of stresses. And I think those things sort of brought up a lot of the negative thoughts for me. Like, well, if you were better, then this wouldn't be a problem or Chris, you should have already figured all of this out. And I didn't quite have the tools to, to take those thoughts captive. So they started to take root in my spirit. Yeah. I think that was the beginning of things for me. So probably, you know, 21, 22, first couple of years of marriage. Yeah. And what was the response like? What was your experience like within the church? And, and just to be transparent, I mean, I've, I've struggled with some of these depressive issues too. And it's always felt a little bit more to me like a stigma. I would say until the last maybe decade where people have, where it's become a little bit more normalized, but I started seminary in 99 and being depressed was sort of a, a sin problem. It was, it was something that you shouldn't be. It was something that, um, you know, people weren't real wild on the, on the brain chemical excuse, let's say. And so what I ended up realizing was, it's like, well, if I'm going to be depressed, I need to be depressed in private, because this isn't doing me any favors to be depressed in public. Was that, is that similar to your experience or? I've definitely had some negative experiences. I want to be careful to say that later on, like, you know, the last few years, the church that I'm in currently, my pastor gets it and it's been life giving and affirming, but, you know, moving back to the early 2000s. Yeah, I, I got to a point after a couple of years where my, my wife and I, after an aggressive conversation, we'll say arguments rather than aggressive conversation, you know, she's like, Chris, you need to get help. And I finally, for whatever reason, believed her that time, scheduled an appointment with my pastor, sort of laid out for him, hey, here are the depressive thoughts and the suicidal ideations that I'm having. And he said to me, these five words, I'll probably never forget them. Man up and pray more. That was his answer to me was, well, clearly you have a, like you were saying, there's a sin problem. There's the, there's a habit problem. If you were in the Bible more, if you were praying more, if you were more invested in your spiritual disciplines, then this wouldn't be an issue. And I was very young and super impressionable. So I walked out of there like, oh my gosh, I'm doing all these things and it's not helping. Like it, what's wrong with my faith? And it took me several years to sort of recover from that, from the, that rug being pulled out from under me. Yeah. I mean, do you find it interesting? I always found it interesting. I'll say it like that and see if this, you know, resonates with you, but I always found it odd that, you know, we had a space for medical intervention for the physical, but for some reason, the mental wasn't really viewed as physical, even though our brains and the neurochemicals that go on inside them are very physical operations, right? It's fundamentally as physical as breaking a bone, which you would always go and get a cast for. You'd always, you know, you'd always go to a doctor for and get an x-ray and all those kinds of things. But for some reason, because it's connected to an expression of disposition, you know, a posture to the world, it became sort of entangled with the sin problem in a way that a broken bone doesn't. How have you, how have you thought through that sort of interconnection and the way that the Christian community tends to, or the way portions of the Christian community is probably the fair way to say it, have tended to view that. The way that I think about it, I agree with you that there is this disconnect. There's this concept that says every, when it comes to mental health, every problem has a spiritual solution, which is, which is an unfair thing to say. Yeah. And the way that I dialogue with people about it is I say, well, we have to go back to the very beginning and look at when, when God created humanity in Genesis 1 and Genesis 2, he created them as holistic beings. So, so the body is connected to the spirit.

Here it is connected to the emotions. You know, there's a reason, you know, there's this phrase you see it on the Snickers commercials, hangry. You know, we, we understand hangry. But what that really means is that our physical influences are emotional, but we don't take that to its natural extension, which is that the flip side is also true. So, but so, so I taught when I talk with people, because I work with folks who are struggling with their mental health in our church, we talk about everything from counseling to sleep hygiene, because there are so many different things that could be influencing someone's capacity to deal well with the circumstances that their life is throwing at them. Yeah, it's fascinating to hear you talk about sleep hygiene. So I've been, I've been involved in personal training and physical fitness, like weight training and those kind of things since I was 14 years old. I was actually a personal trainer for about five years during my MDiv. And I think one of the things that's been more and more emphasized within the fitness community lately has been rest. You know, it used to be no pain, no gain. Now it's, yeah, you need some pain, but if you don't ever recover from that pain, you're never going to see the results that you actually need. And so we're starting to see within the fitness literature, a lot of conversation around how much rest is enough rest. What does it look like to get that sleep to reset your system? Everything from gut health to, you know, muscle regeneration for bodybuilders. It's this sort of fantastic range. And I think it does point to this idea that every aspect of our physical existence has some bearing on the rest of it. It has some bearing, particularly on the physical, on the emotional. And I love the analogy of hangry. I get hangry a lot. And so it makes intuitive sense to me that this is just, you know, depression and anxiety and some of these other sort of mental illness kind of issues are extensions of that. Yeah. Yeah. And then and then you you add in, you know, how the question, is there trauma in a person's background and how is that trauma interacting with their current circumstances? I have a little bit of a traumatic background. My my dad was a violent alcoholic, so there there are things that are somewhat unique to me as opposed to someone that doesn't have the same background. So a lot of times those negative thoughts that come into my head, they sort of they're for lack of a better way to say it, they're voiced by my father. So when I hear, oh, you're never measuring up, I hear it in the voice of my dad. Someone else wouldn't have that experience. And that carries a bit more weight, you know, so we have to look at the the trauma impact that that is in a person's life as well. Well, I want to I want to pivot over and talk about the book a little bit. But before I do that, I'd I'd just be interested in hearing you talk through, you know, a little bit of Given your your own personal experience and your background in this, you know, how do you how do you now feel about your spiritual life? You know, did you go through a period where you felt sort of jaded about spiritual disciplines, about church, about faith because you're getting this advice and everybody's sort of pinning it on you to say, well, you're just not, you know, you're not manning up and praying enough kind of idea. Like, did you go through a period where some of those things were really noxious to you? I, it wasn't quite as strong as that. I definitely went through a period where I was kind of going through the motions, going to church, but not investing much. But my my salvation experience is tied to a suicidal moment as well. So there's a real clear connection to me of outside of Christ. I'm a disaster. So I didn't and I was able to sort of hang on. So I think it's in John six that I'm going somewhere with this, I promise. Jesus does some really weird things. This is when he says you need to eat my body and drink my blood. And everyone's like, whoa, what is happening here? And he turns to his disciples and he says, are you going to leave too? I think it was Peter. It might, might not have been, but I think it was Peter who said, Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of life. And that sort of became a, a bedrock reality for me. I knew that the words of life, the way forward was Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed with inflation, market volatility and ongoing global uncertainty? More families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up. And many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text guide to 94878 to receive your free Retirement Defense Guide or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text guide to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. I'm crying. But there's definitely a bit of deconstruction happening, but this expression of church that I'm experiencing isn't reflecting what I want to be true in my spirit. So there was a bit of searching. There was a bit of trying to figure out how does the work in it maybe in a different expression than what I'm currently experiencing. Does that make sense? It does. Maybe if I can try to echo it back to you and make sure I'm understanding it. So, you know, when you mentioned deconstruction, one of the things I think of is oftentimes when I see people going through that sort of deconstructive phase, what they're doing, what they end up doing is sort of deconstructing the scriptures, stepping away from the authority of God's word because of some of the things that are wrong in the church. And what we really need to do is we need to be clinging more closely to the authority of God's word and recognizing that just as we have sin in our own lives and problems that we're dealing with and issues that are unique to us, so does everyone else. And so we're really trying to deconstruct is, and I think you referenced this on your website, sort of this idea of a new normal. When all of these other sort of sinful behaviors become normalized and there's a conventional understanding of what normal is, that's not any less sinful than anything else. You know, and so you have to sort of get to this point where you step back and you say, no, let me deconstruct that. Let me recognize this as not normal is not sanctified. Normal has its problems too. And so now from a position of quote-unquote abnormal, I can look in on that normal and say, yeah, I get it, but I also don't get it. And what I really need to cling to is Christ. Is that a fair way of summarizing it? Yeah. Yeah, so maybe even another way to say it is as I was sort of deconstructing my experience of church, but I wasn't, I never got to a point where I said, I don't believe in the God of the Bible. That never happened because I knew that that couldn't happen for me because that was my foundation. Yeah, that was that that was that pre-Christ, I was a mess. And so I know what Christ has done for me. I can never let go of that. And so all of these other things need to be questioned, but never Christ. Yeah, exactly. Fantastic. Well, yeah, just having had a mild experience of this, man, I mean, I definitely get where you're coming from and I think I'd be interested just to hear a little bit more about Resilient and Redeemed. So number one, the book looks fantastic. I didn't get to read through this one. Like I told you kind of in the pre-interview, I read through perfectly abnormal and Whispers in the Pews, which I thought were fantastic. So talk a little bit about Resilient and Redeemed and, and where this project came from. Sure. So I, I jokingly like to say that this book is half memoir, half self-help and half theology. I understand the math doesn't work out. There's a lot happening in the book. So each chapter sort of builds like this. There's, there's a vignette from my life and then I reflect on what did I learn in retrospect from that in the context of resilience and what, and looking back on it, what, what does God have to say about this moment? That's the basic outline of every chapter. And I sort of walk, you know, chronologically through

starting with my salvation experience and ending just a couple of years ago where I was really finally in a solid place with my mental health, I walked through my lifelong struggles with depression and suicidality. Yeah. And so when you write a book like this, I mean, when I've written books, I find them to be helpful to me because I am forced to reflect on my own experience. I'm forced to sort of, when I'm putting it down on paper, and I read it back to myself, I say to myself, wow, I see all the wrong thinking that I've done up to this point, and now I need to rethink this. It's sort of a laborious process. Did you have that same experience as you're writing through this book? I mean, you're reflecting on your experience really deeply, and you're drawing that out into theological truth. I mean, how did that experience transform you? Yeah, it was definitely a formational, transformational experience for me because, you know, you don't necessarily dwell on, hey, what do I think God was doing 15 years ago when I was really struggling? Like, we don't live in that. We live in a microwave, instant kind of society. So dwelling on the what was God doing a decade and a half ago, there's never really time for that. So it really forced me to, you know, tease out some of the negative thinking that I still was holding on to that I didn't even realize was still there. And then it also helped me to build a better personal history with God in terms of his faithfulness because I was able to see, even in my darkest moments, there was never a moment where God was not present for me. Sometimes I didn't look for him. Sometimes he was hard to find, but there was never a moment where he was not present. And that was really affirming for me. Yeah. So when you're tying together in this book, suicidality and depression, obviously, well, maybe not obviously, maybe I just don't know. Is that a fairly normative way for people to experience depression in conjunction with suicidality? Or is that a more unique case to you? Like, how do you see those things fitting together? Sometimes, I think it's a sort of a both and. There are some situations, some people that experience them concurrently. And there are a lot of people who don't. They just feel a general malaise, a general sadness, a lack of satisfaction with their life, but there's no sense of, I need to end my life because of this. For me, they've always been closely connected, but I know that isn't true for everyone, not by a long shot. Okay. And so when you're reflecting in the book, I mean, you know, when you're talking about those lessons about suicidality and depression from the psych ward is the subtitle. How do you want people to engage with that as they're reading through your reflections? How do you anticipate people or how do you anticipate this striking people, really impacting people? My desire, my intention in writing the book is that it would be a source of hope and that there would be, even beyond just, well, God was there for Chris, there'll even be some strategy that are kind of battle tested, things that have worked for me that people can try and maybe find success with. There's a chapter where I talk through, there's a couple of chapters where I talk about counselors. One of my chapters is called something like my two terrible counselors, where I just had really, really obnoxiously negative experiences with counselors. And it was bad. And I made a decision based off of them that was a poor decision on my part that sounded something like this. If this is what counseling looks like, I don't need it. And I walked and I stepped away from my counselor when I really needed one. And then a few chapters later, I have another chapter where I talk through how I re-approached after my suicide attempt, how I re-approached finding a counselor and the steps that I walked through to find a person who ended up being a spectacular counselor for me. And so there's some real practicality there, but I hope people will be able to draw from and pull into their own lives and that it'll be helpful and meaningful for them. I don't want them to see this as just like, well, that's a cool story. I'm glad he wrote this memoir, but it's nothing for me. Like that's not the goal of the book. Yeah. I think even my own experience, man. I mean, I resonate with that. The first counselor I ever went to, the first question that she asked me was, why do you think you've chosen religion as a crutch? What was her name? She may have been the same counselor I had. I'm joking. I just remember, you know, and I was a different cat back then, but I was arrogant enough that I just sort of stood up and said, this isn't going to work for me and walked out. Didn't even answer the question. But I stayed away from counseling then for another seven years when I think it really would have helped me. And I found that right fit. It would have absolutely helped me. And so I think that that lesson is really crucial. Like just because you get one bad counselor, one person you may not fit with, right. May not may not really have the ability to form a really strong relationship with doesn't mean that it's not helpful. Right. Like you still have to dive back in and try, but I think, and maybe this was your experience too, but my experience with it was it took so much mental effort for me to do it the first time that when it didn't work, you're like, you're not at zero anymore. You're at negative 10. Right. Especially because what we were talking about earlier where, you know, until very recently, the church sort of has had this negative perception of counseling. So there's almost like, oh, I need to keep this on the down low and I need to push through all this weirdness I'm feeling about try meeting a counselor because that's a bad thing. Yeah. And then you go to the counselor and it's a bad experience. And then all those thoughts you had about, see, this is why people don't need counseling. Sort of stir back up. Right. And then, and then it affirms this thing that's unhelpful. So then you're, like you said, you're not at zero. You're at negative 25, negative 50, and finding the energy to even get back to zero, which isn't enough to actually go see a counselor. That's just enough to do nothing. Yeah. It's hard. It took me, it took me a suicide attempt to realize I needed a counselor, frankly. And did you go back just at, and I tended to stay away from Christian counselors. I know that sounds really bad, but you know, we're going from, you know, mental health being a sin to me saying I'm staying away from Christian counselors. But I think part of it was I didn't want someone to pander to my faith. Right. I wanted someone to help me. And it felt like when I'd go to a Christian counselor, they were pandering to my faith or they were saying things that I would freely admit as an academic geek, right. It's very difficult for people to give me, at least at there was a time in which there were, it was very difficult for people to give me theological advice. I was just too arrogant and too set in my ways. Like, and so when I'd sit with a Christian counselor, I'd be thinking in my head, no, that's not quite right. Like we should go back to scripture with that. Let's do the Greek and Hebrew exegesis and figure this out. So I stayed away from Christian counselors. I don't think that's probably right for everyone, but I'm wondering what your experience was with that. Yeah. So one of the questions that I asked from people when I went back to find a counselor in 2020 was just a general, what's your response to someone saying that faith is an important part of their life? It didn't really matter to me whether they were a Christian or not. I needed someone who was not going to be antagonistic toward my faith. You said, as you did, I had an experience with a counselor who railed on faith, railed on religion for 20 minutes as a couch and told me if I ever wanted to recover anything meaningful in my life, I needed to let go of that fake God, which was not helpful. Right. It's like, it's more helpful for her than it was for you. And the counselor that I landed on, he has a really weird spiritual background. He, he is a former Catholic priest with, who was in the military for 20 years and now finds a lot of value in Buddhist teachings. That's completely bizarre, but it worked for me. And the reason it worked is because Glenn would say things like, Chris, let me give you three skills that you need to develop in your

And I'm, we're going to walk through how to develop them so that you can cope better with the next time you feel overwhelmed by negative thoughts. And that was really what I needed was practice. Maybe this makes me a bad example for Christians, but I don't need biblical support for every single practice that I'm doing. No. I just need the practices. I didn't have them in my toolkit. Yeah, yeah. You know, I think it's a really good point because, so the Bible is the final authority for our life and faith, right? I believe that very strongly. And yeah, you do too. And I think at the end of the day, sometimes when we say that, when we say the Bible is the final authority for our life and faith, what we really mean is the Bible is the only authority for our life and faith. But that's not quite it. There's a lot of things that the Bible doesn't cover that are good for us to do and that can actually help us flourish as human beings and actually live out our faith in effective ways. You know, I'll go back to personal training, like the Bible doesn't tell us to lift weights, but there's a lot of documented evidence that that sort of exercise has positive effects on your body and can have positive effects on your mental state. And so those are skills that I don't need biblical warrant for necessarily, right, in order to practice. And so I think what you're saying is really important for people to hear, is that this isn't all just simply rooted in, hey, here's a biblical teaching. This is exactly what you need to do. That feels to me like the first counseling that I or the way that the church sort of approached it when I would talk to people in the church, like if you're depressed, you need to pray more, read more. And I mean, I'm in seminary at the time. It's like how much more praying and reading do I really need to do? Like, my gosh, like I don't understand. There's got to be something else off here. But I think there are other skill sets underneath there, things that you have to do to really sort of boost the whole thing up. No, I agree with you. And I mean, I think of, so mindfulness is an example. Like you don't see a lot of language in scripture around mindfulness, paying attention to your thoughts. But I sort of take all of the mindfulness skills that I've learned and bundle them under this idea of taking our thoughts captive in Christ. What does it look like on a Tuesday at 11:30 a.m. to take my thoughts captive in Christ? Nobody knows what that actually means in my experience. That's a spiritual phrase that's never been decoded into practical language. And my counselor was able to give me skill that I could sort of bucket under that. But even if I couldn't have bucketed them under a biblical concept, I still would find a ton of value in them because I'm convinced that God doesn't want me to live in a place of condemnation. Romans 8 says there's therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ. So a lot of these skills he was teaching me were skills to allow me to give me the freedom to not live under self-condemnation. So it's definitely biblically oriented, even if it's not biblically sourced. Yeah. Have you ever thought, just your last comment there, the no condemnation comment? I teach a Bible study on Wednesdays and we're going through the book of Romans. And we got to chapter 8 and sort of toward the middle end of that chapter, it talks about suffering. It talks about the groaning of creation and, you know, how we're all sort of yearning for a time where there's no pain, there's no tears, you know, something that's very commensurate with Revelation, right? The end of Revelation where we're seeing the new creation and the new earth. And we were going through that and one of the gentlemen in the study asked me, what guarantee is there that we are not going to sin in the new creation? You know, if we have agency, if we can choose God, if we can, you know, do all these things. The best response I could give to him in the moment, which admittedly was off the cuff, was it has to do something with suffering. And I think it connects to something you said earlier, this idea that you knew what you were before Christ and you were a mess. But after Christ, right, you understood the value that Christ was bringing to you, the transformation that he has wrought in you. And so what I was sort of suggesting was that because we know the negative, we're never not going to choose the positive. Like once we're fully transformed, we will have been so refined and sanctified that it won't even make sense to us to choose to sin because we know what that brings. And so all of that preface to say this, or to ask this, how do you think wrestling with mental illness has given you insight into faith and Christian living that you wouldn't have had without it? That's a really good question. Yeah, it's not, and I'm not suggesting that you should welcome it, right? I'm not wish for it, right? But it surely had an impact. I mean, you've written multiple books on this topic. You know, you have a lived experience. Like, what do you think that is? The first thing that comes to mind, and there's more that I want to say, but the first thing that comes to mind is just empathy. I'm a, I was a very left-brained, intellectually oriented individual. So it was challenging. That's probably a kind word. It was challenging for me to enter into other people's places of suffering because I'd be like, this isn't hard, just do X, Y, Z. Why are you struggling here? I don't get it. I was not a good shepherd. I really wasn't. I was exercising leadership in local churches, but I was doing it poorly because I didn't have empathy. And by sort of getting in touch with all of the challenges that I've had in my life and being able to recognize the struggle and get through them and come out on the other side, it's definitely given me a greater sense of empathy and allowed me to lead from a place of compassion. I read this book, The Wisdom of Your Heart by Mark Allen Slesky. He said that compassion is the leading edge of what God feels when he feels love for us. It's a spectacular quote. So I love the idea that when we're feeling compassion, we're getting just a glimmer, just a second of what it is God feels for us and his agape love. So that's the primary thing that I've learned from this. I also think that by being able to trace through my life the constant presence of God, even when I felt abandoned, that brings more solidity to my faith because there was the whisper in my heart because of my trauma background that would say something like this. You know, eventually God's going to get tired of you and he's going to bail on you because you're a disaster. And now I can look at that and not only read, you know, Romans 8 31, if God is for us, who can be against us? Or Romans 8 38 and 39, you know, life nor death, nor angels, nor principalities, et cetera, shall separate us from the love of God. But I can say, and that's been proven in my life. I went to a darker place than I ever thought I was going to go. And God met me there and communicated his love for me in the midst of that darkness. So I know that I know that I know that God is not going to abandon me. Yeah, that's fantastic, man. I think we undervalue, and again, I don't want to suggest that we wish for it or welcome it. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? 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But we undervalue suffering in the Christian community. We absolutely do. I think we've lost the practice of lament, which is just that expression of anguish and tension of living in a fallen world and a broken world. And I think it's a real loss, because that pain and anguish that we feel expresses something about our condition and pushes us to depend on God in ways that our self-sufficiency and our confidence and our high self-esteem or whatever you want to call it simply does not cultivate. And I would add to that that something we miss when we limit or ignore lament is we miss the fact that God can handle our arguments with him. You know, we sort of feel like, oh, I need to get myself cleaned up before I come to God in prayer, which is a really stupid thing to think. Maybe I shouldn't use the word stupid, but it's a really weird thing to think. And then you read the psalms and David is like, where are you, God? I thought you loved me. I see you nowhere and my enemies are surrounding me. What's up with that? And he's calling God to account to stand true on his promises. And what that demonstrates is, you know, you think about it in the context of any other relationship. If you're very close with someone, you're much more comfortable saying to them, hey, when you did this, it really hurt me. Whereas if it's a co-worker that you've talked to four times and they go off on you, it's going to be much more difficult to have that conversation. So if we take that construct of every other relationship and apply that to God, we should be most comfortable bringing our struggles to God, going back to what I said before, because we know he's never going to bail on us. He's not going to go, oh, I didn't know you felt that way. I'm out. I'm out. That's never going to happen. So when we disconnect from lament, we're disconnecting from trusting God with our challenges in a very real way. I think that that sort of brings me back to a question that I kind of wanted to ask and I hoped we'd get to. When you wrote Whispers in the Pews, you're talking to a number of different people. You're having conversations with a number of different people. What were some of the biggest surprises you had when you were discussing, asking people to voice their opinion on these matters from those various walks of life? Were there surprises? Were there disappointments? Like, how did that work itself out? The thing that surprised me the most and was most disappointing is that when I put the call out for essays to people, I really had expectations that there would be about an equal number of positive experiences to negative experiences. And you've read the book. You know that it didn't really work out that way. There are a couple essays where people say this really good thing happened. But by and large, it was, and this was not the intention when I pitched the idea for the book. It was not the intention to go, hey, let's lambaste the church for not being good with mental health. And that still isn't, I hope that isn't the message that people hear. I hope they just hear, hey, there's a struggle and we have room to grow. But I was really surprised by the amount of people that have struggled with talking to folks in leadership about mental health and how poorly by and large, the capital C church has responded to those who are struggling with mental health. And it sort of affirmed or confirmed for me, hey, Chris, you need to dig deeper into this. You need to continue. Like, I didn't know that I was going to be writing other books on mental health when Whispers in the Pews happened. But as I was editing the essays and I realized, oh, my God, there's more to say here. There needs to be more advocacy. So I realized I need to, I'm not done here, basically. Do you think, and maybe I've insight into this, maybe you don't, but you know, I've had a number of people on the podcast where we've talked about a variety of issues, you know, beyond mental health, let's say pornography addiction. I've had somebody on who deals with pornography addiction in the church. I've had people on who talk about just basic leadership issues in the church, a number of sort of male and female relationships within the church. Do you see this, or do you have any insight on whether the mental, the way the church handles mental health carrying over into some of these other areas? Like, is there something about the church that we are so non-confrontational that we don't want to wade into the deep hurts of life? We would prefer that people just be generally okay and accept Jesus as opposed to, you know, really digging in deep with folks? Is that, yeah, just, I'd be interested in your comments on that. What you said rings true to me. I think, I even think of like, you know, churches are really good at putting together meal trains for a week because there's some emergency that happened. Or like, here are my, you know, someone, a woman in her 40s tragically passes in a car accident. And the church's response is, we're going to give you two weeks of meals for the husband and the three kids that are left. And then we're going to assume you're okay. And we might check in on you every once in a while, but we're going to think that two weeks of meals is what you need. And even though we know that isn't how grief works and that two weeks is not enough and giving meals is helpful, but there's so much more that needs to happen. I think the church is really, the church struggle with long-term bad situations. And I sort of think that it has to do with the malformed theology that says if we're following Jesus and we're doing the spiritual disciplines and we're showing up at church, then everything should sort of work out okay and there shouldn't be problems. And we don't know what to do when that isn't what happened. Even though Jesus promised us problems, people forget that. Yes, he overcame the world, but let's not forget the first part. He said, I promise you're going to have hard times. And every author in the New Testament said, when trials come, this is how I want you to respond. It doesn't say if, it says when. So there's this disconnect with not knowing what to do with things that impact people for the long term. And some of that maybe is related to, you know, discipleship in the 21st century is really hard to do because people are very busy. So finding the time to sit down with someone, sit down with that husband who lost his wife, who is 40 years old. Sit down with him every week for three months. Hey, Bob, how are you doing? How can I help you? What do you need this week? Like those conversations just don't happen. And some of that is on leadership in the church, not valuing that. They value programs over personal relationships. And some of that is on the people who are coming to church and who are viewing it from a very consumer perspective. Yeah, yeah. I also think this is something, it's sort of quasi-related, so follow me for a minute. But I had a conversation recently with a woman who'd written a book on slowing down. And one of the things I suggested in the interview, I said, you know, have you ever thought about the idea that when Jesus is advocating fasting in his time, the amount of time gained back through fasting in Jesus' day was far longer than the amount of time we gain back fasting in our day. Oh, that's really interesting. So, like, I had lunch. I had an interview maybe 30 minutes before this one that we're having our conversation. I went up and nuked a pizza, ate it before our interview. So I, you know, and then I'm blocked with meetings the rest of the day. But the reality is that my eating time is about 30 minutes. No chance that was the eating time in Jesus' day, right? Like, there's a whole different timeframe that when you're fasting, you're gaining back that much more time. And I've often wondered, and I don't have any empirical proof for this or anything other than a little itch in my brain that says, part of our problem is not necessarily being able to find the time, but being conditioned to think that things should happen faster than they actually do.

In other words, I should be able to eat in 20 minutes, not 30. Like that was a long lunch for me. And so when we're taking care of the person who's mourning for their dead wife, who you know, they're in mourning, well, that should only take three visits. They should be over this in a week because what's the matter with you, right? Like, move on, man. And we don't have this concept of time that it's like, no, these wounds take a long time to heal. And so it feels like there's a correlation there that that just You know, there's a depth. The more we make our spiritual experience efficient, the more difficult it's going to be to minister to people in pain. Maybe that's a thesis. I like that thesis. I do. I spend a lot of time talking with people about the need to slow down various different processes. Sometimes that's in the context of when we feel this very rapid emotional response, we need to slow down that emotion and think through a bunch of things. Sometimes that's in the context of pastoring people. Hey, let's not presume that a single lunch is going to be enough to explore whatever is happening. You know, I think that we suffer from, I really like your attaching the word efficiency. You know, we're a very efficient culture, but I don't know that that's always healthy and I don't know that is always helpful. Sure, we're efficient, but I don't know that God values efficiency as much as we do. Yeah, yeah. I'm happy to have my word processor because man, if I were writing on a typewriter, that'd be brutal. Of course. Yeah. You know, and so that's sort of efficiency I'm happy with. But other sorts, I, I do sit back and wonder, like, do I want to have, when I think about my time with my kids, do I really want to have efficient time with my kids? It's not an adjective I normally use, right? Like, I don't want to have efficient time. Hey, what was your relationship with your kids like? It was efficient. That's not something you wanna, that's not something you would say, right? Oh, so you were a bad dad. Got it. Yeah, exactly. That's what people are hearing. So you were a horrible father. Yes, yes, I was, but I was efficient at it. I was efficient at being horrible, so at least it didn't last that long. It just, that word to me, like, we have to be selective in the, in the activities that we want to be efficient at. And some of these things we're talking about today, working with people with mental illness, like walking with them in the church can't be efficient. You know, healing hurts can't be efficient. You can't rush some of these things. They just have to, they have to take the time they take. And so, yeah, just very interesting, man. I, um, well, I know we're kind of running in the end time, and so I usually ask my guests one last question. Um, and so here's the question. What do you think the church needs to be thinking about in order to be and make disciples in the contemporary world today? Oh, that's a good question. Hmm. I think a lot of it relates to what comes to mind is related to the efficiency, you know, sort of letting go of efficiency. You know, we look at the way that Jesus made his disciples, dude, they were hanging with him 24 seven for years. Yeah. And the way that many churches want to approach discipleship is take these three classes. They're each four weeks long and then you're ready to be a leader and you're on your own. Good luck. Yeah. So I, I almost think replacing, maybe replacing the word discipleship with mentorship. Is something that would be worth a worthwhile consideration because mentorship is, is a word that hasn't been hijacked yet. So there's a bit more purity to that word. You think, Hey, if someone like my, my son is going to be mentored in his job by a senior vice president. And that's super impressive and super exciting for me. It's a year out of college and a senior VP is going to invest the next two years of his life. And I'm like, Oh my gosh, that's unbelievable. That's unbelievable. Yeah. That's amazing. Yeah. And so I think that, you know, transitioning maybe to thinking about mentorship, you know, what, what, what does it look like to mentor someone to follow Christ? I think that would be a meaningful transition and it would help us to wrap our heads around more what Jesus had in mind. You know, I, we even, because we even have phrases, Oh, we live life together. What does that mean? That means once a week for a 90 minutes, we get together and we have small group. That's what that means. Yeah. That's not living life together. That's having a small group. That's having a few years here. Yeah. My wife lives together, lives her life together with me. My small group does not. Um, yeah. Um, I like that idea, like reframing discipleship In terms of a different sort of concept. So we can recapture what it really is supposed to be, which is a longer term relationship that is really drawing people into conformity with Jesus Christ. As opposed to giving them a set of of knowledge and skills that will allow them to fit within the programs of our church. Exactly. Yeah. You said it better than I did. Thank you. No, that's, that's the summary. That's fantastic, man. I As we're kind of closing up here. I, I can't encourage people more to take a look at Chris's books. Um, I'll, the website will be in the show notes. Um, Resilient and Redeemed, Lessons About Suicidal and Depression from the Psych Ward. Um, go out, check it out, pick it up, read it. And really think about the way that you can minister to people who are having these issues within your church context. The church needs folks who are going to come alongside people who are having these and other issues and really endure with them as they're going through it. This sort of suffering is happening way too often in the Christian community. It's going unnoticed and we really need to take notice. So I would just encourage you to pick up Chris's book. Chris, thanks so much for being here and having this candid conversation with me about mental illness and your writing and your experience. Really appreciate you being here. It was a pleasure. Thank you, James. Yeah. All right, everybody. Well, we'll catch you on the next episode of Thinking Christian. And hopefully you enjoyed this episode, but join us next time as we'll be back with another guest. And again, check out Chris Moore's work. Really appreciate him being here. Chris Morris at ChrisMorrisWrites.com. I hope I think I'm getting that right. Am I getting that right, Chris? ChrisMorrisWrites.com. So go check that out. It's got all his books listed. I'd recommend any of them to you. And again, we'll catch you next time on Thinking Christian. I just want to take a second to thank the team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on the Thinking Christian podcast. If you go to LifeAudio.com, you'll find dozens of other faith-centered podcasts in their network. They've got shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting, and more. Hey friends, Nicole Unis here from the How to Study the Bible podcast. I want to invite you to experience a fresh look at the story of Joseph and what it means for you today. Life can totally throw us for a loop, whether it's your family or your marriage, work, church, or something else entirely. Maybe you have found yourself in a season that you never would have expected and that you certainly wouldn't have signed up for. In this six-week Bible study together, we're going to talk about the biblical story of Joseph, a man who lived an unexpected life and trusted God through it all. We'll talk about the blessings he experienced, the promises God keeps, the way that tests of our character can actually refine our faith. We'll talk about patience. We'll talk about loss. Absolutely talk about redemption. So come join us for the six-week series over on the How to Study the Bible podcast. Can't wait to dive in with you.