OCD and Christian Faith – with John Andrew Bryant

[00:00:00] Hey y'all, welcome to The Theology Mill podcast from Wipf and Stock Publishers. I'm your host Zach Mickel and on this episode I interview John Andrew Bryant. We talk a lot about OCD and Christian Faith on John's experience of OCD and the experience of others he knows who have lived with OCD.

[00:00:19] We also talk about kind of Christian readings of mental illness or mental health challenges and why it might be important to think about mental health challenges without leaning too much on sort of psychiatric or diagnostic labels. So a little bit about John, he is the author of a book entitled A Quiet Mind to Suffer With, Mental Illness, Trauma and the Death of Christ and that's the one we speak most about in this interview.

[00:00:43] He is also the author of a forthcoming book entitled A Table at the End of the World, Christ's Regard for Those in Despair and that's coming out in October. Both of those are with Baker and we'd like to thank Baker for giving a complimentary copy of the book. Thank you so much. And with that, we'll jump over to the interview. I hope you enjoy the episode. Thank you as always for listening.

[00:01:34] All right. I'm here this fine day with John Andrew Bryant, who is the author of the book A Quiet Mind to Suffer With, Mental Illness, Trauma and the Death of Christ. It's a lovely book. It's a kind of memoir of like your own journey with mental illness, particularly with OCD, which you're very open about in the book. But I'd say it's also it's also like a deeply theological book.

[00:01:59] And in some ways, I mean, correct me if you think I'm wrong in this reading of it, but it's it seems like sort of a theological response to kind of the reality of mental illness. That this is a reality in the world that people deal with and also kind of a map of like your own your own dealing with it, your own kind of like spiritual integration during a period where you were having kind of a particularly painful episode. Right. And kind of recovering from a particularly painful episode.

[00:02:27] But I would also say it's like a very spiritually rich book. And I think it's written with some like literary verve for sure. And also just on a more personal note, like it was a very cathartic read for me because I picked it up at a American Academy of Religion conference two years ago, maybe. And it was I was at a time when I was also going through kind of a significant OCD episode for me.

[00:02:55] And so I remember reading it, opening up on the plane ride home and just being so grateful because there just aren't books like this. I found it to be such a unique book. There are a lot of like treatments of OCD workbooks on OCD kind of stuff. But this was the first I found that was like a real like kind of theological memoir of it, which I thought was really interesting and was really helpful. So, yeah, first, I just want to say thanks for writing the book. I think it's a real gift.

[00:03:24] And of course, thanks for coming on the show today. Hey, yeah. No, thanks for having me. It's a yes, it's writing a book and then having it end up somewhere. And I my joke is that my book's like a teenager. It sneaks out the window at night and I don't know what it's doing. So I don't know where the book ends up. You know, you don't know who reads it, why.

[00:03:51] I guess it's always my favorite things is just where people talk about how they found the book or just even just where they read it. And the most meaningful thing is, is when people said, hey, this helped me explain. At least gave me a head some sort of way to kind of figure out how I talk about it to my friends or family, even if they don't use the same metaphors or whatever.

[00:04:17] It's like, oh, like, it's worth trying to figure out how to talk about what this is like and what a mental world is like. And that. Yeah, those are the it's cool. I guess what I'm saying, it's cool to hear where the book ends up and and where it meets people. That's the biggest honor. So, yeah. Yeah. So thanks. So I'm saying thanks for reading it and having me on the podcast. Of course. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:04:47] Yeah. I thought I thought we could kind of begin by maybe hearing a little bit about your background, whether that's religious or otherwise. And what kind of what led you to write a book specifically on kind of theology, mental illness, trauma? Yeah. Well, so it's interesting. I'm 37 now and the book is written about something that happened in my late 20s, mid to late 20s, really kind of climaxed.

[00:05:16] In terms of the worst of it in my late 20s. Which is difficult because now I'm thinking I'm getting ready for my 40s. But I wrote a book about what something was like in my 20s. And so then you look back and you're like, I read the book again and I read passages. And I was like, man, I was having a hard time. What was going on there? There's like a distance. You're like, why did I feel like I needed to write an 80-page theological essay to introduce my book?

[00:05:46] Like, what was that all about? I was trying to say something. So I even look at the book as like a snapshot of where I was or like a kind of a footprint of like, man, that was a tough time. What was going on? But the background that led to writing it was, you know, I sort of flunked out of an ordination process. I think some of the symptoms of OCD can be a little alarming to people who don't know it.

[00:06:16] So if you say stuff like intrusive thoughts and then they say, well, you're going to be in a caring profession. Really? And we can't really have you. If the people in your ordination process don't understand it, they just look at you like I say that's like the C word crazy was written. That was my scarlet letter over my forehead and I couldn't scrub it off. And in fact, trying to scrub it off is what made it even worse.

[00:06:45] So I was figuring out how am I going to live as an adult male with two grad degrees that should have made me professionally able to do work. Yeah, but I can't function really in those capacities or at least not in the way I thought they would. So I was going to be an Anglican priest. That was a goal in the ACNA. I was going to be a pastor of a small church.

[00:07:15] That was the goal. And but I just needed to take a step out. And then I was a caregiver. For years, I worked as a chaplain part time just with people out and about in my in a city I live in. So just a lot of just regular folks. It was a very healing time, but it was years of just not not really having a career to speak of, not really having a trajectory.

[00:07:44] And that was in that place. I said, man, I got to figure out one, how I'm going to relate to this illness or this affliction. I call it. I've backed off the affliction language just because there's times when OCD is a superpower. It's more there's times when there's times when it's a bully that needs to be. That you have to protect yourself from.

[00:08:09] And then there's times when it's like a gift, the ability to hyper focus, the ability to really hone in on details. So. I was trying to figure it all out and in writing was the only thing that made me feel like myself and I had zero plans of publishing it. I was going to hand it to friends. And then a friend of mine said, come to a conference and let's just see if anyone wants it. We're going to put it in some friends hands that I know.

[00:08:38] And someone read it and said, yeah, let's go with it. We don't know you. You have no platform. It'll probably be. Let it say it. It'll probably not sell. But it's worth putting out there in the world. And so they took a chance on it. And I'm very grateful. It was Lexham Press, which is now owned by Baker, but they had absolutely zero reason to publish my book, except that they read it and thought it would just be a good thing to have in the world. So all the credit to them for doing that.

[00:09:08] Yeah. Well, I'm glad they did for sure. Yeah. So, I mean, you talk really openly in the book about kind of your own struggles with obsessive compulsive disorder, as we've already talked about. But I wonder, like, how would you describe OCD to someone who kind of only knows the stereotypes, right? To someone who, when they think of OCD, they think of, like, Adrian Monk or Howie Mandel.

[00:09:31] And they think that it's – they think especially in particular about kind of physical compulsions, right? Which are a facet for a lot of people. But it's obviously a much broader and more complicated kind of condition than that, of course.

[00:09:50] So maybe a different way to put the question is, like, how would you describe sort of the experience of living with OCD to someone who has not experienced it or who hasn't kind of knowingly experienced it, at least? I think that I rely – I still rely and maybe over-rely on metaphor because I think it changes the landscape. Yeah, the stereotype of OCD that I know it is, like, it makes you quirky and good at things.

[00:10:19] Yeah. Like, you're like, oh, he's really good at his job. He's quirky, though. Watch out. But when you really need him to do his job, he's going to be great. But you also got to watch out because of how quirky he is. And there's parts of that that are true enough. Like OCD people that I've met, yeah, we're a quirky bunch, but it can be.

[00:10:43] But the landscape is – I just – the best metaphor that makes sense with the lived experience of people is, I said, have you ever been in a car that you had to drive, but the car alarm's going off and you can't stop it? And it's annoying. But it's also, like, not true. Like, you know no one's breaking into your car. Your car doesn't know it because the alarm's going off, but you have to still drive this thing. And they're like, oh, that would be awful. And I was like, well, that's pretty close. That's getting there.

[00:11:12] Like, so I just say, like, whatever your brain – like, the things in our brain that go, hey, watch out, there's trouble. Or, hey, like, the three things my brain would say is, like, you know, something's off, something's wrong, or that I'm in trouble. And those are, like, things the brain tells us.

[00:11:34] But if your brain is lying about those things being true, so then you sort of live with your sort of most intimate companion, which is your capacity to think or reason or just process reality. It's actually lying to you. And actually, the other metaphor I use is honestly is an abusive relationship.

[00:11:56] Like, have you ever, you know, been in a friendship or a close relationship where the person was gaslighting you or the person was not telling you the truth about who you were or needed you to sort of be doing what it wanted rather than what you wanted all the time? And when I say that, you could just see that where people say, oh, this is – yeah, oh, yeah, that's not just, like, being quirky and good at your job. That sounds like – that's kind of a hellish landscape.

[00:12:24] Yeah, well, that gets – you know, the thing is, and I talk with folks that have it, is OCD can be very treatable once you're aware of the ways in which your brain is lying to you, how to walk through those symptoms without relying on compulsions that provide temporary relief but aren't really just make it worse.

[00:12:46] And – but I – the main thing I tell people is, like, my mind is not equipped to tell me the truth about life or what life's about or what's really at stake. And it pretty aggressively, like, blares warnings that aren't true, and I kind of have to learn how to walk past it. And so when you say things like a car alarm going off or – or as a – what would it be like if you woke every day and someone was shouting at you?

[00:13:13] Like, someone you loved was just shouting at you, and you had to, like, get dressed anyway and go to work. And I think that gives people just enough of a sense of, like, oh, it's not fun, is it? And they're like, no, it's not fun. You know, I don't like comparing suffering to other people. I was like, no, it's not – it's not been fun. And I think the thing that is hardest for people to wrap their mind around is we really do at some level really trust our brains to be our friends.

[00:13:43] We think that our brain is, like, telling us what's true. And it's like, no, the brain has fallen. It's a fallen organ. And it's – and in this case, it really isn't equipped to, like, tell us the truth about some things that are super important. We have to learn to, like, walk by trust into, like, what is true, even though our brain is telling us the opposite. But those sort of paradoxes really, I think, is where faith helps. Yeah. You're like, oh, so I'm living by trust?

[00:14:13] It's like, oh, yeah, 100%. Your brain is lying to you. So you live by trust in an outside word. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I think those are really, really helpful metaphors, especially, like, the car alarm one. And kind of, yeah, kind of going with what you're talking about with trust, I'm curious if you think that there's sort of a distinctly, like, Christian way to understand the phenomenon of OCD.

[00:14:41] Like, is there – does, like, a spiritual or theological framing of the experience of this condition, if we want to call it that, does it give us, like, a somewhat different picture than what we might find in, like, the DSM or in a therapy setting, like, in some kind of, like, psychiatric community or something like that?

[00:15:02] Yeah, I think the Christian faith, at its best, it provides a way out of the worst of the symptoms. Because when it's framed correctly – so, like, I meet with people as a chaplain. So I talk about the things that you can get back from OCD. Like, it's kind of the bully. It takes things from you.

[00:15:31] So I talk about five things. And the things that people want back first are the things that OCD doesn't give back until the very end. And it's good thoughts and good feelings. Like, we want to feel better and not have negative thoughts or intrusive thoughts. And I say – I said, sorry, you're getting those back last. And they're like, well, what do I get back first?

[00:15:56] I said, trust and focus are things that are – that can be given back. Trust, focus, and the ability to be a gift to the people around you. Now, the thing is, is I think that's a lot of what people in therapy are trying to get people to do, is to have some understanding of self, move out into the world, and re-engage with life. But what's beautiful is that trust is the language of faith.

[00:16:26] Focus is the language of hope. And to be a gift is the language of love. So we're talking about theological virtues, really, in some sense. Because – and when I say, look, a life of faith, hope, and love is radically available to – especially to people with OCD. If you – if we could wrap our minds around the fact that theological virtues are not the same necessarily as feeling good and thinking better.

[00:16:55] So when you say – like, what is our capacity to trust? How does it – how does it not need thoughts? I was like, you're sitting in a chair. Are you thinking about that chair? No, you're just sitting there. Like, are you – you know, we do all the – we do a bunch of things all the time that require astounding levels of trust that we don't think about. Right?

[00:17:17] Like, and so, like, there is a capacity to count or depend on something that doesn't necessarily traffic through, like, thoughts and feelings. Some understanding of others.

[00:17:31] Some understanding of others, of myself. So when you see people working on puzzles.

[00:18:01] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That then eventually does lead to thoughts and feelings.

[00:18:30] But if you're sitting there just, like, upset that you're not feeling good and your thoughts are bad, you say we can't live there. And so I think there's – and I don't think I mastered figuring it out. I was like, a slow growth in faith, hope, and love over time by the means of grace, which is, you know, the Holy Spirit. And I think that's the best thing we've got that are really suffering.

[00:18:59] And it seems like there's – we're not – we're trying to figure out how to do that. How to faith communities help people. Hey, we know you got something. We know every day is a bad day. Do you – can – you want to go for a walk? Mm-hmm. You want to – you want to – can I – can I go to a movie with you? That – you're addressing hope at a deep level. It doesn't have to be, like, oh, let's take those negative thoughts and put in some Bible verses instead.

[00:19:29] Well, that makes it worse for someone with OCD because you're feeding cognition with cognition. Right. I love the Bible, but we're not using it as gasoline. Like, you're throwing gasoline on a fire when you tell people to, like, push out bad with good. Anyway, I'm talking too much. You got to help me out. Redirect me. No, no, no. You're good. That's all good stuff. No, yeah. Yeah. One thing I would like to talk about is kind of the role of self-dependence in OCD or, like, self-sufficiency, which you talk about quite a bit in the book.

[00:19:59] So, I'm going to quote just a short section of your book real quick. So, you write in the book, No shame or fear or dread or thought or feeling has disfigured me as profoundly as my dependence on myself. I have been misshapen by knowing for sure, figuring out, defending myself, and making right. And then later in the book, you write, again, another quote from you. You say, the reason so few of us grow in our life in Christ is because it is so painful.

[00:20:26] There is no growth to our dependence on Christ that is not also a wound to our dependence on self.

[00:20:32] So, I was wondering if you could say something about how this experience of OCD can kind of illuminate or bring forth the issue of sort of self-sufficiency and kind of the need for, like we've talked about, this kind of profound trust in Christ, who is a power kind of greater than ourselves, greater than our cognition or our understanding of ourselves and of the world.

[00:21:00] I think it, though, when we talk so much about individual sins, I think we, of, you know, oh, I did this, that was bad, or oh, I did this, that was bad. Sometimes we miss the view of sin as just like trying to be God and trying to control our life.

[00:21:24] But the main thing that I find that's, and I'm speaking just sort of broadly as being human is like, whatever thing in us that says that we can make things right does a tremendous amount of damage in relationships and life.

[00:21:39] For example, like if you, and I understand that's inbuilt in us, if something's broke, you fix it, if something's, but the idea that we can make things right, that we can win and stay in the blues, that we can control circumstances that really can't be controlled. Whatever muscle that gets flexed, that gets hyper aggravated when you have a brain telling you, hey, here's a bunch of stuff that's wrong. You better figure it out. You better, you better fix it out.

[00:22:08] You better, you better make sure you're not this. Are you sure? Because if you're not sure, you probably shouldn't leave your house. You know, it is like, oh, then it throws you back. It throws you back on self. And what I mean by self is just, there's this thing in us, I call it sin, probably, that says I can make it right. I can, and I tell people, you know, honestly, I think I realize so much on metaphor and image to describe the experience.

[00:22:38] But the best show about having OCD, I think, is the Twilight Zone. Because every episode is the same, you wake up in a, what I would call a negative miracle, which is, you're in a nightmare, but the miraculous is of no benefit to you. So you're worried about, so something happens and it's awful, you know. And it's always like something wild, right? You wake up and like no one recognizes you or you wait in the Twilight Zone.

[00:23:07] You wake up and like your best friends have disappeared and everyone says, what friends? Who are you talking about? And they always do the same stuff in every episode. They go around trying to convince people, trying to figure it out and trying to make it right. And it only makes the nightmare worse. It just does. I call it the flailing. Like they're just like, oh, wait, wait. Yeah. And something about that is just so human, right?

[00:23:34] To say, you know, to sort of just be swatting at things or trying to like, how do I get out of here? How do I fix this? And then the nightmare radically sort of counters that. It's like there's no way. There's no way. There's no way to fix this. And then you're like, well, what's my way forward then? And then it's, well, you need to hear good news. And that good news rescues our trust.

[00:24:01] And then we're led in humility to a path by which we gradually walk toward good things. But those good things involve the shedding of that idea that I can make things right. And I mean in an ultimate sense. And when I'm with people that get that, it's usually with people who have just sort of bombed out on life. And they've broken every relationship.

[00:24:30] Their life's just some version of themselves that was independent, self-reliant, has just been revealed to just be nonsense by the nightmare of living. And then they're like, what's the way forward? And you're like, dude, do I have good news for you, man? Because it's hearing good news and then like learning to walk again with the author of that good news through the Holy Spirit.

[00:24:54] And the thing I hold out of the nightmare for, and I think the thing is to be forgiven is a lot of things. But one, it's the end of that, making things right. You're like, oh, there must be some other thing, God, person, that offers something that makes things right.

[00:25:16] And it offers it to me in such a way that I then like, I'm still me, but I'm the me that's shedding that self-reliance. And I'm moving into, so it's the feeling of like, I'm getting smaller. My ideas of what's possible, my ideas of things are good. And that's just, when I look at the trajectory, it's all, it's what the monastic tradition is talking about.

[00:25:39] It's what all the great spiritual writers are writing about is you're walking a path of faith, hope, and slow growth in faith, hope, and love over time. And humility and dependence on what God provides, daily bread. And I think what the thing that really OCD people need, and I have a friend of mine, and I hope she's getting the book out.

[00:26:07] And if I find information on it, she said really her understanding is people, if people had a better understanding of the atonement, it could really help people with OCD, if we really thought, oh, there's actually something that makes this right, that's not just me thinking about it all the time. In a deep sense, things have been made right, and I walk with the person who makes it right. And I said, I told her, I said, look, I wrote a sprawling slog of a memoir about this.

[00:26:35] You have like a concise, beautiful theological book, like, please write this so that it's in people's hands. You know, pastors, you know, because I think that's what OCD people need to hear is you can't make it right. But someone's made it right, but you have a day ahead of you that involves love and service. So how do I get you there? Yeah, absolutely.

[00:27:00] Yeah, I'm interested, too, what you would say about, I don't know, like, do you think Christianity, which is or possesses like a certain morality to it, right? In some cases, kind of a moralism, for better or worse.

[00:27:21] Do you think that there's something in Christianity or maybe certain flavors of Christianity that kind of lends itself in a special way to OCD or to kind of scrupulosity? Yeah, I mean, when you have thoughts that are just like unspeakable. Yeah. I think we all have intrusive thought. I think it's a normal part of being human. I mean, intrusive thoughts is like stuff that comes in. You're like, oh, I would never do that. So why did that come in my head?

[00:27:49] Well, like, I think a lot of people are able to walk past that. But OCD is like you just can't get over it. And then before you know it, you're just like in a heap on your bed and you can't function because you're so devastatingly worried about those intrusive thoughts being indicative of your character or what actually might happen, all that stuff. Yeah. But if there's if there's if there's some pushback I would give to. I don't know.

[00:28:15] There's like some imagine there's some like hypothetical, like rhetorical boxing match I'm happening with people. It's I think we we really think that our thoughts are us and we got to stop that. So we have a bad thought. And then we're like, oh, I'm just this, you know, I'm a sinner. And that's a sign of just my deep depravity. I was like, well, maybe like the deepest depravity is trying to be God. So like we should. It's not. Yeah.

[00:28:45] We don't think that we don't think this. We don't think before a thought is anything else. It is an experience provided by the brain. And that brain is an organ that is, although it overlaps with self, is not you. So the thing is like, how do we how to experience thoughts? Doesn't matter the thought. Good thoughts, bad thoughts as not necessarily you.

[00:29:14] Is the biggest trick for me from recovering from OCD and for friends of mine who just. Like cannot get over the fact that their thoughts are deplorable or this or that. And I'm just like, there's a part of me that says like thoughts are just junk. Like they're just they're just they're just floats them and jets them off the ship of life. They're just coming at you. Like, how do you how do you wade through it?

[00:29:43] And so we just so many of my friends that just. Oh, I had these bad sexual thoughts. Yeah. OK. I would reframe it. Your brain is providing you with thoughts you necessarily wouldn't choose, although they might seem tempting. How you walk through it is probably the most determinative. They're like, instead of like, well, did you are you are you grabbing hold of that thought and savoring it like a big old piece of pizza? Oh, no.

[00:30:13] Like, what's the problem? Yeah. I would just be like, oh, yeah, you had a thought and you walked by. Are you you know? But there's something that there's just this hyper vigilance over our thought life. And I don't I think there's some part of me that picked it up from my background. And I wish that I hadn't picked that up. I don't know if it was the evangelical South that I grew up in. I don't know where it was. But like this sort of like a thought comes in.

[00:30:43] You immediately relate it to yourself. And then you say by because of this thought, I should hate myself or I now this this somehow is reflective of my character, which means that I'm bad. I was like, that's just not helpful. I haven't found that helpful. But I don't or honestly, the same with feelings. Oh, I shouldn't.

[00:31:08] I should not be this or that about I should not feel this way about that. It's like, well, tough because you. I think the thing that if people if theologians, the aviators, whatever religious faith systems were in, if they would not make people feel so culpable about thoughts and feelings. Yeah, not. These are primarily experience, non-voluntary experiences that you have to walk through.

[00:31:37] Now, what you do with it matters. I get it. Yeah, you're mad. Don't go punch somebody. I get it. But you don't need to repent for feeling something that. In some ways, it was not up to you. There's a non-voluntary aspect to it. Now, you want to say, oh, where did that come from? What is I get it? You want to be thoughtful. It's not like it doesn't matter. But people feel that and then they feel shame.

[00:32:04] And then all of a sudden, they're just in a self-hatred spiral that they can't come out from. I'm like, how do we stop from spiraling? You know? Anyway. Yeah. Yeah. Again, help me. Redirect me because I'll just keep talking. No, that's good. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. No, I've heard people use the metaphor of like weather systems. They're like thoughts are like weather systems or clouds or whatever, like a rainstorm or something. Like they come through and they pass through.

[00:32:34] But if we're just like, you know, if we're just like stuck on, well, this weather sucks, right? Or like it's too hot or it's too cold and trying to like fix our experience of that weather or something. But accepting that this is the weather that we're operating in and it's, you know, it's temporary, right?

[00:32:57] Which kind of, yeah, which kind of leads into my next question, which is, do you think that the goal of, and I think you've kind of touched on this a bit already, but do you think the goal of kind of a Christian person who's suffering from OCD or really any kind of mental health challenge, should it be to kind of escape that challenge or to overcome that challenge?

[00:33:20] Or do you think that there's sort of a spiritual fruitfulness that comes from learning to like endure that crucible, right? Or endure that mental illness or even to kind of embrace it rather than to resist it or flee it.

[00:33:37] And then kind of in tandem with that, like what, what do you think kind of Christ's model of suffering might teach us about living with kind of our own psychological distress or psychological sufferings? I think, I remember I was talking to my mama and I wrote like a catechism that was sort of from a neurodivergent perspective.

[00:34:03] And I took the language that I think is provided by like some of the best writing of Fleming Rutledge in her Advent book of sermons or, or just some of the tradition of the, I call it the Christian nightmare. That's like, some people find it really consoling, but I was like, it's the land of sin and death, baby. Like, like, like, like he conquered it. I get it.

[00:34:33] He conquered it. Like you're going to die. I'm going to die. We got afflictions. We're still dealing with our own sin nature, even though it's been dealt with once and for all. Like that, the atoning work of Christ is doing work with us and in us. But when I tell people like, what if you're not a monster? What if you're in a nightmare?

[00:34:55] And what if the nightmare is just like, there's just things that make us cry out to the Lord, how long, you know, how long. And I think when people really get in touch with lament, deep sorrow for their own afflictions and for those they love. And to say like, you know, Lord, please come back. This is intolerable. Wish people shouldn't have to live like this. People shouldn't have to suffer like this. Not just me, but people.

[00:35:24] So that sorrow is like when I when I it's like a weird thing, but. Like OCD has taken life for me. And it's years and relationship and time that I'm not getting back. Right. And that's and that's painful. Friendships I could have had. Relationships that weren't nurtured because I was spending too much time in myself. Right.

[00:35:54] And like that, that's a loss. And we got to cry more. We got to we got to sing more sad songs. We got to fall in love with not just the Psalms that we embroider on, you know, pillows. But the Psalms where it's it's like, oh, Lord, where are you? What is this? I think I think the thing when it would be it because it helps.

[00:36:24] Sorrow says like this isn't what life is was supposed to be like. It's not what life's about. Life's not about life's about the mercy offered in Christ. Life's about the good things. All the good things Christ is. It's about the small good things we offer in his name. It's about all these things. And if you have an affliction that's not going anywhere, although relief can be provided.

[00:36:50] The biggest thing I have with people is is is this is weird. It's my Christian friends with mental illnesses sometimes asking me for permission to go on meds. And I say, go on meds. Yeah. You know, it's like it's OK. You're saying there's something that with and I get the whole med thing. I'm not trying to get into it. Let me just say. It's been a gift to have relief from the screaming brain.

[00:37:20] And I would never withhold that gift from other people, even if there are abuses of people overprescribed or, you know, people throwing pills at problems that are. You know, I get that. I'm not trying to touch that. But but when people are like, man, my life is daily suffering and there's this thing. That might reduce it. I say, yeah. And what's the problem? Well, I'm thinking I should live by faith. Well, OK, the Lord gave us doctors.

[00:37:50] The brains in Oregon. I'm not saying just say yes to anything the doctor throws at you. But relief that meds have been a real source of relief. Anyway, this is what I'm saying is. Helping people understand this affliction might not go anywhere. You still have a life of faith, hope and love available to you. The Christian life is always possible. The problem with the Christian life is that we think it's any life's possible. I could be this. Sorry.

[00:38:20] You know, John, John Bryant, you could have been a great pastor. Yeah, no, I couldn't. The administrative logistical load is just not possible with my brain. I could be probably one day a pretty good chaplain because it's more focused and it's more people related and I can function. But if I was to say, hey, John, let's get your let's fix your symptoms so that we can get you back on this career path. That would be death to me.

[00:38:45] Instead, hey, John, embrace a brutal limit provided by the brain. But with grace and mercy, learn to know you've been forgiven past, present, present and future that you can be because you've been forgiven. You can follow through the power of the Holy Spirit. And this is the big thing. You can be a friend. The people you can learn how to be a friend.

[00:39:09] That's the that's a aggressively plain spoken way of talking about faith, hope and love is you can follow because you've been forgiven. And you can learn to be a friend to the people around you first with your loved ones and then with the people that you meet. Oh, so you mean I can't necessarily go back and be an executive? No, maybe not. Maybe yes, maybe not. Who knows?

[00:39:34] But I think if we radically humble ourselves to say the Christian life is possible. But it's not the same as any life. It's not the same as the life we imagine. And helping people walk through their affliction toward that. That's what's the only thing that's worked for me. I have a very I love my life. It's the land of sin and death. I want the Lord to come back anytime. But I love my life. I love the people I get. I love the people I've learned how to be a better friend to.

[00:40:01] I love the forgiveness they've shown me in my affliction. I want to see them. And I'm okay with learning to be okay with life being that small. Yeah. And saying, I'll take it. You know? Yeah. Yeah. Sure. It hurts when you tell people, yeah, because of your affliction, I don't know that anything's possible for you. I just know the Christian life is.

[00:40:28] Because it's following because you've been forgiven and learning to be a friend to anyone still living is my little rhyme I tell myself. And that's, I think that that's its own brutal limit for people who really were told they could do anything. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I think you're on to something. It does seem like accepting our finitude and our limitations, kind of the contingencies that make up our life is a huge part of it for sure.

[00:41:00] The subtitle of your book, I want to talk about a little bit, right? So you subtitle it Mental Illness, Trauma, and the Death of Christ. So I want to kind of zoom in, right? We're talking about the land of sin and death and suffering. So I want to zoom in on the last item of that subtitle, which is Christ's Passion, right? Because I think this speaks so powerfully to those things.

[00:41:25] But why is it, do you think, that the cross is such a necessary focal point for thinking about kind of mental illness or psychological distress or however we want to frame it? You know, the cross, in the best way, is always a mystery.

[00:41:45] The things that have mattered the most to me about it is it's the place of God's most radical, God through the sun's most radical involvement in what it means to be human. It's to suffer like that and to die. That's just, there is something so, in the ugliness of it, so beautifully welcoming.

[00:42:14] Say, oh, you're having the world's worst day. Your thoughts are terrible. You feel bad. Is there any place of welcome in that situation? And it's the cross. Yeah. That's whatever it means to be human. You know, whatever it means to say that God gave of himself, that Christ gave himself to us, and that we are welcome there.

[00:42:43] So you can always go there. And I mean, it means all sorts of stuff, right? It's like the end of, it's the deepest point of the incarnation. It's the overturning of sin. You know, here's what you really need. You need, what you need is Jesus. What we need to hear is what Jesus did. It's the place to begin again. It's the place that says, what do you got in your hands? But nothing. This is it.

[00:43:12] This is what we put in your hands. This is what the Lord gave to us. And I think it's, I mean, I, again, I'm, there's a part, someone told me I was going to one day discover I was Lutheran. But like, you know, if he, whatever, wherever all the promises of God, what it says, like all the promises of God are yes in him.

[00:43:35] If whenever, if that yes was capital Y-E-S exclamation mark, exclamation mark, it was, it was at the cross. All the moment, everything that needed to be said, dealt with all of it there. And I think sometimes when we say, well, let's not just focus on his death. Let's focus on his resurrection, his ascension, his return. I was like, great. But his resurrection is the vindication of his death. Yeah. Right.

[00:44:04] Like, like his return will be the amen to his death and resurrection. Like there's like, these things are not, they're not just, they're not just separate. Like if he showed doubting Thomas the wounds, then it was the resurrection, the resurrected Christ showing Thomas signs of the crucified Christ. So it's like, yeah, let's, yeah, let's have a robust theology.

[00:44:31] But if there's something we don't want to ever let go of, it's, it's, it's the cross. It's the self-giving. It's the mercy. And I, I think the thing, if I talk about the cross, there's like this evangelical landscape where people are like, well, John, you say mercy. Don't you mean grace? And I was like, what are you talking about? Oh, well, grace is the gift and mercy is the lack of punishment. Where does it say that in scripture? So when I say mercy, it's, it's God's steadfast love.

[00:45:01] It's a self-giving love. That's what I mean. A mercy, a mercy is the off. He offers his, it's, it's an, there's an offer of self, not just the lack of punishment. That's so, uh, there's an offering here. This is where his mercy, he shows us what he's like. He shows us what, uh, what he's about. And that changes us.

[00:45:23] And I think the big thing, if I was to sum it all up, my rant is when I'm meeting with people like myself that are in hard spots, um, to say like, we can be changed. The change begins with what we trust so that we trust what he's done here and not what we're doing with our minds over here. And we need to hear it and we need that word to rescue our trust.

[00:45:48] But then what, if what we trust can change, and this is the biggest word of hope, I think to anybody, what we trust changes what we pay attention to and what we pay attention to changes what we really want. And so when I'm talking to addicts saying your desires can change, maybe not all at once, but like, I just know just from lived experience that if what I trust can change, then what I pay attention to can change.

[00:46:15] And if those two things can change that ultimately what I want can change, which is a word of hope that I'm not just stuck, you know? And so I go, you know, when it's like, where do I go? If I feel stuck, where'd I go? If I feel like I'm, there's no way forward. Well, we got to go back to the cross. Millions of ways to preach it, metaphors, atonement theologies that can overlap, help, whatever it means. But it's like, this is where we go to be changed. This is where we go to receive.

[00:46:45] This is where we begin again. And a person with OCD always needs a place to begin again. Yeah. Say, hey, what if, what if the problem isn't these narratives? What is, what if it's just the thing in you that says I can fix this? Yeah. Oh yeah. What should I do instead? Man, let's just talk about Jesus for a second. And let's just figure out if there's a place to begin again. And that takes a lot of work to figure out what you're going to do and what discipleship looks like. All that stuff. Yeah. Yeah. It ain't go. Yeah.

[00:47:15] Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. So like shifting gears a little bit, there have been a lot of like, obviously, like very strong criticisms of psychiatry from like kind of a philosophical angle.

[00:47:30] Um, so I'm thinking of like people like Foucault, for instance, um, who, who like really point out that, um, the ways that like psychiatry conceives of mental illness might be as much sort of products of like, uh, a culture that the culture that a person lives in, or like the sort of moment in history that a person lives in. And the kind of norms around psychology, um, are, are really significantly shaped by those things.

[00:48:00] Um, and they also, I think they also like, uh, express like a, a, a concern over like how certain institutions, so particularly psychiatric institutions have sort of this power to kind of define what is normal for, for people or what, what is, um, abnormal, like what's an illness. Um, they get to kind of define this for other people in ways that are like, um, that have a big impact on people's lives, of course, and their experience of their own psyche.

[00:48:28] So I'm, I'm very interested to hear kind of what you would make, um, of some of these voices and their, their kind of criticism of, uh, psyche. Maybe it's like a psychiatric framing of mental illness.

[00:49:09] Yeah. That's just a way of sort of dismissing anything else they might be. They might be funny. They might, they might be incredibly talented, beautiful artists. They might just be wonderful people. Some of the most wonderful people I've met are, are locked away in psychiatric institutions. I said, man, we got to get you out. You're funny. You're, you're fun to be around your life giving. Yeah. Uh, let's swap you out with some of these other jerks.

[00:49:37] Uh, but I, I, I've realized in my, uh, you know what I think what I have written the book I wrote now differently. Now what I, what I've had. Yeah. I wrote that primary. I, I wrote that book as someone who was in their late twenties or, or in their early thirties was trying to figure out their late twenties. And I would have so much more nuance now about, I just don't speak.

[00:50:07] Uh, I would just say personally, I, I don't speak as, uh, I think I just found such relief in, in the words of diagnoses. And it seemed to be like, oh, this thing that like exonerated me. And I speak less that way, uh, now.

[00:50:27] And I think partly because my time as a chaplain is just, I'm with a lot of people who got a lot of something and I don't, it's not even really helpful to know what it is sometimes exactly. Yeah. Cause, uh, there are sort of more primary categories of self that I've found more helpful. So I think more in terms of, of, um, uh, like I call it the three big feelings or the three things people need is people need to be seen.

[00:50:55] They need to know they're safe and they need to feel fed in terms of meaning and purpose. And when you see those categories lacking in a person, if they, if they're obviously, everyone needs to feel like a somebody who's got something going somewhere is what I would say. And those are, those are just general, a general axis of chaplaincy is when you see, oh, this person is afraid because they should be. The things they need to live are not there. Or this person has been treated so poorly with disregard.

[00:51:24] Uh, no wonder they're at odds with the world or this person lost their whole family. Uh, and now they're trying to figure out things and they seem to have a real thing with despair. And I just go, I think that's just what it means to be human. Past that. I feel like I'm entering into a landscape I'm not familiar with and that necessarily I don't always trust, uh, the people I hang out with them. I would, you know, Oh, they, they got a cute schizophrenia.

[00:51:52] I was like, you mean my buddy Ben? Ben's great. You know, but there's like, uh, like I get it. He's got something. I don't always know what it is. Sometimes he doesn't make sense. Uh, but we, we like going to Burger King and he's funny. So I like, I think that's, that's sort of more aggressively plain spoken. Hey man, let's just, what's, what's it like being human for you? I don't want to dismiss psychiatric stuff, but.

[00:52:20] I, again, I work with populations and it's like, Oh, you know, he's got, you know, he's got this. And it seems to, uh, dismiss and discredit human possibility of what people can do. Like for example, if no one would think, Hey, I can, can, can people special needs lead a worship service primarily attended by people with neurodivergent. Oh, that's, that's kind of risky.

[00:52:47] And maybe what if they're not good speakers or what, what if they can, what if, what if people special needs can lead our liturgy? What if, what if everyone, what if there's more pot that's possible than we think? And so the limiting of possibility for a human person, I find that to be the most destructive element of, of, um, some of that stuff is to just become what's wrong with them. That's it.

[00:53:15] And then we just put them in places where they won't bother us. You know, and I mean that ironically, we put them somewhere where they're not a problem. It's like, we, we, we should stop. I would agree with this. We create labels, some of them helpful, some of them not, but then they become a condemnation machines to say, we're going to put everyone with this label here where they won't bother the rest of us. And I think that's, that's, uh, I think that's evil.

[00:53:44] I don't think it's just like people trying to be evil. I think there's just something in us that says, let's put inconvenient people away. Yeah. And, uh, that's bad. We shouldn't, that's not living. That's that, that hurts us. We need, we need people to slow us down or challenge what we think is normal. Anyway. Yeah, for sure. No, that's great. Yeah. Thank you.

[00:54:09] Um, one of the things that comes up in your book a lot is, is, uh, spiritual rhythms. You talk about this quite a bit and you talk about how that's certain spiritual rhythms. I think you mentioned, uh, the Jesus prayer and, and, uh, oh, what's the other one? The daily office. I want to say, if I'm remembering correctly that is that okay. That have proven like really helpful for you and kind of your own walk through mental health challenges.

[00:54:36] So I'm, uh, I'm wondering if you could say more about sort of those spiritual rhythms and what role they've played in sort of renewing your mind in Christ, even as kind of your mental health struggles were, were ongoing at the time. Yeah. I've, I've, I'll be honest. I've, uh, I've, it's the, it's been the, I want to say the cutting edge of my ministry, but really the thing I just think most about is what does good news?

[00:55:03] What does a simple life with this good news look like for someone who, who's neurodivergent or struggles to function in ways that we would say, oh, like, yeah, like this person's, this person's got a touch of something and their life's going to look different. Okay. Okay. But is, is it impossible that they have a flourishing life of faith, hope, and love in the land of sin and death now?

[00:55:30] So what does it look like in trying to figure out what it looks like has been a huge journey. And my main guinea pig was myself. So, so I say, I have the, sorry, you're going to be, uh, captive to my, um, my entire life's work in, in the next 30 seconds, which is, I believe it good news, simple rhythms and ordinary hospitality. I say, good news. Crisis died. Crisis risen.

[00:56:00] Crisis will come. Let's, let's do that thing. Simple rhythms is. Okay. Uh, we, I would say scripture, prayer, hobbies, and friends is our life with this good news. We need to receive good news. So we do the promises of scripture. We want to stay with this good news. So we need to learn the power of prayer and we want to work the works of our hands and the love of neighbor, hobbies and friends are a way to work with this good news in daily life. So we receive good news.

[00:56:30] We stay with good news. We work with good news, but it's all one thing. It's a life with this good news. So when people talk about rhythms, it's like, what do you mean by that? I was like, well, I need to hear scripture. I need to hear the promises of scripture, a good King, a new heart, a return home, all those fulfilled in Jesus. Give me the good stuff. I need to hear the good stuff today. Yeah. Okay. Okay. And now what? Well, we learned how to trust.

[00:56:56] Now that we, now that we heard the promises of the scripture and, and some, some, something of our trust in him has been restored or rescued or deepened. Now we trust him with the things going on. Well, what's going on? Well, we've probably got a lot of mental illnesses going on. We got a lot of catastrophes going on. So land of sin to death, lots of headlines here. Okay. Okay. What would we do after that? Hey, I'm caregiving. I got asked the Lord to give me a way to love and serve today as best I can.

[00:57:24] You got to do your job as a carpenter. Hey, you're over here. Maybe you got, you know, maybe you don't got a job job, but like, what do you got going on? Do you want to work on this? Do you want to play a game with me? Do you want to walk with me just to say, and I, that's what I mean by rhythms. I mean, something so simple, uh, it's overlooked of just like a slow and steady life of scripture, prayer, hobbies, and friends that works with the neurodivergent mind so that we don't just

[00:57:53] say, well, if they can't do a Bible study, maybe they're not for this. Okay. Well, what does work? Neurodivergent people like me, we love singing. They love hymns. Hey, let's get the hymns that have the best atonement theology and some good melodies and let's be singing them. Yeah. Let's find passages that do, uh, that aren't as complicated, but that say good, beautiful things about who Jesus is.

[00:58:19] And let's rehearse those, uh, rather than just like studying them and looking for the footnotes, you know, let's find a way that good news is accessible. And then it's like, well, then where do you go from here? And I say, well, ordinary hospitality is, is regard company and rest. So let's, let's, how did, how do we not be awful in our everyday life? Like how do we look people in the eye and say, how are you? How do we give people regard? How do we keep people company? They have a lot going on.

[00:58:47] How do we offer our homes in ways that show signs of, of good news? So figuring that out, uh, the daily office helps. What helps is a lot of repetition and rehearsing of good news. Uh, but also like coloring good news, singing good news. And then giving people, um, what, uh, the whole point of a rhythm is that it creates a new sense

[00:59:17] of what's next because if it's the lane of sin and death, things aren't going to just work out because things fall apart here, even though we know it's not the final word. Friends die. Things happen. It's awful. Okay. What is possible? Maybe hearing we've been forgiven, following, learning to be a friend. Yeah. That's what I mean by a rhythm is, is that, um, and the problem is some of the best stuff is just

[00:59:46] buried in these denominations that just, they make it so high brow. Oh, do you have the latest edition of the common prayer with the four? No. Oh, and make sure. Do you follow your A, B or C for your electionary? Oh, do you like how they use the apocrypha? Good. But I know I need to be able to give someone a version of that where I just say, you read from this page to this page. Right. Right.

[01:00:14] And if you don't understand something, you let me know. We'll try to talk it through something. But some of the best stuff is just, it's just encrusted in, I'll be honest, just kind of like this slightly. I mean, everyone has the person who became Anglican and used to be Baptist, right? And they just won't shut up. Won't shut up about how great the prayer book is. But if I gave someone the prayer book, they would have no idea what to do with it.

[01:00:43] And that's how you know there's a problem. Right? Yeah, the prayer book's wonderful. Organizing scripture for the scattered mind, beautiful, wonderful. Accessibility matters too. And let's figure out how to make this thing not so, I don't know how to say it. Not so, we got to, it was meant to be a gift to regular people. That was the point. Right, right. Yeah. It was meant to be a gift for working people, regular people.

[01:01:10] And we got to figure out how to make that that. I'm not saying people aren't doing it. And people aren't trying to teach each other. But anyway. Yeah, yeah. No, the book, yeah. Book of Common Prayer in particular can be cumbersome for sure. Yeah. So final question. I want to hear if you just have any kind of final thoughts you might like to share with our listeners, particularly those who might be struggling with like a mental health challenge in some way or know someone who's experiencing challenges like that or anything

[01:01:40] you might want to share with like pastors or Christian counselors or folks who are working with those who are kind of struggling with mental health challenges. I would say learn how to be a friend and then figure, learn how to be a friend to someone with a mental illness. And part of that is to say, I, is to say in what we, how we approach them that say, I

[01:02:08] understand that your mental world is different than mine. And can you help me be a companion in your, in your life? What's that like? What's it like to have such aggressive downs and such a, in such aggressive ups? Is that hard for you? You know, what's it like to love your kids, but to have such a bad depressive episode that you just, you're just catatonic sometimes.

[01:02:37] Like that sounds like, you know, man, you're not, and not digging into them, but just being like, you've got something going on and I want to be a companion because I know you're walking through this best you can. And I'm assuming that some of the best signs of faith, hope, and love is just me reminding you, man, Jesus loves you.

[01:03:03] And this doesn't have anything to do with you really. There's other things that do, you know, but this is just something you got. And, um, how do I keep you company? What's helpful? And, um, and, and to not, and to help people, if I would just, my, my begging and pleading that, cause it's been so helpful for me is help people reframe their mental illness as

[01:03:30] a nightmarish landscape that they are walking through and that you are companioning them through so that they don't think they're just a monster. Cause that's what most people that I know that really struggle with when they get in a self-hatred loop, I'm a monster. No, you're not a monster, but you might be in a nightmare. And I understand part of that's your mental world. And I, I'm curious and want to be, want to see what it's like to walk with you and, um, helping people.

[01:04:00] And I think the language of scripture is ready. We got to reclaim the nightmare because, you know, I mean, there's, there's enough scriptures and revelation to say, yeah, like it's going to be tough until the Lord comes back. People are dying. The Lord does it like that. People are hurting. We cry out how long and that, but if it's a nightmare, then maybe I'm not a monster. Maybe I'm a pilgrim. Maybe I'm walking through it. Maybe you're a fellow pilgrim.

[01:04:30] I think a lot of it is you don't have to be an expert to help reframe the journey people are on. And you could still acknowledge the realities of sin. You could be a good evangelical. No one's saying you can't. Yeah. Right. No one's saying we can't talk about sin. Right. But help people understand sin may be the thing in them that self-hatred has, has much more to do with sin than anything else. Cause it convinces people that maybe if I hate myself, this will be okay. That's not the answer.

[01:04:59] Maybe, maybe if I think I'm a monster, maybe that's some way of making it right. How do we get you out of there? How do we preach the cross to this thing? And then how do we move forward? Anyway, that'd be my advice to pastors. Yeah. Yeah. That's great. That's great. I lied one, one final question and then we can wrap up, which is the, do you have any kind of projects in the works or anything you might like to plug here? I, if I'm remembering correctly, I think you published another book since you published this one. So I don't know if you want to share about that or anything else you have going on.

[01:05:29] Well, unfortunately, not only will I not shut up, but I won't stop writing either. So I got stuff coming out and in October, there's a book that there's, I have a series, I call it a series of faith, hope and love memoirs. That was kind of my ultimate hope. So the book Quiet Mind is really about how good news restores our faith and rescues our faith in Jesus. And then we walk out from there.

[01:05:56] This upcoming book is called A Table at the End of the World. It's with, it's with, it was written when I was with Lexham Press, but then now they're with Baker. And so it's coming out with Baker. That's coming out in October and that's about love. It's about my work as a chaplain to say, how can I be, how can I offer regard company and signs of rest irregardless of where people are at or if they agree with me, or even if

[01:06:21] they're nice or how do I offer, because we have the gospel, how do we offer signs that the gospel is true? And so it's about love and ordinary hospitality. And then I'm working on a book on the rhythms that we're talking about. And it's about how good news shepherds our attention toward good things. And the good things being all the good things Jesus is that he reveals himself to be.

[01:06:49] And then the small good things that we offer in his name. So it's, it's a book about rhythms, scripture, prayer, hobbies, and friends, but only as this one thing I would call a simple life with this good news. If good news reveals Jesus, right? Then we just need good news everywhere we go. We need to know that good news is our friend because it's the way that he cares for us is, is the gospel is not just information.

[01:07:15] It's the way that he cares for his people and to, to, to be there present in the proclamation of it. Anyway, I love writing. I love creating things. So yeah, I'm always working on stuff and thank you for asking. Yeah, of course. Yeah. And yeah, as far as, as far as books, I'll, we'll be sure of course, leave a link in the show notes to the book we've been talking about today, a quiet mind to suffer with, but also your book that's coming out in October. If there is a link, I'll be sure to check it out and drop it there in the show notes.

[01:07:42] Um, John, thank you so much for coming on today. It's been a joy talking with you. Yeah, man. It's been a hoot.