Celebrating Change and Bridging Faith's Gaps

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Welcome to Being Human with Steve Kuss. On this show, we pay attention to the dynamics that infect all of our relationships. Not just our relationships with other humans, but also our relationship with ourself, which is often the most elusive relationship, and our relationship with God. It turns out that the same dynamics that infect our human relationships actually also infect our faith relationship with God. They're one of the core reasons.

All right, friends, welcome to Being Human. I'm your host, Steve Cuss, and I brought with me my favorite guest, the friendly neighborhood therapist, Lisa Kuss.

I'm trying to embrace that title.

Yeah, how do you feel about that title? Because I made it up, I didn't ask you.

made it up. I feel like I'm a part of Mr. Rogers neighborhood.

I was thinking Spider Man.

Oh, let's hear this.

Okay, so you're kind of a superhero in my mind. And Spider Man is the friendly neighborhood Spider Man.

Ah, that's where it comes from.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'm excited to be here with you.

Okay, folks, so we are doing a second episode around the general theme of gaps in our faith. And what do we do about them? We feel this gap between what we believe and what we experience, but then we kind of get stuck in it. So that's what these episodes are about. And that's the spirit in which we're gonna light our candle. I have upgraded the lighter. This one's wildly more reliable than the one I've been using, so

So much easier to say, but I love the exchange.

Yeah. So speaking of anxiety, I wrote a book this year. What was it like to be married to a author?

Oh my goodness. The first word that comes to mind is bipolar.

Mm.

It felt like such a up and down experience. And it also makes sense because it's you're putting your heart and soul out there and pushing in some areas. Some days we're like, here we go, so excited.

Oh excited about that.

And then the next day would be burn it now. And it's continued even with the book being done, I think. But it's also true that even in writing a book. It's like we're continuing to grow, right? So even after it's published, there's gonna be more things that we wish we would put in or and that's just all part of the process.

Several years ago, I read a quote by Ira Glass from This American Life, and it was so comforting to me, where he said, You get into your creativity because of your taste. So for example, I love listening to great music.

Okay.

But I'm a musician and I cannot play my tape. Uh my output does not match my taste. And that's totally true with my writing. Like I write and I'm like, I love great writing. Why can't I write really, really?

No, it's a fantastic book. There's something just about you and the way you lay it out that just makes me giggle.

I hope so. Yeah. I hope people laugh their way. I think through the back half of the book more than the front half. I think the front half is a bit of a journey and then the back half I get much more playful, which is more my personal

But it really it's one of those I feel like I could read a couple of times a year just because it does get down to what do I really believe? And what do I believe for other people? That's one thing. What do I believe for myself and how I'm showing up? That's something else. And there's a lot of goodness in looking at that. So I am excited about the book.

Okay. So we ask a lot of our guests on the gauntlet, when we put them through the gauntlet, one of the questions is where do you experience a gap in your faith between what you believe and what you experience? The heart of this book. You know, I started asking this question, what, three years ago, I think, on the gauntlet. Yes.

I mean, if I'm honest, I find myself in all three.

I'm really glad to hear that in a sick way.

Yeah, for sure. Definitely I should be further along by now. My inner critic can tell me that again and again and again. How long have you been following God? How long? Why are we still struggling with this? And it can almost become a pretty quickly shaming thing. and comparisons lead into that and so much leads into all of that. But I believe God loves me, but I don't always feel it. What's interesting is I feel it when I feel like I'm being good.

Yeah. It's interesting'cause I was not raised in the church and you were. Your dad was a preacher and

Yeah.

So we come at faith through a different experience, especially with childhood. A couple of weeks ago we had Steve Carter on the show, right? Yes.

She's such a good episode.

Yeah, we're both big fans of Steve and I was really struck in his most recent book about how difficult it was for him to admit that he got lost. Yes. So in the book he talks about walking the Camino and he actually got lost and needed to ask for help. And it just strikes me, yeah, when you're raised in the church, I do think it's harder to realize that you get lost as well.

Yes.

That you've talked to me about the idea of how to have access to God based on Performance and morality.

Yeah. Well, I mean, to go back, like I was even looking over your book again this morning. I think it's chapter eight. If you're talking about the faith of Peter and you're talking about the faith of Paul, and then you just kind of insert a table in there. And the table talks about who were you before meaning God? Who were you after? And it's brilliant because Peter's right there.

Yeah, it's Peter Pole and Steve.

You're fine.

The pillars of church history.

Yeah, and then you're great because you also put me so that the readers can put who was I before meeting Christ. Who am I after? With that same core humanness in the ideas looking at, of course, how are we transformed. And then I was trying to put myself in there and I was like I don't remember a moment where I didn't know of God or know God. And so I was thinking, how do I do that for me if I've been raised in the church?

Yeah. It raises a question for me. I don't know if anyone would know the answer. Do you think that God actually answers prayers more readily for children? We all went through that phase of the simple I ask God answers, and then we often go through a disillusionment, especially around suffering. Do you think God's more prone to answer the prayer of a child?

Oh man, I'm afraid to answer that. Yeah, I'm just afraid it'd be taking wrong. From what I know of the heart of God, I can totally see it. Yeah. What's interesting, the more I've researched and looked into trauma. That there's evidence that for some children in severe trauma, they have powerfully said. the presence of God, Jesus with. I've heard stories and ways that some adults don't. for a long, long time in their journey. And so that's powerful to me how a child can sense the witness.

Yeah. You were a school teacher before you were a therapist. You worked with pre-K, fourth grade, all kinds of ages. Now you predominantly work with adults. It feels like a lot of our journey of faith is also directly related to human development and the way our brain processes.

I mean it absolutely is. And I think in childhood, if we look at what are we trying to figure out in childhood, elementary years, it's what am I good at? What can I do?

That explains a lot of why my childhood was rough. I did not feel good at anything.

What can I do? What can I be good at? What can I feel good about doing? You know, that can even build confidence. Which makes sense even in our faith. What can I do? What can I not do? With what I do, how do people respond to me? How does God respond to me? And we learn it's pretty concrete. We do this, we get this response, you know? And then more into the teen years, we're trying to figure out who am I according to how do I belong?

What's that that book title? I remember John Otberg mentioned a book title. I'm riffing out of my brain. I might not quite get it right. It's a book on raising teens and the title is Get Out of My Life, but first can you take me and Cheryl to the mall? Get out of my life, but first can you take me and Cheryl to the mall?

Oh, it's a brilliant book title. Yeah. But it is. It's so much on belonging and figuring that out. And then in adulthood, we're looking at what does it look like? To be loved and to love. For a lifetime. And that's a long journey for us. And there's layers. But that's why as adults in our faith, if we're taking do this. Don't do this, you know, the concreteness and applying it to can I be loved? What does it look like to love and be loved both horizontally and vertically? It just doesn't work.

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Okay, so there's three themes we're pulling out today. I think two of them are reruns from previous episodes, but they're all in the book. The first one is the simple idea that we have our precious belief in Jesus. But as we get, I think it's into our like early to mid-20s, we start realizing, oh, I've got these other beliefs that I didn't even know were running my life.

Core and precious.

Yeah. I mean Jesus is precious to us, but that doesn't mean we're always living for him.

Yeah. So I think I would say was mine that my core belief That I hold for myself. Would be that I have access to God when I'm doing things pretty good or perfectly. Yeah. You know, my head says something different, but my body believes I have access to God. in those times. And then as life gets messy and pain happens and I mess up or fall short or whatever, learning on the journey. Oh no, you have full access.

Yeah, there's a famous photo that I'm I always think about when we talk about access to God. I mean the book of Hebrews comes to mind. Yeah. Therefore, we can just enter right in. But there's a famous photo of President John F. Kennedy at the resolute desk. And he's built a cubby hole in the bottom of the desk where his legs are. And his boy, John Jr. is playing in the desk. He's and he's peekaboo. He's opening the door. And the photo is John doing whatever, he's signing some bill.

Fuck.

Come to dad's office anytime. Yeah. Yeah. And then you watch like the crown and you see these royal children learning that even though he's dad or mum, you don't get full access. At least in the English monarchy system.

Right.

Somehow in Christ, our king says, I'm dad, come on in.

Exactly. Like it struck me lately that I'd actually love to have a T shirt. I'm big on like the things that I'm learning. I need them imprinted on jewelry or I need them on a T shirt or whatever to make me grow. But I keep coming back to you know when Jesus died on the cross and then he resurrected like The veil was ripped from top to bottom when he died. So from the top to the bottom, the whole idea that we had to clean ourselves up or have somebody else.

Big font.

Full access big font. Big font. And then I wanted to have I was thinking through the letters that mean a lot to me. LCFG on it, which would mean love, conviction, forgiveness, and grace. Full access.

I've never heard that from you before.

Yeah, it's kind of it's been through this last month and my dear clients, I think, as I sit in stories and the lunk of my own, it's like, ooh.

The great secret of therapy, isn't it? What you learn from your clients.

I learned so much from my clients.

Okay, before we move on, I have questions. This full access T shirt, how do you feel about a tattooed teardrop and full access on your cheekbones? Too much? No.

Too much. Yeah, I cry enough as it is. I don't need a tattoo.

You don't want to tattoo your face. But you could tattoo an arm or something full access, maybe. We'll talk about later.

Maybe. T shirt for right now.

Yeah, very good.

Right. Like it's almost like we can control it.

And we can manage it. Yeah. Train up your child in the way they should go and they will not depart from it. Preventative, preventative. What's true in my life, I think it's true in yours too, is most Christians after a while, we tend to live, I think, out of the preventative gospel. And I don't think we're necessarily living out of legalism.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it showed up in the way I parented and how I could take reviews and job performance. I could see lots of great and anything critical meant to me failure, you know? Because if you do it all right, then there's no problems. And then I think when you live out of the preventative gospel, your posture

I've had a number of appointments with parents over the years that want to meet with a pastor about raising their kids. They always want to know how do I raise my kids in a way that they will love God. Yes. And when I hear that, it took me a while to figure this out. When I hear that, I mean it's very good hearted. It's a very good thing to want your kids to love God, but fundamentally that's the preventative gospel.

Absolutely.

I do wonder if the reason we all are shedding legalism is'cause we the preventative gospel is first and foremost for us. And I think the redemptive gospel is foundational and the preventative sits beautifully on it. So I'm trying to live my life now where I ne w the redemptive gospel's never in the rear view mirror. I'm always in need of grace and mercy and God's love and relaxing into God's love and so on.

Full access.

Okay, good. Tet not tattooed though. And then the third theme was you kind of teased me about the table of Peter, Paul, and Steve. And what I was doing there is two things. One is I think the reason that we think we should be further along in our faith. is we are in fact comparing ourselves to the pillars.

We are.

And not just the pillars, but them at their best. I've never heard a preacher, for example, say, You should live your way and life in such a way that Jesus says, Get behind me, Satan. We don't teach people to do that side of Peter. But we do, you know, Peter stepped out of the boat and he was bold in the book of Acts and those are all true.

Yeah, absolutely.

Paul in the same way was really just a truer version of Paul than before Christ.

Absolutely. And it's needed.

It I think it's the path to relaxing is to realize my transformation journey is to not be like a stack of followers in the Bible. It's to be Exactly who God designed me to be. Yeah. So I tend to be bold like Peter, but then someone else might be like a risk analyst.

Right.

Do they get to walk by faith when they would rather make a spreadsheet than step out on on the water, for example?

And making a spreadsheet can be a part of building faith too. And which is what you're saying. It's like be willing to steward who you are for the sake of the call and the love and the ongoing journey of empowerment in Christ.

Yeah.

Many of us struggle with a gap between what we believe about God and what we experience. We believe things about God that we actually struggle to encounter in our daily lives.

Lots of energy.

Very few don't experience a gap at all.

I believe God's with me, but I don't see him.

spiritual progress. I want to help us mine these gaps so that what we believe will be more congruent.

Experience. We'll always have gap

I believe we can find a way to approach them in a soul satisfying manner.

How do we live so that our cognitive body

An Aurora Lee.

Barrett Browning.

Earth's crammed with heaven. And every common bush of fire we've got to

Cheers.

Barrett Browning is suggesting that we can see God all around us if we just know how to look.

I've eaten one.

Rounded down.

All right. The book's out. The expectation gap. We'd love you to get a copy. But also, we hope this episode has been a help and relief to you. We really exist to help you get relief from your anxiety and your faith anxiety. so that you can relax into God's presence and so that your precious relationships can improve.

And I think we just invite you to dig into your gaps with us. There's even power in naming them together that we have them so that we can both grieve, but also move forward in exploring God in some of these unknown places.

Thanks for joining us. We'll catch up next week.

Today.

Are the executive

This episode was mixed by Kevin Morris and

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