Ep. 85 Jim Wilder - Escaping Enemy Mode

listeners. So thank you for doing that. I really appreciate it. Previous guests on the show have included Jesse Cruickshank talsi Gara, and Jamie Winship, you could go back, listen to those episodes and more. But today's guest is Dr. Jim Wilder. Jim has been training leaders and counselors for over 30 years on five continents. He is the author of 19 books and has extensive clinical counseling

experience. He is the chief neuro theologian of life model works, a nonprofit working at the intersection of theology and brain science. Jim and I have a great conversation diving into his latest book escaping enemy mode. I'm excited for you all to hear this one. I don't think that there is a more important topic than escaping enemy mode at this moment. There's a lot of us versus them out there. So let's figure it out. How do we

escape enemy mode? Well, here is my conversation with Dr. Jim Wilder, and you could figure out how to do just that. Welcome, Jim. Thanks for coming to the podcast. excited to talk to you. Great to be with you, Joshua. Yeah, I'd love to just start off a little bit with your story of how you got engaged with psychology in the brain and following Jesus together and why you've decided that that's important for your relationship, and our relationship with God.

me. And what he actually had done was to heal some post traumatic stress and somebody that I was happened to pray for, just walked into them, you know, wasn't expecting a prayer encounter or anything like that. So then I started studying psychology to find out, you know, what I had just witnessed, but always looking at how does God intervene with that. And, oddly enough, eventually ended up working with Dallas Willards wife, and she was working on the spiritual disciplines with

Dallas and things like that. And we find that for some people, they were working pretty well. And for others, they weren't. So again, looking at what the difference was, and traumas showed up in the middle of that. And trauma, you know, essentially means your brain isn't running, right. So all of a sudden, we have, you know, what is the brain got to do with spiritual life as becoming sort of the focal question? Yeah, that's how I got into it.

didn't say it this way. But To get the brain in its most stable configuration where it's running in a good relational way. And then ask God to guide us through the trauma. So instead of getting into the brain's most upset and dysfunctional state, and then trying to find God, why not find God and let Him guide you through, then all of a sudden things seem to be resolving in about a sixth of the amount of time with a lot less difficulty for everybody

all around. So, again, could it be that our attachment with God is sort of central to who we are and how we handle tough things? And the more we looked at the evidence, the more that became compelling, yeah, if you're connected with God, you can get through a lot of hard things. In fact, Jesus says something, or says of Jesus and Hebrews 12, that, you know, he turned his eyes towards heaven, during the crucifixion, and that, that's how we should handle our

problems, too. So if we can get Steven getting stoned and killed in the eyes, Heaven opens up, so shouldn't we connect with God and His perspective and presents that those hard times and then we can face the problems, more straight on and with less brain problems. So the brain has got to learn to do these things. So in some ways, it's the weakest link in the whole thing, and requires the most attention for that reason.

very well with God. And you'd think it might go the other way around. So that you saw, in fact, most spiritual experiences as they're studied, in psychology, you know, so they go in this spiritual experience, it says, sort of a depersonalization experience, it's a place where you're not attached with your body, you feel one with the universe and stuff like that. That's really not where spiritual life with God is focused on God is very connected God, and he's actually

God of creation. And so he, you know, he's lives in an embodied kind of experience, you know, and so when we connect with our bodies, which usually means we have to take a few deep breaths, and notice how how we are those kinds of feelings inside. That is when we're most present to God, when we're in our, in our bodies in a restful state, and the best way to get there is through being thankful. So, you know, it can be as simple as being thankful for a little

coffee. Or, you know, being thankful for a good relationship or being thankful the best things are being thankful for moments when God taught or touched our lives, and they just feel what that's like inside. But the other counterintuitive thing is that thoughts that come from God seem to be first detected by the cingulate cortex, which is a mutual mind state. And in that mutual mind, state, we don't know at first if it's our thought, or someone else's thought most of the time.

Occasionally, it's so surprising that we don't even understand it. And then we go like, Oh, that must be somebody else's thought. But for most people, Christians and pastors in particular, they've already learned a little bit of thinking with God. And so there's always this uncertainty. Was it me thinking or was that a God thought? And the answer is that since the mind of Christ supposed to be in us, when it's at its best, you can't tell the

difference. Kids, were thinking the same thing that God is thinking, yeah. And then when you reflect on it, you realize, oh, yeah, this matches with all the other things I know about God as well from Scripture and experience and things like that.

So being in our bodies and having thoughts come into our minds that we're not sure at first, whether they're God's thoughts or not, are the two counterintuitive things about listening to God in a relational kind of way, where you're actually learning to think with him in real time?

to escape enemy mode. So just to let us know, a little bit, what is enemy mode? And why did you you write this book?

on my side. And it goes into an antagonistic position, that's an enemy mode, rather than seeking to understand the other person, we're trying to now convince them that we're right, or, in essence, trying to make them lose. And that's the state of enemy mind, what we want other people to lose, shows up kind of

three ways. First, is I don't even want to connect with you just go away, don't bother me, that this sort of simple enemy mode, and then there's stupid enemy mode, where you get all energized about it and start saying and doing stupid things. And that's something that people often notice, we call it losing it. And then there's a scariest one, or that which is intelligent, and I mean mode. And we usually see that in politics and in wars and places

like that. And that's where I'm actually using all my intelligence to figure out how to make you lose. And in any, any of those three, there's a lack of compassion. Yeah, a lack of connection to the other person. And so escaping enemy mode is to go back to our sense of compassion and connection with the other person. And the, you know, for most of us, the only reason to do that with really annoying people. Is that a we live with them, or be God

must love them somehow. And so, you know, I have to overcome this. You know, even though I don't feel motivated, because God seems to be motivated, and I want to be like him.

that way. But most of us that have been around a while we are like, we're not so much into that. But, you know, if we're wanting to connect with who God is creating them to be, that gives us that. You know, that way to draw out with all the stuff that Philippians talks about, you know, in the other person, to encourage them to become who God wants them to be.

And the more annoying they are, the more we want them to become who God wants them to be, you know, whether it's our teenage children or, you know, really annoying parishioner or often our spouse, you know that it's, it's those moments that we're not being a new creation that are particularly annoying. And if we go into enemy mode, now we decide we're just going to make you lose. And I'm going to win, as opposed to I'm going to be able to draw out of you who God wants you to be.

me. So, you know, it's your chances of, you know, having someone want to scratch your eyeballs out, is really high when you're trying to help someone in enemy mode, you know. So the first thing is enemy mode is extremely contagious. Yeah. So you have to be good at keeping yourself out of it. And I think that's where most people get into trouble instead of learning how to be good at keeping themselves out of it. They try to be get better at getting the other person out of

it first. But, you know, your chances of dropping into enemy mode are way too high. When I was a lifeguard, and I was taking lifeguard lessons, they said, you know, every time you go to rescue someone, if you go swimming out there, that person is going to try to climb up on top of you and they'll drowned you unless you dive down before you get to them and push them up. And then they won't want to drowned you because they'll feel like you're the one that's

pushing them up. And so the actual reason why most people go into enemy mode is because it feels like their status has been challenged. Yeah, brain is extremely sensitive to status. So if I tried to raise your status, and the best status to raise as a, you're a child of God, and we're going to act like children of God, you'll feel me pushing you out of enemy mode, in the sense that I'm lifting

who you are. If I try to argue with you and show you you're wrong, it'll feel like you're trying to drown me more by pushing my status down and telling me how wrong I am. And then I will, you know, I lock into enemy mode even more fiercely. But for many of us to push somebody else's status up as a child of God means we have to be connected with God at that point ourselves, right? Unless we're feeling like a child of

God right at that moment. We're just going to feel like we're getting attacked by this other person. And you know, you can't let them do that.

in him. It was sharing a new hope and a new identity in Jesus. So how do we one of the things you said in your book is that escaping enemy mode requires a large amount of compassion, attachment and identity. So How do we get that identity and us and, and others in a way where they actually can realize their true identity?

about me. And that's really where most Westerners stay the rest of their lives, consciously, but their brain at age 14 switches so that the my survival is no longer as important as the survival of my people. And my people become the ones that can tell me who I am, up until then any individual could tell you who you were, you know, usually your parents family, it could be a teacher, a lot of things like that. But you notice this peer group thing that takes off around age 14?

Yeah, well, that's the brain in search of a group identity. And now your group identity has the right to tell you who you are, how you work, how you should react to things, what you're like, you know, what you should enjoy and not enjoy? And, you know, teams do a pretty nasty job on each other a lot of times. Yeah. Okay, so But now, your brain is not going to listen to individuals anymore.

They're gonna it's looking for a group, who are the people that can tell me what who am I and what am I like, and you realize that one of the huge problems for Muslims becoming Christians is the shift of their identity group, you have to be willing to, you know, essentially give up your identity group because of the way the the situation is polarized. And so now you move over to Christians, and you say, Well, who are your identity group and the West. And suddenly, it's not an attachment

group. These aren't the people that share life with you. These aren't the people, you know, they get they share some beliefs in common. But that beliefs are way, way, way, way, way down the list of important things for the brain. You know, you're, we're, our brain has changed much more by who we love than what we believe. And so if our people say to us, you know, you know, we're the kind of people that love our enemies, which by the way, you have to do if you become a Christian and a Muslim

country, right? Yeah, either do that, or you fight everybody. Yep. And so, again, when it's not easy to do, it's a big switch for the brain. It's not how we're used to thinking, but if that's how my people do it, then I'm, you know, I need to learn how and when I'm losing it. And that feeling that my people come around to go Yeah, I know, that's really upsetting.

And it's really hard when, you know, you get treated badly, but were people who love our enemies, because we see in them something that God, someone that God loves. And I'm sure you've seen that and practice, you might even have some good stories about that.

attached to communally. I wonder why, if that's the reason why people are saying, A there must be something else other than this faith that I've been brought up in, because we're working on that aspect alone.

But that relational element where someone's actually learning from me how to do it, yeah. Doesn't doesn't really come across very well in the English and not in our in our culture either and have, you know when I've heard from people, Muslims who became Christians, many of them are puzzled that the Christian suddenly lost interest in them, once they've made the decision and went on to say, Okay, I got to go find somebody else, when they thought the person was inviting them into relationship

with them. And again, that's, you know, we got the beliefs now. And so let me go looking for somebody else permeates the the Western Church. And therefore, it's hard for us to even imagine that love might mean attachment. Wow. And yet I see if I look back at the Hebrew words in particular, and the way that they are used in the Greek, which is kind of stretching Greek, because it wasn't quite such a relational language. It looks to me like it's talking about a real attachment to other

people. And that's the essence of salvation, we formed a new attachment with a new God, and a new people who have the right to tell us who we're going to be now. And our brain is actually looking for that. In the West, we wander around trying to find it without knowing what we're looking for.

the peace part of it. And, and so, if we have a fellowship in which we are glad to be with each other, and we let each other rest in that, people are drawn into that, that's where small groups become very, very effective. The problem is, as soon as I get confused about who I am, yeah, most Westerners think the thing to do is to talk through all of my feelings of being upset until you understand just how upset I am. And since we want compassion, we want the other person to be as upset

about it, as we are. So rather than getting together, to find out how God sees it, and share peace and joy, we get together to share our upset and see if we can't all support each other in that. And those upset, I'll push us in the enemy mode direction. Whereas other people as God sees them, doesn't take away the upset. But it does take away the agitation, but like, Oh, of course, they're upsetting me. They're not who God wants them

to be. So let me Forgive them which, you know, Jesus was pretty clear about that God's gonna forgive us, using the same standard we use to forgive others. And, you know, they know not what they're doing seems to be pretty big on Jesus standards of you know, why he would forgive people, and most people have no idea who they are. Now, preaching can help. You can give people the ideas, here's what we're like. But most people then try to say, Okay, now how am I

going to force that? Which Dallas called sin management? Instead of? How am I going to feel about this the way that God does? Well, to do that, I'm going to have to get closer to him. And again, this is the spiritual formation, things that make room for that. But then, start noticing the thoughts that God puts in our mind, and at least wonder about them. Like, how could God be thinking that I'm so mad?

You notice how far that's getting us with the conflicts in the country that involve trying to empower people. You know, you get rid of a colonial government and the government that takes over is likely to be equally sociopathic, you know, different preferences, but just as uncaring. So this is the human problem. And a lot of it has to do with the way that we choose

leaders. So since we choose leaders primarily in the West, so that they get results, and make us look good, those are two things you have to do you have to get results and make us look good. And if you fail on either of those, sooner or later, we'll replace you with somebody else. Well, that's that favors narcissistic, sociopathic kinds of leadership. And they know that the, you know, their group wants them to succeed and make them look good. So how do you

succeed? Well, the best ways to convince other people that we have enemies, and we're going to beat them? Yeah. So that gives, as long as they're doing that with leadership, we're going to keep selecting leaders, whether it's in church, or politics, or business, that operate in enemy mode, a large part of the time in order to make us all win and make them all lose. So how do you how do you get around that?

Well, now the question is, are we going to tell even our leaders, that we're not the kind of people that are out to make other people lose, we're the kind of people who are out to bring out in others, the person that God had in mind, for them, their best self, the self that

probably has never existed. So when we're talking about bringing out a best self, we're not talking about the best human self, we're talking about what God spoke through St. Paul, he said, you know, the, the good work, the good works, that God prepared ahead of time that you should walk in them Ephesians 210, that's being your self, that's who God was made made you to be. And, you know, we're not

even looking at that. And it used to be, maybe 100 years ago, the church had a lot more songs that saying to each other about who we are. And, you know, how we get along, and how we relate to each other, most of those songs are, are gone now that they're not in fashion. So we have songs, singing to God about who he is, which is good also, but with the voice that says, And now given that God is good, what are his children? Like?

Yeah, that message is kind of been deleted, or at least greatly decreased when it comes to handling the real problems of life. So the fun thing we've noticed is that when a community decides we're not the kind of people that put up with self justification, we're not the kind of people that will make ourselves look good. We're the kind of people who bring out in each other what God wants to grow there. The leader doesn't

have the backing. If you got a narcissistic, narcissistic, sociopathic leader, yeah, he doesn't have the backing to pull off his his plan anymore. You know, he can't get the votes, you might say, yeah. And in the cases where the people have done the changing, most of the time the pastor is given in and I'm talking about pastors leaves, because that's what I'm talking

about. Now, I'm not really so much involved in politics, but within church communities, the pastor's gone, oh, the people are really looking for something else. And it's a few of them have left. So while I'm going to go and find a bigger pond to fish, but many cases they've made the change and when the pastor has been the one to say, I'm going to teach you what our identity is like. The people are amazed. And they do go ahead, they keep attacking him. But a pastor who says You don't want

to stay close to God. And I knew what people would do if I started this message, is that going to come attacking me? So I'm going to use that as an experience, they can have to see how I love my enemies. That is a more mixed result. Yeah, because there's often a power group and church that wants to throw them out, and they'll do it. But, again, we've seen some successes from that point of view. So it's

a funny thing. But the congregation again, seems to have a larger influence on how it's going to turn out than the pastor alone. And of course, if they were looking for a group identity within the brain, that would, that would be true. Yeah. So but you're asking this as a preview to another question. So let's go back to what you wanted to ask.

damage. And, you know, I'm writing all these reports on people who rode riding their motorcycle too fast and ran into a tree or got a concussion from a bomb explosion in the war veterans and these kinds of things, or had a stroke, thinking to myself, what a waste of my, my talent, you know, but I got very intimately involved with the brain before there was even brain scans. And I thought all of that was pretty much a waste of time. So then, we're working with all these trauma

victims. And there's some of them that all of the experts we were working with just said, you know, they're beyond the range of help. So nothing can be done for people with that much damage. And at that point, brochure arrived in my office from conference that nobody, I didn't know anybody, and I didn't like the organization. And so I went, throw it in the trash. And I tried throwing it three times, and it wouldn't leave my hand. And so I finally

looked at it. And it's sort of like God's saying, said to me, you know, someone needs to go there. Well, that was the last thing I wanted to do. So we got some intern that had no excuse that weekend to go to the conference. And he came back with big eyes and a whole set of cassette tapes. I don't know if you remember cassette tapes. Yeah, the entire conference, said this guy wrote, read his manuscript, his book is very,

very boring. But I didn't understand much except that he explained all the science behind the problems that we're having. And it matched with the maturity and development things that we're talking about. So I was finally forced to listen to the lecture about the brain, and how it develops based on relationship. And suddenly, things began to fall in place. And it turns out that the people, no one to help were the people that did not have a working relational attachment to

another human being. Often they were raised by people who had severe psychiatric disorders. Some of them were criminally insane. They were in the, in the prison for the criminally insane and the area, and they had never been able to form a working attachment with other people. They could not figure out how God worked. Yeah, because their map for figuring out relationships was totally screwed up. I mean, they're expecting all the wrong things, and not looking for the right

thing. So suddenly, how the brain learned that and where it learned, it became very, very interesting to me. So I basically said, Well, let's try and see if we can, we can repair their bad learning. Yeah, well, that makes a difference to their being able to connect with God. And basically, these are the

brain's relational circuits. And we discovered while the relational circuits were up and running, they were actually able to understand what God was saying they could read Scripture and like, oh, that made sense. They could see oh, maybe I'm someone are you different from who I've always thought I was? Because obviously, people who can't understand relationships are very annoying to everybody

else, right? Yeah. So when we begin to see these changes, we went to the more subtle change, does it turn out that when Christians are trying to connect with God, if they do so just on the basis of ideas, and not, if not, on the basis of their, their brain actually being relational at the moment, that is I'm, I'm learning to I'm talking, I'm reading about someone who loves me and cares about me and sees me and knows me, and is going to help me know

myself better. All of a sudden, we see no changes happening for the people who have an attachment to God. And how did they learn that? Well, some of them learned it directly from God, when they asked him, God formed a relationship with them. And from that, they learned how to understand people. And then there's people who formed an attachment with God's people. And from that they learned out how to understand God. And it seems like God worked it both

ways. Wow. But in both cases, the brain had to learn and practice with other people. So as St. John says, you know, how can you say that you're attached to God, who you haven't seen if you're not attached to his children who you have seen. And so developing these relationships with others, strengthened what the brain was learning. And then it could better stay connected with God, as things got harder and harder. And by harder and harder, we mean, more and more upsetting.

So, watching that, I think, you know, maybe God meant all of this to work together.

them get better. And so this idea that we would practice with each other is just not part of our Christian culture. You know, so that I think is a fundamental change, we have to become a people that say, you know, we're going to practice how to stay relational with each other. Which means we're going to get better and better at this when the more and more upsetting

things in our lives come up. And what I hear from the larger churches that run small groups is when these upsetting things start coming up, that's when those small groups start breaking apart. So you know, two years, we'll all act nice with each other. But when we start getting into trouble, all of a sudden, we have no idea what to do with this now. It's so missing from our mindset. Yeah, that we don't even look at that as an as an opportunity. So, again, the brain doesn't usually

want to start there. Yep. So once it start by building joy and peace, and so how do we build joy to be with each other is a fundamental thing. And that grows around gratitude. So we want to be grateful, you know, how am I going to be grateful to Joshua Johnson, you know, is going to be practical, or my brain is not going to look at with joy. When When I see your name, you know, we need to do that with all the people that God's put in our lives.

And so we make some attachment to the Lord. But the churches that do it better in terms of forming relationships with each other, at least have potlucks or something. And but how do we actually become people who are fed by God and by each other? And then what Jesus says is that, you know, this natural food is just the start of feeding each other. Right? Yeah. So there's, you know, that's the first thing if we were to practice that, the second thing is, attachments are unique to

every individual. So this idea that we have replaceable pastors, replaceable, small group leaders, replaceable fellowships, replaceable things, we're not building anything permanent, is not going to build attachments. So what is there about you that I'm going to attach to, that becomes

permanent? And to do that, we would look at even our trip traditions, you know, like, make a spiritual family tree, what are all of the things that you have, that have formed who you are as a church as a group, as a family? And how did they build in what good things did they build in you that you've been appreciating? And all this time? And so going through the the ways in which attachments are built? You know, how are we going to? We're looking for people who are glad to be with

us. Yeah. So how are we going to do that, since almost every culture has prohibitions about who you can smile at and when and how and because if you just go about smiling at anybody, you attract predators, something

fierce. And so again, working through these characteristics of attachment, the one that I'm doing right now, with my small group here, is a good attachment stretch you slightly to grow, which means you don't allow people to develop and protect a comfort zone as sort of their final criterion, because most of the churches that last, at least a generation have created a comfort zone. And then if you don't fit that comfort zone,

you're you're out of here. And so I'm not sure that the people particularly enjoy it, my small group, but I'm frequently stretching them out of their comfort zone. And I'm saying we're a kind of people that do that and take those 12 characteristics. You know, I recommend a book, I think it's a good one. It isn't good way, based on the brain science, and then look for those in the Bible. I think they're all there, too.

never happen. But if you can actually teach your brain to do that, that would be very, very good. And going back to the question you asked a long time ago and we never answered what do you do when people are in enemy mode? Yeah, well, the best thing to do since most of them are going to be part of your everyday life anyway, is to make it a topic we can talk about. So if I give people permission to tell me why I mean, I think you

might be an enemy mode. Now if you do that, just to make me lose like your anatomy mode now. That's going to be both of us are an enemy mode. But if I do that, like you asked me to remind you when you might be an enemy mode, and I think that might be going on. So can we just get Godspeed? resonance before we go forward, that simple one step would start us building something that would be contagious. The people around us would go like, how did you get

out of that fight? And go, oh, let me teach you how to do it. It's, you know, it, these things are not as insurmountable as the first appear.

And we'll try and do it. And I think I should have paid more attention to that. Now, I actually tried it. And it was a wonderful experience. But I didn't seem nearly as important as it now does.

other? And let my face reflect the the face of Jesus to you, when we're interacting in real church time, and real family time and stuff like that? And then the weight of leadership is how do you avoid becoming a people pleasing codependent person who's now just, you know, trying to make everybody happy instead of represent Jesus. So those books I'm finding quite inspiring right now.

or RG. And that's where you get more broad information on the stuff that we're up to the fun to be part of a team that's trying to make this stuff work. And it doesn't always work on the first try. So it's good to have some other people to help you figure out why they did as well as it sounded.

you for that. And thank you for your team, as they're working hard to to really put this out there so that we can engage it, start to live into it, and walk with one another over the long haul, and have a good journey.

what needs to be in your diet. I really appreciate people like you that are saying, Okay, well, how will we make this edible? You know, how will we serve this up so people come and actually liked the meal, and so glad to have you on the team.