Speaker 1: 1:05

Welcome to the Husband Material podcast, where we help Christian men outgrow porn. Why? So you can change your brain, heal your heart and save your relationship. My name is Drew Boa and I'm here to show you how let's go. Today's interview with Kurt Thompson was beautiful. We all feel shame in our sexuality and in this interview you are going to hear more about how shame works, what it can look like to heal shame and how Jesus relates to us in the middle of our shame. And I'll give you a hint to us in the middle of our shame. And I'll give you a hint. He's not going anywhere and he looks at us with love.

Speaker 1: 1:55

Kurt is a seasoned psychiatrist and the author of many books, including the Soul of Shame, retelling the stories we believe about ourselves. He's also the host of a podcast called being Known and the founder of a network of groups called Confessional Communities that you'll hear more about. These are places where shame is being healed by love and the presence of other people. Enjoy the episode Today. I am absolutely thrilled to be talking with Kurt Thompson. Welcome to the show.

Speaker 2: 2:25

True, thanks so much. It's a privilege to be with you. Thanks for having me on the show. You're welcome.

Speaker 1: 2:30

It's a bit of a dream come true. Thanks so much. It's a privilege to be with you. Thanks for having me on the show. You're welcome. It's a bit of a dream come true. I've been a fan of your work for years and I especially really want to focus today on shame and sexuality. Why are you so passionate about addressing these topics?

Speaker 2: 2:45

Two things One is shame is just ubiquitous, it's just in everything. It's like driving your car through the desert and wondering how did the sand just get everywhere? Or here in Northern Virginia, the pollen comes in the spring and it is everywhere. It's unavoidable. So, number one in the work that I had have done, you just see it everywhere and so like, and then, in addition to just seeing that it's, it begins early in the biblical narrative, right, so it's, it's early there, it doesn't. They don't wait till, like even the middle of genesis, like it's page two, right at the end of the second page. It's, it's probably we're getting an alert. Right, the man and his wife were naked, unashashamed. So I think that's one thing, because there's just so much material that it's important for us to address. In addition to saying that, I think that one way to talk about shame I'm not saying it's the only way or the right way, but to say that shame in many respects is the neuroaffective or the emotional element of what sin often amounts to. So that's something for us to think about. And then I think, as far as sexuality is concerned, I mean the first thing that I would say. I mean I don't know that I'm passionate about sexuality because it just makes me so nervous. Number one I'm just like. I'm like nervous. Nothing makes me more nervous than sex, nothing. I had very little education about this as a kid growing up. I never had a single conversation with my father about this. My mother handed me a book when I was 13 or something of that nature, and these are all well-intended things. My parents were both God-fearing people and so forth. Two things about this.

Speaker 2: 4:26

Number one is that also sex and the role that it plays with who we are as human beings. It is also as old as scripture in terms of how we use it and misuse it to like how we, as broken people, are responding to the very end of the first page of the Bible, before we even get to sex per se. When we are made in God's image, male and female, made he them Like the whole notion that you know. It is common for us to think that, oh, we begin with biology, right, we begin with biology. There's male and female, and we look at that from a biological standpoint, from our sexual organs, and then gender is kind of developed after that. Right, gender is this thing that we create socially, it's a social construct and so forth and so on, and the biblical narrative actually would say no, actually it's reversed. You actually begin with male and female. Like the idea of this long before we are created with sexual organs. Male and female is a really big deal.

Speaker 1: 5:43

And somehow it's connected to the image of God.

Speaker 2: 5:46

It is right, I am not fully an image bearer as a male of God's image, without being aware that I get to do that because there are females in the world and vice versa, and we have a hard time getting our head around this. And so the brokenness then that comes like in me right, comes in any like. I just have a hundred different ways in which my own body, my own gender, my own sexuality and so forth makes me nervous, makes me ashamed, like I don't. I feel uncomfortable, all the things, and so I then create all kinds of coping strategies in order for me to like, reduce my distress. And in our day, of course, I know that part of your work really invites people to pay attention to like.

Speaker 2: 6:32

How has pornography kind of like worked its way? And pornography like it's not a modern day thing, right, we've had pornography for as old as we've had human beings. But in the age of the Internet it has taken on geometric scourge proportions, non-geometric scourge proportions, and what we recognize, even when it comes to how the mind works over and around both of these things shame and pornography and sexuality and so forth has a lot to do with accessibility. It's the same thing if I'm an alcoholic and, as it turns out, everywhere I go, whether it's my car or my kitchen or my workplace or whatever a bottle of the.

Speaker 2: 7:13

Macallan sitting everywhere, everywhere I go Like it's not, that's not easy.

Speaker 1: 7:20

So it's what you described as going to the desert and finding sand everywhere, like in our world now. Pornography is everywhere.

Speaker 2: 7:28

And so I would also say, therefore, it is the prompting, like the prompting and the provocateur of our shame matrix.

Speaker 2: 7:37

Neurophysiologically, our shame is being provoked. I mean, this is what pornography does. It isn't just a thing that I participate with, it is a thing that does something to me by further encasing me in shame with every single inch of movement toward it that I go, right, I begin to think about it before I even, like, open up my laptop and all the things that comes with that, and so shame is already at work. Like we like to say that in the Garden of Eden, shame was in play long before any fruit cut eaten, and the very notion of the conversation that the serpent is having with a woman, shame is being active. He's going to use this as he's going to use her very brain against her, because he's going to tell a story, in a certain way, about a relationship that evokes all these things. And then you know, and then you open up your laptop and there you go, we find ourselves in that same place, with the serpent whispering to us that evokes all these things.

Speaker 1: 8:31

And then you know, and then you open up your laptop and there you go. We find ourselves in that same place, with the serpent whispering to us and I love what you said in the soul of shame. Every minute of every day, we choose between shame and love.

Speaker 2: 8:41

Yeah, and I think you know evil is so subtle it is not interested in notoriety. Notice that the serpent gets all the best lines in the Genesis three narrative and then completely and unannounced just fades out of the picture. Just fades out of the picture and he doesn't even say like hey guys, I'm leaving. Okay, no more lines for me. No, he does not need notoriety, he wants us to be devoured. That's what evil, chaos, is trying to do for us.

Speaker 1: 9:13

Yeah, and one of the primary weapons that he uses is shame Right. So, from a neurobiological perspective, what is shame?

Speaker 2: 9:24

So I don't define it as much as I describe it. We know, like you don't need a shrink to tell you, like when you're feeling ashamed, like you don't need me, but like there are some things to consider. One thing, when we observe it, that we know that is true about it, is, before it's anything else, before it is a thought in my head, before it is an awareness of, before it is my awareness of something that has happened to me or something that somebody has said to me. It is my awareness of something that has happened to me or something that somebody has said to me. I'm feeling it in my body. It is a neurophysiologic event that tends to, as we say, disintegrate or, like the folks at the Bible Project would say, it decreates, it separates.

Speaker 2: 10:12

So if any of our listeners have ever been ashamed, either privately or publicly, like, how easy is it for you to be comfortable with yourself? Do you want to look at people? Do you want to look at yourself? How easy is it for you to think clearly? How easy would it be for you, when you're embarrassed, to sit down and say, like, let's have a creative time together? Like, how are we going to do this Like no, I want to turn. I turn away from parts of myself. Neurophysiologically, I disconnect from within myself, while I am simultaneously disconnecting from you, disconnecting from you Every time I look at porn. I'm disconnecting from myself and I'm disconnecting from all other human beings. Right, because I'm looking at something that's not real. I'm not like with a bone and blood human being. I'm moving away from humanity as a way for me to cope with things, and so it leads then to isolation, which leads to greater anxiety, which leads to greater shame, which leads to me wanting to even further cope with shame by doing something by myself, because the primary cognitive feature of shame is that of condemnation. I have these thoughts of like, I'm not this enough, I should have done this, I should have done that, if I'd only done this, if I'd only been like this, I should have done that if I'd only done this, if I'd only done that. You're so stupid, you're so this, you're so that whatever.

Speaker 2: 11:36

And I am so likely to fill myself up with this self-condemnation that at some point, I begin to share this with other people, all of my shaming behavior in which I shame other people, in which I think about people in that political party, or I think about these people in that church or that theological tradition, or this or that or whatever, or my wife or my pastor, or my kids or my parents or whoever it is. It is all from an excess of my own self-contempt. And, mind you, most of the things that have happened to us in our lives for which we have felt shame, whether it's come from our families of origin, whether it's come from our workplaces, whether it's come from our churches, these are particular events that have happened to us. But what we are often and this is where evil, as I like to tell people look, evil is the second smartest force on the planet. It's far smarter than I am, but evil does not need to keep doing things. Evil can let me do things, because something happens to me where somebody says something to me that really hurts my feelings and shames me. But then what do I do? I replay it over and over and over and over in my mind and every time I do, I reinforce the neurophysiologic felt sense of shame, I reinforce the strength of the thoughts of shame and when I do all these kinds of things, I further distance myself from myself and from others and I heighten my felt sense and need relief, sense and need relief. Which is why you know it's like how this works with any addiction. And again, just to be clear about addiction, we're all addicts. We're all addicts.

Speaker 2: 13:25

The Bible calls it idolatry.

Speaker 2: 13:26

We're all idolaters. I have my thing that I'm going to turn to. Instead of turning to Jesus, instead of turning to other people, I'm going to have my thing that I can be in charge of, and the very act of turning toward it reinforces my isolation, which reinforces my need for the very thing that I've turned to, which reinforces my need for the very thing that I've turned to. And so, until I get to the point where I've suffered enough because of what my idol has done to me, it's really difficult for me to eventually turn and say to you, drew, drew, I need help, I need help from you.

Speaker 2: 14:02

And, as it turns out, you, drew, become the help. Like you are the answer. In that, in that, like you are the image bearer of Jesus. The Holy Spirit gets to me through you, not through just an idea, not through an abstraction, but through living, breathing relationships through which the Holy Spirit is living and moving. And, like you know, god's like. God is so dang serious about us being his hands and feet, not with pressure, not with like well, you know, you're the light of the world and so, like, don't screw it up, but like you're the light of the world, like I can't wait for us together to go into the world so that the world can be healed, so that we can find we can find the people who are sick, which is what your ministry is doing Amen.

Speaker 1: 14:54

There is no contradiction between Jesus healing shame and other people healing our shame.

Speaker 2: 15:00

No. In fact, we would say, people who are old enough, who remember the phrase, just say no to drugs and we like to remind people.

Speaker 2: 15:08

We like to remind people that the part of the brain that hears the words just say no to drugs. And we like to remind people. We like to remind people that the part of the brain that hears the words just say no to drugs has got nothing to do with the part of the brain that likes to do the drugs. And so it's really difficult to just tell somebody you shouldn't be ashamed, you don't need to be ashamed. I first am only going to believe those, I'm only going to, I'm going to come to that conclusion that I am not ashamed. I can come to that conclusion cognitively only after I have actually been able to name for you, right here and now, what my shame is. And have you not leave the room? And instead of looking at me with what I expect to be a facial expression of contempt, and instead I see love and kindness, I see compassion, I see curiosity, I see something other.

Speaker 2: 15:57

I see something that the woman at the well, that the woman with the bleeding problem saw, that they were not expecting to see with Jesus, that Peter, when he said after Jesus fills his boat up with fish and Peter says go away from me, I cannot like Peter was expecting to see. Like, oh, you of little faith. Like wait, like no. Like he's like follow me, y'all come, I'm going to make you, I'm going to help you fish for men. Like that's not anything, that's not what Peter's expecting to hear or to see. Like that's not anything, that's not what Peter's expecting to hear or to see. And Jesus then says in John 20, as the Father has sent me, that's how I'm sending y'all. Now. You're going to do that through vulnerability, because you know it's in that same chapter where he's showing people his scars, but it's in he breathed on them and received the Holy Spirit. He says, like this is you know? This is like the introduction to what's coming at Pentecost. Yeah, like dude, like this whole oh gosh.

Speaker 1: 16:58

The king man, the king is sending us out.

Speaker 2: 17:01

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 17:01

With his kindness and love and acceptance.

Speaker 2: 17:07

Yeah, and he sends us. And what's challenging, I think, is even you come to me because I need you. I don't even know that I need you, but there you are and you say so, how are you doing? And I tell you, and you're like wow, that just sounds really hard. And before we know it, we're in the middle of a conversation in which I'm being transformed by the presence of the Holy Spirit in you and the next week and the next week, and like, why is it? Like it's like I'm still. This thing is still banging around in my head and I can't. And I think, like I thought that we I thought we already had talked about this last week and we would just be resolved. When we hear Paul's words. It says, therefore, work out your salvation. With fear and trembling, like we're going to work it out, we're going to work this out, yeah, but jesus is the author and the perfecter. Like he, like he's working, like it is not like one and done. It's not like, oh, I graduate from high school and I no longer have to get an education, I no longer have to learn and and part, and this is the thing we like to say. You know.

Speaker 2: 18:04

Historians later on would say about, you know, world, world War II, that the Axis powers knew. They would say there was a sense that the Axis powers knew that if the Allies took Normandy the war would be effectively over. The war was not over yet and you know it's an imperfect metaphor, but we would say this is what the incarnation of Jesus has done. He's come and the war is over. Man, there's tons of resistance that's keeping it from. You know, we don't know how long it's going to take. And so we discover oh my gosh, this is. You know, I tell people it's like I'm.

Speaker 2: 18:52

Like David Wilcox has this song called the Rusty Little American Dream. It's about a, you know, 1950s Cadillac that's sitting by the side of the road. It's rusty and this, and that he wants somebody to come along and take it. Like Jesus has found me by the side of the road and he brought me into his garage. And like now I'm in his garage and this is great because finally I'm out of the weather, I'm out of da-da-da-da. But now, like he turns all the lights on and you're like crap, like the fender, look at the engine, look to die, to die, like all the things.

Speaker 2: 19:22

Like I, you know, it's nice to be in, and but you look around there, oh there are other cars in the garage too. And jesus is like, yep, you belong to me now. And I'm like, but there's all this work to be done. Yeah, but this is why you're in the garage, this is why you're here. I saved you. Now we're gonna do go. Now we're gonna go to work, and while we're, and while we're doing work, and the very work that we're doing, work, and the very work that we're doing becomes the occasion for you also to be sent, as the Father sent me On occasion. You're going to drive your car and other people are going to see it, and you're like y'all, come, come back to the garage.

Speaker 1: 19:57

It's a beautiful invitation.

Speaker 2: 20:02

And so it takes practice over and over and over and over and our work against the tyranny of evil as it tries to use, shame as it is effectively embedded in really ancient neural networks for us that are not just mine, but they're generationally mine. I was given this from my parents and my grandparents as well, and so we're not just pushing against our own personal stories, we're pushing against the stories of others that came before us, that had their own traumas that were never worked out but that kind of like, through what we call epigenetic changes, kind of pass this down the line and we're pushing against the earth. It's a lot that we're pushing against, which is why we need community to be doing this.

Speaker 1: 20:42

Let's talk about that, because I have heard really wonderful things about confessional communities. What is that all about and how can it help heal?

Speaker 2: 20:51

shame. You know, over the last 15 years there emerged in our practice a particular model for what started out many, many, even many years before that, for what started out many, many, even many years before that, what we would call group therapy, but has in the last 15 years become much more an enterprise and an initiative of spiritual formation, and we name it as such and we talk about it being a community of six to eight people. Now, in our practice it's um, it's guided by two therapists, and we have a number of these groups that run uh, but outside of the practice and in our nonprofit we have lay led versions of this that people can enter into. Um, but it is. It is a group of six to eight people that gather together for spiritual formation, and what we like to say is that the outer border of the sphere is this notion of we're living within a context of Christian anthropology. What does it mean for us to be humans from the biblical perspective? What does that mean and that's important, because many of us tend to think that the gospel story begins in Genesis 3. Like, the leading edge of the gospel is that we're sinners in need of a savior, all of which is true, but that's actually not where the story starts. The story starts two pages before that. Everything else that follows those two pages is what went wrong and what God's doing to try to correct that and not trying what he is doing, what he's done. And so it's a Christian anthropoc, a way of understanding what does it mean for us to be human, that we were created for joy and we were made in God's image to create beauty and goodness in the world and to extend the borders of Eden into the wilderness. And that mission hasn't changed. And the new heaven and earth that is coming is one that we have to practice for, to get ready to do that very thing. So that's the first outer sphere that's containing everything.

Speaker 2: 22:41

Within this we talk about the mechanics of interpersonal neurobiology. How does the mind work? What does it mean to be a thinking, feeling, sensing creature, and not only that? Within that is a third sphere, which is the dynamics of group psychotherapy. What happens in a community and, as we like to say to folks in psychotherapy in general gosh, I don't know what happens in those offices, like I don't know what's going on in there or something it's some you know. I don't know abracadabra, I don't know what all y'all are talking about in there, but it's certainly not like real life, it's not normal life to which I will tell people look, everything that happens in a psychotherapy consultation room, everything that happens in a confessional community, everything that happens in a confessional community, everything that happens there, is happening everywhere else in the world. The thing that sets it apart in psychotherapy or in these confessional communities, the thing that sets it apart, is in that space.

Speaker 2: 23:34

We are actually explicitly naming the things that are happening in the space. That's so good. Right, how many of us have gone? You know we're in a meeting at work or we're in like an elder board gathering at church or a small group gathering at church, and we're there. You know we're going to have a Bible study and we're in the middle of a Bible study with our like eight or ten people in our room, that we're sitting there, we're talking about this and, as we're having this thought, like somebody's thinking, like I am so bored, but like who's going to pause and say, excuse me, like can I? Just I'm really bored with what we're doing right now. Like no, we don't. We don't say that, but I will. I will guarantee you that that energy, the thought, the felt sense, the feeling, all these kinds of things. They are affecting what's happening in the room, because you can't avoid it, but because we don't name things that are actually happening in the room. We're in the elder board meeting, we're talking about a budget right, that's what we think that we're there to talk about, until you know, stan starts to sound irritated. But nobody wants to say to Stan Stan, you sound irritated, what's going on? We never hear from Stan that actually, as it turns out, stan's got a kid who he doesn't know if he's going to survive because of his addiction. It's really bothering him. Or Stan's marriage might be this, or Stan might be irritated at somebody else in the room and Stan's not saying that because we think we're there to talk about the budget, but that's not what's happening in the room. The budget isn't the topic. Stan is the topic, but it's not just Stan, because Just stand, because we're all involved.

Speaker 2: 25:01

This is the thing, this is the beauty about. When Jesus brings disciples together. You put Peter and Matthew in the same room. These guys are, like Peter's, going to kill it. This is one of the reasons why the chosen is such a beautiful thing. They're just showing us how these cats don't get along. And Jesus seems to be completely content with having people in the room who are not going to get along. And then we're going to say, like, what's actually happening here in the room, the work is not just him preaching the Sermon on the Mount. That's separate from what's actually happening. Like, what's happening in the room is the Sermon on the Mount.

Speaker 2: 25:40

So in these confessional communities we are committed not just to talking about things in our lives. We really. Eventually, we help people to discover that, like, our real life is happening right here in this room. This is real life at its maximal. No, we're not having sex with one another, even though there are men and women in the room, but because there are men and women in the room, sex is in the room.

Speaker 2: 26:02

For example, and by this we don't mean, right, people are having sex. But what we mean is that I don't know that I'm a male if I'm not in a room with women. No, what does it mean? Because when I'm in a room with a woman, she's playing some role for me. She's either my mom, my sister, the girlfriend who just broke up with me, something's happening with me in the room that the Holy Spirit is moving to get at. This? Is spiritual formation happening? Because we're doing this within a context of being serious about describing where is the text, what just happened here in the room and what we're finding, drew, is that not just for people who come to our practice with quote unquote diagnoses?

Speaker 2: 26:46

Right, I come out, I'm depressed and I'm anxious, I have an addiction, I have a marriage problem, I have OCD, I have sexual trauma, I have all the all these things. They're all real, very real, but one of the things that they have in common is that they have shattered my capacity to allow myself to be loved, and my shame is in the thick of it all. And what we're inviting people to do is to come into this space to do the work, not primarily of learning things, which you will not. Primarily of learning how to behave differently, which you will not. Primarily of learning how to behave differently, which you will, but mostly as a way, and you will do the first two things eventually as a function of allowing yourself to be seen soothed, safe, secure, allowing yourself to be loved.

Speaker 2: 27:37

It is the single most difficult thing that we humans have to do, that we're not very good at letting ourselves be loved, because we love love until love shows up, and then it starts to feel dangerous. Because love shows up with demands. Love your neighbor, pray for your enemy. Allow me to see the part of you that you hate the most. Become a person of patience. Become a person of simplicity. I am very ill-practiced at all of these things, but this is its demands. If you want your old, rusty Cadillac to come to my garage like you're going to be out of that bad weather and we're going to go to work on it, you don't just get to come in and like live how you please.

Speaker 1: 28:20

And we're not going to work on the Cadillac because it's bad, but precisely because it's good. Dude, dude, right, right on. So what happens when men and women in the same group start talking about their shame and their sexuality?

Speaker 2: 28:37

There was one woman who, unannounced, in one of our groups this is a group of about four women and four men that are in this group and I and my colleague Courtney, we're the two folks that are running this group and one woman says to another guy I just want to let you know, I'm just really aware of how attracted to you I am. Now, both parties are married to people who are, of course, not in this group. Both parties are married and the guy, uh, as uh I had been helping him get ready to come and join this group had said to me like kurt, here's the one thing I'm worried about. I'm worried that I'm going to have like some experience with a woman in which I'm going to feel attracted to her. She's going to feel attracted to me and, like I don't know I can, I don't know if that's going to be okay. I'm like, well, what are you worried would happen?

Speaker 2: 29:30

We start to talk about this, of course, because this is what happens to us. We have all these worries and we then stop with just because I'm worried. I'm not going to do that. I don't pause to explore, like, well, what's that really about? Like this is what happens, right when we look at porn because we're not actually being curious enough about what is really going on here. We're not being too curious, which is why I want to look at, you know, engage with that kind of material. I'm not being curious enough. And so she makes this announcement to this guy and you could just feel the oxygen just get sucked out of the room Because, like everybody else is like, did she actually just say that to him, right? Did she really just say?

Speaker 1: 30:12

that to him, and this is the kind of thing that keeps a lot of us in men's only groups.

Speaker 2: 30:21

Exactly, and so we never get the opportunity to actually pay attention to what's actually happening in the room. And he, of course you see him turn 30 shades of red when he hears this and Courtney and I are like so what do you mean? Tell him when you say that you're attracted to him? Say more. And so he starts to name.

Speaker 2: 30:42

I've just been really grateful for how well you've listened to me. I've been grateful for how protective you have expressed that you felt toward me when I've named some of the things about my experience with my family of origin and even in my marriage. I've really appreciated your kindness. I've appreciated how you've talked to other women here in the group and you're really not hard to look at. And what's the story? What do you want from him? We ask what do you want from him? Right, because now you're getting closer, closer to the edge. Like do you? Do you do you want to like? Are you having thoughts of like in that way? Like is it? Is it about having sex? Is this where you're like? Actually, what I really want is I want more of that felt sense of being loved, and in fact it really just makes me really aware of how much more I want that in my marriage and what I'm not getting in my marriage. Now we turn to him and of course you know you can feel the sweat pouring off of everybody in the room, right, but you can also you also sense that little by little, the immediacy of the anxiety that everybody was feeling in the room starts to gradually decline Because we're getting behind the curtain about what this is about. And we turn to him what is it like for you to hear this, when he starts to say it feels really flattering and I'm really grateful for this, and what does that bring her for you? Well, I'd love to hear more of that from my own wife. And there are other things that he goes on to say. But as we name the things that are happening in the room, we discover that there's so much about the attraction that comes together with these two people that isn't ultimately really about each of them as individuals. It's her with her marriage and her story, and him with his marriage and his story, and so forth and so on. And so then we ask the question what do we want to do about this? What are other people feeling? Now? This is where things become, I think, really powerful in that, as other people start to contribute to this, we recognize that these two people are not just having a kind of private moment in public. This is not just about them.

Speaker 2: 33:00

C is actually a spokesperson for a number of women in that room, and not just about toward this particular guy. C is a spokesperson for a lot of women, for the other three women who have great longing and great desire to be seen by men in general, not like their dads, their husbands. Right, it's not just I want to have sex with this person. No, and for him he's also speaking for like, yeah, I long to have a felt sense of experience and relationship with women in which I can feel really deeply connected to them and nobody's going to get exploited.

Speaker 2: 33:36

This might've been the kind of conversation that Adam and Eve might have had with God, had Adam been willing to say look, I just like I know I've screwed up, could you please help Eve and me work this out? Adam never gives God that conversation opportunity, but this is what's happening here, and so then what else happens? One other woman says like gosh, here's something that's just happened to me. She says like I thought, okay, I had already come to the conclusion that my marriage is what it is. There's nothing I can do about it. I'm just going to have to learn to live with this. This is a woman who's been married for 35 years. This is a woman who's like she's going to be you know another 20 years, that she want it to be. I'm just going to have to let it rest. And even now, like what you just kind of upset the apple cart because what I'm going to have to do is go home and tell him I'm not happy with where we are. I want more from our marriage, because these two people are actually having the conversation that she wants to have but is too afraid to have it, and so forth and so on.

Speaker 2: 34:32

And here's the thing that we then say, drew, like this is the point, this is the point. We have this conversation in this group and then we're able to say look, the work of the Holy Spirit right now in this room is trying to form each of us into the image of Jesus through the medium of how we are to be God's image bearers. And we are his image bearers as male and female. And I'm not going to be able to bear his image effectively if I'm not working out my unfinished business with the other half of the population that I invariably have and the way that I cope with all my distresses about that. I look at porn. Instead of actually having the conversation as we say like, look, this stuff is happening in this group, it's happening in the pews in every church every Sunday. Sunday. Imagine what it would be like if you know, during confession, some dude stands up and says points to some woman across like I'm really attracted to her. Can I just say that I was like, excuse me, like this. You know what I mean.

Speaker 1: 35:34

Yeah, it brings up concerns about safety, of course.

Speaker 2: 35:38

But, but. But this is the thing. When it comes to driving cars, we can ultimately be safe by just we just never drive them. We just never drive them. But instead we say, oh, here are some things that happen in cars. We need to put safety belts on. That's going to be a good idea for us and we're going to ensure that, like we all have In fact, like if you get pulled over in your safety belt. In other words, we're going to build things into the system to say we really want to maximally, we want you to be able to maximally drive your car with effort and with efficacy, and so we're going to put safety belts in. That's a way to be safe in a car. Of course, the ultimate way is like you just never get in one.

Speaker 2: 36:23

And so we have guidelines in these, in these confessional communities, like in terms of the kind of contact that people have outside the room, so forth, but like, as you know, look, god gave adam and eve one guideline. It didn't have, like they didn't have like a whole tax code on guidelines One fruit, you may not eat One. I mean, it's not complicated, it's very simple. It might be really difficult, it might be different, but it's not difficult because it's complicated, and so God gives us guidelines and we can break them if we want to. You can have the affair with a woman in the church and you can think that, like gosh, as long as I just keep to all my men and all my women over my women over here, my men over here, um, like that's. That's like okay, that's going to keep me from doing things that I shouldn't be doing. It's like if I don't drive a car, then I will never be in an accident.

Speaker 1: 37:14

Yeah, and we have a lot of men in groups who find themselves sometimes attracted to someone else in the group.

Speaker 2: 37:20

Sure Right. This is why I said earlier, like sex makes me nervous. But I think I would say, like, I don't think I'm nervous because I'm silly or stupid or just immature. I think I'm nervous because I'm a human. Why is it that, uh, as my friend Bart many, many years ago, why is it that we, that God designed us in such a way, like, why can't we just have kids by saying, like, I'm just going to like, touch our pinkies together and that's how it'll happen? Like, why does the procreation of other humans involve something that is so deeply vulnerable physiologically and that is deeply connected, vulnerably, to my psyche, to my soul's emotional development?

Speaker 2: 38:08

I think there's something beautifully mysterious and intentional, of course, about this, and so of course, we want to have guidelines, we want to be wise about this.

Speaker 2: 38:19

But the fact that I'm like I got generations right back to Adam and Eve, of trauma and because my parents and the way that they delivered it to me like it was pretty imperfect, and so, like I'm left, like I don't know what the heck I'm doing and I'm nervous as all get out about these kinds of things, and so, even when it comes to like, like we would say, look, yes, if I'm a male and I have attraction to other male or other women, like it doesn't matter, like I'm.

Speaker 2: 38:45

When I say it doesn't matter, I don't mean that they don't have our particular things that we have to pay attention to. I'm simply saying that, like every single one of us is going to be a person for whom evil will target and want to use shame, in particular in this domain of our life, because shame, so historically, is entangled with it. Right, my felt sense of the parts of me that are the most vulnerable A man and his wife were naked sense of the parts of me that are the most vulnerable. A man and his wife were naked, vulnerable and unashamed. But shame entangles itself in the most vulnerable places, like our sexuality Exactly, and so my sexuality makes me nervous because I'm afraid of where the shame is going to find me.

Speaker 2: 39:42

And so, as we like to say, my shame is not healed, drew, because you tell me Kurt don't be ashamed.

Speaker 1: 39:53

My shame is healed by my revealing my shame in your presence and you not leaving the room and discovering that the things we don't like about ourselves don't disqualify us from being loved. We can be accepted, connected anyway. That's right. And it starts to sink in a little deeper and a little deeper in communities where we can actually talk about it, that's right. In communities where we can actually talk about it, that's right.

Speaker 2: 40:28

So, in contrast to the story of shame, what is the story that Jesus tells us? Because the Father has sent me, so I send you. One of the early encounters that we have between Jesus and his father, especially in Luke's version, is the father saying through the spirit You're my son, I can't believe that I get to be your father, I'm just so pleased with you. Isn't the story a joy? And Jesus wants to come and find us and say oh my gosh, I'm so glad you're here. And that, of course, is something that we don't often hear from anyone, let alone hear it repeated to us over and over, hear it repeated to us over and over, let alone hear it said to us in the very moment when we are most aware of our own shame and to see it shown to us by action and presence and embodiment by action.

Speaker 2: 41:39

And presence and embodiment. That's right. It was the fall of 2019, and I was helping. I was one of a number of helpers for a men's retreat in Colorado and the leader of that group, michael Cusick. There was a moment in which, in the course of the weekend, I was just aware of some of my own. I'm one of the leaders, I'm one of my own. So my own story is like coming into the room, I remember finding myself in this place of great vulnerability and a felt sense of just being overwhelmed with myself. I will remember this until I, like, can not remember anything.

Speaker 2: 42:14

Uh, at one point in the course of just talking about these things, naming these things, uh, michael embraced and I, you know, like, you have an embrace and like, and I'm a hugger and so, like, I know how to embrace people and dude, like, that embrace probably lasted for 75, 90 seconds, dude, that's a long time. And like I, I like, I feel it in my chest and my back to this day, this felt sense of his embrace, his hospitality, his welcoming me in, and this is what we're talking about. We like to say that the brain operates bottom to top and right to left. First we sense and then we make sense of what we sense. So somebody can tell me right, you don't need to be afraid, you don't need to be ashamed, as if giving that information is going to be enough. It's not unhelpful, it's not unimportant to have words, it's just that that's not how my brain operates. So if I'm not feeling it in my chest, it's not yet going to take root and germinate and bear fruit the felt sense that I am loved, right. So first we sense, then we make sense of what we sense, and this is child development.

Speaker 2: 43:39

I became a grandfather for the first time about three months ago and little Simon we are watching him emerge. It's just unbelievable. And you see things as a grandparent that you didn't, because you're too busy trying not to screw it up. As a parent, you're not able to see things like you see them as a grandparent, and I'm watching our daughter and our son-in-law literally continue to bring this child into the screw it up. As a parent, you're not able to see things like you see them as a grandparent, and I'm watching our daughter and our son-in-law literally continue to like, bring this child into the world. It's just such a beautiful thing.

Speaker 2: 44:07

All that Simon knows is what he's sensing right now Like he's not making sense of things. He's not, we don't. We don't say, oh, I love, we love you. And like he's like thanks, right, no, no, he has to sense things. And that Jesus said look, if you don't change and become like little children, heaven is not going to work for you. And so that means little children live as if. But this means like oh, I have to be receptive to sensing it, sensing loving kindness. And this takes practice, because I'm pushing against a lot of a neural payload of shame that does not want to go quietly into the night.

Speaker 1: 44:44

Yes, and it's also a risk.

Speaker 2: 44:46

Totally. And there is the part of me that will feel ashamed for still feeling ashamed, right. And so we have to name that and say, okay, we and we're not going to shame the part of me that feels ashamed, we're not shamed. It takes work, it takes practice, it takes our resolve to do this, not unlike Jesus and the woman with the bleeding problem in Mark 5, right, he says right.

Speaker 2: 45:11

Who touched me? She thought like she had a plan for healing. It's just one thing I need. I just need a one thing, one thing, one time. And we're going to do it like commando. I'm going to get in, get the job done, get out. Nobody gets, nobody's seen, nobody gets hurt. And then he says stop and all the wheels come off of her plan and he's not moving. And this is a problem because there is an urgent need for him to get to the priest's house to heal the daughter and everybody's like we're on the move. Who touched me? And nobody's thinking about some woman and she's like this is not, this isn't right and and but like so he's not moving. How many of us? Jesus finds us and we have a plan, we, we, we have an idea for Jesus about how, about how he needs to heal us. Patients come to me. They have plans for me for how I'm going to, like you know, treat them. And he's like no, we're not leaving, we're not moving.

Speaker 2: 46:09

And everybody's like, confused, and she like, and then the text reads it's so good. With fear and trembling, he fell at his feet and here's the kicker and told him everything about herself. Wow, she tells her story Because that is the thing that she most needed healing from. This is a woman who, because of her problem, does not have a family, husband, children, community. She's out and he's sensing what she isn't yet thinking about or aware of. We all, like all the extra stuff that she's going to have to continue to work on. How many people are going to say, oh, you're that woman with a bleeding problem, but she's going to need to have somebody else say oh, no, no, not, no, no, by the way, her name is Sarah, she's not the woman with the bleeding problem and she belongs to us. Sarah's going to need other people to help her do this because of all the shame that she's had to carry.

Speaker 2: 47:11

I think of how long it would have taken Matthew, the tax collector, to get used to being in this company. Jesus followers, jesus is not worried about how long this is going to take. He's not worried about it, it just keeps coming. It just keeps coming. We're in the garage. It just keeps coming back. Today we're going to work on the carburetor. Raj, this keeps coming back. Today we're going to work on the carburetor. Oh, but you don't want to look at that. Could we not look at that? I think you're ready for it. I think you're. Yeah, let's open the hood. And so it helps when we have other people around who are putting flesh and bones on this, that Michael Cusick and my friend Terry Wardle and my spiritual director Ann Howley, when they're putting bone and blood, bring it into the room. The parts of us that need the doctor can be found by him or her.

Speaker 1: 48:26

And he's not going anywhere.

Speaker 2: 48:29

No, nope, not moving. Who touched me? She's like crap.

Speaker 1: 48:38

And then he calls her daughter yeah, just like he calls her daughter yeah. Just like he calls us sons Right on. Kurt, thank you so much for being with us.

Speaker 2: 48:47

It's been a pleasure. Thanks so much for having me.

Speaker 1: 48:49

You're welcome, guys. You can go down to the show notes. If you want to learn more about Kurt, get a copy of his books like the soul of shame, although he's got many others and if you want to learn more about confessional communities, I encourage you to explore that and I want everyone to know that the thing I say at the end of this episode is partly inspired by Kurt, but it really comes straight from the heart of God, of our sexuality and our shame. He never stops saying you are my beloved son. In you I am well pleased.