0:05

If you are suffering today,

0:07

first, welcome to the human race. Our

0:09

guest says to be human is to suffer.

0:12

So the outcome of a program on suffering

0:14

you would think would be less

0:16

suffering, right? Ten steps

0:19

to overcoming your struggle. Your

0:21

anxiety. How to avoid the suffering

0:24

you had yesterday, or how

0:26

to at least turn down the volume on the suffering

0:28

so that it becomes more manageable.

0:31

Sadly, our guest today is not going to offer

0:33

you that. He would probably be

0:35

much more popular if he did

0:37

offer that. Because we

0:40

all want less suffering. We want an easier

0:42

life. Isn't that what we signed up for? And

0:45

I wonder if in my own life and in the lives

0:48

of fellow believers that I've walked this

0:50

trail with, if we don't promise something

0:52

about the Christian life that

0:55

frustrates us and those

0:57

we ask to join us, we believe

0:59

something about God and what he offers that

1:01

isn't actually true. We

1:04

don't want to suffer and we don't

1:06

understand why God allows it or

1:08

even puts it in our paths, and we

1:10

want it over with and done. So our guest

1:12

today does not promise that by

1:14

listening to him in this hour you will

1:16

suffer less. But.

1:19

But if you, however,

1:21

and a friend of mine used to say, there's

1:23

always a. However in life. However,

1:26

if you listen closely and carefully and

1:28

enter into his thesis,

1:31

he does promise you will suffer

1:34

differently. And

1:36

I don't know if that helps you or makes

1:38

you. It makes you want to

1:40

throw the radio, turn the radio off.

1:42

I hope you'll keep it on, because

1:44

that's what we're going to talk about today at

1:46

the Radio Backyard Fence, our

1:49

programs recorded. What you just heard

1:51

is how I opened the program last,

1:54

uh, toward the end of August last year,

1:56

and a conversation with Kurt Thompson.

1:58

We'll get to that straight ahead. Let me thank Ryan

2:01

McConaughey, doing all things technical. Let me thank

2:03

Tricia for her work

2:05

as a producer. A little inside

2:07

information here. When we go

2:09

back to the program, you're going to hear

2:11

our dog, Mr. Bingley,

2:14

barking in the background. So this

2:16

is we are not hermetically sealed. This is real

2:18

life radio. Okay? So

2:20

listen for Bingley and listen,

2:23

friend, we need your help

2:25

at the radio backyard fence. Have you

2:27

gotten a copy of Memorizing Scripture

2:29

by Glenna marshall? It's our. Thank you. This

2:31

month, 86695

2:33

Fabri is our number. Or go to

2:35

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2:38

says we never study God

2:40

simply to acquire knowledge.

2:42

And we don't memorize scripture simply

2:44

to be able to recite it. No,

2:47

the bedrock of both study and

2:49

meditation is relationship,

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and that's what we want to foster with you.

2:54

Get a copy of this Memorizing scripture.

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We'd love to send it to you. Just call

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3:02

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3:04

Become a back fence friend or partner today.

3:07

Chris Fabry live org

3:10

doctor Kurt Thompson is a psychiatrist,

3:13

speaker, author of books on shame,

3:15

desire and The Anatomy of the soul.

3:18

He's board certified by the American

3:20

Board of Psychiatry and Neurology.

3:22

He graduated from Wright State University

3:24

School of Medicine, completed his psychiatric

3:26

residency at Temple University Hospital,

3:29

has written a number of books. The one we're going to talk about

3:31

today is the Deepest Place.

3:34

It's got a gorgeous cover, suffering

3:36

and the formation of

3:39

Hope. Doctor Thompson side

3:41

in here. How are you doing today?

3:43

I'm doing well. I'm, uh,

3:45

grateful to be on the show with you today and

3:47

looking forward to having a chance to talk about

3:49

the what's going on in the book.

3:53

Um, psychiatrists are supposed to fix

3:55

things. You're supposed to to give

3:57

us something. You're supposed to tell us something to take

3:59

the pain away, and you're not going to fix our suffering.

4:01

That doesn't make me real happy.

4:04

Yeah, I mean, I anymore, I

4:07

feel like it's not just a matter of like, am

4:09

I going to disappoint someone today? It's a matter of like,

4:11

how many am I going to disappoint? So

4:13

people can, you know, for the most

4:15

part, probably line

4:18

up, uh, in this regard because

4:20

I think we, you know, we live, Chris, in

4:22

a world in which we

4:24

are being trained and we are we have

4:26

been trained to believe

4:29

that, uh, first of all, that we shouldn't

4:31

suffer and that if we are

4:33

suffering, this is not I mean, this is not new, right? This

4:35

is job. Uh, if

4:37

we are suffering, there must be something wrong

4:39

in the world. And we

4:41

also, though, have almost an

4:44

infinite array of

4:46

options that are disposal that will help distract

4:48

us from our suffering. Uh,

4:51

you know, beginning with the little supercomputer that I

4:53

carry around with me in my pocket. And

4:55

I think what's what's significant in the work

4:58

that that I, that I'm doing is that,

5:00

um, you know, the Christian story,

5:03

uh, is the one story in the world,

5:05

the only story in the world in

5:07

which suffering is honored.

5:11

In which we say that

5:13

God actually is in the business,

5:16

not of disdaining suffering, not

5:18

of blaming us for our suffering,

5:20

but of being with us in our suffering,

5:23

and in so doing, transforming

5:25

not just us, but our notion of suffering

5:28

at the same time, which I think is really

5:31

good news. It's difficult news,

5:34

but it is good news because suffering

5:36

is as true is

5:38

as common. It's going to be as human, as having

5:41

a pulse and

5:43

suffering in many respects, we might say like, why do

5:45

we suffer? Why does suffering exist? In some respects,

5:48

I would say that suffering is the mirror

5:50

image, the painful

5:52

mirror image of

5:54

God's intended vision for

5:57

who we were to have become in Genesis

5:59

one and two. And

6:01

instead, given

6:03

the choices that we've made over time,

6:06

we find that our suffering,

6:08

or as we like to say in in the business

6:10

of psychiatry, suffering is

6:12

our response to pain

6:14

over time. The

6:16

way we respond to our pain

6:18

over time is shaped by

6:21

so many more things than the

6:23

gospel, and as such, I

6:25

find that my responses to suffering are ones in

6:27

which I simply typically just want it

6:29

to go away, or find some way

6:31

to blame someone else for

6:33

it. Just so long as I don't

6:35

have to endure it.

6:37

It's okay. It's okay for Jobe to go through

6:39

this, or for anybody in the Old Testament

6:41

or even the new. But it's like, for me. No.

6:44

And and you, the whole book

6:46

is basically the first few chapters of Romans

6:48

chapter five. You look at Paul

6:51

from the very moment of his conversion,

6:53

what God says to Ananias

6:56

about going over, you know, and, and

6:58

and see this fellow Saul, you know, and,

7:00

and and Ananias calls a timeout

7:02

and said, you must not be paying attention. You

7:04

know, this is the guy who's doing all this, wreaking

7:06

all this havoc, and God says, I

7:09

will. He's a chosen vessel. I will show

7:11

him how much he must suffer

7:13

for my sake. And

7:15

for those who say, well, suffering ought not be

7:17

a part of the Christian life. There's

7:20

God saying it about one of his

7:22

chosen vessels. Right.

7:24

Mhm. Yeah. Well I think

7:26

again it, it speaks to

7:29

the, it speaks to the reality

7:31

that in the world of the biblical

7:33

narrative, in Paul's world,

7:36

in Ananias world, in the world of the disciples,

7:38

in the world of job. Uh,

7:40

suffering was assumed. It

7:43

was assumed that suffering was part of life.

7:45

Now there are different ways in which I mean, the ancients,

7:48

they would say, well, if you're suffering, it's because the

7:50

gods are angry with you. It's because

7:52

there's something about you. This is in

7:54

John chapter nine, when Jesus and the

7:56

disciples come upon a man born blind,

7:58

and the first question out of their mouth

8:00

was, who sinned such that

8:02

this man is born blind? There was

8:04

no sense in which his blindness

8:07

could possibly be a doorway.

8:10

Into beauty and goodness. Suffering

8:12

only was a sign of God's

8:15

condemnation. And Jesus answers

8:17

them and says, actually, this

8:19

man was born blind such that the works of

8:21

God might be revealed in him. When

8:23

God talks to Ananias about how much Paul

8:25

will suffer, that suffering is taking place

8:27

in a context in

8:30

which Paul first has

8:32

an encounter with Jesus

8:35

on the Damascus Road, in which Jesus has a

8:37

conversation with him. And

8:39

we hear that conversation. Paul,

8:41

Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?

8:44

We hear it. We, you know, depending

8:46

upon our own ways of hearing, you

8:48

know, thinking about how this story unfolds, it's easy

8:50

for us to imagine that Jesus, in fact,

8:52

is like, upset with Paul. Why are

8:54

you persecuting me? But

8:57

what if the voice that Paul was hearing

8:59

was a voice of compassion? What

9:02

if it was the voice of Jesus basically

9:04

getting underneath Paul's story and saying

9:06

all the work that you're doing? Persecuting

9:10

me. My friend come home

9:12

to what's really going on here? And

9:15

Paul having the experience of being loved

9:17

by God through the person of Jesus

9:20

in a way that he never had been. Is

9:23

part of what Paul experiences that

9:25

enables him to write the words that he

9:27

writes in the first three verses, the first

9:29

two verses of Romans chapter five,

9:31

this notion that this faith

9:34

and this justification that are really

9:36

an expression of trust and secure

9:38

attachment with God, lead to this

9:40

experience of glory. Glory,

9:43

not just that in which

9:45

we say, God is a wonderful God. God is a

9:47

beautiful God. God is a powerful God, all

9:49

of which is true. But it

9:51

is also true that God is

9:53

a God. Who

9:56

directs his delight at

9:58

us. We are the objects

10:00

of his delight. And

10:02

our brokenness makes it really difficult

10:04

for us to be aware of

10:06

this. But we we

10:09

recognize that in the text of Romans five

10:11

one through five, that by the time we get to

10:13

Paul's words about how suffering leads

10:15

to perseverance and so forth, that

10:17

suffering is predicated with this notion

10:20

of God's glory, that we

10:22

hope in the glory of God.

10:24

We sit in this notion that

10:26

we are the objects of his utter

10:29

delight. And

10:31

that's what we are based. Again, this is

10:33

what we are paying attention to. In the context

10:36

of a community in which we

10:38

hear the voice of Jesus and the other members

10:40

of the body of Jesus, we see the sightline

10:42

of Jesus gaze in the body of

10:45

the of Jesus. And in that

10:47

context, our experience

10:49

of suffering is transformed because

10:51

it begins with our utter awareness

10:54

of our being, God's delight.

10:57

As you can tell, we are in deep weeds,

10:59

friend. We are in really

11:01

deep weeds with Doctor Kurt Thompson today

11:04

because this is exactly where

11:06

we all live and we struggle. And I

11:08

was thinking before the program, we had a

11:10

phone call from a listener whose

11:13

daughter went missing in June.

11:16

Sheena and Valerie had called,

11:18

and I looked up just before we started

11:21

here to see if there's any more news. And and

11:23

there's no more other than the different

11:25

authorities that have gotten involved. You

11:27

talk about suffering, the

11:29

suffering of a mom who doesn't know

11:32

where's my daughter, what

11:34

has happened to her? And she

11:36

is sitting in the middle of that, you

11:38

know, that's a real issue.

11:40

Or if you're dealing with a debilitating

11:43

illness today, as you listen, if you're going

11:45

through marital discord

11:47

or a child has abandoned

11:50

you and said, I don't care what you think

11:52

about me, I don't believe in God. And

11:54

you turn their back on you and your all

11:57

of that suffering. I want you to filter through the

11:59

conversation today with Doctor Kurt Thompson.

12:01

The deepest place is our featured resource,

12:04

Chris Fabry live. Org.

12:16

What do you do with the suffering in your life,

12:18

the suffering that you're experiencing right now?

12:20

Doctor Kurt Thompson has written,

12:23

he's the author of The Soul of Shame. So

12:25

we're gonna get to shame here today. But

12:27

he's written just an amazing book

12:29

titled The Deepest Place Suffering

12:31

and the formation of Hope. We've been talking

12:34

about this topic over the last few

12:36

months, but I want you to hear his

12:38

take on on suffering,

12:40

on Doctor Thompson's take on it,

12:42

because I think what

12:44

I have done and what I've seen others do,

12:48

is try to minimize the suffering

12:50

by comparing

12:52

it with other people. Well, I don't have as

12:54

bad as you know. And and somebody

12:56

who has had this deep loss.

12:58

Well, my loss is not as big as that. And so

13:00

I take comfort in the fact that somebody else has

13:03

it worse than I do. Or

13:05

so the comparison or the minimizing,

13:08

the the drowning out the

13:10

squelching. I used to Doctor Thompson

13:12

when I was a kid, I had a CB radio.

13:14

And when you get on the channel, the frequency

13:17

that you're on, you hear

13:19

this just rabid noise,

13:21

this radio noise that's there until

13:23

you turn up the squelch and

13:25

you turn up the squelch and all of that

13:27

goes away so that you only hear

13:29

what people are saying. The the

13:31

threshold of the noise floor

13:34

is still there, but you've squelched it out.

13:36

And we and we do that with

13:38

we can now, like you said, with your phone,

13:41

with social media, with

13:43

pornography or with

13:45

of some substance, alcohol,

13:48

etc. but

13:50

it's a way to try to get

13:52

that out of our lives. And I

13:54

think what you are encouraging us to

13:56

do, kicking and screaming,

13:58

you're encouraging us to be

14:00

to be all here in

14:02

the middle of the mess is

14:04

am I getting that right.

14:05

Mhm mhm.

14:07

You're right. And Chris in some respects this

14:09

really goes back to the

14:11

first two pages of the Bible

14:14

when we recognize that,

14:17

uh, you know, in the 18th verse of the

14:19

second chapter where God says it's not

14:22

good for the human to be alone, it's

14:24

not good for you to be alone. This this

14:26

is a primal statement

14:28

that carries throughout

14:31

the history of the world, because so

14:34

much of what our

14:36

suffering is about has

14:38

to do with our experience of isolation,

14:40

has to do with the sense that I

14:43

am alone in my pain.

14:45

It's not just that I experience pain,

14:47

it's that I experience pain in

14:50

isolation, by myself, in the privacy

14:52

of my own head. And then I begin to

14:54

tell all kinds of stories about myself

14:56

and about my pain, including, for instance,

14:58

what you suggest this notion that, well, my

15:00

pain is not as bad as my neighbor's pain, and so therefore

15:02

it doesn't mean anything. And

15:04

so we we find all kinds of ways

15:07

to disconnect from our pain,

15:09

rather than allowing

15:12

others to be with us in our

15:14

pain. When we talk about the notion

15:16

of atonement, that

15:18

word atonement, which not just means

15:21

paying the price for a sin, but it also

15:23

means the capacity of

15:25

God to be fully with us, because it comes from

15:27

the Old English word at one

15:29

ment. This

15:31

notion that Jesus

15:34

and the Holy Trinity are fully

15:36

at one with us,

15:38

but it is difficult for us

15:40

to allow ourselves

15:43

to be loved. We look around in our world and we see that

15:45

it's, you know, it doesn't take much

15:47

to see that we're not very good at loving each other.

15:50

But we are even less capable.

15:52

Surprisingly enough, we are

15:54

even less capable of allowing ourselves

15:57

to be loved. As odd as that might

15:59

sound, given all of our pop music, all

16:01

of our literature, all of our movies, all

16:03

of my longing to be loved. The reality

16:06

is that the moment that it

16:08

gets close to me, the moment that Jesus

16:10

actually gets close to me, it

16:12

becomes, at some level even more

16:14

terrifying than my brokenness.

16:17

Because he's about to walk

16:19

into rooms, through doors,

16:22

into spaces where my pain,

16:24

my suffering is, along

16:26

with the shame that contains it

16:28

and wraps it up, and

16:31

that I have practiced being afraid

16:33

of. I've been practicing being

16:35

afraid of God. I'm not just afraid like I practiced

16:38

being afraid. And that

16:40

leaves me in isolation.

16:42

And so the first we

16:45

talked about there are different parts of how the mind works.

16:47

That is part of our suffering. One of it has

16:49

to do with our capacity to tell time.

16:52

I can just imagine that I'm going to be in pain

16:54

for a long time down the road. These are

16:56

things that, for instance, we don't believe

16:58

that a dog or an elk is imagining.

17:01

In the same way that I also have

17:03

this sense of the story

17:05

that I tell about it, which includes

17:08

there's nothing I can do about my pain because

17:10

I am alone with it,

17:13

and so evil will want to

17:15

hijack my

17:17

way of telling time and

17:19

my isolation and the story

17:22

that I tell about both. I'm going to be alone

17:24

with my pain indefinitely

17:26

as a way for me to continue to

17:28

suffer. But the moment someone else

17:30

steps into that suffering and

17:32

says. Tell

17:35

me where you are. Tell me where you are.

17:39

Now I am looking

17:41

at someone's gaze, who is loving me

17:43

in the very moment that I'm suffering.

17:46

And the suffering itself in

17:48

that moment, is transformed. Take,

17:50

for example, the woman with the bleeding problem

17:53

in Mark chapter five. She has

17:55

a plan for her healing, and

17:57

the plan is like commando healing. We're

17:59

going to get in, get the job done, get out. Nobody's

18:02

going to notice until

18:04

Jesus stops her,

18:06

stops the crowd. And

18:08

that's when things get difficult for her

18:11

because she didn't plan

18:13

on him coming for as

18:15

much of her suffering as he's coming,

18:18

for. She only thought that

18:20

her big problem was her bleeding. And as it turns

18:22

out, her shame, her social

18:24

isolation, her not being a

18:26

daughter anymore, her not being married,

18:28

her not having children, all of

18:30

those huge shaming,

18:33

social debilitating realities.

18:35

She's not even imagining that there is

18:37

any antidote for that suffering. But

18:41

Jesus turns and says, stop. And

18:43

then he looks for who did that. And

18:46

the text reads, in fear and

18:48

trembling she comes to him.

18:50

This whole notion that to allow

18:52

ourselves to truly be open

18:55

to Jesus, if we're honest

18:57

about it, it means he's going to name

18:59

the things that we give to him with

19:01

fear and trembling. The beautiful thing about

19:03

this, Chris, is that as

19:05

we practice allowing ourselves

19:08

to be seen fully,

19:10

vulnerably in the context

19:13

of the body of Jesus, which of course, many of our listeners

19:15

might say, look, I've tried the body of Jesus

19:17

that just like that just creates more

19:19

trouble. I'd like to find a way to

19:21

not be suffering, and I just don't want other

19:23

people to be involved. And

19:26

we would say there is no

19:28

other option. That

19:30

our suffering is intended to be

19:32

met with the voice

19:35

and the touch and the sight line

19:37

of Jesus. And that's what the body of Christ

19:39

is intended to be about.

19:43

There's a beautiful story that you tell

19:45

of Chaney, who

19:48

went through just

19:50

some horror in her childhood,

19:52

and she has been doing that. She

19:54

has been alone with her suffering for a long

19:57

time. Tell that story here

19:59

briefly.

20:02

Well, uh. She

20:05

indeed had a series of

20:07

events that happened to her in her

20:10

older childhood years that

20:13

brought her to a place where she was,

20:15

uh, really effective at life.

20:19

Uh, really effective at all the things

20:21

that we easily, um, have benchmarks

20:23

for and have metrics for, in terms of what

20:25

she was doing for a living and how she was doing it, so

20:28

forth and so on. Um, but

20:30

her body was paying a price for

20:32

that, and she came to see me for these

20:34

symptoms that she was having. And

20:36

what became clear pretty quickly

20:39

was that she had an entire story

20:42

locked away in a vault.

20:45

Uh, that she was having to burn energy

20:47

containing all of

20:49

that suffering regarding all those things

20:51

that had happened to her and

20:53

all she wanted when she came in to see me, she

20:55

just wanted a solution for her presenting medical problem.

20:58

That's all she wanted. She had

21:00

no idea of

21:02

the vast ocean of suffering

21:05

that was behind her brain's wall,

21:07

that was starting to eke its

21:09

way out through some of the symptoms that

21:11

she was having. And

21:14

what we began to do was to

21:16

little by little by little, uh,

21:18

invite her to have

21:20

a conversation and put words

21:22

to those parts

21:24

of her story that were so overwhelming,

21:27

so shaming for her.

21:30

But eventually we invited her to

21:32

take this same work, not

21:34

just with me individually, but into

21:36

a group that we call a confessional community. It's a group

21:38

of about 6 or 8 people that we

21:40

are helping to facilitate, in which she's

21:42

now having to tell this story

21:45

initially to people who are total strangers,

21:48

but that she is trusting, are going to be willing

21:50

to listen to her. And what's so

21:52

striking about this is that the very beginning

21:54

of her telling her story,

21:57

she's terrified of what people are going to think.

22:01

Until she starts to see

22:03

their responses literally

22:05

in their faces, hear their

22:07

voices of compassion across the room.

22:10

And for the first time ever,

22:12

Cheney has an experience in a room

22:14

full of people not just with one dude, not just

22:16

with me. Who right, who's paid

22:18

right. This is a thing that you know well, you're my psychiatrist.

22:21

You're you're paid to be nice to me. You're

22:23

paid to have these all kinds of things. And

22:26

these are people who are just like Cheney.

22:29

She's not paying them to be compassionate.

22:32

And this is the first time she has

22:35

a group of people, a wall

22:37

of people, a body of believers

22:40

who are literally

22:42

using the physics of

22:44

relationship. Multiple

22:46

brains in the room, multiple minds in the room,

22:48

the body of Jesus that

22:51

began to encounter

22:53

her in such a way that

22:55

she sensed in her very body things that

22:57

she had never sensed before. This felt

23:00

sense of being seen and soothed,

23:02

made to feel safe and secure

23:04

in that room, revealing her

23:06

story, and this led to

23:08

tears. And

23:10

of course, many of us, you know, we're

23:13

we're embarrassed about our tears because our

23:15

tears remind us of parts of our

23:17

lives that are embarrassing when

23:19

we've wept in ways that

23:21

have not been seen or made to feel secure

23:23

or soothed. And

23:26

her tears first began

23:28

as tears of embarrassment. But when

23:30

those folks in the room stayed with her,

23:34

she began to notice her own transformation

23:36

of relief that they weren't leaving the

23:38

room. Nobody was being critical. Nobody was making

23:40

fun of her. They continued to welcome her

23:42

story into the room. And this,

23:45

Chris, I would say, is exactly what the work

23:47

of the gospel is about. This is what Jesus

23:49

was doing with the woman with the bleeding problem.

23:52

He didn't. It wasn't enough for him.

23:55

That her bleeding was stopped. That

23:58

wasn't her biggest problem. He

24:00

was inviting her entire story

24:03

out into the open for him

24:05

to come and find it and call

24:08

her daughter. For

24:10

the first time, I'm sure, in over 12

24:12

years. And this

24:14

is what the work of the body of Jesus

24:17

intends to do with all of our suffering.

24:19

And, you know, like I like to remind people, look,

24:22

healing is

24:24

a disruptive technology

24:26

in the Bible. We

24:28

look at these healing stories of Jesus and we think, oh,

24:30

this is fabulous, right? The

24:32

woman, her bleeding problem was stopped. The

24:34

man born blind in John nine, he

24:36

can see, you know, the

24:39

guy who he heals in John seven.

24:41

The you know, the lame guy

24:43

like this is awesome. Except when you

24:45

actually start to think about it, you now

24:47

have a blind guy in John nine

24:50

who gets his sight back, and at

24:52

the end of the chapter, he's thrown out of his community.

24:55

Not only that, he has made

24:57

a living. He has made a living begging by

24:59

the side of the road. Now he

25:01

can see he's got no job. He's

25:03

got no skill set. The

25:06

woman who's caught in adultery

25:08

in John eight. Where

25:10

are your accusers? There are

25:12

none. Neither do I accuse you. Go and sin no

25:15

more. Jesus is heroic. The problem

25:17

is, how is she now going to feed her kids?

25:19

Yes, and that is the perfect

25:21

place to push pause on this segment

25:23

with Doctor Kurt Thompson. Our guest

25:26

on Chris Fabry live or featured resource

25:28

is his book The Deepest Place

25:31

Suffering in the formation of Hope.

25:33

You can go to the website to find out more. Chris

25:35

Fabry live.org.

25:38

Our program today is recorded, but I'm guessing

25:40

this best broadcast is

25:42

a dose of hope for you and perhaps

25:44

something you're going through right now.

25:47

Thanks for joining us at the Radio Backyard

25:49

Fence. Again. Go to the website Chris Fabry

25:51

live.org. More straight

25:53

ahead on Moody Radio. I

26:06

want to tell you a little bit about Cornette today.

26:08

If you go to the website Chris Fabry Live. Org,

26:11

we have a green Carnet button there.

26:13

Chris Fabry live. Org.

26:16

They call themselves Pro Abundant

26:19

Life. And let me illustrate it by the

26:21

story that we just heard, this story about Cheney.

26:24

Cheney. Her name has been changed

26:26

in the book, but she was

26:28

at a boarding school. She

26:30

was bullied by the older girls,

26:33

and then later on, she was taken

26:35

advantage of sexually by an older

26:37

boy that she had turned to

26:40

to kind of give her emotional support.

26:42

And then she became pregnant.

26:45

And then she had an abortion. And

26:48

it was in that community

26:51

of people who were looking at her,

26:53

who were accepting the

26:55

really hard parts of her

26:58

story that she didn't even want to tell anybody.

27:01

That the life began

27:03

to come back into Cheney's eyes

27:05

and in her life, and really

27:08

begin to live the

27:10

forgiven life. The same

27:12

thing happens with Cornette. Now they're

27:14

all about saving babies. It's something since

27:16

2008, it's something like more than a

27:18

million babies that have been saved because

27:20

of all of the work that Canada has done.

27:23

But they're not just about the babies,

27:25

they're about the moms, the

27:27

the the unexpected pregnancy

27:30

that the woman has there, about the unexpected

27:32

pregnancy that the guy finds out

27:35

and who maybe pushes

27:37

her toward an abortion.

27:40

And then years down the road

27:43

they feel the weight of this. It

27:45

is for all of the people involved

27:47

as well as others around

27:50

them. I'm just telling you. Clarinet

27:52

is one of the ministries that I'm

27:54

slowly getting my eyes open to. If you

27:57

click that green clarinet button,

27:59

you'll find out more. Some really encouraging

28:01

things, especially if abortion is one

28:03

of the big issues for you in life.

28:06

But you say, I don't know what to do. Click

28:09

hairnet today Chris Fabry live.

28:11

Org. Doctor

28:13

Kurt Thompson, psychiatrist, speaker,

28:16

author. He's written the book

28:18

that was kind of a breakout book,

28:20

The Soul of Shame. His

28:22

latest is The Deepest Place.

28:24

So I want to go from Cheney's

28:26

story, though, to

28:29

your own story, and

28:31

you wait for 100 pages to

28:33

kind of peel back the onion on your own

28:35

life. And before

28:37

we even go into that, tell me, when you were a

28:39

kid, when you were a kid growing up, what did you want

28:42

to do? Did you want to be a psychiatrist?

28:44

Neurologist?

28:47

Wow, Chris, you know, uh, no,

28:50

I didn't even know that psychiatry was

28:52

a thing. Um, I

28:54

went off to medical school. Not really

28:56

sure that that was what I wanted to do,

28:58

and wasn't even considering psychiatry.

29:01

And when I started my

29:03

psychiatric rotation, by the time I got

29:05

there, I was I was really quite uncertain

29:08

about what I was going to do

29:10

and felt, in fact, a little bit lost.

29:12

Here. I was, you know, two and a half years

29:14

into medical school, not really sure that I even

29:17

wanted to be there and not really sure that I,

29:19

uh, was, was cut out to do this. And as

29:21

I have said about, uh, many

29:24

moments in my life that Jesus has been

29:26

coming to find me in

29:28

very, uh, significant, powerful

29:31

ways and in particular moments.

29:33

And one of the moments in which I believe Jesus came

29:35

to find me, uh, and to get

29:37

my attention was when I started my psychiatric

29:39

rotation in medical school, and

29:42

it felt like lots of

29:44

tumblers fell in the lock for me,

29:46

this longing to understand

29:48

how we operate as human beings meshed

29:51

with my love for

29:53

science and the way the body works.

29:56

And this then, uh,

29:58

was, you know, something that was, uh,

30:01

I've just grown to love. And I feel

30:03

humbled that I'm able to do this kind of work. But

30:05

it was not what I was thinking about when I

30:07

was a kid. I think for the most part, I

30:09

was just kind of wondering, like, what would life

30:11

be? But without a lot of guidance in,

30:14

in the beginning parts of my life.

30:16

Did you feel alone when you were a kid?

30:20

Well, you know, it's interesting, Chris, I there's

30:23

a sense in which looking back on it,

30:25

I don't know that at the

30:27

that, uh, that I was consciously

30:29

aware of how alone I actually

30:32

was. Uh, I

30:34

was not a kid who was depressed. I was not, I was

30:36

I was a kid who generally, I think most people would have

30:38

you would have asked me like, do you enjoy your life? When

30:40

I was ten or when I was 14, I would have

30:42

said, yes, I enjoy my life

30:45

now. It's also equally true that there

30:47

were parts of my life that,

30:50

uh, from which I was pretty cut off,

30:52

things that I felt like. So, for instance,

30:54

I grew up in a house where, uh, both

30:56

of my parents had they were they

30:59

were God fearing Jesus lovers

31:01

who were imperfect. And

31:03

there were many things about my family life that were wonderful.

31:06

And then there were things that were a bit

31:08

maddening. But I'm

31:10

only only later in my life did I become

31:12

aware of what some of those maddening things

31:14

actually were. For instance, I grew up in a

31:16

house where my mom was, uh,

31:18

pretty anxious, and my

31:20

dad was, uh, though deeply

31:23

affectionate, could also be pretty stern. So

31:25

I grew up, uh, learning to be

31:28

afraid of anger. And

31:31

learning to be worried about anxiety

31:34

if you know if you will. And

31:36

and so then you end up having and so the

31:38

the parts of my own story

31:40

where I would feel angry or

31:42

feel anxious were not

31:44

really ever parts that I could talk about. So

31:47

these were parts of me that

31:49

got isolated and cut off,

31:51

which meant, you know, there were all kinds of

31:53

things that should have been happening in

31:55

my life. Uh, one of the

31:58

one of the, um, well known conversations

32:00

when I was about 15 years of age. And my, uh,

32:02

mom came to me one day

32:04

and said, you know, your dad has asked

32:06

me, why is it that you will talk

32:09

to me about certain things and you won't talk to him?

32:12

And I kind of paused. Yeah, right.

32:14

Exactly, exactly. I mean, like, I'm

32:16

like, I'm only 15 years old. And I look at her

32:18

and say, do you hear what you're asking me?

32:23

And what was so striking was.

32:25

She said.

32:25

You've just made me a psychiatrist.

32:27

Right?

32:28

Yeah, right.

32:30

Exactly. My training started very at a very young

32:32

age, at a very young age. And

32:34

after that, what was so interesting is nothing

32:36

ever came of that. Like

32:38

nobody ever came back around and had a further conversation

32:41

about this. And so I

32:43

learned that again, without

32:45

consciously knowing this, I, I learned

32:47

that there were lots of things like, what do you do about

32:49

women and sex? And what do you do about

32:51

your longing to be, you know, a person

32:53

of, of, of significance

32:55

in the world and what you're going to do for a living and where you're going to go

32:58

to call all these kinds of things were things that I was

33:00

pretty much processing on my own. And

33:03

again, because you don't know anything

33:05

different. You don't

33:07

necessarily know that you

33:09

are alone until

33:12

you discover that you're not.

33:14

When you encounter Jesus

33:16

and then you start looking behind you,

33:18

and you start to see all kinds

33:21

of trails that you've left

33:23

in your family of origin. In

33:26

which things happened that shouldn't have

33:28

and in which things, in my case, in a lot of respects,

33:30

in which things didn't happen that should have.

33:34

And when that takes place, you discover,

33:36

man, I have by

33:38

myself when it comes to

33:40

feelings of sadness and

33:42

grief. I mean, I lost my dad when I was 17.

33:45

I've lost three brothers, three older brothers

33:47

to cancer. I mean, you

33:49

just come to learn that like, no, this

33:51

is a thing that you're just going to have to take care of on your own

33:54

because nobody is coming for

33:56

you. With the exception

33:58

of Jesus. The

34:01

challenge, of course, is, you know, as far as the brain

34:03

is concerned, uh, the brain

34:05

pays a lot of attention to the things

34:07

that we pay a lot of attention to.

34:10

And if I am practicing living in my

34:12

mind as if I am alone most

34:15

of the time, the fact

34:17

that Jesus and I have encounters

34:19

every now and then. Doesn't

34:22

really give my brain the option to countermand

34:24

that. If most of the work that it's

34:26

doing is the work of persuading

34:29

it, that it's by itself. So this is kind of like the way Cheney

34:31

was. Cheney learned, she practiced

34:34

learning that she was by

34:36

herself with her pain. She

34:39

practiced this and she needed to in order

34:41

to survive. It's

34:44

only when she started

34:46

to encounter someone, first with

34:48

me, and then with this confessional community in which

34:50

people were genuinely coming for

34:52

parts of her heart that she

34:55

had isolated from

34:57

herself and from everybody else, that

34:59

literally her brain and her soul

35:02

started to wake up to things.

35:04

But of course, what's challenging about

35:06

this is that our

35:08

deepest longings for connection.

35:12

Those intimacy longings

35:14

that we have for relationship. Remember, it's

35:16

not good for the man to be alone. That

35:18

longing is often the very

35:21

place where our wounds have also

35:23

taken place. Cheneys

35:25

deepest wounds took place in the context of

35:27

intimate relationships with her boyfriend, with her

35:29

friends at school, in which she was bullied. Like these, these

35:31

close proximal relationships. And

35:33

so we come to learn that as

35:35

much as I long for

35:37

intimacy, it's also dangerous.

35:42

And so I, I practice

35:44

surviving. And in some

35:46

respects, that's what I had to do.

35:48

And to this day, Chris. I

35:50

mean, I and I like we come

35:52

up with all kinds of coping strategies for these

35:54

things that are troubling. So I've come to discover

35:57

I'm I am I am now 60 years

35:59

old, and I have come only recently

36:01

to discover, for instance, just

36:04

how often and everywhere

36:06

I use envy. As

36:09

a way for me to cope with

36:11

the parts of me that I still feel like,

36:14

that I still feel inadequate, like I, and

36:16

like the person who gets invited to speak

36:18

at places that I don't get to speak to, the person who gets

36:20

a bigger advance on their book than I get. The

36:22

person who's more, you know, the most interesting

36:25

person in the room. If I'm not more interesting, like

36:27

the thing, I'm not the smartest guy and like, all

36:29

the like, it's just everywhere. And

36:33

all of this. To be

36:35

envious is a way for me to cope

36:37

with the parts of me with

36:39

which I suffer in isolation.

36:43

But if I'm willing to practice vulnerably

36:45

opening the opening those spaces. This

36:47

is what when Paul writes in First Corinthians

36:49

chapter eight, verses two and three, there are

36:51

those who know, who do not know,

36:54

those who think they know, who do not know as they ought,

36:56

but the one who loves God. The person who

36:58

loves God is known

37:01

by God. Notice it's not the person

37:03

who loves. God knows God is

37:05

known by God. They have the experience

37:08

of being deeply seen, soothed,

37:11

safe, secure in all the places that

37:13

they hate the most, and

37:16

have the experience of being loved in that space.

37:18

And this is where suffering

37:20

meets its match in

37:23

Jesus. Jesus

37:25

comes and says to us, I see

37:27

your suffering and I am not leaving

37:29

the room. And

37:32

I want to say, well, you have no idea how long this

37:34

has been. You have no idea

37:36

how horrible this has been. And

37:38

he might say, I might

37:40

know more than you know. I just know I'm not leaving the room.

37:43

I know that I'm going to continue to be with you

37:45

in the presence of this, and we eventually

37:48

discover. That

37:50

the worst part about our suffering

37:52

is not the pain that we experience.

37:55

But our deep sense that we are

37:58

alone with it. Yes.

38:01

You have so many great

38:03

quotes throughout, you know, from

38:05

from believers throughout the centuries. I want

38:07

to come back. But one

38:09

of the main questions that I had for

38:11

you that I wanted to deal with today is

38:14

that penchant that we have

38:16

for making sense of our own

38:19

suffering, of figuring

38:21

out why something bad happened

38:23

in our life? Well, this happened because of this,

38:25

and God did this, and, and

38:28

and we fed all the puzzle pieces together.

38:30

And so when we come back, I want you to answer

38:33

that question. I got a quote for you. This

38:35

is really, really good stuff today

38:37

with Doctor Kurt Thompson. The deepest

38:40

place is our featured resource. You'll

38:42

find it at Chris Fabri Livorno.

38:44

Org. I

38:56

think what we're talking about today. It's

38:58

a it's a it's weird to think of it this way, but

39:00

when Jesus said that I came to

39:02

give them life and life

39:05

abundant, that that's

39:07

part of what we're talking about with our suffering.

39:10

Doctor Kurt Thompson has written the deepest

39:12

place, suffering and the

39:14

formation of hope. We're just kind

39:16

of scratching the surface. As a matter of fact, there's so

39:18

many great quotes in here. And Mark in

39:21

Illinois wanted to add

39:23

one. Mark a right ahead. Why did you call

39:25

today?

39:26

Yeah. This is a George

39:29

McDonald quotation, and

39:31

it begins. C.S. Lewis is the problem

39:33

of pain. And for those who know the

39:35

quotation, I'm going to alter one word just

39:38

to make it more understandable to the modern mind.

39:41

The Son of Man suffered

39:43

unto death, not so that

39:45

we would not suffer, but

39:47

so that our suffering would be

39:49

more like his.

39:52

And Lewis later

39:54

says in the book, God

39:56

whispers in our pleasures,

39:59

speaks in our suffering, and shouts

40:01

in our pain. Pain is

40:03

God's megaphone to arouse

40:05

a deaf world. And I would follow on with

40:08

two points. Number one, it's interesting

40:10

that Lewis represents pain

40:12

as one of the ways that God

40:15

amplifies his voice,

40:17

and the other is that I would

40:19

contend that if if

40:21

God shouts in our pains,

40:23

he sings in our

40:26

ecstasies is.

40:29

That's a really good mark. I'm glad you

40:31

called. So, Kurt, what do you say to that?

40:34

Well, you know, uh, Chris, I

40:36

think, uh, what.

40:37

Mark's.

40:38

Getting at, I think, is, uh,

40:40

what our common experience

40:42

is that, um,

40:45

we like to say in our, in the work that we do with patients

40:48

is that, you know, when people, uh,

40:50

come to the office, uh, they

40:53

come and they mostly want to

40:55

be relieved of their symptoms. But

40:57

that's very different than coming wanting to be.

40:59

Well. And

41:02

we often we, we say

41:04

that like people begin to make the changes

41:06

that they need to make once they have

41:08

suffered enough. And

41:11

if someone is not making the changes

41:13

that they claim that they want to make or that they need

41:15

to make, it's because at some level they haven't suffered

41:18

enough. It doesn't mean that they haven't suffered, but

41:20

it means that they haven't suffered. You

41:22

know enough of through. Through

41:24

a threshold of suffering that really is

41:26

evoking the kind of change what? The kind of suffering

41:29

that we talk about when in recovery,

41:31

in the recovery from, uh, from

41:34

addictions, when we reach, you know, that rock

41:36

bottom place. And so this notion

41:38

that God has built into

41:40

the, uh, into the fabric

41:42

of creation. A

41:45

response, a painful stimulus, a painful

41:47

response. When we are

41:49

living in a way that is apart

41:52

from the way we were made to live, you know, really just

41:54

makes a lot of sense. The real question, of course,

41:56

is when that pain comes,

41:58

whether God is talking to us or God

42:00

is shouting at us through his megaphone.

42:03

The real question is how we are going to respond,

42:05

because I have all kinds of ways. When

42:07

someone shouts at me through a megaphone,

42:10

I may like, it, may get my attention, or

42:12

it may have me running away. And

42:14

the question is whether or not I'm going to respond

42:16

by coming toward God. And that

42:18

has everything to do again with what we're doing

42:21

in response to the body of Jesus. That

42:23

can be Jesus for us in those moments

42:25

of suffering.

42:27

The question that I posed

42:29

before the break I

42:31

make, I can deal with my suffering.

42:34

If I can make sense of it,

42:36

I can deal. You know, as I look at the cross,

42:38

I can if if I'm giving

42:40

my life for the sins of the world,

42:42

that is okay. Well, I can understand that.

42:45

And Jesus had that. I don't have

42:47

that. I don't understand what's going

42:49

on here and the cause and effect. And

42:51

is it my fault? Is this something that God's

42:53

is the enemy doing it? You know, all those questions.

42:56

But I think a lot of times we comfort

42:58

ourselves by thinking, oh,

43:00

I may have made sense of my

43:02

suffering because this happened and this happened

43:04

and this happened, and even

43:07

that we're not promised to understand

43:10

in totality as humans. Right?

43:13

Well, not only were we not promised that,

43:15

Chris, but it actually doesn't even follow

43:17

the rules of the way the neurological

43:20

system of the brain and central nervous system work.

43:23

Um, as we like to say,

43:26

first of all, is that the human body?

43:28

First we sense things,

43:31

and only then do we make sense

43:33

of what we sense. And

43:36

so when we feel

43:38

whatever it is that we feel, especially if we are

43:40

suffering, we're having sensations, right?

43:42

This is the physical or an emotional,

43:45

uh, perception of distress over

43:47

time. If I'm having that experience

43:49

and someone gives me information

43:52

or even explains to me why

43:54

I'm having the pain, the fact that someone says, Kurt,

43:56

here's the reason why your femur is fractured.

43:59

The explanation in no way, shape

44:01

or form reduces my suffering of my fractured

44:03

femur by knowing about

44:05

it isn't what it needs. What

44:07

I need is surgery when my

44:09

son doesn't come back from Iraq.

44:13

There's no explanation. That's

44:16

going to be enough. What

44:19

we need is presence.

44:22

When we look at John 11.

44:25

I mean, it's a classic example of

44:27

Jesus encountering two

44:29

sisters after their brother has died

44:32

who are in their suffering.

44:35

And Martha first has

44:37

this encounter that becomes this theological

44:39

conversation with Jesus. And Martha doesn't

44:41

stick around long enough in her own grief.

44:45

Jesus is trying to get to that.

44:47

It's not until Mary comes and

44:49

simply after saying, if you

44:52

had only been here, she just returns

44:54

to her weeping. There's

44:56

no asking for an explanation. There's

44:58

simply grief. In

45:01

which Jesus joins her. And

45:03

then he moves.

45:05

That is really good. I

45:08

don't think I've thought a bit about it

45:10

that way in the moving into.

45:13

And that's what God wants. And

45:15

here we are at the end of the program. We've and I

45:17

said we only scratched the surface here.

45:19

But this is.

45:21

This is freeing. It

45:23

really is not making

45:25

sense of the

45:27

the suffering. It is allowing

45:30

God to do in us

45:32

and through us what he wants,

45:34

which is glory.

45:36

And you, you develop that in the book.

45:38

Uh, Doctor Thompson, thank you for

45:41

the conversation today, for the hope

45:43

that is is here for the abundant

45:45

life that is here. Keep

45:47

doing what you're doing and come back and see us again,

45:49

okay?

45:50

We'd love to. Chris. Thanks so much.

45:52

Doctor Kurt Thompson, our guest today

45:55

on this best broadcast.

45:56

Of Chris Fabry Live, our featured

45:58

resource at the website. The deepest

46:01

Place suffering

46:03

and the formation of Hope. It's

46:05

one of the best reads of the last

46:07

year for me, but

46:10

this message is difficult to embrace.

46:13

I'd rather talk about the happiest place.

46:16

I'd rather go to the path of least suffering

46:18

and pain. But for some

46:20

reason God allows this in our lives.

46:23

And as you've already heard in this hour,

46:25

the place of growth, the place

46:27

of transformation comes in the hard

46:30

spots. And if you're going

46:32

through one right now, God bless your friend. I think

46:34

this will encourage you even more as

46:36

you get into it. The deepest place.

46:39

Go to the website Chris Fabry live org

46:41

click today's info. You'll find out more

46:43

about the book and Doctor Thompson and

46:46

thanks for listening. Remember, Chris Fabry Live

46:48

is a production of Moody Radio, a ministry

46:50

of Moody Bible Institute.