10/4/26 - "Lets Talk about Psychology and Christianity: Who Will Deliver Me?"

0:00 Good to see you guys. You guys weathered the heat and made it here. Good for you to be honest, like, you know, growing old kind of sucks. You know, we went we went and our com group went and hit golf balls yesterday and my body feels traumatized by it like I was like, what kind of exercise is this? 0:21 It's like what the, so I'm kind of like, I'm, I'm feeling a little off today. But hey, we're, we're going through what we call, I think our hot top topic series. And as you guys know, we've been, oh, it's called let's talk and we've been sorry, I'm blaming on golf. 0:38 OK, I blame it on golf, but let's talk and we're talking about a bunch of controversial topics. And Ben has done a lot of the heavy lifting. He's he's done some pretty crazy ones today. Well, I think this one's less controversial in, in a lot of circles, especially the younger generation, but we're talking about psychology and faith, OK, psychology and faith. 1:01 So, so some of you guys, because I think mental health has been sort of like a fad recently and it's become less taboo to go see a counselor or therapist. So in a lot of ways, some of you guys might be going like, what's the controversy controversy here, right. 1:16 But I'll tell you guys something like in the circles that I grew up in, even as a psych major in my undergraduate years at UCSD, like this was a topic that came up OK and why? And well, I was, if I could take a, maybe I'm oversimplifying this, but if I can take a real quick stab at it, I would say that, well, this is what it kind of impressed me when well, made impression on me when during my undergraduate years, I read 1 of Freud's first books, Sigmund Freud, right? 1:51 One of the founding fathers of psychology, right? And in his book, he's explicitly said I want to replace religion. OK, so a lot of the founding fathers, not all of them, but a lot of the founding fathers of psychology were secular humanists. 2:07 They wanted to replace God right now, this is what I'll say is that I think most people that are in mental health profession and study in in the field of psychology, they would all agree that today psychology takes a very different approach, right? 2:23 It doesn't have this kind of like worldview driven like kind of agenda or the maybe they're probably some better still like that. But I would say that psychology has relied a lot more on research, neurobiology, empirical evidence as a way to understand human, the human experience. 2:45 So this is what I would say, if we believe the Bible's claims about human anthropology, right? Our purpose, our meaning, what makes us tick, right? If if we believe like God, you know, everything that the Bible claims about the human experience is true, then wouldn't we be able to observe it in our reality, right. 3:10 And the study of psychology, that's what it's trying to do. It's trying to understand human experience. OK, so let me give you guys kind of a silly illustration, right? So imagine it's my birthday, right? And we have the we break out the birthday cake and everyone's like, this cake is so good. 3:30 And they go, Joe, why is this cake taste so good? And I say, and I tell them it's because my wife made it with love, right? And so like, OK, and so, you know, some people, some people like that answer. 3:48 But then like, let's just imagine P Ben's at my birthday party and P Ben's all. No, Joe, it's actually because she used 2 cups of flour, three eggs, butter, sugar and vanilla. OK, So he gets really factual, right? 4:06 And then I say stop, you're ruining love, all right, because I'm the touchy feely guy, right? But now, OK, knowing that, OK, now here's the thing, right? If we take a step back, knowing the ingredients of a cake doesn't Make Love disappear, right? 4:27 And at the same time, knowing the ingredients doesn't explain how much care and attention my wife put into making the cake, right? So this is what I would say that's part of what psychology does. 4:49 It helps us investigate the ingredients of human experience, right? Our brains, our bodies, our relationships, our attachments, our learning, our emotions, our trauma, our cognition, our behavior, all these things, right? But describing these things doesn't mean we've explained the way God, right? 5:10 It doesn't mean we've explained away sin. It doesn't mean we've explained away grace or redemption, right? And if the gospel is really about transforming the whole person, then why should the gospel be threatened by our endeavor to understand the whole person, right? 5:31 So instead of turning this sermon into like this lecture or debate, because it's still a sermon, right? So this is, this is so, so hard to write this message because it's like I, I was trying to integrate all these like really complex ideas and make them simple, but they're not be like this weird debate or lecture, right? 5:50 It's still a sermon. And so let's see how psychology helps us understand the truths of how the gospel affects the whole person. So in understanding the whole person, we better understand what drives us to sin and we better understand what encourages health and growth. 6:11 OK, so that's that's what we're trying to attempt to do this morning. OK, so let's go ahead and and read from Romans 7, verse 14. And this is, you know, a passage that many are you familiar with. 6:28 And it's Paul's like kind of description of his human experience, right, of of his frailty and his limitations, right. And verse 14 for we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh. That is really important. 6:43 It says I am of the flesh sold under sin. For I do, for I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very things I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law that it is good. 7:03 So now it is no longer I who did it do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me that is in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out if I do not do the good I want, but evil I do not want, and but the evil I do not want. 7:29 And it is, is what I keep on doing. Sorry this is such a tongue twister like passage. OK verse 20 Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. 7:44 So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God and in my inner being, but I I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. 8:07 And then he says, I like the NIV because it says they add an O here, right, Oh, right, wretched man that I am who will deliver me from this body of death. 8:23 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then I myself serve the law of God with my mind, with my flesh. I serve the law of sin. Let's pray. Father in heaven this morning as we endeavored to kind of explore just the depths of our human experience, our struggle with sin, our humanity, our limitations, Lord, perhaps it will move us to despair. 8:54 And yet, Lord, we know that is that is the first step to knowing your grace. And I and I pray, Lord, that this morning that you would renew our hearts in Christ. Lord, we thank you. We pray these things in Jesus name, Amen. 9:09 So the first thing that I want us to like think about this is when Paul talks about the flesh, right? What he's saying is that we are these embodied souls, right? We're embodied souls with limited agency. OK, So what does that mean? 9:26 Well, embodied soul, Well, basically this is the idea that our souls are very intimately woven into our bodies, right? We experience reality through our bodies, right? We we interact with our body and the the world interacts with us, right? 9:45 Our bodies help us feel. They help us think they help us desire, right? So that's this idea that we are embodied souls. But then he goes on in this passage to make this point that we are limited in agency, right? 10:01 If we look at that, the verse right there in verse 17 or 14, for I know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh and sold under sin. Can we go to the next slide actually? 10:18 So verse 15, I do not understand my own actions if I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. And verse 17, So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. 10:34 And what Paul is saying here is that in my mind, body, soul, experiences this limited agency. I don't have full control. I do the things that I hate, the things I don't want to do, I keep doing. And when I want to do good, evil lies right there beside me. 10:52 And I feel like sin lives in my body. So sin dwells in me. So not only does my soul dwell in my body, but this sin, the sin nature dwells in my body too, and it wages war against me. 11:09 So how do we understand this? Well, this is kind of interesting. It's very nuanced. This idea of the flesh, right? Is, is the literal translation, right? But the NIV chooses not to take the word flesh. They translate flesh instead. 11:25 They use this idea of sin nature. OK, sin nature is the reason why they do this is because I think they were afraid that we would come to the conclusion that's that our flesh or our bodies are inherently evil. 11:43 And that is not true, right? So when Paul's talking about the flesh, she's talking about the frailty and weaknesses of our human experience, but he's not necessarily specifically only talking about our bodies being like by nature, evil. And that's why when the NIV people chose to translate this, they said sin nature. 12:03 OK, now, so and you think about it, that's true, right? Because Jesus lives in our bodies, right? He understand, he understood humanity. He understands our biology, right? He experienced it, and yet he was without sin. 12:19 So there's nothing inherently evil about our bodies. In fact, our bodies are were created good. OK, but the Esvs you guys notice uses this word flesh, right? And this is really important. I it could be just because the ESV likes to keep things as literal as possible, but I can't help but think that there's also this idea that sin expresses itself in our bodies and, and, and sin is embodied through our bodies. 12:50 And one other way of saying this is that sin exploits our bodies. OK, So what in the world would I mean by that? Let's just look at something like human sexuality. OK, so human sexuality is a good thing, right? 13:07 Especially if you're married. It's like, yes, but, but here's the thing, it glues to the purpose of it. One of the purposes is to glue together husband and wife, right? To bond them together, right? It's like the spiritual, it's a physical and spiritual act of intimacy, right? 13:24 But here's the thing, when you're, when you're not married, right? It's not like those appetites aren't there, right? And So what sin does is it takes those appetites and it tries to disorder them, right? 13:40 And we have temptation that exploits our body, the appetites that are there that we might express like intimacy outside of the covenant of marriage, right? And it kind of wrecks what God intended sexuality, the how it to be expressed in a healthy way in the covenant of marriage. 14:00 And so that gives you kind of like this idea, like, look, if I didn't have those sexual appetites that are part of my bodily experience, then soon wouldn't be able to exploit that, right? So let's let's think about it this way, OK? 14:21 Psychology is the study of the human mind, the brain, its functions and how it affects our behavior, right? So it helps us understand why we think the way we do, why we feel the way we do, and why we act the way we do. 14:40 Now, psychology, what I think it can do is help us understand why we sin. Why does sin have such a huge power over our lives, right? 14:58 And it fits in with Paul's idea of embodied sin, right? This idea of flesh, the sin, sin exploits our bodies, our brains, our weaknesses, right? And so one way that psychologist or therapist, they would summarize this idea is that history becomes biology. 15:21 History becomes biology. OK? So what do we mean by that? OK, let's take like trauma, for example. OK, so maybe you have this really traumatic experience in your life. And do you know what your brain and your body automatically does usually is it's decides this you, you cannot experience this again. 15:47 So what I'll do is I'm going to put up these new neural pathways that are going to warn you. And what it does is like anything that reminds your brain or your body unconsciously about that traumatic event, it will set off fire alarms, right? 16:07 And so history becomes biology. And so triggers can be completely random, right? But for some reason, your brain has associated that with danger. And when you're triggered, it causes all this dysregulation. 16:26 It could make you really aggressive. It can make you really scared and like, you want to feel like you need to run or whatever, right? I'll give you a silly example. OK, so when I was in college, I was driving down the freeway and everyone just braked really hard. 16:43 OK, so I think there was an accident in front of us. So I slammed on my brakes and I braked and I, I actually stopped in time. I didn't hit the car in front of me right, but the person behind me didn't stop in time. It rear-ended me right. 17:00 So do you know what happened what my brain automatically did for decades and my wife hates this about my driving and it took a long time for it to kind of go extinct. Every time I saw a brake light somewhat close to me, I would like slam on my brakes and everyone be like like passengers hated like riding with me. 17:23 It was like, I the only way I could stop it is I really focus and I just like, OK, I'm not going to respond this way. And it took a long time with psychologists say this is like extinction, right? And so, so that is an example of when history becomes biology. 17:40 Now, how does this kind of help us understand like sin? Well, let's trauma is one thing, right? And trauma, Oh my gosh, that could be another whole message, I guess, or a workshop we could do. 17:57 But let's like even look at like relational traumas or injuries, right? Many of you guys are familiar with this idea of attachment theory, right? And so this is the idea that in your childhood, if you had like these relational like injuries, right? 18:15 Unfortunately, caused by our parents, the way they related to us or didn't relate to us, right? It could form, it can form the way we automatically approach relationships like we could become avoiders, right? 18:34 Because we automatically in our brain is telling us relationships are not safe. And so we avoid, we become very independent. We, some people would say that you're kind of cold, right? And, or on the flip side, maybe that your parents raised you in a way where it caused like you to be really obsessed over relationships. 18:57 You get really anxious about them. And when it feels threatened, you get really, really aggressive, right? And so there's all these things that are like, and there's mountains of research on this, OK, like, and it makes absolute sense if you just think about it, right? 19:16 But here's the thing. It's like, why do I get defensive? Why do I have a hard time loving? Why do I have a hard time drawing near to people? It's because my history became biology. And on the flip side, it's like, why do I get so aggressive? 19:31 Why do I get so like obsessed with these relationships? You know, and I start nagging or I start like really like I'm becoming really aggressive and I like some other people, right? Or even start yelling at them. I just get completely unhinged, right? 19:50 It's because your history became biology. Now here's the thing. How about addictions? I tell you guys something, addictions like, let's say pornography. Like I work with a lot of people that are struggling with pornography. 20:05 And one of the things that I found, not in all cases, but in a lot of them, there are these deep traumas. There are these hurts, there are these like emotions that are so hard for them to deal with, like massive amounts of shame, anxiety, whatever it is. 20:27 And and pornography is like the only way they know how to cope right now. Here's the thing. This is what I I don't want us to misunderstand is that understanding someone's sin, it's not the same as excusing sin, right? 20:48 Understanding someone's sin is not the same as excusing sin. But what it does is it helps us understand our brokenness. It helps us understand what is underlying our sins and driving us to these things without making an excuse. 21:05 But at the same time, as we can have a little more compassion for ourselves, we can empathize with ourselves, maybe the way that Jesus does, as the author wrote in Hebrews that he sympathizes, He empathizes with our weaknesses because he knew what it was like to be human, you know? 21:32 So the fact, so this understanding of what drives us, right, can help our repentance be more concrete because now instead of us just saying, stop your sinning, right? 21:51 That's awful. You should feel terrible about yourself. And I get, I guarantee you people that are in addictions or whatever, they hate themselves already and it's not going to help them. Like, you know, you can't hate yourself into transformation and change, right? 22:06 But here's the thing when you start asking what wounds are underneath that? What are the beliefs underneath that? What are the habits? What are the relationship traumas? What were the circumstances? What behind those patterns? Now you're identifying idols in their life. 22:24 And now you know where the Lord's healing hand needs to make some transforming work in people's lives. And now we could shine a light and and bring the gospel in to those hurts and those injuries and those traumas. 22:45 But here's the thing that when we like take a step, when we think about this and we think about Paul's experience where he says, what a wretched man I am, right? 23:02 I think we can all to some degree relate to that, to that, like, experience. Can't you? Like when I read this where he says, wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from my body of death, Paul is feeling despair. 23:21 He's feeling a kind of helplessness. And he's not saying I'm not morally responsible. He's not saying that at all, right? But he's saying, absolutely, I can't save myself. I can't change myself. 23:38 Somebody needs to help me. Somebody needs to rescue me. And this verse, like, honestly, for me, it's a very vulnerable spot for me because I think I've felt that helplessness. 23:53 I have felt that powerlessness. And I have a feeling everyone in this room, if you've been honest with yourself, you have felt it too. You know what it's like in these moments where I don't know why I do what I do, but I keep doing it and I hate it and this. 24:13 So this moment of despair is the first step to change. This moment of despair is the first step to rescue. Where you say I am affected by powers and patterns within me that I do not fully control. 24:37 And many of these powers are rooted in deep injuries and pain. And here's the thing, why did Jesus rescue choose to rescue us? 24:52 If you think about it, he said it in so many different ways. He said that it is the sick that need a doctor. He said it's like we're sheep without a shepherd. 25:08 He says they do not know what they do. And in the and I mentioned early in the book of Hebrews, he sympathizes with our weaknesses. You know, there is a part of our human experience where when Jesus sees our sin, it's like he sees an illness and he he has the remedy and he wants us to find him to find our our cure and our healing. 25:53 You know Martin Luther, he wrote really interesting paragraph here that if you guys can bring it up about despair, it says but no man Sorry, I'll read it from here. 26:12 But no man can be thoroughly humbled until he knows that his salvation is utterly beyond his own powers, devices, endeavors, will, and works, and depends entirely on the choice, will and work of another, namely, of God alone. 26:30 For as long as he is persuaded that he himself can do even the least thing toward his salvation, he retains some self-confidence, and he presumes that some place time work for him, by which he may at length attain to salvation. 26:51 But when a man has no doubt that everything depends on the will of God, then he completely despairs of himself and chooses nothing for himself, but waits for God to work, and then he has come close to grace. 27:09 Those who fully understand their need for the a Savior are the ones who run to grace, and they are the ones that will find grace. Yeah, Andrew Huberman, he's a professor in neurobiology at Stanford Medical. 27:30 He's, you know, professor of ophthalmology. Yeah, total underachiever, right. But he says this, right? This is really interesting. I was listening to podcasts and he made this observation, I think. I'm pretty sure he's a person of faith. 27:45 And he said this. He said people, when people are not able to suppress actions, in particular and addictive or compulsive behaviors, and they decide to give that process to a higher power, the success rate of people being able to suppress that behavior are astounding. 28:04 And this is what he said in his podcast. It's he said, this is totally anti intuitive, right? He's like, it's kind of like you're driving and you go, I can't stay in between the lines. And he's saying, you know, what helps is when you let go with the wheel, right? And trust in a higher power. 28:20 And I don't know, like we could probably psychologize this too. But there's one thing. Let's stick with theology. What we know is that despair, it leads to surrender and it leads us, it pushes us to Jesus and it leads us to transforming grace. 28:43 In this passage where Paul is saying, O wretched man that I am, who will deliver me, this is Paul letting go of the wheel. This is Paul running to Christ and his remedy is thanks be to Jesus Christ. 29:04 And so in this moment when he's writing in Romans 7, his whole self righteousness, his confidence has crumbled. And then he crumbles into the arms of Jesus where he finds healing. 29:23 And this is the pathway, a spiritual transformation. You know, we don't have, we're running out of time. So I mean, Romans 8 is an amazing passage about, OK, we've we've gone through despair, right? 29:41 Romans 8 is like the new life in Christ under the gospel. And now the Holy Spirit dwells in you too. So we dwell in our bodies. Sin dwells in our bodies, but the Holy Spirit dwells in our bodies, right And in. 30:02 And this could be Part 2 also of faith and psychology, but we won't go into it because there's not enough time. But maybe we'll just, we'll just touch on it really, really lightly. There is one thing an important ingredient to the gospel to transform our lives, and that is the work of the Holy Spirit in verse 15. 30:25 For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the spirit of adoption as sons by whom we cry, ABBA, Father, the Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God. 30:49 This is what if you wanted to like study it right or psychologist the way they might look at it, they call it this the Holy Spirit provides we call a corrective experience. So what is a corrective experience is an experience that essentially where our experience in it could be in therapy, it could be in prayer, it could be with a spiritual director or whatever, or even in our relationships with people. 31:20 We have an experience where our old patterns, our old expectations, our old relational beliefs like are formed by a new and transforming experience, like something different happens. 31:38 So let me give you guys an example just right here in this passage. In our lifelong struggle with sin, we have the Spirit of Christ reminding us over and over again that we are children of God. 31:56 Why is that a corrective experience? Because it's not what we would expect. It's not what we often experience in everyday life and in our despair over our sin, what we would often expect expect us to be met with shame and condemnation. 32:16 But instead we are met with grace and we are met with love. And what the Holy Spirit reminds us is that we have this Heavenly Father like singing over us, rejoicing over his children and love. 32:37 We we have him continually calling us his beloved children. And he sends the Holy Spirit to dwell on our lives, to remind us again and again and again and again that there is nothing that can separate us from his love and faithfulness. 32:57 And this is this is where that corrective experience can heal the earthly father's wounds, wounds from spouses rooms, wounds from our failures, wounds for our disappointment, our failed dreams. 33:19 The Spirit turns our despair into gladness. And it is the gospel that provides this corrective experience through the Holy Spirit. So, and there's so much we could talk about this, but let's just focus on the first step, which is this idea that before we get to the grace, we need to understand despair, we need to surrender, we need, we need to admit and confess to God. 33:57 I cannot change myself. I need a savior. I need you to deliver me and it's when we admit that that we begin to experience grace worship team. 34:14 If you guys could come on up, I want to just give you guys a moment of prayer and really what I'm I'm hoping that you guys could talk to God about is to talk about your despair. 34:30 Talk about those things in your life. Talk to God about it, the things that felt feel out of control, the things that you feel powerless against. And maybe what you can do is just meditate on these two verses and as you kind of read it over and you think on it, let the Spirit and press on your heart any prayer that He moves you to pray. 35:02 Maybe it's a prayer of confession. Maybe it's a prayer of praise. Maybe it's just a cry for help. Maybe a prayer of surrender. Whatever. These verses move you to like, talk to God about it. 35:18 Let's pray.