Defining Emotional Health in Leadership

Episode 56 - Emotional health
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Cameron: [00:00:00] Virtually every time we see something like, um, pastor scandal or whatever, it's described as a moral failure, even if under the surface, it really is like. An emotional health issue or spiritual health issue or whatever. It's a moral Failure and I I wonder what that is. I wonder what like what that means about how

Luke: we view it Welcome to the uncut podcast.

Luke: I'm pastor luke. I'm pastor cameron, and this is the uncut podcast, but we have honest uncut conversations about faith life and ministry So we were just sitting down and we were talking about what we're going to talk about today. And we kind of started talking about what

Cameron: we're about today.

Luke: So we just decided to turn on the microphones and kind of keep going.

Luke: So, um, picking up from the last episode a little bit, we're talking about [00:01:00] emotional health. And really just reflecting on its impact in leadership. There's like a couple, there's some podcasts that you and I were listening to, um, that were talking about the fallout of the lack of emotional health in leadership.

Luke: And, um, there's no shortage of stories in the news of just like a fallout from the Failed

Cameron: power dynamics gone.

Luke: Absolutely. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And that is like, you know, that like when we talk about that, it's often called a moral failure, which is a good descriptor. Um, it's sometimes a spiritual bankruptcy.

Luke: Um, but it's also an emotional health issue. Like maybe that brings us to What is emotional health like?

Cameron: [00:02:00] It's really interesting because I've never realized this before, but it's just kind of just hit me is that virtually every, virtually every time we see something like, um, pastor scandal or whatever.

Cameron: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's described as a moral failure. It is. Even if under the surface, it really is like. An emotional health issue or like a spiritual health issue or whatever. It's a moral failure And I I wonder what that is. I wonder what like

Luke: what that means about how we view it

Cameron: How we view Someone's like the downfall of someone in ministry, like, like, let's just say they had a deeply flawed sense of like emotional health or deeply like a, um, like a relational [00:03:00] inequity.

Cameron: There's an inability to be within healthy relationships and that produced a lot of like destruction in their ministry. And then they left the ministry and it's called what a moral failure. Right. Right. And so what is the morality, the morality of emotion, uh, or the morality of like the inability to control emotion in a healthy way?

Cameron: I don't know. That's an interesting topic. I wonder, like,

Luke: do you think that's a, do you think that's a convenient way to flatten down the narrative of it all? Because it's easier to judge a moral failure.

Cameron: Well, I think probably it's just become out of convenience, a catch all term for what happens when a pastor didn't want to leave, but had to leave.

Cameron: Right. So, [00:04:00] cause you can't. Really say, Oh, they were not good with people, but they weren't. Yeah, but they weren't, but that's a moral issue or not. I don't know. Yeah. But anyway, yeah, we were talking about like, what does it mean when we, when we talk about emotional health, what does that even really mean?

Luke: Yeah. Like, what is it? Cause we, we talked a little bit around it in some vague terms. Last time we kind of talked about emotions as messengers of relational need. Um, Kind of talked about like pursuing that what do we mean when we say emotional health? Yeah, because

Cameron: I think sometimes people are gonna they're gonna think that like, oh Emotional health means I am never gonna be a hell if I'm emotionally healthy just like if I'm physically healthy I'm never gonna get sick.

Cameron: Mm hmm, right, right So if I'm emotionally healthy and I'm never gonna experience depression I'm not gonna, never gonna be [00:05:00] anxious. Never gonna be sad. Never gonna be sad. I'm never gonna be mad.

Luke: Or maybe even you're, you're, you're following, you're following the middle path and you're just gonna be not gonna feel anything.

Luke: Right. Right? Not gonna feel happy or, or too happy or too sad. You're just gonna be this kind of like, perfectly like. Super vanilla. Super vanilla. Unaffected by everything.

Cameron: Yeah, that's not emotional health. I think that's, I think emotions, the, the peaks and valleys of emotion, Or experiencing the peaks and valleys of emotion is a sign of emotional health, not a sign of emotional Yeah.

Cameron: Um, and so if emotional health is not the absence of emotion, that's not what we're talking about. That's not what we mean. And what do we mean? Right. There. Um, and I, I, I think that emotional health, when we talk about emotional health, I [00:06:00] think what we talk about, or at least one of the ways that I'm talking about it is in the realm Like an awareness and a curiosity about how and why I respond, react, feel, think in certain situations.

Cameron: Like, so having a good, if I'm, if I'm emotionally healthy, I have a recognition of like, why, why am I getting angry at this? Thing or, or even anticipating what my emotional response is going to be to a situation that's coming up and being able to walk into that situation in a way that is, I've already been curious about how I'm going to feel.

Cameron: I'm already aware of how I'm likely to feel given [00:07:00] past experience. And now I am in the process regulating unhealthy, damaging emotions in a way that allows me to maintain relational, um, good relational boundaries or good relationships within that. So if I'm going into a, for instance, if I'm going into a meeting.

Cameron: And I know either the person or the topic is someone that makes me angry, but that my anger, I don't believe that anger is always a bad emotion.

Luke: Sure. Like you're coming into a meeting and you're going to talk about the Easter Bunny. Right. Completely made up

Cameron: scenario, of course.

Luke: Completely made up scenario.

Luke: Right. Um. Which I know, Cameron, you feel a certain way about the

Cameron: Easter Bunny. I do feel a certain way about the Easter Bunny. Um, but that's neither here nor there. See, that's him regulating his emotions. [00:08:00] Exactly. That's an exact, exactly. That's a great point. Is that, um, is that if there's something that you're passionate about, you're about to go into a conversation about it, you know how you're likely to respond.

Cameron: But what I'm going to say is, okay, now as a leader or as a pastor, my relationship with you. Mm hmm. Or whoever the person is, persons or environment that I'm in, we're having that conversation. Um, that it is important that I maintain a sense of Christ, Christ likeness, kindness, gentleness, love still can be passionate.

Cameron: still can speak the truth, still can have an opinion. Um, but that I do not allow my emotional reactivity to damage the environment or the people around me. Um, or that I'm [00:09:00] aware of how My emotions or my emotional responses to things affect others around me. Yeah. Because that can happen in the reverse.

Cameron: Yeah. To like with, with, we're talking about anger, but you don't want to get angry at someone and blow up and ruin a relationship or something like that. But it also be as like, okay, what if I'm experiencing an internal emotion that's, that's not serving me well, super anxious about something. Mm hmm. Mm hmm.

Cameron: I can carry that emotion home and carry around a lot of anxious energy. And then it comes out in anxious thoughts and anxious words and anxious actions. Right. And then all of a sudden, what happens to my five kids and my wife? I look at them and they weren't anxious when I wasn't home. But now that they're home, what are, I'm home and I've got all this anxious stuff.

Cameron: What are they? Now they're anxious. Now they're responding to my anxiety with their own anxiety. They're [00:10:00] codependently, uh, they're codependently reacting to my anxiety.

Luke: Well, I mean, just like, uh, how many times have we, you know, I don't know, spilled a coffee of, or spilled a cup of coffee or a cup of tea in my case.

Luke: Um. Tragedy. Um, or like someone's like a good example is like when we just absolutely lose it. In our anger, when someone's, when we're driving and like somebody does something stupid, like fails to merge properly and you just go off the handle, like, are you actually all that mad about how they merged or are you angry about all the other things that you've just not been dealing with the anger about?

Cameron: Yes. Um, so would you like, you think that an awareness and a curiosity about the tendencies of emotional response is a good. Definition of emotional health.

Luke: I think so. I mean, so like I as you were saying, I was like, oh, this sounds a lot like, [00:11:00] um, have you ever read the emotional intelligence book? It's called emotional intelligence 2.

Luke: 0. I can't remember the authors of it right now. I think

Cameron: it's on my shelf on our shelves. I've

Luke: never read it. So the their quick definition is, is self awareness. Self management. Others awareness, others management. So, aware of yourself, what you're feeling, what's going on with you. Learning to manage and regulate that.

Luke: Awareness of how you are impacting other people and how they're impacting you. And then managing that dynamic. And I think, I think that kind of gets, I think that's a, just another way of saying exactly what you were kind of talking about, but this curiosity of, uh, of what, what it is that we're feeling and, and then kind of, it has to have a [00:12:00] managing part of it too, I think.

Luke: I think we have to grow in our capacity to, like, hold it, um, because, like, there's a lot of people who kind of, this is kind of like maybe a stage of people's, like, when they begin to explore their mental, emotional, spiritual health, is they realize, oh my gosh, I've been like, Not feeling my emotions for a long time and they start feeling their emotions But then they're just like well, I'm angry and so then they become privileged in their actions, right?

Luke: Because they're like, well, I'm just speaking my truth or I'm right just living my truth or I'm You know, they end up just doing literally anything because and the justification becomes their Oh, I was triggered. I was upset this, like, you know, it becomes this, I'm just like, well, your awareness of the thing does not mean that you must be dictated by the thing, right?

Luke: You can go into [00:13:00] that other extreme. They just, essentially they move from repressing to overexpressing. You have to have that like ability to ability to take the emotion, take the thing, hold it, even if it's a really big emotion, like anger. And not let it rule you, but like, listen to it. What's that? Um, what's the message it has for me.

Luke: And then direct it in a God direction and a good direction, you know,

Cameron: I like it. So then how do we see, is there an environment where emotional health does? You don't have to be aware of it.

Luke: No.

Cameron: Yeah. I can't, because I was thinking like, well, okay, my marriage, do I need to be Do I need to be curious about my [00:14:00] emotions and like aware of my emotions and aware of my like responses to emotion and I would say like also emotional health, especially in context of relationships is also the ability to understand the emotions of those around you, not just your own.

Cameron: Right, you know understanding what is going on in my wife's heart understand that others my staff or my you know Church or whatever like to know what's going on or at least to have an idea about what they're experiencing and how How how am I going to respond in the midst of their yeah emotion, right?

Luke: I even was like as you asked that question. Is there a space and I was like, well, what if i'm Uh alone in the house playing video games and eating cheetos Oh yeah i need to be emotionally aware of that because like

Cameron: maybe you're an emotional

Luke: eater right like or maybe i'm just like trying [00:15:00] i'm playing some video games and i'm just trying to escape from like what i'm feeling or something like that there's still i still my emotions are still there and you know i was i can't remember what book or where but like.

Luke: We feel things before we think things. Like, like, anything, anything sensory or anything that happens, it gets processed through our brain through the emotional center before it enters into our logical center. So we've had an emotional response to what someone has said before we've even understood what they've said.

Luke: Mm hmm. And I think we like to think that, no, that's not true. We're just these logical brains on sticks. You and I talk about that all the time. That's just not true. No.

Cameron: Yeah, it's just not. So how then should we talk about emotional health in regards to leadership?

Luke: Well, so to go back [00:16:00] to, cause I was talking about like, this is like something that has been really just recently brought up in my head of just like, or I've been learning is that like the ability to hold things to kind of hold a big emotion and not let it rule me, right, or not push it away, but learn from it and move in a good direction with it is like, that is so essential to good leadership.

Luke: Because like, if say you're leading, you're, you're leading a staff meeting and we get, we sit down and I come in and I've just got an attitude, right? I sit down to the staff meeting and I'm just like, I'm just like, why are we here? Like, this is pointless. Like, I'm just, I'm just emotionally vomiting all over the place.

Luke: You have to figure out how to lead in that. I'm bringing this big emotional energy into the room. That's going to take the whole staff and everybody down this negative [00:17:00] direction. And you've got to figure out a way to hold it because you could just push back equally strong and kick me out of the room might be the right decision to do in certain circumstances, but probably the best thing to do would be say, Hey, Luke, like what's going on?

Luke: Like what happened before you came here? And like, let me feel bad and then even deal with like, holding off your own emotions about maybe me being disruptive so that you can navigate it as a leader.

Cameron: Because, so let's talk about what the, what the, what the other options are. Right. The other options are is you, Can really like in a situation like that, you could, um, let's say that there's, we'll just talk about the extremes of the spectrum.

Cameron: Yeah. You're a person who is, has a really, um, forward, almost aggressive, [00:18:00] um, uh, type of personality. You're like, you, you face things or you have an, the other end of the spectrum, you have a really avoidant personality. Yeah. All right. So if let's say I'm the person over here who is like, face it, recognize it, face it, call it out, like deal with it head on.

Cameron: Yeah. Right. There is a possibility, like you said, that not that's a possibility. Recognizing my own emotional, my own emotional tendencies towards that thing, I can, I can not see what's going on inside of you or stop to see what's going on inside of you. Right. And instead just allow my emotional reaction to how you are, rule of the day and just completely just like bull in a china shop over top of someone.

Cameron: And it ends up leaving a mark. This person you in [00:19:00] a space of being like, oh, I just got my rear end kicked in right because I had a bad morning and Now I know that I can't be honest Right about how I'm feeling with this person because their tendency is just to crush me Yeah So that's one spectrum and it ends up damaging this person because I'm not aware that that's my tendency and I'm like, okay How do I lead?

Cameron: faithfully How can I be still still be forward with this person without crushing them with my forwardness, right? The other side of the spectrum, you can come in like just fit to be tied, looking for a fight, whatever. And I, I sit on the avoidant side of the spectrum and I don't say anything and I try to ignore it.

Cameron: And you're just like continuing to like, You essentially

Luke: allow me [00:20:00] to infect everybody else with my

Cameron: attitude. Exactly. Right. So now it becomes not necessarily The, the, my lack of emotional awareness of how that works or what's going on in the room, it doesn't necessarily affect you. Although it does, it does.

Cameron: Yeah. But now it's affecting because I'm as the leader, I'm not dealing with. What you're experiencing, it's affecting this person, it's affecting this person, it's affecting this person, it's affecting this person, it's affecting the culture of the room. And so now I, no matter what side of the spectrum, right?

Cameron: If there's not an awareness and a curiosity about how I tend to respond and react to things, someone else's emotional landscape, then it, Can be will be damaging. Yeah, and I would say that like what is what is pretty clear in [00:21:00] experience for me is that leaders who have very low emotional IQ or EQ, meaning an awareness and a curiosity about their own feelings, emotions, actions, reactions have behind them a trail of broken relationships.

Cameron: Just like you look behind them in their life and you just see broken relationship after broken relationship after broken relationship after broken relationship. And usually the person is like, it's all their fault. Without understanding or taking stopping long enough to say, wait a second, I happen to be the common denominator and all those broken relationships.

Cameron: Maybe I should be a little bit more curious about who I am and how I react and how I respond. And what the way in which I think and feel and act in [00:22:00] really all of life,

Luke: all of relationships. I can't remember. I feel like it was one of the speakers that we saw at the global leadership summit or like one of their books or something, but they were talking about, like, you have to consider how you affect the people that you walk into a room with, like, that is like, for so, and I was like, that is such a, Next level question

Cameron: that yeah, that is a very that's a high level leadership question, right?

Cameron: It's like whether or not you believe it or not when you walk in a room the the emotional Landscape of your life you bring it with you. Mm hmm and the responsible Thing to do is to ask the question, how does my presence affect the other people in the room?

Luke: Yeah. And I, just like you were describing the person who has that low [00:23:00] EQ and has just a absolute, like, you know, just a trail of disaster behind them has no idea.

Luke: Yeah. How they affect people when they walk into the room. Or they don't care. Yeah.

Cameron: Or they don't care. It becomes a really self centered view of their leadership is whatever I'm feeling is the most important. Relation or is the most important emotion, whatever I'm experiencing is the most important emotion and it's on other people to remain healthy.

Cameron: That's

the

Luke: worst. It is just the worst.

Cameron: It is. Yeah, I'm like, I'm, and I'll be the first to admit, like, I don't sit here as the, like, as the perfect example of what it means to be an emotionally healthy leader. Sure. Like, uh, that's not me. I would say one of the benefits that we have about having a small staff here or a small leadership here.

Cameron: There's like four of us really right. Is that, uh, we work closely with each other and [00:24:00] we've, we've, you know, you, you're here almost three years now. Yep. Right. I've worked with some of my other staff for, you know, going on a decade. Right. You know, and, uh, what's really nice, but also like, yeah. It means you got to check your heart, right?

Cameron: Is that they can tell immediately how you are, who you are, how you're feeling, what you're dealing with when you walk in a room, your posture, your body language, your what you say, what you don't say, how you say, what you don't say,

Luke: and then we got to figure out how to manage it because sometimes like I've been here and I'm just like, Oh boy, all of us are just loving life right now.

Luke: Like we are all just bringing like your energy into this room. So, And we got to figure a way to shift this. Like, do we need all, they need to go to like crown street for like some donuts and there's some bagels or something go and like, so,

Cameron: I mean, I think that there's a [00:25:00] benefit that one, there's a benefit to us knowing that about each other and being able to see that about each other.

Cameron: Um, I don't always, I don't always feel like we, it's necessary, necessarily healthy to like, say we all come in with ER energy. Being like, Oh, we need to do something to cheer us all up. Right. I think that there is a, there is a, a healthy part of a leadership culture or a staff culture where it's like, um, is we can name it, but not necessarily feel inclined to have to fix it.

Cameron: Right.

Luke: Cause you got to honor it. Or like, like what I was saying, you got to figure out how to

Cameron: hold it. Yeah.

Cameron: So like I was just sharing with you and Jessica just a little bit ago that I'm, I'm, I'm sad today. I've got some sadness for some things going on in my life. It would be. One thing for [00:26:00] like to spew all that with the expectation that now I want you guys to be sad with me. Sure It's not healthy for you and it's not healthy for me.

Cameron: It does no one any good, right? Right,

Luke: but it would also be terrible you know let's stick with Winnie the Pooh for a second if you were to come in feeling all your and I just come in and say You're all tigger. I'm all And I just come in and say well Cameron just like look on the bright side of life like Yep And I was just the, just the bulldoze over you trying to, in goodness, even with positive intention, fix all of your sadness.

Luke: I'm just like, turn that frown right side round. What does that do to you? You're like, Oh, well, I can't be, I can't be me here. Right.

Cameron: Yeah. Yeah, it, it completely, um, what's the word I'm looking for? It, um, devaluing. Yeah. It devalues what a person is feeling emotionally. And as a leader, um, we have to walk really, really tight lines, really, really razor thin lines between our [00:27:00] own emotional states and the responsibility that we have to lead people to different places than they are right now.

Cameron: Yeah, um, and so and understanding what environments you can let more of your own emotional state out and what environments it's more responsible to hold that's not responsible for me to do what I just did in the office with you and Jessica at the pulpit on Sunday morning, right? You know, uh, that there is a, you know, I, I need to, um, uh, I, I need to be a little bit more, uh, guarded or aware of how my emotional stuff affects the whole,

Luke: right?

Luke: Yeah, I, yeah, we won't go down to that example. Um, but anyways, let's just say, um, I'm curious, because we kind of, we got a question on the [00:28:00] video this past week, and they were kind of asking like, is there so many more mental health issues in this modern society, because God is so much more removed? Maybe we don't have the same values or ethics that we once did.

Luke: Um, you know, we've become more of an individualistic society push towards gratification. So I guess, like, I'm curious as we're kind of having this conversation is where does explicitly like Christ come into this? Mm-Hmm. . And, 'cause we, 'cause we did talk about that at the beginning. We were talking about like moral failure.

Luke: Is that emotional failure or spiritual bankruptcy? Um, is some of this all kind of, where does the undercurrent of spirituality blend into emotional health and leadership? Because the thing is, is that, interesting about that question was my initial thought is like, man, [00:29:00] actually people who are really religious, at least in my mind and experience, have a bad track record for emotional health.

Luke: Agree. And so much of what I feel like I'm trying to do consistently in my ministry, and I think you are too, is trying to show the integration between those two things and show like, look, like acknowledging God and being spiritual and reading the Bible doesn't mean repressing emotions or getting rid of them and showing the harmony of all of those.

Luke: So can we talk about that

Cameron: a little bit? Yeah. Wow. Is that a big topic? Yeah, um I agree that I think, um, I think that there is a vacuum of emotional unhealth, particularly in evangelical Christian communities. Christendom. Yeah. [00:30:00] Um, probably spurred on by just like the last like evangelical revolution. Um,

Luke: Which one?

Luke: The one that started in like 2016 with all the deconstruction? No,

Cameron: no. I'm like the one that started like in the seventies with the Jesus movement.

Luke: The, the, the fallout. And of, of the seeker sensitive modern contemporary church movement.

Cameron: Yeah, yeah. Where everything is convenient, everything is fast, everything is shiny, everything is happy, everything is well put together and excellent.

Cameron: Um, and so if you're not shiny, happy, well put together, excellent. Um, then you, something is wrong with your faith. Like you, what do you mean you're depressed? You're going to heaven. What is there to be depressed about? What do you mean you have problems with anger? Aren't you still supposed to just love everything and love everyone, right?

Cameron: There's [00:31:00] a, there is, there has been a culture, I would say like in the last 50 to 60 years of Christianity that has like put. emotional health on the back burner of faith and said, it's not as important as just believing that as important as just having faith. And, um, and the reality is, is that we experience faith through our emotions.

Cameron: Like you, you, you can't have an emotionless faith. Yeah. You can't have a faith that is, that is completely devoid. Of any of your typical, normal emotional processes or reactions or responses. And so the two can't be separated. [00:32:00] And, um, I think it's one of the reasons that like, Scazzaro's work does hit so many high points in life.

Cameron: You know, he, Pete Scazzaro is a retired pastor, author, now wrote, writes, I guess it's a series called Emotionally Healthy Discipleship was the first book I think that he wrote. Emotionally

Luke: Healthy Spirituality, Emotionally Healthy Discipleship was his most

Cameron: recent book. Okay, Emotionally Healthy Churches.

Cameron: Yep,

Luke: so he's got like a Small group curriculum and they're excellent. Yeah,

Cameron: they're, they're incredible. Um, but, um, but you know, so I, I think that there has been a, a little bit of a cultural, like I kept a stuck, um, in the. denying of emotional things in the midst of faith, um, to our detriment. Um, [00:33:00] but to answer that question or some of the questions that were in it, you know, do I think that the The rise of emotional health and the fall of emotional health or everyone is associated with the general loosening of values and morals and society and going from a we us society to a me or I society.

Cameron: I don't think so. Yeah, I don't I don't know. I don't I don't know that I I don't I don't know that I would say that the. Change in the landscape of emotional health now is paralleled with or that there's direct correlation with the changes in the values and core values or morals or ethics or whatever individualism versus, you know, um, [00:34:00] community type of things that's going on in the culture.

Cameron: I think that.

Cameron: It may be an overly simplistic answer, but I don't really think there's too much that's new under the sun, you know, in terms of, um, why things happen in culture, the way that they do, I think my, the stand, I have a, even though this is a kind of a loaded term, Uh, I have a biblical worldview. Um, you know, and I, I, I, I believe and I, I trace virtual, I trace everything back to all of the brokenness that we experienced now, even the brokenness of our own emotional processes back to the original, the original act of brokenness and sin.

Cameron: And I think that we experienced a lot of, um, this emotional disease In our lives, because we are experiencing the fallout of sin, the consequence of sin that, [00:35:00] um, not necessarily because the culture is changing so much, although those things are kind of one in the same, or at least that there's associations and parallels there.

Cameron: Um, so generally that's what I think about that question, but

Luke: yeah, no, I, I think like there's something, there's something to challenge in that assumption in that, like, is the world getting worse? Um, and yeah, maybe kind of, but I, you know, I was talking with someone,

Cameron: I think just the worseness is changing its environment.

Cameron: Yeah, it's like the character, like the, the window dressing on the worseness of the world is changing. I don't, we, we, we, we will, we will never get more sinful than we were in the garden. Yeah. Yeah. It's not like there's a more sin and a less sin. Right. We are not more sinful than Adam and Eve. They are not less sinful than us.

Cameron: Like it's the sin changes its manifestation, [00:36:00] but it still remains equally offensive to the holiness of God.

Luke: Yeah. I was talking with someone and they were, they, they were having this realization or like, you know, all of this, like awful things that happen, like, um, like sexual abuse and sex trafficking and stuff like that.

Luke: And then they were finding out that, Oh, this is old. Like, this isn't just new. This has been happening for a long time, just previous generations maybe haven't talked about it publicly. Or talked about it in a different way. Or talked about it in a different way. Or if you just, if you go backwards in time, you can go back far enough that you can find literature and history and people who were very honest about all of those things happening.

Luke: We just had like a season in, in, you know, maybe a hundred years or so, or two hundred years where we decided to not talk about it. You know, like we became repressed at

Cameron: some point or thousands of years ago, we hear this a lot about [00:37:00] like, um, the way that the world or the way that the culture now is changing their views on sex, the morality of sex, like, like, like, just look at the way that the world has become like, have you ever read the Greeks?

Cameron: Right. Like, do you know how sexualized that society was? I mean, normative experience of pedophilia, like that was normal. Right. It was not an aberration. Right. It was normal and accepted. This is not a new thing. No. We're not experiencing a new thing. Yeah. We're experiencing the same old thing. Yeah. Again.

Cameron: Um, but we have very short memories. We do. Um, or we're just not informed. We're not, yeah. But, uh, yeah, like the Greek, the Greek experience, even in the Roman period, there, [00:38:00] Expressions and practices of sexual things equally as like, well, disturbing. We

Luke: don't even have to talk about, talk about sexuality. We can just talk about the Roman Coliseum.

Luke: That used to, you know what they used to do? So you used to take criminals and execute them for entertainment.

Cameron: Yeah. Make them fight

Luke: lions. Right. And that were, they weren't even not even like criminals is even the nice thing that to say they used to put. People who were just politically unfavorable and have them fight lines or fight each other and people

Cameron: cheered.

Cameron: Yeah, they bought tickets. Right. We filled stadiums.

Luke: Right. So is it, are we worse? Are we

Cameron: worse? I don't think we are. Yeah i don't think

Luke: we are i mean we still have like reality tv where we put emotionally unhealthy people and make them do life in front of a camera

Cameron: but love is blind bachelor you know that kind of stuff [00:39:00] and

Luke: we watch it we do we eat it up.

Luke: Somebody was telling me like early in reality tv show i'm i need to look this up but early in when reality tvs were new they had like a game show where they grabbed homeless people and made them compete in a reality tv show to win money.

Luke: Right? Yeah.

Cameron: Wow.

Luke: Are we better?

Cameron: Yeah. We're not.

Luke: We're not really. We're not better. You know, and so yeah, I think that there is, I think it's unfortunate that sometimes religious language is co opted to cover up spiritual and emotional unhealth.

Luke: I, I can remember, I'm not going to say who this, who this pastor was, but if people [00:40:00] listening recognize this sermon, then wow, it's a, cause it's a deep cut of a sermon, but it was a pastor that was well known. I listened to him a lot at one point and I remember listening to this one sermon where he got up on stage and he was complaining to the congregation and he was like, he was He kind of was just like, you guys are so stiff necked, you guys are so just hard to pastor, you guys make my life so difficult, I just want to become a bread delivery man, and I just want to deliver bread.

Luke: Because the bread won't talk back to me, and the bread won't sin, and the bread will just listen to me. And maybe I'll just preach to the bread, because that would be better than preaching to you. I was a young, younger believer, and I remember listening to that sermon. I was like, something feels wrong.

Luke: Yeah. And now I can name what was wrong. Yeah. The whole world can name what was wrong in past in, in retrospect, but like, yeah, that's [00:41:00] not healthy. Right. Getting up there with this sense of like religious authority, berating people, making them feel bad and having this kind of like, Martyrdom over over serving in the pastorate all covered in this religious language all covered with sin and righteousness and and you're a stiff neck people like the Israelites in the wilderness and just like all is this just giant emotional unhealthy and spiritually bankrupt way of being and leading and That's

Cameron: awful.

Cameron: Emotional disease. Mm hmm.

Cameron: Okay. Do you have anything else to say on the topic? The last word? Or is that the last word? I'm, maybe that'll be my last word. I think that's a good, [00:42:00] I think that's a good ending point for today. Mm hmm. Um, good conversation today though. I think that's, I think it's valuable. Um, say we've talked before about the things, the books that we want to write.

Cameron: One of them is around, you know, these topics of like church, moral failures and emotional health and how to heal from it and how to, um, avoid it. Maybe you'll see that book someday out there, Uncut podcast audience. Maybe you won't, but we appreciate you listening today, tuning in, um, as always, if you would share this to wherever you share things.

Cameron: Yup. Bye. Instagram, uh, Facebook, TikTok, whatever you use Twitter, um, X, X, um, like it, uh, subscribe. That would be great. It'd be a great encouragement to us as always. If you have any [00:43:00] questions and you want to send them in and see what we would say about them, our text line is 716 207 0507. And, uh, we'd be, we would love to see those questions come through.

Cameron: So thanks for listening. We'll catch you on the next episode.