Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Self-Care or Selfish? The Gospel of Wellness | 2 Corinthians 4.16

Episode Date: February 11, 2021

People say you have to take care of yourself before you can take care of others. Is that true? Or is it an excuse to be selfish? Hear Keith Simon and Patrick Miller discuss how the modern explosion of wellness and self-care correspond to Christian principles. Interested in more content like this? Scroll down for more resources and related episodes, including Tara Isabella Burton's book Strange Rites, Anna Lynne's article on Rachel Hollis, and our earlier episode on How to Love Your Neighbor. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now.

Welcome to Tim Minna Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work. My name is Patrick Miller. And I'm Keith Simon. If this podcast has been helping you in your walk with God, would you take five seconds to help us? Hop onto Twitter and follow our new Twitter account at TMBT Podcast. If you go there, you can see our latest episodes. You can also follow Keith and I and send us messages. We'd love to follow you back and see what's happening in your life.

So Patrick Kersina and I just came back from a few days of a little getaway that we did with some friends. And it was kind of a friend of a friend of a friend kind of thing where a small group of couples has gone on a trip in the last couple years. And we picked the place in Arizona. I didn't pick it, but it wasn't so much chosen for what it was as much as it was just because it was great weather and that kind of thing. But it turns out that I spent the last few days at a wellness center. at a wellness center. So that's like the church of the new age, right? Well, yeah, and that's what we're going to talk about today is wellness.

But I've got to describe this to you. Now, it's kind of a really... I'm so excited right now to hear about this. It's kind of a really nice resort. I mean, it's beautiful. It's in the desert and the mountains and all this. And all that's normal. If you went on vacation somewhere, you'd be looking to go to a place like this.

But there was a clairvoyant there, an astrologer. Clairvoyant. That's the person who can speak to the dead? Is that right? I was trying to figure out the difference between the clairvoyant and the psychic. Oh. And I wasn't exactly sure that I understood the difference. And this isn't just like a, this isn't a joke.

No, some of the people there were really serious about it. Now there was like an astrologer. A dreamologist. How about that? So did you tell them about your Super Bowl dreams? I stayed away from the whole thing. I was afraid I was in it. Last night I dreamed I was going to the Super Bowl with my friends.

What does it mean? Are you going to the Super Bowl better? No, I wish I was going to the Super Bowl. However, I had a very vivid dream that I was going to the Super Bowl with a friend. Wow. That must have been a letdown when you woke up. Well, no, we had terrible seats. I couldn't even see the game.

Oh, well, there you go. Anyways. Okay, so astrologer, clairvoyant, psychic. Yeah, and so they had these massages where they would chant over you, flap their wings, bark like a dog. Now, okay, I just want to be really clear that none of us on this trip signed up for this. Be honest, you did it. We had no idea what we were getting to.

You got a massage. I didn't do it. And he had told the masseuse, start barking. No, I did not do any of that. But my eyes were open to this whole world of wellness on steroids. Now, we see it play out in our life in a lot more common ways and just in our everyday life. But there's this group of people out there, this movement. Maybe it affects everybody to some extent in which people are told that we need to take care of ourselves. So a wellness center is kind of an extreme example to start with it. Very extreme. I actually don't know many people who are looking to go to wellness centers as a part of their quote-unquote self-care. I haven't talked to anyone who's doing something like that.

Here's the best thing that came out of it for me. Really the only thing that came out as far as the wellness deal is that I've stopped drinking monsters and now I'm drinking water. Wow. I wonder how long that will last. I want everybody who's listening to know there is a box of monsters sitting on the floor. At Keith's a very large box of monster. I haven't opened it. To his credit, he hasn't opened it, but he also hasn't gotten rid of it.

And it's been there for a while. So I am playing with fire. Temptation. I'm drinking water today. You're like the person who kicks a cigarette habit but leaves the box. You just don't know. Maybe I'll need it again. We'll see.

Well, so I didn't bark like a dog, but I did kick monsters for today. So whatever I think about wellness and self-care, I think about maybe more everyday normal things. When someone takes a mental health day, I'm just not feeling. good. I can't come into work because I need to recoup, take care of myself. Or I think about things like oils, beauty care products, makeup. There's a whole kind of fitness aspect of wellness and self-care. And it's something that has really grown in the last five years. In fact, there's a number of studies that have pointed out. I think it was back in 2015. There was something like maybe 15 wellness apps. And last year alone, there were thousands upon thousands that were released for the first time,

so much so that Apple called Wellness the app theme of the year. Some of those are like calm, headspace. There's some of the early ones that became very popular. Big time people are invested in it or users of it. There's the whole Gwyneth Paltrow line goop, which we'll get to in a little bit. Oh, I cannot wait to talk about it. So wellness or self-care, it kind of has a theology that lies behind it. And when you hear that, you might get a little bit uncomfortable and say a theology.

I just thought I was taking care of myself. How do we get to a theology behind it? But that's how everything works in our world, is that behind everything we're doing is a set of principles, ideas, values, and beliefs. And even if we don't buy fully into those values and beliefs, even if we don't buy into the theology of wellness, we probably pick up bits and pieces of it and then incorporate it into our life. The people that were at the Wellness Center that I was at a few days ago,

I'm sure that there were Christians there who were taking bits and pieces from the smorgas board of wellness and incorporating them into their life. There's a whole movement of people, and maybe this even describes you, and they're known as SBNR, spiritual but not religious. And I think that captures some of the wellness theology, is that it is trying to be spiritual and meet a deep spiritual need inside of people, but it's not religious in the sense that it doesn't have much form or structure that is shared among its adherence. People pick and choose what they want, and then they incorporate them into the other beliefs they have in life. So we

kind of become this hodgepodge of mixed beliefs, some Christian, some New Age, some Buddhist, some whatever else it is that we want to add. You become what Tara Isabella Burden calls remixed. It's her way of describing a new form of spirituality where we are mixing in maybe Orthodox Christianity with ideas and concepts that really have nothing to do with Christianity, and at times may even stand in direct opposition to the story that Christianity is telling. Now, she has an entire chapter in a fabulous book. It's called Strange Rights. Oh, it's really good. Oh, my gosh. If you like being interested, then read this book, because it is full of interesting stories. And she has a chapter on wellness and self-care. And she offers a really helpful definition of the theology

you might say behind wellness and self-care. It's a little long, but it's worth reading. She says, it's a theology fundamentally of division. There's the authentic, intuitional self and the artificial, malevolent forces of society, rules and expectations. We are born good, but we're tricked by big pharma, by processed food, by civilization itself, into something that falls short of our best life. Our sins, if they exist at all, why in insufficient self-attention or self-care? False modesty, undeserved humilities, refusing to shine bright. We have not merely the inalienable right, but the moral responsibility to take care of ourselves first before directing any attention to others. We have to listen to ourselves, to behave authentically in tune with what our intuition dictates.

Others, after all, are potential enemies. The people in our lives and the demands they make upon us might very well be the sources of toxic energy if we're not careful to avoid them. them. The foods we eat are full of toxins as well. It's a long quote, but it's a helpful summary of the central ideas that you will see behind a lot of these wellness brands. Again, whether it's fitness, it's oils or health care and beauty products, you'll see this same kind of thinking come out behind the product itself. And of course there's nothing wrong with taking care of yourself. Taking care of yourself is smart. It's wise. But at some point, it's becomes a religion. So I think Burton says in this book, although it might be somewhere else where

I remember hearing this, but this idea of taking care of yourself before you can take care of others goes all the way back to Oprah Winfrey. And she had used the analogy of the oxygen mask coming down in an emergency in an airplane. And first you need to put on your own oxygen mask, and then you can help others around you put on their oxygen mask. And so what they've done it's taking a good principle that we need to take care of ourselves so that we have something to give, something to offer other people. And then they have made the self into an idol so that you take care of yourself. That becomes the be-all end-all. And we don't really ever have time to take care of other people. And we're seeing examples of wellness and self-care. It's all over the place.

So a fun example is Weight Watchers. They rebranded from Weight Watchers to WW. And then they said that WW doesn't actually stand for Weight Watchers anymore. Now it stands for wellness that works. Weight Watchers has somehow tuned into the fact that something as artificial as weight loss could be anti-self. And they want to be for the self. They want to be for wellness that works. In fact, they've paired up on their Wellness That Works app with Headspace, which is a meditation app. Another example, and this is actually what first began to clue me into some of this stuff. My wife has the Peloton app. We don't actually have a Peloton device in our house. But you can get this.

Oh, wow. I was expecting you on a Peloton bike. I had it in my head. No, I'm sorry. So she's got the app. It's on your phone, and it will take you through workouts. And so she likes doing their treadmill workouts because it makes you go fast and slow. You have a treadmill at home.

And so she was doing this treadmill workout on her Peloton, and she stops in the middle of it because it becomes this sermon. I mean, this bizarro sermon where the Peloton instructor is saying, I want you to divide up everybody in your life into people who give you energy and people who give you toxic energy. I want you to make a list in your head of anyone who takes from you, of anyone who doesn't make you feel good about you, of anyone who makes you feel negative things about anything. I want you to make a list, and she goes, cut it off. Just cut those people out of your life. Cut those people out of your life. What if you're like your parents, your family? What are my two-year-old? And Emily's listening to this. She loves the exercise, but she's listening and she's going, this is crazy.

I'm seriously going to say, Patrick, you've got to do a podcast on this. I'm hearing this stuff everywhere, that you have to cut out toxic people. And it's true. It's the wellness ideology. What's the problem? You are good and of yourself. Trust your own intuition. And there's things that are outside of you that are threatening you. And again, it's just, it's happening all over the place. I really like the way you said that because the sin in wellness theology is what exactly? It's the toxins. It's the bad food. It's the big pharma. It's not trusting yourself. Not trusting. yourself, whereas in Christianity, sin is defined as rebellion against God, and it is something that we all struggle with. But in the wellness theology, it is that we are good people who need to get rid of the bad circumstances around us that bring out the bad in us or cause us to be bad, completely different than the conception of sin of a biblical worldview. And in fact, in the Bible, if you rebel against God, one of the major symptoms, in fact, a great way to tell that you've done it is that you become an incredibly selfish person. You turn inward. You turn in on yourself. And so, again, we're just trying to highlight that there's some differences here. And that this

stuff, again, it's everywhere. I remember the first time I heard someone tell me that they were taking a mental health day. They said it as a joke. They weren't trying to be mean to anyone, but five years ago, taking a mental health day was kind of a joke. You're like, I'm having a hard day. I need a mental health day. But now it's become a very serious thing. There are people who are calling into work saying, I can't come into work today because I need to take care of myself. I need to deal with my emotional life. Now, again, why are we talking about this? We're curmudgins.

We're not saying, get off our lawn. We might be. We might be a little. We might be crumaging. Let's don't completely rule that out as a possibility. Well, I would make you get off my lawn. So maybe we are crumptons, but I think there's something deeper. If your mom died, you might actually need a mental health day.

It's called grief. It's part of a normal process in life. If your house burns down, you might need a mental health. day. If your spouse gets diagnosed with cancer or your child, you might need some mental health day. So I'm not trying to minimize those things. But if you're just dealing with the normal anxieties of your life, if you're just saying, I just don't feel good today, I mean, welcome to planet Earth. I don't know what to tell you. That is part of normal life. And you're not going to make yourself feel better by taking a quote-unquote mental health day. In fact, I'm reading a book right now that's talking

about Christians who were imprisoned for their faith. So you want to talk about need in a mental health day. How about that? Wow. You just went big on us. Well, just what's fascinating. It would make us all feel bad about our life. So they were imprisoned by the Soviet government. And one of the things, it just struck me that one of these prisoners said was there would be days where he would say, I'm not going to go through my normal Bible reading and prayer. I just need to relax. He essentially said, I just need a mental health day. And he said, things always got worse. They never got. better. Those were the worst days, and I tried to avoid them. I would convince myself I needed it, and then I'd realize this is destroying me. So again, I'm trying to draw a contrast between two ways

of seeing the world. So let's do this. I think it's helpful to keep trying to define what wellness is and to show examples, because my guess is, if you're listening to this, you haven't bought into it entirely, but there might be elements that you might say, you know what, I need to resist that. I need to question that. And what makes wellness, at least to me, really interesting, is that it is truly a deeply American phenomenon and the sense that it appeals to the very things that we as Americans love. It sounds scientific, it is consumerist, and it's intuitional. So let's see each one of those things, and we can start with scientific. So wellness thinking can be traced all the way back into the mid-1800s, maybe even earlier than that. But in the mid-1800s, there was an idea

called animal magnetism. And the idea is that all animals, including human beings, have kind of magnetic fields within their body. Now, we would call this pseudoscience, or we might even call it just completely wrong today. But this idea is that human... I would call it completely made up. But it was housed inside the scientific community. And at least where they were the way I understand it, they believed it was true. It wasn't as if they were trying to make something up. They have scientific diagrams that are showing animals and where magnetic waves are coming from. And the people who were practitioners of this often called themselves doctors. And again, if you read the books, it would sound very scientific. I mean, back then, magnetic waves were a

brand new thing. People didn't know that they existed. So this is the pinnacle of science. Well, which kind of is a good little reminder here that science grows and develops, and that just because something is a scientific theory of a particular day, doesn't mean 100 years from now. People will still agree with it. So it might just want to remember that science has developed over the years, and it's still developing. And this is the movement that eventually grows into Christian science, which a lot of people don't even know what Christian science is. It's essentially the notion that if you think positive thoughts, you will magnetize positivity to yourself, and if you think negative thoughts, you'll magnetize negativity to yourself.

This is why Christian scientists won't go to doctors, because they believe that they can heal themselves through their thinking. Now, today we hear about that, and when we hear about parents doing that the children, we might even call it abuse because we realize it's entirely made up, but what we don't realize, it's called Christian science because back when it started, it sounded scientific. And the whole idea that you attract positive or negative energy to you, depending on how you're thinking about your life. It sounds like a book called The Secret, which came out years ago and was... That's a big Oprah Winfrey thing, too.

I was going to say Oprah publicized it quite a bit. But if you listen to the way that someone like Oprah talks, she will draw upon a lot of this power of positive thinking. So let's look at some modern examples of how wellness and self-care have begun taking on this scientific language. We're going to admittedly pick some extreme examples to make a point. They're the most fun. Just because they're super fun. But I want to say this. When you start buying into a beauty product, a skin care product, a set of oils, or even a mental health regimen, and it claims to be based on science, I think you should press pause.

Why? Well, let's talk about Gwyneth Paltrow. Gwyneth Paltrow, from Shakespeare in Love, actress. I know her as Chris Martin's ex-wife. Chris Martin's, they decoupled. They decoupled. Decoupled wife. Is that a new phrase for divorce?

You know she came up with that, right? Oh, yeah, I forgot about that. They were going to have a conscious decoupling. Yes. So anyway, she formed a business called Goop. Perhaps you've heard of it. If you go to it, what you'll find is this one of these asses? She should have fired the person who she hired to market this stuff.

Gupe? Fired. She should. No, it's genius. Bonus them. Are you kidding me? She's killing it right now. She is killing it.

So if you go to the website, you'll see that it is an aspirational brand. but if you dig down a little bit deeper, you find some of the craziest products, and you have to ask yourself, what are they selling here? And it's trying to sound, like Patrick said, trying to sound scientific, but it's not scientific at all. I can read you an example of a product on there on Goop. For $27, you can get, I'm just quoting from the website right now, a sonically tuned water with rosewater, grain alcohol, sea salt, collodial,

I don't even how to say it's a colloidial silver, therapeutic grade oils of rosemary juniper, lavender, a unique complex blend of gem elixers, including but not limited to, black tormaline, lapis lazuli. You're doing great job reading this. Ruby, Labradite, bloodstone, aqua, black onics,

garnet, pyrite, and pneumite. Recky sound waves, moonlight, love, Recky charge crystals. I should have that loud. People get angry at us and we laugh when we read quotes that are ridiculous. But you should stop getting angry. You should laugh at things that are funny. Yeah, so that's an example you can buy off the website,

and that's going to fix whatever problems you have. She also has Moon Juice, 2.2 ounce. Oh, that's a different person. Oh, it is? Yeah, that's a different one. But it's still worth of reading. Jessica Alba? Yeah, that's, well, this is, her last name is, I should have written it on here.

It's a juicing lady, one of the first juicer's out there, actually. Moon Juice, 2.2 ounce smoothies for $55. And here's what it does according to... That's not even... That's like a shot and a half. Some good bourbon. It lights up your brain and increases mental flow, toning the brain waves that connect to creativity.

And so the owner of this, we can't seem to remember her name. I shouldn't have written down her name. It's a weird name. It ends with a bee. And anyways, keep going. She became famous by publishing food diaries that were short on actual food,

but really heavy on bizarre ingredients. And so it might not surprise you that when Condé Nast, the big publishing house, wanted to do an article on Goop, and who wouldn't want that? Your Goop and you're going to have well-known magazines writing about you, it's going to promote your products. And of course you want that. But Goop refused to participate with Condé Nast in the piece

because Condé Nast wanted to scientifically verify the claims that they make on their website. And they're like, oh, no, you can't do that because they know they're making it up. All they wanted to do is fact-checked the scientific claims. That's all they wanted. Just let us fact check your scientific claims and Glenn Paltrow says, we're out. Yeah, because they know they're making it up. So what are they really selling? They're not really selling something that does what they claim. They're selling something to you as a person who says, I want to buy these products. I want to be known as the kind of person who takes care of themselves. Or I'm just so lost. I don't know what to do. And so I'm looking to moon juice or some sort of product to help fix my soul.

why won't they let them check their scientific claims? So another example from Gwyneth Paltrow's website. She has a blog on there. And again, what we're trying to show here is, and in this particular example, the connection between pseudoscientific sounding thoughts about what you eat, consume, put on your body, and your own mental health and health care. So check this out. It's a little bit crazy, but I'll read along.

After seeing thousands of patients, so this is a person who's claiming to be a doctor, after seeing thousands of patients over my career and going through cancer myself, I can tell you that unresolved emotional pain and unexpressed desires are the core of what I call dis-ease. So they're playing on the word disease. Or a body mind that's not at ease. Women who live only to serve and nourish the lives of others develop subconscious resentment because no nourishment is coming back to them. So you hear the self-care element there? You're taking so much time caring for others, but not caring for yourself that you're causing dis-ease inside of yourself. And he goes on. He says, is it just a coincidence that these women often develop cancer in the most

nourishing organ of the female body, the breast? Yep. Breast cancer is caused by caring for other people. You heard it here first. Well, second. Second. Now, again, we're laughing because it's so obviously ridiculous, and yet I hear people say this kind of thing, where they seem to think that their physical and mental health is being negatively affected by caring for others. Now, again, you should set up healthy boundaries in your life. That's not what we're talking about. But being a self-sacrificial person, no matter how much scientific language you put around it, that is not going to give you breast cancer. Now, my point in saying this, because I can imagine someone who has their particular product that they really believe in and its particular claims,

and maybe you're starting to feel offended by what we're saying, my point isn't that everything in the wellness world is entirely made up. You'd probably need a PhD to tease out what's true from what's false. It's a mix of things. What we're trying to say here is that the scientific language used by these brands, it's part of a new religion. And the reason why they speak in the scientific register, why they use that kind of language is because in America, science is the language of truth. And so if they're going to give you true claims about your body, about your soul, about what it means to be human, they have to couch it in scientific-sounding language. And I'm not trying to offend you. That's called marketing. It's not real. It's marketing. They're trying to sell you

something, which leads to our next point that wellness isn't just couched in scientific language. It is deeply consumeristic. They say if you want to know the truth, always follow the money. And if you follow the money, what you find is that wellness is a huge, huge industry. In fact, in 2019, there was a $4.2 trillion market, not billion trillion dollar market. In 2015, it was only $3.7 trillion market. So we spend half as much on wellness products as we do in actual verified medical health care. Wellness real estate, $52.5 billion in America. Let me explain for those who don't know what this is.

You can buy into these neighborhoods or communities that are entirely based around wellness. Because, Keith, you're negative energy. We share in office. Your negative energy is really affecting you. It really affects me, man. And I take that home and it affects my kids. And then if I'm around my neighbors and they're bringing more negativity into my life, well, that's going to make things worse.

And people, again, this is insane. $52.6 billion is being spent so that people can live in wellness community. This must be like in California. Oh, it has to be. Doesn't it? It's not in Columbia, Missouri. Workplace wellness jobs, $17.6 billion. So follow the money trail.

And what you find is what Patrick said is true. And that is that this is about marketing. People are trying to sell you certain kinds of drinks. So there's supplement stores or whatever. They make all kinds of scientific claims, but what they really want is for you to part with your money. And they know that you're living in a world that says take care of yourself. And they know that you have a natural inclination to be healthy, to be smart, to be a person who is developing in their life. And so they appeal to that instinct and say, hey, we've got this magic elixir over here.

If you drink this, if you use this ointment, if you go to this clairvoyant, if you do this exercise regimen, Yeah, I mean, even Soul Cycle or CrossFit kind of gets into this. It's not just that you'll lose weight, but that you'll become a better person. It's not that you'll just get in better physical shape. It's that you'll have more positive energy. Now, look, there's a lot of great things about working out. There's a lot of great things about using good products, but you have to be wise and not just get sucked into a marketing scheme.

And not buy into the transcendent promises that some of these things are promising you. Yeah, really that's the big thing because I don't really care if you waste your money. What do I care? Waste your money. Do whatever. We all spend on money on all kinds of things. Some of them wiser, some of them unwiseer. I like to buy nice meat.

Well, we just keep going. So, thanks, Patrick. So if you want to spend your money on stuff, go for it. I don't care. But the point is that if you're thinking that this is going to be part of your soul care, if you think that this is going to heal you, if you think this is going to draw you closer to God, if you're looking for satisfaction and fulfillment and meaning and purpose and it makes sense out of your life, all the things that are promised by many of these products, that's where I'm bothered.

That's what I don't want you get it sucked into. And as much as Key says, spend your money on whatever you want to spend your money on, he can say that. I don't know if that's what God says to us. Oh, wow. And I'll press further than that. These products can be extraordinarily expensive. Oh, crazy expensive. I mean, insanely expensive.

Because people have money. They've got to spend it on something. and so they're attracting a specific kind of person. They have got a target market of people with a lot of disposable income who have empty lives, and they're trying to get you to spend your money and give it to them. The target market is affluent or would be affluent, people who want to appear affluent, young to middle-aged white women. And what's so ironic about this is the person who actually coined the term self-care was a academic

who was in the field of black studies, and she was making the point. that if society doesn't care for you as a black person, then you're going to have to care for yourself. And she calls it self-care. But this word has now been co-opted, again, largely by affluent white women to talk about you who can afford to buy $70 beauty products and go to the gym and all these various things,

you taking care of yourself as though no one will take care of you. Are you sure this appeals to women? I think it appeals to men more and more. I'm going to say that there's a lot of guys buying in this too. I agree. I think some of the fitness and the... Like the CrossFit, whole CrossFit thing. I totally agree with that. The products I don't see as much, buying the beauty products, the oils, that kind of thing.

But I see it in the exercise regimen. I see it in what one of my friends calls hustle porn, which is this kind of ideology that says, work hard, hustle hard, be the best, max yourself out. But it's, again, often couched in this wellness language about. taking care of yourself and being the best that you can be. So we see similar things. Broader point here. Wellness is deeply consumeristic. You have to have a certain income level to buy in. Why that's so appealing, I think, is that you can kind of curate a bespoke wellness regimen for yourself, for me. In fact, there's this bizarre advertisement. It's totally grammatically

incorrect. But this is what it said. It said self-care you can confidently say is my. Is my? Is my? I don't know. Yeah, it's weird. But you see the point. They're saying because it's expensive, there's kind of this sense of I've bought in, I've invested, I've created this very particular regimen that's perfectly suited to me, which goes to the next point in this whole idea of wellness and self-care. It's intuitional. It's all based on your intuition and what you know about yourself. So when I was at this wellness center with this kind of vacation for friends, and I just keep emphasizing if nothing else I have insecurity, that we were not there for that. We were there because it was warm and a nice place to hang out.

But one of the things that people would ask you who work there is, are you intuitional? And to be intuitional, you picked up, even though there just a couple of days, you picked up was a really good thing. It meant you were in tune with yourself. It meant you were in tune with nature, in tune with energy, in tune with other people. And you really wanted to be able to say, yes, I'm intuitional because I think it meant that you could read other people and see what was going on in their life. So you said as being others-oriented, not knowing what's best for you, not seeing what's true of yourself, not being faithful to you. Well, remember, I was only there a couple days, but I understood the intuitional meant that I could look at you and tell you what you're going through right now. I could look at you and say, oh, Patrick, you're stressed because you have a family problem.

I just met you, but I know this about you because I'm intuitional. I can read you. Now, maybe it starts with reading themselves and knowing them. themselves that allows them to read you? I don't know. I just know that Intuitional was a word that was used a lot at this place. Hold on. I'm going to try to read between the lines here because I too am Intuitional. Are you saying that someone like came up to you at the pool and said, I can tell that you're stressed? I'm saying that there were friends of mine. There were friends of mine who had something similar to that

happened. They were supposed to put an object. Okay, catch this. I do. There's something here. I was like, I've got to pull it out. Well, there's plenty here. But so catch this. Friend went to one of these little seminars and she had a person she was paired up with at the end and they had to take an object from them to themselves, like a purse, sunglasses, something, and put it at their feet. And then they were supposed to be able to look at that object and read it, intuitionally, I think, although I'm not exactly sure what that means, and read that object and tell them something about the person they had just met. They didn't know anything about. But somehow that object, their object, had power in it or was able to communicate

their mood, their history, their background, their problems they went through. What's so bizarre to me hearing this. People pay a lot of money to go do this. What's so bizarre to me hearing this is it really is a pseudo-religion because I remember when I became a Christian, I was around some Christians who actually did very similar things of like, oh, we're going to read what's happening and pray over you and tell you what. your future is and what God has for you. And they didn't know you. Kind of a word of faith movement, charismatic, Pentecostal. So it's just fascinating to see the exact same kind of idea, except in this more new agey self-care wellness thing. So let's go back

to Intuition. You were talking about how Intuitional can be others focused, which is probably better than what we're about to talk about. One of the things that has drawn people to an intuitional model of self-care. This notion that I know what's best for me and I can take care of myself best is honestly just the historical events the last four years. You had all these news agencies saying that Hillary Clinton was going to win the election. It was going to be a landslide victory for her. And all of the trusted institutions, our news agencies, our polls, they all broke down. They were all incorrect. And this led a lot of people to begin to mistrust institutions. I mean, they already mistrusted religious institutions like the church, but now they're mistrusting the media and other places.

In fact, I find this really interesting. On Headspace, they've got an SOS button. It's basically when you're having a mental breakdown, you press this button, and it offers you help. That button was pressed 44% more after Donald Trump's election. The week afterwards, that's when people first say, it gets even weirder. The New York Times, it added its self-care section about a month and a half after Donald Trump's election. When Donald Trump gets elected, there was a huge amount of articles talking about how to care for yourself in the face of it. I've got a few titles here.

The rise of Donald Trump demands we embrace a harder kind of self-care. You see, the logic. The world's breaking down around us. We can't trust what's happening. And so the only person you can take care of you is you. You've got to do a harder kind of self-care. How about this one? A self-care guide to TV to watch to forget about Donald Trump's rise.

You need to go watch some TV and take care of. yourself because there's a new precedent. And if you don't do it, you're not going to be okay. Yeah, so there's a lack of trust in these institutions. You already mentioned the church, government, media, people don't trust their neighbors. There's a lack of trust of others. So who do I trust? Well, I trust myself. I trust my own intuitions. Only I can take care of me. Only I am going to look out for me. And so that appeals to something, I think, I think that appeals to something the Bible would call sin. Everyone's own inclination is toward themselves. We all kind of live in the kingdom of me. And what self-care does is say,

that's okay, that's good, take care of yourself. But I think that runs completely opposite of what God really wants us to do. Love your neighbor as yourself. When Jesus is to love your neighbor as yourself. He knows and takes as a starting point that we all love ourselves. The point isn't to do that first and foremost. The point is to love others with the same kind of intensity, with the same kind of sacrificial love, same kind of care that you already love yourself. So the Bible takes us from being inward focus and turns us outward. And what self-care does is it says it's good to be inward focus. Take care of yourself. Okay. Let's play a fun game here. I'm going to read you two quotes, Keith, and I want you to guess which one is Jesus

and which one is Headspace, the meditation app. Oh, this is going to look really bad. We're going to edit this out if I screw this up. It's not going to look that because it's so obvious. Okay, here we go. You ready? All right, if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will a prophet a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul? Okay, I think I got that one. That one I'm pretty familiar with. That's Jesus. Okay, that's Jesus. If you want to find your life, lose it. If you want to follow me, take up a cross, which is a capital punishment instrument. That's what it's.

Death to self. Death to self. Die to self, live to God. Yep. Okay, here's a different one. People mistakenly assume that a meditation rooted in compassion begins with a deliberate focus on other people. Not so. We must first cultivate a sense of loving kindness towards ourselves, with the intention of being kinder and more forgiving toward others. For many people, it can feel strange and perhaps even indulgent to spend a meditation directing kindness inward. But the more we notice how it feels to take time out for ourselves, and the more we enjoy how good that feels, the more easily we are able to share it outward. Compassion for others begins with self-compassion.

Oh, wow. I feel like I need some mood music in the background. Matthew, our editor, could you have some mood music on there? Something that's kind of calming and Patrick reads that. That'd be awesome. There's actually some devotional, I shouldn't say it, but there are some devotional podcasts out there where that's what it is. It's like the Zen music and this guy with a fluffy voice talking on the top of it.

Obviously, if you're listening to this, that's not your style. So what do you think is good about this, Patrick? In other words, Jesus says love your neighbor as yourself. So there is a sense in which people have said we do need to love ourselves, that we can't love others if we don't love ourselves. Do you buy any of that? Do you think it's all bunk? Or do you think there is a bit of truth in that? I do not think that God calls us to self-hatred. I don't think it calls us to live lives deeply motivated by shame. But we When you read what Headspace just wrote, it's not talking about not hating yourself. It's talking about making a daily habit for 10, 20 minutes directing love towards yourself every single day. And I think that kind of self-obsession, that kind of self-focus, this notion that I need to take care of me before I can take care of anyone else, is I just don't know how you square that with take up a cross and die. If you want to find your life, lose your life. The Bible seems to say that we need to spend a lot less time focusing on ourselves, not spend more time doing it, that loving our neighbor

as ourselves is probably only possible if we spend less time thinking about ourselves. And of course, the ironic thing, or maybe you'd say it's the paradoxical thing, or maybe Jesus would just say, yeah, this is how I created you, is that when we serve others, when we think of others, when we put others' needs above our own needs, that's when we end up finding our life. When we lose our life, we find it. It's where we find joy. Jesus says it's more blessed to give than receive. So we find joy, we find blessing, we find our life, we find meaning, we find purpose when we think outside of ourselves, when we serve God, when we serve other people. When we are third, it turns out that we're the happiest.

So if it's God, others, myself, self-care would say, no, you've got that all backwards. You need to put yourself first. But what they really promise of joy and peace and release from anxiety, that will never come by putting yourself first. It turns out all their promises come only when you don't put yourself first, but when you put yourself behind God and others. If there was ever anyone who could justifiably focus prayers of loving kindness towards himself, I think it would have been Jesus because he's God. And yet Jesus' prayer life seems to be focused towards his heavenly father, worshiping God. and focused towards others, praying for his disciples, praying for others around him. There's another quote from, again, Gwen Paltrow's website. It says, Giving to yourself first is one of the greatest gifts you could ever give to those you love.

I think Jesus would change one preposition, and it makes all the difference. Giving of yourself first is one of the greatest gifts you could give to those you love. And I know Jesus would say that because that's what he did for us. He didn't say I'm going to give to myself first. The Bible is clear. He set down self-interest. He set it all aside so that he could die in our place for us. And that was the greatest gift he could ever give to us. I love that. So instead of giving to yourself, give of yourself. That's exactly what Paul says Jesus did in Philippians 2. He laid aside all of his rights. He did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but set it aside so that he could come and die for us. One of the ways this manifests itself in Christian circles, and here I might step on a few people's toes.

and I kind of apologize, not really, but kind of. Are certain authors, speakers who baptize self-care in Christian language. And so one of the people I'm thinking of is Rachel Hollis. And Rachel Hollis had a couple books, Girl, Wash Your Face, Girl, Stop Apologizing. And a couple years ago, I started following the advice of the second book. I don't apologize to anyone anymore. Sounds like Donald Trump, doesn't he? He never asked for forgiveness. I heard he read, Girl, Stop Apologizing.

And it changed his life. Wow. So Rachel Hollis has these really popular books. She runs these conferences or at least did pre-pandemic. She has a bazillion social media followers. I read her books because a lot of people around me, a lot of the friends that my wife and I have were reading them. And I just thought, I don't know, let's get into it and see.

And when I stopped reading it, I was very impressed with Rachel Hollis and absolutely utterly exhausted myself. I mean, she's a very accomplished person. These are just a few of the things that she says in her books that she's done. Are we about to get her CV? Well, she's overcome her dysfunctional family she grew up in, which included abuse and eating disorder and her brother's suicide. She's a biological mom of children, adopted mom of more children, foster mom of children. She has a fantastic marriage.

She evidently has great sex, or at least she says she does. She boxes, not boxes like collects boxes you might move in, but she boxes, think gloves like Mike Tyson. She eats healthy. She's lost and kept off a bunch of weight. She runs marathons in her free time. She hydrates properly, drinking half her body weight and water every day. No exception. She sleeps eight hours, but still wakes up at 5 o'clock in the morning to do her routine. She has a bajillion social media followers. She journals her daily goals. She practices gratitude by writing down specific things she's thankful for. She's involved in church and volunteering. She started her own business on a high school education. She now runs a multi-million. dollar company. Again, all on a high school education. She's written books and ended up on the New York Times bestseller list. She owns their own business. She has weekly date nights with her husband. Well, more on that later. She owns a vacation house in Hawaii. She overcame the abuse of alcohol. She overcame being a people pleaser. I mean, when I got done reading the stuff about Rachel Hollis, I was under the pile. I thought, she's impressive. I suck in my life. I didn't feel better

about myself. I felt worse about myself. But really what it did is it put me under the pile. And I think all these people who are reading her books walk away thinking, I could never be like her. And one of the central messages that Rachel Hollis has is you have to focus on yourself. You have to put yourself first. You need to focus on your career, your interest, your mental health, your body. It's all about focusing on me first. And again, there's always the little footnote, and then that's going to free you up to do great things for other people. But her main message is this self-care wellness, start with you, and then

everything else in your life is going to be great. Yeah, you have the power to change your life. And that's one of the things about this kind of remix theology that Patrick referred to earlier, the spiritual but not religious, this wellness culture, is that you've got the power to fix you. And therefore, if you're not fixed, it's your fault. There's no grace, there's no forgiveness, there's no God, there's no bigger purpose that God is working in your life. It's all up to you. Now, get it done. But I can't live up to that. I can't get it done. The truth is that I can't fix myself, that I need to be rescued. But that's not the gospel of the wellness culture. That's the gospel of grace, the gospel of Jesus, who says, you are sick beyond repair, and he has come to rescue you from

yourself, not the gospel of the wellness culture that tells you to fix yourself. And the fruit always shows the tree. If you look at what's happening in Rachel Hollis's life since she published these two books, apparently the sex wasn't good enough, the date nights weren't fun enough because she ends up getting a divorce. And I'm not trying to make fun of her, but if you read her description of why she did it, it all goes back to caring for herself. This is what's best for me. The most bizarre part for me was reading her husband's response. I want to assume the best about him and say maybe he's just trying to love his enemies and be gracious to her in a big public way. But he essentially said, yes, she needed to do this for herself.

This was what was best for her. And so I'm supporting this. I'm in favor of this. Not because I'm happy. He says that he's really sad. He doesn't want to get a divorce, but because he wants what's best for her. Now, let's just pause and think about the irony here. Yes, Rachel Hollis has been able to extravagantly focus on me. Do you know who doesn't get to? every other person around her. And that's going to be the cost of self-care in anybody's life. If you want to make your life about you, you are free to do it, but I promise you, your spouse, your children, your friends, they'll know what you're doing, and it's not going to be healthy or good for them. So we're not saying that everybody who practices the gospel of wellness or who's

into self-care ends up getting divorced. And we're sure not saying that everybody who claims to follow Christ is going to end up with a great marriage. Instead, what we're trying to do is say, Listen in to how they're describing their choices, how they make their choices and what the outcome of those choices are. And when you focus on yourself, you're going to find that you live a more isolated life, a lonelier life, a life that is disconnected from people because who wants to be around someone that is always demanding and never getting? You're going to live a more self-righteous life because when you're cutting out people who are toxic in your life, well, I thought we're supposed to give those kind of people great. race. I thought that we were supposed to... Are you glad Jesus didn't do that to you? Yeah. There are so many people in my life that could cut me out of their life thinking that I'm

somehow bad for them, and they're probably right on any given day. But I'm thankful for friends that love each other in the midst of that difficulty who don't cut someone out because they aren't positive enough. And just as critically, it's worth pointing out that people like Rachel Hollis, Jen Hatmakers, and other person has a lot of this stuff inside of her thinking. Joel Osteen, which you might not want to associate all those people together, they all have a very similar theology. In fact, it's really interesting. If you go back, we mentioned this earlier to the 1800s, there's a movement called New Thought, and the idea was think positive thoughts and positive things will come to you. That movement ends up influencing Christians

in a significant way, and one of the leaders of that movement was actually the person who did one of Donald Trump's many weddings, and Donald Trump has personally named as one of his biggest influences. And so we were joking earlier that Donald Trump and Rachel Hollis have a lot in common. It's not a joke. It's a very serious thing. They actually have the same theology. Yeah, so I think you're referring to Norman Vincent Peel, who was the pastor who officiated at a wedding of Donald Trump and his wife, Ivana, who, if I remember correctly, is his first wife, but of course I could be wrong. So Patrick was saying earlier that people think Donald Trump is some kind of megalomaniac, just found a narcissist, crazy person. reality is that he has just done a great job of practicing the gospel of wellness, the gospel of putting yourself first. So is he narcissistic? Well, I don't know. That sounds like a medical

diagnosis that I'm not qualified to make. But I will say this. All of us, to some extent, are narcissists. To the extent that we practice wellness theology, we're going to be encouraged down that road of narcissism, of putting ourselves first. I think what we know, need to do is learn to set aside our goals and our agendas and our needs so that we can focus on others. So before we wrap up, Patrick, let's talk about maybe some good and bad. Should Christians buy into the self-care movement? Are there any positives that we can take out of this? I think that there's some positive things. Now, these are things I think that have always been a part of a Christian worldview. You are embodied. You have a body. You should take care of that body. The Sixth Commandment is that you shouldn't

murder, and that includes self-murder. Taking care of your body is one of your responsibilities that God gives you. I also think that people pleasing is a sin. And so sometimes when people talk about boundaries and self-care, what they're really talking about is people-pleasing, they're saying, hey, we've mentioned this before, you got a mother-in-law who, every time she's with your kids, she won't follow the rules that you've set out or says bad things about you and undermines your parenting. Well, it's not self-care to set healthy boundaries with that mother-in-law. It's just wisdom in that particular situation. So it can feel like a fuzzy line between self-care and selfishness. What I do to think about that is, is just ask yourself, what's your priorities? Is this coming out of

love for God first, love for neighbor second, and love for me third? If you can answer those questions, yes, yes, yes, then it's a good chance you haven't actually fallen into self-care and selfishness. You're just showing wisdom. Self-care inverts that. It flips it on its head. It says, start with self, then maybe think about others and probably God last. So here, some questions that might help you know if you have gone too far down the road of wellness theology. And it kind of starts with, do you spend more time thinking about yourself or more time thinking about Jesus? Do you find yourself focusing on problems according to self-care of things like toxic people, mental health, toxins? Or do you think more of yourself as I'm a sinner who's

rebelled against God. I have put idols in my life of putting other things before God in my affections. Is your problem from outside of you, or is it inside of you? I think another question to ask yourself is, does your self-care routine justify ignoring important relationships? Does it justify spiritual responsibilities that God's put upon you? Because again, when you read some of this wellness stuff, it will tell you you have to put your spouse's interest far below your own, even your children's interest far below your own, own. And it sounds holy like, oh, you're taking care of yourself and it's a good thing. But again, it's selfishness. And it doesn't match the character that we are supposed to pattern our wives after.

So a great example of this was the Apostle Paul. Did the Apostle Paul put his interest above others? Did he use his own self-care as an excuse to ignore important relationships? Let me just read 2nd Corinthians 11 versus 27 to 28. I have labored and toiled and have often gone without sleep. I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone without food. I've been cold and naked. Besides everything else, I face the daily pressure of my concern for all the churches. Paul is not a self-help wellness guru. He's saying, because I love God's church and because he's called me to a purpose to plant these churches everywhere, I've undergone terrible things in my life. His physical body has been harmed. His sleep has been harmed. His mental health even has been

harmed. And he's saying, I did all this for Jesus and it was worth it because this is what Jesus has called me to in my life. You can't help but notice that a lot of emphasis in self-care is on the physical, on the outward. Now, there's a lot of talk about your inward issues as well, your emotional issues, your psychic issues. Yeah, I get that. But it always comes back to your appearance in some way or another. Staying younger, staying more youthful. You just see it everywhere. I want to read a verse to you because I think what this verse shows is that we've got it exactly backwards. When we put our emphasis on the outward, not the inward, we have it exactly wrong, according to the Bible. So Paul says this in

2 Corinthians 416. Therefore, we do not lose heart, though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. And I think one of the things that we fall into the trap of is turning that on its head. So we would say it perhaps like this, though outwardly we are being renewed. Outwardly, we are trying to get younger. Outwardly, we look better than we ever have, yet inwardly, we are wasting away. Our souls are wasting away because we're not feeding on the truth, feeding on Jesus, feeding on His Word, prayer, community with other friends, small group Bible studies that we're a part of. Why? Because we emphasize the outward over the inner. And of course, you don't want to separate those. It's just that the priority for Paul was the inward as well.

what needed to be renewed, not his appearance. So let me give one practical example. Actually, two. And I'm probably going to offend people, but if you made it this far in the podcast, it's too late. Nobody's even listening. Yeah. Do you put your spiritual health or your physical health first?

That's part of what we're asking here. And what this used to mean is I know a lot of parents who wouldn't take their kids to church because they were afraid that their kid would catch a cold. And I always kind of thought to myself, well, it stinks when your kid won't sleep because they've got a cold. Believe me, I've been there. But on the scale of things, what is a greater threat to your child's eternal existence? Getting a cold? Or never going to church because mom and dad are afraid of you getting a cold? I've seen that now happen in large scale with COVID. I'm not talking about people who are high risk. We're not trying to say COVID isn't real that we don't

believe in it. But there are a lot of people who are not high risk, who are not coming to church. I haven't been to church in a year now. And the reason why is because they're afraid of And while they wouldn't say this, I think what we've begun to say is my physical health has priority over my spiritual health. And I just don't think that's a good place for a Christian to be. You might not even think of yourself as a wellness person. You might even think that you bought into this stuff, but you're going to see it start cropping up in ways that you never expected.

When it comes to the COVID thing, there's a lot of ways to participate in church online. We have lots of opportunities here at the crossing, and all of those are good. So it's not a matter of whether you're showing up online or showing at the in person, it's the thinking behind it. But the thing that kind of puzzles me more than anything else is people who will go out to dinner but won't go to church, people who will go to the grocery store but not go to church. So that church somehow is down on the bottom list. All these other things are deemed essential. But going to church, that's an extra. So again, the point isn't whether you go to church in person or online or exactly how you're handling COVID. Everybody's in a different

situation. So everybody needs to make different choices. The issue is, is what's the reasoning that led you to make the choices that you made? Is it biblical reasoning? Is it sound Jesus honoring reasoning? Or have you prioritized things above Jesus in your life, including your own wellness? One last thought on wellness. We've talked about how wellness and self-care is intuitional. Part of the notion is you can't really trust others. You can only trust yourself to know yourself. And you're going to know what's best to take care of yourself. So go out and collect your own little bespoke wellness.

program that fits you personally. And again, that kind of thinking that you know what's best for yourself and that you should trust yourself, that is a deeply American modern way of thinking, but it has absolutely nothing to do with the Bible. Let me read you two Proverbs. Proverbs 2826. He who trust his own heart is a fool. Proverbs 3.5, trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. Those are hard verses for us to accept today. Here's how I say it to myself, self, Patrick, don't believe everything you think. It's a pretty good way for me to live because I think a lot of really stupid, foolish things that if I believe them and think that they're true are going to lead me astray, I can't trust myself. You cannot trust yourself. Your intuition is the worst compass, or one of the worst compasses that you could ever find to guide you to truth.

Before we go, I want to let you know that we will link to an article in the show notes that our friend Anna Lynn wrote on the Rachel Hollis books. I think if you're a Rachel Hollis fan or if you have a friend who is a fan, you'd benefit from reading her article. Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed this content, please subscribe and give us a rating. That helps others find this podcast more easily. Also ask yourself who you could share this podcast with. Texting an episode to a friend or family member is a great way to help them grow spiritually. If you want to go deeper, check out our show notes for book recommendations.