The Sean McDowell Show - Henry Cloud’s Journey to Faith: A Psychologist on God, Miracles, & Science

Episode Date: August 30, 2024

World-renowned psychologist Henry Cloud has written a new book titled Why I Believe. In the book he leads us through his early struggles with illness and depression and the miracles that healed him and led him to his calling as a healer of others. Today, we'll be diving into the book and discussing prominent topics he talks about. READ: Why I Believe: A Psychologist's Thoughts on Suffering, Miracles, Science, and Faith by Dr. Henry Cloud (https://amzn.to/3Vng2Wq) *Get a MASTERS IN APOLOGETICS or SCIENCE AND RELIGION at BIOLA (https://bit.ly/3LdNqKf) *USE Discount Code [SMDCERTDISC] for 25% off the BIOLA APOLOGETICS CERTIFICATE program (https://bit.ly/3AzfPFM) *See our fully online UNDERGRAD DEGREE in Bible, Theology, and Apologetics: (https://bit.ly/448STKK) FOLLOW ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA: Twitter: https://twitter.com/Sean_McDowell TikTok: @sean_mcdowell Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmcdowell/ Website: https://seanmcdowell.org

Why would a trained and practicing psychologist write a book on suffering, miracles, doubt, science and faith, and more? And what unique insights does he have about how psychology points to God? Our guest today, Dr. Henry Cloud, is the author of a new book I thoroughly enjoy going through called Why I Believe. Henry, a lot of folks will recognize you from your best-selling book, Boundaries, which had a huge influence on my father, big influence on my life. But this new book is on Apollo JFC evangelism. The moment I heard you read this, I thought my audience is going to be so intrigued. So thanks for coming on and joining me. Well, it's good to be here. You know, I owe a great deal. In fact, I talk about it in the book when I first came to faith that your dad's work was so instrumental in helping me resolve a lot of questions. So I got especially interested in your story and your insights as a psychologist on some of these issues.

So maybe take us back to the kind of family that you grew up in and you describe in the book how they modeled faith for you. Yeah. And what I was trying to show there, Sean, was, you know, I live in this kind of ultra faith world now. I do a lot of stuff, you know, in the this kind of ultra faith world now i do a lot of stuff you know in the church and and all of that but i didn't grow up in what we would think of now what looks like did you grow up in a christian family because when you use that term now you know devotionals and and you know all things bible and you know all of this stuff and um mine wasn't like that i mean i grew up in the south and um my parents were devoted methodists and kind of like you go to church on sunday and you know we believe in god and you try to be a good citizen before god and we tithe and say prayers you know before meals and

and say prayers at bedtime and i knew my father the Bible. And so it wasn't like all things Christian all the time at all, but God was certainly in the architecture of life is how I would put it. And the way they mainly modeled faith, and this was very real to them, we had a family business, but they really used their business

in service to the poor. And they were very involved. My dad was chairman of the board of the Salvation Army, they were involved in helping black businesses in the south and black churches in the south in the 60s. He had laborers that he took off the streets and they were illiterate and ultimately taught them to read blueprints and become project managers. And they really they serve the poor all the time. My mother took care of widows. They just they

lived it out as kind of like social workers in business. And that's how that's what I thought kind of faith was what i what i didn't really know and what got me you know and when i hit a crisis i didn't know that god was somebody that actually did stuff i thought god was somebody you believed in and sort of life was lived under him so you better be good but i didn't know a lot about an intervening miraculous present god i didn't know that and when i hit bottom i needed i needed one and that's when i found out that he was really real we're going to get to that point where you hit bottom and i appreciate your vulnerability and honesty in the book i think it's going to get to that point where you hit bottom, and I appreciate your vulnerability and honesty in the book. I think it's going to really resonate with people.

But maybe tell us growing up, did this faith take? Did you feel at odds with this community? How would you describe yourself maybe in junior high and high school before we get to the college period where things really went off the rails? Well, and those are flimsy rails to begin with, but I would, you know, it's sort of like a normal Southern family and a normal Southern community. Right. And so, you know, we had the religious people and I won't name denominations, but there were, I went to school with kids that, and, you know, they couldn't go to the prom because they you know dancing was not good and you didn't do you didn't go water skiing on sunday and you know and you and just a lot of rules

and i just i just i just couldn't go there i mean those weren't my peeps and i didn't think they were fun i i remember feeling as a kid you know god i like you i just don't like your friends i mean i thought they were weird right and so but i had a real i had a real faith in a relationship and i said i didn't see god as miraculous but i always talked to him as a kid um i had a couple of experiences at camp where i felt something real that i write about in the book and i knew i knew i i knew god was there. I just couldn't do it the way the God people did it. I related more to my friends that didn't have anything God. And I liked the music they liked.

I didn't like all this other music. I was listening to Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix and the Allman Brothers and all that and sitting around with them while they were getting high. I didn't because I was kind of like, like well god wouldn't want me to do that so i was trying to be good with the bad guys and i was badder than the good guys and so i kind of felt a little bit like i didn't i didn't really belong faith-wise in any group because the people that didn't believe i related more to his friends the people that did believe i just couldn't connect with them in life and so i really just had a private faith that's the way

i would and i you know i tried to be as good as i could but you know how that works out so in some you weren't like searching after god just kind of living through your life it was backgrounded but not like a point of urgency for you that really mattered compared to the other things in life no there there was no urgency but i have to say i don't know you know soteriologically i don't know was i saved or not i don't know it depends on i could name names on the theological popular spectrum of one would say yes and one would say no but i really believed i heard the gospel when i was a kid and i really tried to live my life before god in the big areas that i knew he cared about but it wasn't um it certainly wasn't it certainly wasn't God was not the orient the organizing principle of my, my pursuit. I wanted to, I wanted to play

golf and I was recruited to play golf in college. I play a lot of competitive golf. That was my dream. And I would have say golf was my God. That's what I pursued all through childhood and, and then went to college to play and had big dreams. And then I had an injury and lost my dream in life. And my girlfriend and I broke up and I got really depressed. And that was the first time that God needed to really matter to me. And I didn't know really if he was there or not because he had never been tested.

Okay, so would you describe that as a season of depression and like how long did it last and what was the reason for it? Well, I later found out the full reason, but all I knew, look, I, you know, I was 18 years old and I had a lot of success in, in tournament golf and was now going to a great golf school, great hopes and then freshman year early on i had an injury and my play started to suffer and i i wasn't playing well i had a lot of pain and i was gradually kind of bummed i mean my my dream was falling apart you know and so i was getting bummed i wouldn't call myself depressed I was in a really hard season. And then finally, into my sophomore year when I had to quit, because I literally I take the club

back and pain would shoot through my arm. I had to give it up. And that loss. And that a serious girlfriend at the time when we broke up, and I think those two losses you would a psychologist would call those precipitating events that a serious girlfriend at the time and we broke up and i think those two losses you would a psychologist would call those precipitating events that triggered what turned into a clinical depression that i didn't know that word i didn't know what that was i just knew sean i mean i couldn't get out of bed in the morning i made myself i was confused um i didn't know what I was going to do in my life. But I was literally, I mean, I lost weight. I was a mess. If I had been a psychologist then, looking at me, I'd have put me in a hospital.

I mean, I was really, really depressed. It was bad. And so, I mean, I go through the whole thing in the book and how bad it actually got. But summer um i went home and that's when it really got bad so bad that i had to um not go back to school junior year the first semester i couldn't i mean i just i couldn't do it literally couldn't do it and so yeah that's when the depression really started and then that's when the God story started to and you know, it took a little while. What I found out later was probably to a to a kid is glued together pretty well. It has a loss like that. That's kind of a bump in life and you

go through it and then you find your way and you keep going. Why I think the reason it triggered the depth of depression and i'll say this to a lot of your listeners you may be going through something in life right now where you have a breakup or you have a loss or you have this whatever and you're suffering way more than you feel like you ought to be well what I didn't know was that was tapping into a lot of trauma that I never had dealt with in my life. And, you know, without going into the whole story, right before my fourth birthday, I had a significant hip disease and had to go in a wheelchair and braces and didn't walk for two years. And they were about to amputate my leg and then god actually intervened then literally spoke to my mother in a voice to stop the amputation and take me to a specific doctor 200 miles away who knew what it was and didn't

amputate my leg but but i had that had that trauma and then i had some very significant losses um early in life and i was i was sitting on top of all of that you know i when you're a crippled kid i mean i was a crippled kid and i i'd go to birthday parties and have to sit in the wheelchair while the other kids rode the pony and i felt like a you know it was a lot of shame with that and feeling kind of like an outcast. And, and I mean, you're four years old, all of a sudden, one day they tell you, you can't walk. Don't get, you cannot stand up. I was prohibited from walking. My life went away. And so when later on, what, you know, when I got out of the wheelchair and off the crutches and braces, I think what happened is what a lot of people do is I'm going to overcompensate. I'm not going to be a crippled kid showed all of that into the darkness and I pursued sports and and really you know overcompensated I think in kind of a what we

call a performance orientation life which is not a good foundation. And that was working. I mean I was succeeding I in a lot of sports and especially golf and you know when you're every day you can go say hey i'm good because i shot 66 you know and that kind of constant positive feedback of yeah i'm i'm doing okay until you can't and i think when all of that was ripped away from me like some of your listeners may be going through something and you're going why is this hurting so bad? Well, you may have a breakup or a divorce or whatever, but that's tapping into some unresolved stuff that's underneath that.

And that's what happened to me. And the path was obviously having to get some help and work through that. And then God did some amazing things. to where you're in college and you're feeling this just debilitating depression like you said because of so many other past trauma and experiences kind of being brought into this and not being resolved some people look at this in that state and say why would god allow me to go through this clearly god has abandoned me what started what's that i mean I felt that same thing. I mean, because I believed in God. And I remember I was praying about this. And the day that it's kind of a dramatic moment, which I talk about in the book, the day that it all happened and I went and truly reached out to him, I was expecting, okay, finally I did it. I jumped out of the plane.

The chute's going to open. God's going to be there. You know, on TV, they get zapped, right? They go to the altering and i reached out to god it was on the smu campus i was sitting in my dorm room and i was obsessing over all this and and i looked up on the shelf my bible was there which i hadn't read since i've been since i had been in college and i felt com i mean it just kind of stood out i don't know how to explain it is with a thousand other books,

and I said, maybe that, and I went over, and I picked it up, and I opened it up, and just randomly, and you know how people say a verse kind of jumped off the page? There was a verse, I looked down, and it said, seek first the kingdom of God and all his righteousness, and all these, or his righteousness, and all these things shall be added into you as well I'm sitting there in my room obsessing about all these things how do you make a relationship work how do you find the

right girl what am I going to do in my life how do you find a career how am I going to make a living what am I going to do now if I don't play golf or pursue golf and worry about all these things and the book said look for God and all these things will be added to you and i'm going really that's look for god to make these things work well i've tried to get out of this hole by myself so i i said you can't do this in a dorm room so i walked across the new campus you probably know perkins Chapel right and dark kind of late spring wintery day I walked down to the altar and I said God I don't know if you're there or not I think you are but I don't know if you are I just need help help me and I felt like I had done it i had really for the first time surrendered and sean i'll never forget that moment nothing happened because i thought i've done it and i didn't get zapped

i didn't feel anything and i was it was the loneliest moment i think I've ever felt in my life because I reached out to God at my wit's end and he wasn't there, or so I thought. And I kind of said, and I really think I might've said this, okay, call me. And I walked out and I go back to my dorm room and the phone rings. And it's a fraternity brother of mine.

And he says, I don't know why I'm thinking about you. You're the last person I would think of to invite to something like this. But we're starting a Bible study in our fraternity house. And I just thought maybe you'd like to come. And I thought, oh, oh, maybe that's okay. I mean, I just said, God help me, and this happened. And so I went, and I was fortunate enough to land in a Bible study with somebody from Dallas Seminary, actually, who was leading it

and actually knew some things. And it's kind of where it started. A month later, I remember asking him to go to lunch and I told him, I said, Bill, I turned to God because I can't get out of this and I feel terrible and I thought he would heal me and he's not he's not doing anything and and I remember Bill said well you know keep coming to the group you know God uses people too hmm and Sean I thought that is the lamest thing God uses people too I thought thought, you know, that's like the cheap seats.

I want the real thing. And then as I continued to walk, and that's when the miraculous things actually did start to happen at desperate moments and times. But, and here's what I talk about in the book, it was a while before I could say I was undepressed, but I had truly miraculous supernatural things that were happening in the process of that. Let's call it maybe a

close to a year. I mean, it was kind of gradually, but, but a while I was still depressed, especially in the worst times and God was showing up and he wasn't healing me to your point i was going i know he's real but i'm still you know like god zapped me well i mean it took better part of the book to talk about this but now i know i was still depressed and non-functional because of some brokenness in me that had to be repaired in order for me to ever have a good life and if god had instantly healed me of the depression what he would have had was a healed disconnected fractured traumatized non-emotionally regulatory person you know halfway impulsive halfway ocd i mean it was all over the spectrum and i would be a fractured walking undepressed person well he had to put me back together

and the symptom of getting put back together was feeling good so you know it's like when I would check somebody into a hospital later when I was became a psychologist Sean I can and this is such a spiritual metaphor for me I check somebody into a hospital suicidal and I do the intake I do the diagnosis and i look at their scenario and i know what's going on i'm already planning their discharge date because i know this person's going to be fine this is what's going to have to happen this is how long it's going to take they don't know that and they've checked in and they're still depressed i think it's a lot like

that with us sometimes god knows what he's doing we can't see it but he's working and i had to find that out now there are other times that i've seen him instantaneously do stuff but i'm not god i don't know why sometimes but i do ponder that question pretty deeply in the book well i want to get back to some of the specific ways god showed up because you tell some stories in the book i'm like holy cow this is amazing about this car ride and you were led to this pastor but before we get to that uh what would you say to somebody i've had conversations with non-believers and they've said point blank to me they've said Sean I'm in depression and it's lasted and it's debilitating and I've prayed for God to take it away and he doesn't why should I believe in your

God how would you respond to a question like that well I might respond a little differently than some because I can actually say, yeah, I know. I've been there. In fact, I had that conversation with a rock star on a plane not too long ago. And I said, I don't know why he doesn't change things instantly sometimes. Jesus asked the same question himself. Why have thou forsaken me?

You know, when he was dying, Job asked the same question. Joseph probably asked the same. I said, I can't answer why he's not answering your depression right now. But here's what I could tell you from and I can just tell you this from my story. And I also can tell you that it's what the Bible says as well. God has a marketing problem. You know, if you look at a commercial, this call 1-800 and you lose 30 pounds today right god tells us here's the way it really works there are times i will instantaneously heal you there

are other times i'm going to walk you through some things and i'm going to be with you and i'm not going to do exactly what you want on your timetable but you've got to trust me that I know what I'm doing and then all sorts of scenarios and so I can say that to them look I've been there here's what I would tell you God if you're gonna if you're gonna turn to the Jesus of the scriptures here's what he says. He says, sometimes he'll do that. But there's some other things he says, that if we're going to really turn to him, we got to turn to the real him. So here's what he says. First thing I want

you to do, you are not meant to go through this alone. The first if you're going to be a person of faith and asking God to heal you, then we also have to kind of do what he tells us to do. And he tells you to reach out not only to him, but you will find him in other people that he lives inside of that can bring you his healing. So the first thing I want you to do and I will help connect you with some people who know how to help you get out of your depression because God has given them that knowledge that ability and

that help secondly you are meant to be in a family now I don't know the people you're hanging around with right now i don't know if they're contributing to maybe some of the things that are contributing this or if they're contributing to building a safe space for you to heal and we got to get you connected to a community because what jesus actually says is in that community he's going to distribute a lot of things that are going to heal you. The next thing is, sometimes part of our depression, you're not doing anything wrong, but you've been sinned against. You know, the Bible talks about sin as being a big problem, but it's not always what we do.

He also talks about people that are oppressed, abused, suffering, misused, and they suffer for that and you and it says that they have to be healed so we're going to do everything i'm going to help you in any way i can to get you when you're reaching out to god to get you connected to what god has for you and i think that that's a big part of how he's going to answer you. So if you want to follow him, come with me and I'll take you. And that's a big part of how I would answer it because I'm not making this stuff up. I mean, I've been right where you are. And I've since then, I mean, I was a stupid college student.

But later when God called me into this field, I started working. And he called me started a faith based psychiatric hospital, which I did. And then we did another one, another one, ultimately, I treatment centers in 45 cities. And I was the clinical director of an entire system over 200 doctors. And I have seen, we can say thousands of people enter in that door feeling like God's not there and they can't get undepressed. And I can tell you in him, in his ways,

there is real hope. And you don't feel today and borrow my faith. Just borrow it. I'll stand here. I'll pray with you. I'll walk with you. You don't feel today and borrow my faith just borrow it I'll stand here I'll pray with you I'll walk with you you don't have it that's fine borrow mine because I got it for you and that's what I would tell him that's a an amazing response I love that it's experiential it's compassionate it's practical but also this comes from certain principles established in psychology that we're going to get to in a little bit line up with an arguably point towards christianity being true so and can i say one more thing about that sean because a lot of people a lot of people that have that question that you

had they may also be christians and they're depressing they turn to god and what they also do is they turn to god's people and a bunch of god's people really did them in and here's what they said well if you're depressed there's some sin in your life or you don't know the word enough you need to get into the word or you don't have enough faith or you should let your righteousness be your guard claim your righteousness and your position or you need deliverance you know if you're depressed must be a demon somewhere okay all of those answers when you analyze job's friends sermons it looks like a walk through a christian bookstore wow job you're different you don't know the word you don't have enough faith you got sin in your life you need to put god first all of this and job said to them you are lousy counselors oh that i wish your wisdom were silenced in the hebrew it means shut up you don't know what you're talking

about and in the end god says about them they did not speak the truth about me as job has and job was the one that said it ain't working where are you you know all this kind of bad stuff but he also said but you're bigger than me so i'll trust you even though I'm still in this. That's a hard answer. That is. That's a hard answer. But if you've been hurt by the pat answers that a bunch of Christians give you that have never been there, then, you know, find a different room because there are people that do understand this.

That's great. I appreciate that non-believers and for Christians getting it right about how to deal with depression biblically is really really important let's shift back to your story and you're coming you're going to this Bible study regularly still trying to figure out if God is real and how he's working in your life and then you describe this story in the book of somehow being led through this car discussion to a pastor like what exactly happened why did that in part convince you god is real and present in your life well during that was the summer when I went home. And when I went home, it got way worse.

You know, I was apart from all my friends. And it's the first time I'd ever been at home and not playing golf. I mean, it was just my whole daylight to dark routine since I was a child. And I think I fell in this black hole even further. And it was getting worse. And it was kind of a two-step process i remember one day i was looking for god and i got my car we had a a little lake house on a lake about a half hour out of town and i used to go there and you know sit and contemplate life on the dock late at night

talk to god when i was in high school um somehow i thought god he might not do a miracle but he could be a dating coach right and so and so i i went i went for a drive up to the lake i was driving through that wooded you know road and i was i was looking for him and I was talking to him. And Sean, I don't know how to describe this, but it felt like some kind of power like went into my body and was like, I thought it was sort of like a helium balloon or helium tube sucked up to you.

And I felt like I was, and I was energized and it's being lifted. And it was just kind of like it was, I wouldn't I don't know how to describe it. But it was it was this amazing, like, good feeling of goodness. And I knew this is, this is him. He's doing it. And I had to kind of like pull off the road. It was so strong. Now. I could hear a psychologist saying, well, you were having a manic episode. Well, I know what a manic

episode is. And I wasn't. I could have passed any mental status exam. I because I actually actually say God, stop. I can't I mean, is this a lie? And then it went away. And then I got back and kept driving. I was still in the depression. And I learned something that okay, God is with me. I knew he was with me and I was still in the pits. And I just had to say, okay, I got to keep following you. I know you're with me, but you're still not, you know, you're not doing anything. You're allowing this. and so i i keep going and then right after that call it the next day or the next week or whatever it really got bad and and i i went to this church that was um uh you know kind of um i would call it uh let's call it appropriately charismatic i mean they believed in healing and praying and and and the gifts and all that so i knew it wasn't like the bible church that didn't believe god did that stuff anymore

and if i could go there at least they would pray for me and so so i went and i didn't feel really comfortable like going forward or anything like that but i i listened to the pastor and i it seemed like he was saying and i wanted to talk to him and i couldn't i wasn't able, and it seemed like he was saying, and I wanted to talk to him, and I wasn't able to. And it was either later that day or the next day or something, I felt this, I've got to talk to that pastor. I've got to find that pastor. And it wasn't our church, and it was kind of outside of town a little bit,

and I didn't know how to find him. And I asked my dad, I said, do you know where that pastor lives? Because it was either on Sunday or Monday and the church was closed. And he said, you know, I think he lives north of town. There's a couple of subdivisions out there. I think he lives out there somewhere. And so for some reason, I said, God, take me to him. I'm going to go look for him. Take me to him.

I had no clue where to go. But as I drove, I would feel this kind of clear turn right, turn here. I mean, this is like a 20, 25-minute drive through intersections and different. There were three highways and then all these housing developments and all this. And I'm just having these nudges.

It wasn't visions in the sky. It's just nudges. And I keep doing this, going through a maze, 25 minutes through houses and streets and stoplights and corners. And I make this turn. doing this going through a maze 25 minutes through houses and streets and stoplights and corners and and i make this turn and then sean the only way i know to describe it is the atmosphere in the car changed it's like i wasn't in mississippi humidity it went to the cleanest and the only I know one word to describe it I felt this a few times in my life when God was very present it was still that's

the only word I know to describe it and I think that was eternity I think that the you know time like continuum. Okay. I'm not kidding. It was a, I was in a different dimension of something. It was a different atmosphere. And I stopped and I looked on the curb, the pastor's name. I was at his house. And then I saw the name, and then the atmosphere went back to normal. And I went up and knocked on the door.

And I was there for a long time. And ultimately, as we talked and all this, I pretty much had a breakdown. And he was wise, and he called my parents, and he said, you know, I think he needs some real professional help. This is past what I know to do. And so, but that's the experience that you were talking about. And I mean, I've had a lot of, I say a lot. I mean, I've never seen anybody raised from the dead. I know people that have seen people raised from the dead.

Yeah. I know people that have seen people raised from the dead. Yeah. I know people that have seen limbs grow back. I heard a story today of a cutter who, you know, a teenage girl that had been cutting her arms and went to a church that I know and went up for prayer. And she woke up the next morning, all the scars were gone. I mean, I know of many, many, many documented miracles like that, and I've seen some.

But in the book, I have had some pretty out there, even past that one, what I call more miraculous than that. I talk about them in the book because I just know that God is a God that still does stuff, but I had to find out the hard way. It wasn't three-megatom emissions trip and seeing it second second hand i mean i i had to learn the hard way well this is just one story i mean your book is chock full of these kind of stories that really are a page turner that may convince you that god was real was there kind of a moment or season you know what sean if i can say one thing about, cause you're an apologist, right? And,

and I'm kind of like an amateur apologist. You know, you, you're, you, you get paid for being good at this. I'm good for nothing and I'm not that good at it, but I do know some stuff. But, but what I've learned, um, and this is what you see in the new Testament. I can, I can tell people about miracles and there are people that are, if they're really open and seeking and they will hear that and it will open up a curiosity and a, wow, I'd like to know more about that, explore that. And it has an effect. And even on believers, we tell our testimonies to strengthen one another. I'm always strengthened by hearing people's stories. But there are other people. Jesus

healed people in front of people. And they said it was from the other side. They wouldn't even believe it when they saw it. And when Thomas put his hand in the wound and said, I need you to prove it to me, and Jesus said, here, and Thomas saw it. And then Thomas believed because Thomas was open and he was honest and he really wanted to know. And God met him and told him. But then Jesus said, one time he said even if somebody came back from hell and told so they're not gonna believe anyway even if they've seen it because they refused to and then Jesus

said blessed are those and I say this in the book some of you have never seen a miracle and maybe you won't but jesus said blessed are those who have not seen and still believe so god has a lot of different paths for each of us but he will show anybody that he exists and that he's real but you've got to be very careful about having a spirit, a cognitive bias of negation, where it doesn't matter what happens, you're already pre made up your mind suppositionally, that, well, there's a guy, it's like the guy who thought he was dead and told his wife, I'm dead. She said, No, you're not. She goes,

he goes, Yes, I am. She said, I'm taking you a psychiatrist. He goes, fine. Take me to the psychiatrist. The psychiatrist says, What's your problem? She says, I'm dead. He says, I'm dead. She won't believe me. He said, Well, we can find out if you're dead or not. I'm a medical doctor. Medical fact, dead people don't bleed. So he says, Okay, give me the test. And so he pricks him in the finger and he bleeds. So the guy looks at his finger and goes, Oh, how about that, Doc? Dead people do bleed. Some people are not going to believe the bible says that so i'm glad to share miracles i've seen i would just want people to say maybe that is possible it's outside of what i've allowed myself to believe that's a great way, great way to think about it. Appreciate you sharing your experience there

and your, your insights. I wanted to, to ask you about this is there's a lot of obstacles you talk about the book and barriers people have to faith. I'm an apologist. So I tend to have people ask me intellectual barriers. People talk about, I just heard you do, I just heard you do I just heard you yesterday cuz I you know we're gonna do this interview I want to learn a little bit more about the format and I I go on YouTube and I look you up and there you are with Scott Ray who was one of the people when I hit bottom in college that God put in front of me to disciple me and taught me the early tenets of the people, when I hit bottom in college, that God put in front of me to disciple me and taught me the early tenets of the faith,

him and a lot of other your friends. But you guys are doing an episode on a megachurch pastor that walked away from his faith. That's right. And it was all about basically bad Christians, hypocrisy, hurtful Christians. That was one of the obstacles that I had. Oh, okay.

That the book goes into. In fact, I think it's even an entire chapter. You know, if God's good, how come Christians are so weird or bad sometimes? They're not all like that, but they're a big obstacle to a lot of people. Do you have a sense of what are some of the biggest obstacles in the sense of, do you think for most people, it's intellectual? Do you think for most people it's emotional? Do you think for most people it's moral?

As a psychologist, or is it really just everybody has their own experience and it could be some combination of the different factors. And the reason I ask is I think we tend to think barriers are primarily intellectual. I think that's a piece of it. But more often than not, there's other pieces, at least a part of this emotional hurt, moral concerns, relational, et cetera. As a psychologist, when you're talking with someone who's not a Christian, how do you try to like diagnose what maybe key obstacles are if such thing is even possible?

Well, first of all, I think you've hit the nail on the head. Is that what you're saying? Okay. That it's not one thing for everybody. It's not one thing a lot of times for any one person. It's it's a lot of different things. I would and I you know, you have to I'm an empiricist. So somebody's

got to go research this and do the factor analysis and where the variance actually lies. But I would think my guess would be statistically, that the biggest obstacle is experiential. Okay, that. And let's start with relationships, because that's our deepest experience and most profound experience that shapes us the bible says you know david said specifically talking about believing in god david said god you taught me to trust you at my mother's breast you know a baby doesn't really know her his or her mother's name but the initial orientation to I've come into life and I'm not in control of everything and I can't make everything that I need come to me and we can't even think this but

we have basic needs that are met by the outside world. And we develop trust by how we're treated. We develop worldviews by sometimes even the zip code we're born into. We develop worldviews by whether or not we're abused or loved. We develop worldviews by success and failure we have developed world there's a lot of ways but experiences shape us and i think i think i'm pretty sure the word i think it's the word character comes from the etymology of an engraved mark that we're shaped, life engraves itself on us and we become, we're formed by our experiences and how we experience our experiences.

It's not just what happens to us, it's how we experience us. And we develop worldviews in our experience. Some people are abused and become healers of abused people. Some people are abused and become abusers. So there's a, you know, we're getting back to freedom and sovereignty and all of that when you get into that unanswerable antinomy but things happen to people and they go to church and they're treated badly or they see hypocrites or whatever they they may have a you talking about diagnostically, you know, I

would I would look at somebody, one of their biggest defense mechanisms may be splitting, that they can't see the world in dynamic tension, that there are good guys, gray guys, sort of bad guys are really bad guys. They're not good or bad. So they go to church a few times, and they run into some hypocrites, or they ask for money or something. Well, all those Christians now it's gone from, it's gone all bad. And so now they've got, they've got a borderline personality disorder when it comes to faith. That's the cognitive lens with which

they're looking at things to see they're all good or all bad. There's bad, so none of it is good. So they just have cognitive biases and confirmation biases, especially. Where's the big obstacle? But a lot of it comes from what they've experienced. That's why it behooves Christians so much to treat everybody well, because an image bearer is more than, I mean, you've heard Heiser on this.

It's not, the image of God is not all faculties. It's also, you know, you are his, you're the little G creation that's supposed to be doing what God does on the earth. He put us on the earth to do what he does. And so some people are representing, everybody not knowing it in a very destructive way that keeps people from ever thinking that he has anything to bring to us, much less the people that are abused by non-believers. And bad things happen to his children. Where was God? I mean,

that's one of the biggest questions today. You know, how could God let that happen to me? I was a child. Where was he? And so we've got that one. And then the intellectual one, and I'm gonna, I'll get some hate mail about this. Okay. But, I mean, it's just what the data say. I have just come to believe it's never an intellectual problem. I think there are intellectual quandaries and doubts, and those are honest and real, and it might be a big hurdle. But when you go through the science, and you have, was it Collins or Crick, the human genome?

Francis Collins. Yeah. So here's an atheist scientist, obviously is not a moron okay this is a high iq he looked at the science he said there is no way that this did could happen without an external designer. It is impossible. Okay, so he's got an IQ of 3,000. You got another guy that's got an IQ of 3,003.

And he's a materialist, atheist, whatever. It's not an IQ problem. And it's not, I don't think, an evidence problem. Because they look at the same evidence, and I would have to say, and I'm not trying to offend any atheist friends here, I just got to say, and I'm not trying to offend any atheist friends here, I just got to say, there is enough evidence that even if you can't work out the particulars,

was it 18 gazillion billion years and God did it through a processor, did it zap and we don't understand time and all that kind of stuff. But like Romans says, the things that are evident about God through just looking at the creation are undeniable. And I think there are intellectual obstacles and dilemmas. I've had them. I've got them. There's some stuff I still don't get. And thank God I don't get them because I'd be God.

Who would I worship then? You know, if i can understand everything i'm god of course there's going to be some things that we can't understand you know you learn developmental psychology and cognitive science and all of that we learn that cognitive understanding is developmental and i write about this in the book this helped me with a lot of intellectual quandaries I still don't have answers to that the Bible doesn't give us you take it a one-year-old that crawls and you're playing with them and playing with a ball you don't play hide-and-seek and

you put the ball behind the couch the baby goes turns and does something else why they don't their minds have not developed to a level of comprehension that a physical object can exist when they don't see it it's called object permanence now you wait a few months and you can show them the ball and put it behind the couch and they'll scurry over there to get it because now they can understand something they couldn't understand before the parent is at that level of understanding that's why you don't teach algebra to a three-year-old they will get there it's a higher order intelligence they literally can't comprehend i think there are certain intellectual quandaries in the faith that relate to faith that cognitive development answered that question for me sovereignty and free will okay yeah i

try to resolve that we go down to the subatomic some atomic of randomly firing subatomic particles, randomly firing that end up in some sort of order and complexity, that makes no sense, but it exists at the very smallest parts of the universe that they've examined. I don't know. And I'm an infant trying to figure out how the ball exists when it doesn't exist. There's just going to be intellectual quandaries that we as humans can't grasp yet.

I think it's much more experiential. I think it's more like, it's a big barrier. I think another barrier is, and I'm going to get theological about this, we have the wish to be God. The temptation, the original sin, was to know all this stuff, to be like the Most High. You can be like God, the tempter said.

That's in every one of us to be able to figure it out and not need him. Ultimately, I think the rejection of Jesus is ultimately, I want to do it on my own. Not with these words but ultimately i'm my own god i'm not going to submit to anybody above me and i might make one up that i'm in control of. But bending the knee, I think is the ultimate problem. I think these other things are doubts and questions and I love apologetics. We need them.

Because we lie awake at night worrying about this stuff until we have answers that satisfies enough. And it's really helpful. Thank God for you guys. I mean, I i needed you i wouldn't be where i am today if i hadn't gotten my problems you know those questions resolved but ultimately you will never get away from the one thing that god requires that atheists do as well and that is to have faith atheists have faith that all of this came from nothing or it came from me an eternal something but then they have faith in the eternal material all of a sudden turned into a an alive material which we've never seen happen and they have faith in that that That's not science. They can't replicate that and test it. That is a faith that, well, it must have happened once. And then somehow it must have gotten all this. That's a faith. And to me, that just takes way more faith

than when I see a Picasso to think, I don't think the wind blew all that paint on that canvas. And who showed up with the canvas and who delivered it and put it in the frame and made the colors right to where I can appreciate. I think there must have been an artist. That's a lot easier answer for me to believe than faith. So ultimately, That's a lot easier answer for me to believe than faith. So ultimately, people want the proof to have faith. And the Bible says, here's the evidence, step into faith, and the faith

will prove it to you. We said you're gonna get some some hate mail on that one you'll probably get some emails we'll get some comments here which is great uh i could have some followers about by the way i'm not judging anybody wherever you are in the past of course yeah i'm just challenging you fair enough are you open and i've also said if you're still struggling, I understand that, but let's keep walking and we'll help you. And we'll find people to help. I'm not judging anybody for where they are. I'm just telling you that you've got to be open. You know, as Thomas said, help me in my unbelief. If we're asking and seeking,

I really believe he'll show up. I've seen it too many times. Fair enough. Well, I could have some follow-ups for you on that, but you've expressed your view very clearly, which I think- Probably way too long. No, that's okay. As a psychologist, I was really interested in where you think the data points on barriers to belief, and you laid out your views. Now, because of time, I want to make sure we get to a section at the end of your book that in some ways to me is most interesting because you're speaking as a psychologist and how you think certain findings in psychology actually confirm or support the Christian worldview. Now, I believe on page 241 you have a list of like, I don't know, a couple, let me see here, a couple dozen of these that are bullet pointed, maybe two dozen of them. We don't have to walk through all of them, but maybe make some of the key points

of how you think those two intersect so well well you know i i kind of came came at this in a full circle because i i kind of came to faith in a christian psychology sort of milieu there you know in dallas where there a lot of that was going on back at that time and a lot of the but there was also there was a psychological milieu but there was the church dealing with emotional problems milieu. And that was that kind of the anti-counseling group. They were the anti-psychology group. And, you know, the John MacArthur's and the Bob Gans and all those, you know, people that were against this, these secular humanists. And then you got the God's truth, this God's truth.

And they used to debate all this stuff well the first part of that was um the christian pick on the christian models a little bit you know the ones i talked about earlier they're the christian models of how you help people with emotional struggles and there was a the you, the demon model, the truth model, which always cracks me up because all you hear is, when you know the truth and the truth shall set you free, and you memorize scripture, that's going to heal all your problems. And I'm paraphrasing, but I've never asked an audience, tell me what that whole passage says that's able to answer it. Literally, I've asked that question a million times. You know the truth, and the

truths will set you free, and believe your Bible. That's not what the passage says. The passage says, if you hold to my teachings, then you shall know, experientially know abraham knew sarah not cognitively only you will know the truth and the truth shall set you free that there is this life that jesus calls us into of processes that are the whole truth he is the truth the way the life so those models were incomplete there was truth in all of them but they there were still people suffering that i didn't see this helping so then i go through all this training and i've become a clinician and all of a sudden suddenly over a handful of years i'm seeing people get well i'm seeing undepressed people get or depressed people

become people who don't get depressed anymore i'm seeing people with panic attacks that now don't have panic attacks i'm seeing eating disorders abnormal relationships with food and i was learning what resolves all of those issues clinically and i was learning that in all of everything i was studying all the different theoretical orientations and evidence-based treatments and all this. And I'm in a quandary. I went into a spiritual crisis, and it felt like I'm going to either be a Christian psychologist

that doesn't really help people that much, or I'm going to be a clinician that does these things that help people. And which one can it be? And then I took, I i'm gonna call it two years sean this is in my kind of mid-20s and i dropped out of life i mean i was working and playing golf you got to play golf that's part of life right and all i did was read my bible i'm going to go back to the scriptures called the naked Bible. Right.

And I went back to the Bible this time, having the lens of having actually walked through all of these experiences with people and seeing them healed and knowing all of these modalities. And Sean, I was born again, again, because everything basically, and I think I can say this that any evidence-based treatment has shown by research heals these maladies those processes are commanded in the scriptures over and over and over and

those heal us. And it resolved another question for me. Because when I first started, if you've got an emotional problem, you send people to the Christian therapist. And if you've got a spiritual problem, you send them to the pastor. Like there were two sets of problems,

spiritual problems and emotional problems. That made no sense to me, this integration of psychology and theology. Because to me, there was one creation. We were designed to feel well, to relate well, and to perform. That's what psychologists deal with, clinical issues, relationship issues, performance issues. And then that fell. It got all screwed up.

And then there was one redemption. There was one gospel that came to seek and to save that which was lost seek jesus is looking saved means heal loss means broken beyond repair the gospel is supposed to heal all this stuff well i was told now i got to go to all this over here to heal it which i believe in obviously and i'll explain that but I went back to the Bible and went wait a minute the gospel does heal all of this stuff and what good psychology is doing is doing exactly what the Scriptures say do all along now they don't scriptures oftentimes maybe not to drop down windows in the day you

know the scripture will give you a financial principle you made it a CPA that spends his whole life in the dirt sure knowing the particulars of that for example the bible says heal the brokenhearted somebody has has has ptsd go talk to somebody who spent a lot of years knowing how to heal the brokenhearted but the principles that do that and the processes are in the new testament and i wrote a book way back when it was the first book i wrote on all of this um which your dad actually um uh his quote is on the cover of it's called changes that heal yeah um he actually said um i couldn't believe he said this but he said next to the bible this book has affected my life more than any other book. I've heard him say that. all this kind of issue, problems, symptoms, there's just a handful of big biblical, theological

processes that heal all of those. And I narrowed it down to four. When you work with depression, panic disorders, eating disorders, all of this, take the biological part out for a second. I'm talking about purely the spiritual, psychological dynamics. You're basically talking about the biggest theme is emotional and relational disconnectedness or alienation. You take a baby, if they're not connected and they don't have a bond

by which everything is downloaded and they achieve emotional stability, security versus an attachment disorder, you will have symptoms in a variety of DSM diagnostic categories, depression, anxiety, thought disorders, all of that. The Bible's number one theme that all of the processes in the New Testament and the Old Testament that we are called to actively be healing is relational alienation from one another when somebody's depressed and addicted whatever it is the first thing a good therapist does is they get them connected first to themselves and then to others and they also work through the sin patterns or the

brokenness patterns they are fueling alienation in their lives day to day okay number one number two it is for freedom that christ has set us free galatians 5 says we lost freedom and autonomy that was in the created order okay we were designed to be free you know god god is we we have potency we have power we can choose we're not to be controlled from the outside god is omnipotent we are potent but people have lost their what's called human agency autonomy when you're connected in a connection i should have separateness from you to where i can freely choose to say yes or no and love you or give to you and not be controlled and manipulated from the outside. When people lose their boundaries and they lose their God given in his image, human autonomy, God delegated the whole thing to humans. You go do it.

Told Adam to name the animals and then went watch to see what he would name them we're supposed to be choosers in our lives and people get broken they get abused they get manipulated they've lost their ability to choose they give in to guilt manipulation they give in to pressure they all these boundary issues they don't separate from parents they don't don't leave and cleave their in-laws are controlling them. The family's great. All these freedom things. And parents control children instead of developing self-control in children. Self-control. That's freedom. Panic disorders, anxiety disorders, thought disorders, OCD, depression, eating disorders, always have some sort of a loss of boundaries, loss of autonomy,

loss of freedom that has to be restored. The scriptures are replete with processes and commandments for us to get that back. Number three, third big issue, was we were created in a perfect world, in an ideal world, and we were created perfect and ideal, and we were never meant to have to deal with the knowledge, the experience of badness. We don't even know what good and bad was. We were just supposed to live without worrying about it, just sing and not worry about how am I singing, you know?

But we fell. And now we are not equipped to deal with the experience of sin, of badness. Now what, in other words, people are abused unto our own self, we can't process grief, we can't resolve PTSD, we can't deal with self, we can't process grief. We can't resolve PTSD. We can't deal with failure. We can't deal with loss. All of the badness until we are re-equipped to metabolize the badness of a fallen creation

through grief, through forgiveness, through learning, through all of these biblical processes that do away with what cognitive therapy talks about catastrophic thinking critical voices judgmental failure fear of failure and all of all the inability Freud talked about the the you know complicated bereavement we don't have the capacity for mourning Solomon said the same thing before Freud discovered it you go to Ecclesiastes 7 it says that it is better for the, for to go in the house of mourning than the house of pleasure for a, and here's what it says. It's

amazing. A sad face can make a heart happy. In other words, take a depressed person, you get them crying and moving through the grief and they get happy, but the house of pleasure, they'll go into sexual addiction instead of grieve their trauma, work through their trauma, seek pleasure and never get over it. Well, the Bible tells us to resolve grief and failure and their forgiveness and grief and processes and weep of those who weep. And it gives us the principles of resolving, ingesting all this bad experience in life. And it gives us a growth paradigm towards the perfect that involves failure. And Hebrews says he is perfecting those he's already made perfect. So he says, don't worry about it.

You're already perfect. Now be perfect. Get there. Grow. And there's failure and forgiveness and all that. That resolves all sorts of emotional problems. That's what a secular therapist does every single day. They're just doing what, if they're worth their shingle.

Sure. And then the fourth one, we were born under authority. God has created a universe that has authority. And as Galatians 4 says, we were born under manager, guardians and managers. You're a little person in a big person's world. Gradually, you're building skills to have authority over your life delegated to you gradually by parents until you have a bar mitzvah one day or a bat mitzvah. And as Galatians says, until the date set by the father and now you're an adult psychologically we've got to become equal to other humans god has no grandchildren

now a lot of people are stuck in a one-down one-up relationship to the adult world they go into a board meeting they feel like a little boy inside or a little girl they're they don't express their opinions they're afraid of judgment they're afraid of other people's disapproval they're living up to somebody's standards jesus said don't call anyone on earth your leader your father your rabbi or your teacher for you are all brothers and so people have we come to a human equality with one another then we can respect roles of authority I can submit to a boss because I've signed up as a human to sign that contract even when I don't agree with him we're still equal humans and I don't feel put down by a boss tell me I gotta do something I don't want to do I say I

said enough for this I don't agree but I and people have all these kind of like this narcissistic kind of you know get triggered by somebody telling me I got to show up on time or say I mean it's just parental squabbles a lot of the deconstructionists in the church today I read these books by some of them now some of them have got a lot of good points but i read those things sean and i go are you kidding me go work out your parents the issues with your parents in a shrink's office not by inventing a new theology because a lot of it is a lot of it is is is oppressive structures that aren't in the Bible anyway. And it's psychological issues of authoritarianism that they

shouldn't have Jesus told him not have that stuff anyway. That's what the Pharisees were about. So you take these four basic issues. And that's what's going to happen in a lot of therapy offices over and over and over and there is no conflict ever between what is truly evidentially proven empirically based science and what treatment shows and the scriptures it's just not well i i love this i love the stories in your book. There's some amazing stories in this last section because it's a kind of apologetic. We don't hear enough about what psychology shows, how we flourish. The Bible has been teaching for years. That last section of your book is worth the price of the entire book and some so i hope you'll keep speaking out on this maybe write some more maybe we'll do another show in the future where we just probe that even in some more depth and take some questions but you are leaving me what's that don't even give me a start i mean in that whole segment one of the

big ones you know my life changed in that area um when i and i was classically trained in systematic theology. You know that. Stuff at Dallas and Talbot. And I wrote a book on systematic theology, in fact. But when I started looking at the scriptures with a non-systematic theological cookie cutter, and started looking at it, with a non-systematic theological cookie cutter. Okay? And started looking at it, and I slowly, and this isn't,

don't write hate mail if you're a theolog about this either, because it's not what I mean. But in a certain way, the scriptures over and over speak to the creation as almost a hermeneutic. Interpreting life through how life works. And Jesus would tell stories about a father and a son. And the creation, you know, screens out the glory of God and wisdom is, you know, the scriptures talk about, look at this and how it works in the vine and the tree and the fruits and all of this well

i learned early you know my initial classical psychoanalytic training and don't write hate mail about freud either that's a whole other topic but freud was a newtonian physicist and where he came up originally early on, he was treating hysteria, hysterical blindness, paralysis, all of this. And he found in depression. And he was a physicist. So that's where his model came from. If you push down an emotion, hydraulics would say it squirts out over here. And we know that from push down pain and squirt out an addiction, right? But he's discovered that. And I said, Wait a minute, he was a

physicist. So I started studying Newtonian and quantum physics is a hermeneutic psychologically. Okay. And one of the big ones is second law of thermodynamics, right? In a closed system, things get worse. Until you open up the system to two things, a new source of energy, and intelligence to organize the energy. And also they don't know me. Wait a minute. That's a human.

Why does therapy work? why does community work why does a relationship with god work because we are closed systems and it gets more chaotic and run down till we open up to new energy and intelligence that organizes that energy and then something else happened I went wait a minute that's the scriptures to organizing principles of the love of God and the intelligence of his truth of how that love is organized and that takes us to a higher order and one of the big things that I see in the field of psychology is that it proves open system change. And there is no more open system change than the gospel of Jesus Christ. Amen.

We became a closed system. Chaos and entropy abounding. Look outside today. And when we open up the system to a new source of energy and his truth to organize that energy, we reverse entropy in a clinical situation, in a marriage, and hopefully the rest of life. I mean, there's a lot in the book about all this. Of course. That is a wonderful note to wrap up on. I knew you were trained in psychology.

It benefited greatly from your books. Personally want to thank you for how much they influenced my father and through him shaped our family. But I didn't know you had such a heart for evangelism and an interest in apologetics. So we will have you back in due time. Tomorrow you're heading out

on an international trip at the time of recording this so thank you for squeezing it in but I want to make sure I encourage folks to check out your book Why I Believe Why I Believe A Psychologist's Thoughts on Suffering, Miracles Science and Faith

and this is a good substantive conversation but we really just scratched the surface so we'll do it again thanks for coming on and for those of you watching, make sure before you click away, hit subscribe. We've got some other topics coming up on near-death experiences. We've got some other conversations

with people of different faiths. You're not going to want to miss it. So make sure you hit subscribe. And if you thought about studying apologetics, we would love to have you at Talbot School of Theology. We've got a full distance program. Or psychology, which we will teach you how to think theological about. We have a school called Rosemead that Dr. Henry Cloud went to years ago.

So shout out for one of our star alumni. Dr. Cloud, thanks for taking the time and for coming on. This has really been a joy. Good to be with you, Sean. Thank you for all the work you're doing. Now that I know more about that y'all are there, I'm just turning people on to you all the time. Super kind.

We will definitely do this again. We'll have you back. Thank you. Okay. Say hi to your dad. You got it.