The Limits of Therapy: Why a Counselor Can’t Replace Your Community 🛋️📉

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Speaker 1: The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that deny God. As such, we need Thinking Christian to become as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian Podcast. I'm doctor James Spencer, and through calm, thoughtful theological discussions, Thinking Christian highlights the ways God is working in the world and questions the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions that hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ. Now onto today's episode of Thinking Christian.

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Speaker 2: He called to make a difference in mental health.

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Speaker 1: Columbia International University offers graduate counseling degrees that combine professional excellence with Biblical truth from associates. Through doctoral program, CiU prepares you to bring healing and wholeness to others through a biblically based framework of compassion and care. Whether it's their k CREP accredited Masters in Clinical Counseling or their PhD in counselor Education and Supervision, You'll learn from experience faculty who integrate faith with real world application to cultivate a Kingdom impact through disciples who counsel, teach, and train. Whether you're starting your journey or advancing your career, CiU's counseling programs equip you to serve others both professionally and spiritually.

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Speaker 2: Visit CiU dot edu.

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Speaker 1: To learn more about making a difference in mental health through christ centered education.

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Speaker 2: That's CiU dot edu.

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Speaker 1: Hey everyone, welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian of doctor James Spencer, and I'm joined by doctor Ben Matthew.

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Speaker 2: He is a.

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Speaker 1: Professor of counselor education at Columbia International University, and today we're going to be talking a little bit about the limits of therapy in a collapsed culture. And so, Ben, you work with a lot of people in a therapeutic setting. You're still not only training future counselors, but you are yourself a counselor. And so I guess I'm just wondering. You know, Well, let me frame it like this. I talked to actually a couple of other people from CiU, a couple of your colleagues, and one of the things they noted was that often they feel like a paid friend. I think, actually, I've had this conversation too. It's like they're not really dealing with these sort of upper tier psychological challenges.

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Speaker 2: What you're dealing with is more.

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Speaker 1: If I can make the analogy like people keep coming in with the sniffles, and what you're really equipped to do is deal with you know, the flu or you know some other you know, upper tier problem. I assume you experienced that as well, And I'm wondering what do you think that says about the limits of therapy, the limits of counseling within today's world.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, now I appreciate that. Uh. For the record, I think for a second year you were about to announce me as the professor of counsel education. Hey, I'll take it if I need, with all due love and respect to my colleagues here. So yeah, you know, it's a really interesting, uh reality that I engage with sometimes with my clients. This is the phrase that sometimes I'll hear Ben. You know, honestly, if we weren't doing counseling, I would love to just hang out with you and you have coffee. Okay, So aside from the ethical parameters that need to be implicated into that and the encouragement, like, honestly like the fact that nice it is nice that there's a resonance, there's a certain connection that we feel that Yeah, I totally could hang with you and just enjoy your company. Yeah, So there's encouragement on one hand, but at the other hand, I'm like, yeah, but dude, you're spending a lot of time and money for this, Like this is If this is what you're wanting someone to hang out and have coffee, there are a lot better ways and places and resources to evilizes to get that right now. Again, I don't usually get into that with my clients. I don't unless it's something that we kind of go towards. But there is this growing, if I can call it, this non concern in the back of my mind that sometimes clients are just coming in just because they don't have really anyone else to talk to about life and struggles, and I want to be there. That's I love. I feel so blessed to be able to enter into that space. But to the whole point of what this whole series that you and I have been talking about, there are these larger structural issues that it brings to mind that we've now collapsed, meaning making societal engagement down to therapeutic point within an office with one individual, that where I should be finding all these things, where I should be engaging in community to find larger response to life's crises. Is now being done within a model of mental health that I'm both thankful for that were are at least someone they can talk to, But to be honest, deeply concerned about that we're in a lot of ways the only one that people can talk to. There's something about that that that again, I think it's been a recent shift. There has been a destigmatizing of mental health within the past so many years. There's a certain health to that. I'm thankful for that. I think it helps more people engage with the process. The unintended consequence to some degree is that because it's a little more destigmatized, people think, not only can I but that's kind of the only way I can get the help I need. It's the second part that concerns me. It's the belief that it's only in mental health spaces I can get the help that I need to find meaning to combat loneliness, to find a friend that I can have coffee with. I'm like, oh, that says something more about our society, not just the individual across from me.

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Speaker 1: So I got a little bit of a curve ball based on what you just said. So in the spirit of throwing your curve balls and just seeing if I can bait you into saying something crazy. No, you know, I look out at the landscape and I see counseling, and I've I've only ever gone to counseling. And let me maybe give you an analogy. Right, my daughter, Let's say she got injured, not very seriously doing gymnastics, and so one of the recommendations was to send her to a chiropractor. And I'm thinking to myself, well, why would I send her a chiropractor when I could send her to a physical therapist, you know, like.

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Speaker 2: Like that's that within the medical field.

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Speaker 1: And that range like they've got you know, everything from you know, an acupuncturist to maybe a massage therapist, right who do manipulations on the body.

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Speaker 2: And you know those kind of things.

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Speaker 1: And you've got sort of the chiropractice is sort of in the middle, right, and then you've got physical therapists, right, and you can almost use them, I hate to say it, almost interchangeably on some level.

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Speaker 2: And so as I think about.

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Speaker 1: Counseling, one of the things that I found interesting. I was just at a conference here like two days ago, and they were talking, you know, biblical counseling, which is really just an exhirtation from the Word of God, and people are trained to do this somehow. I don't really know a ton about it, but it's not integrated Psychologically's put it that way. You've got spiritual directors who are kind of popping up, and that's getting more and more popular. Coaching, right, these sort of quasi unregulated slash completely unregulated professions that are now what I would say, maybe in the mix with this same layer of people you're dealing with in this sort of friend based counseling mode. I don't know if I've described that well, but a good point. And so what I guess I'm.

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Speaker 2: Wondering is part of it is it's great I think that you have spiritual.

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Speaker 1: Directors and coaches and all these other different kind of people who are now available to also be paid friends.

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Speaker 2: It kind of takes the pressure off of therapy.

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Speaker 1: But it's also part of the problem, isn't it.

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Speaker 3: Oh, this is my shooting myself at the foot by admitting this. I don't know, because this is part of the dilemma I feel, because I have this doctrine of stewardship that informs a lot of what I do, not just clinically as a professional counselor as a professor, as just a human, we are called to give an account for the time and resources God gives us, and we will be held account to the Great Judge one day. Part of that that implicates itself into then when I sit across from someone and they respond that way, we make a connection. It's helping them, It's it's helping them regulate symptoms and develop coping strategies. Like these are all good things that therapy does, but it doesn't have to be just through me. And then I sit there, I'm like, am I being the best steward of this time these resources? I don't know if I am. And in ways that it implicates this other issue that is so lacking, and that to me is where I keep on coming back here. Yeah, it's not just that the problem is that we are available life coaches, you know, therapists or different different levels of social workers. I think there is a place and time for those realities, and I think that's what we do well. Right, I'll speak specifically to my construct of professional counseling. We can provide some helping coping, right, We can provide some response, particularly in trauma informed contexts. Right, there are some good behavioral and relational things that we can bring to bear that helps the individual kind of cope in extraordinary situations. So obviously I'm not diminishing that as a viable and good perspective to be utilized in caring for people. But I'm getting the sneaking suspicion that more and more of what's happen thing in mental health is more of a friend zone of sorts that because it's highlighting what's lost, what's being lost in what should be a normative part of human life, that is community connection, shared meaning working together in both relational and physical spaces at times. I mean part of the growth of digital therapy. I mean, that's another whole area we can get into, is digital therapy and what that looks like. And again, I'm maybe continuing to shoot myself in the other foot at that point. But there's this gnawing concern that I have that are we just kind of adding to the problem just because we can. I don't necessarily know it means if we should, if it's continuing to create more of a problem in the larger constructs that are missing out for human engagement.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, because I guess what comes up to me. This is a little bit plain Devil's advocate maybe, But it's interesting to me number one, that you know, you're having this proliferation of people who will talk to you, right, And I could pay someone to talk to me, right, not like you know, I could pay a therapist, I could pay a spiritual director, I could pay a coach.

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Speaker 2: I could pay you know.

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Speaker 1: And it's just strictly like, I'm not in an executive level position and i want an executive coach to help me through some rough spots, right. It's more like I need a friend right now. And so, as opposed to turning Surrey on and asking her a series of questions, I'm going to go and meet with Ben, right, and Ben's gonna be my buddy for an hour a week, right, And I know it's gonna cost me, but it's not really that much more than a movie, and it's gonna be okay, right, you know, like that sort of mentality. But I'm wondering if there isn't based on the way our culture is gone, if there isn't just more underlying trauma and mental health problems that are now creating this proliferation In other words, when people are like unable to as we've talked about in previous episodes, convey their sadness, articulate their sadness, when they're unable to find any sort of.

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Speaker 2: Stable meaning in.

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Speaker 1: Their lives, when they're overly anxious about what's going to happen.

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Speaker 2: We are seeing a lot of turbulence in.

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Speaker 1: The world right now, and so I'm wondering as these people are coming in, Yes, they're friends, but are you also seeing sort of an odd uptick in the level of mental health problem that your quote unquote friends might be having.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I think to think through that is important because the issues that are coming to bear. I want to be careful how I say this, are are real for the person, yes, but they're not really that big, okay, in the sense that if we can provide them some stability in relationship, stability in context of community, if there's a way that we can provide these other things that are so lacking in our cultural social context. Again, I want to give space that it really affects them, but these are not These are not life altering issues that you need specialized help for all the time. Sometimes maybe, but we're getting to a point in our society where we're now because we've so destigmatized mental health, we think this is not just the first, but the only response to get the help that I need. So I do find myself getting to the point with some clients and asking that question, trying to be respectful and ethical in the engagement. Is my space as a professional counselor the best place to deal with these? And the question that often comes back is, well, then who am I going to talk to about this? Like that's a great question to ask, And my hope is that actually exactly exactly where I'm like, let's look through that a little bit and see where that needs to be developed. And by the way, that's going to take some work. It is so much easier just for you to come to my office, plunk down the fee, we'll meet for the hour, and you're done. Man, I will schedule it for you. I will give you a receipt at the end. Like it is easy, peasy, right, no problems whatsoever. This other thing that you probably need that takes a lot more time and effort and energy, and it's not nearly as easy. And yet when I hear a client say that, like, where else am I going to talk to people about these things. I get excited because I think that's exactly where that needs to move. More so, not for all, but for some to a certain degree, because they need to build in those communal contexts that I think actually give the right place, the more normative space, if I can say it that way, for how to deal with some of these struggles in life?

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Speaker 2: So what would you say some of those?

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Speaker 1: And somebody says, like, I've always been a guy who doesn't have many friends, right, just confession time, Right, So I'm gonna I'm gonna pump you for a free therapy session basically, And so I just don't. I don't tend to keep a lot of friends, right, Like I have a small group of people that I would count as my real friends.

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Speaker 2: And then that's about it, right.

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Speaker 1: And so if I can't get one or more of them on the phone in any given day, right, if I can't grab coffee with somebody, right, I don't have a big I don't have a lot of resources beyond those.

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Speaker 2: Let's say.

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Speaker 1: So let's say I'm coming to you, and I say, well, who would I talk to about these things?

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Speaker 2: Right?

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Speaker 1: How do you help counsel people to actually build those relationships intoday's world.

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Speaker 2: Like, uh, you know, it was a running joke.

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Speaker 1: When I was at an academic dean some of the young ladies would occasionally ask.

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Speaker 2: Me for dating advice. I have no idea why, but I would tell them the same thing every time. I'm like, my wife and I were high school sweethearts.

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Speaker 1: So the only advice I could give you is, you know, awkwardly stand by our locker and ask for the dance.

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Speaker 2: I did, Like, I don't know anything else.

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Speaker 1: It'll worked for me, right, And so like, I think a lot of the things that I would be able to tell someone, like where to go to find friends, right, those are well gone.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, like they're not there anymore. And so how do you how do you counsel people to walk through that a little bit?

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I was talking to one of my kids about the mall the other day. Right, if you could just see like this confused look on their face, Like what you actually went to a physical place, not necessarily shop, but just to hang out with hanging out people? Yeah, like yeah that was I mean the food court, go see a movie maybe with a job, and we'd see, you know, these girls going up the escalators, so all of a sudden, we need to go down the escalator and make these incidents. It was a whole thing, right right, And I could see my kids just like, why would you do that?

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Speaker 2: Exploding?

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Speaker 3: It did not comprehend it at all because to them it just seems so foreign to engage into a place, a particular place in time to then help encourage those relationships to actually move into to use your idea. Rather than standing by her locker room, I would find my space next to you know, the record store or whatever. Oh you you like you too? So do I look at that right right, that those places, those those social spaces are becoming less and less to a certain degree, what I am encouraged by. I do think there is a recognition to somebody. I just I saw this with a university recently as they were advertising one of my sons in university and the other one's about to start. So we're getting tons of university flyers, and one of them came in talking about how they have essentially shared spaces that are intended to be digital free. So one of the advertisements to eighteen year olds, given their marketing research and some of the things they're realizing is that they're intended to say, we want to be intentional about building space to be able to engage. Now, I know that's not for everyone. I know that's not going to be an opportunity, but I am encouraged that I think there is a movement afoot where people are recognizing we do need to be intentional. So I'll say, even here in the town I'm in, what I often tell people is find out what you love and find other people that love it. Find out what you love and find out what other people love it as well. And if you can use that as a at least starting point and use your online Like if you love needle point and bag pipes, I guarantee you there's a website out there that could probably find So I literally was just talking about something about this yesterday. He actually that's why bag pipes came to mind. He plays the bag pipes all right, like he is a really good bag pipe player, And he said the community that he's found within our town of bag pipe players is pretty small, but they're very close. And so even in the most obscure interest, I'm realizing that most communities are starting to develop these spaces, whether it is for high schoolers going into college, or whether it's just the average Joe or Josephine that are recognizing. As much as we can find a face group, group, Facebook group online, how much better if we use that website to say, hey, we're meeting here at this time. A friend of mine just told me about a ukulele group that's meeting at a local brewery strums and brews, and so, if you love beer and if you love ukulele or want to learn how to you, there is a literal group that meets every Tuesday night at this local pub just for that purpose. Wow, I look at opportunities like that. Where again, it is so you mentioned this earlier, James. We have so renormalized our constructs, our social that it just seems so cultish like to then enter into what it looks like of what's now should be the norm. It seems so abnormal. It's gonna feel. And so what I do with my clients when I hear them ask those questions. I need to let you know here's the way to do it, and it is gonna feel really weird. Here's what we can do in therapy. How do I help you manage the weirdness? So you can still enter into the goodness. It's not a matter of avoiding the weird. It's actually saying, how can I build resilience and what is now just feels so odd and foreign, but have the belief that's still better. Yeah, find what you love, find others that love it, engage with the opportunity. No, it's going to be weird, but let's build resilience to actually enter into that. That's a step in the right direction that gives you at least some context to be able to move into what I think is serb in this's largest systemic realities of how we've become so isolated and apart from shared meeting that creates this existential dread that is just so endemic within our culture today.

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Speaker 2: It's interesting.

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Speaker 1: I did this conference over the last day or so, and I met a few people there, and I remember walking away from a couple of conversations.

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Speaker 2: Just in my head going, oh, that was awkward.

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Speaker 3: That was good.

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Speaker 2: That was awkward.

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Speaker 1: But at the end of the day, I'm like, you know, these are the things that I need to do, Like I need to go out and actually meet other human beings, regardless of the awkwardness. But you definitely got the I was like, wow, right, this is awkward. This was wow.

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Speaker 2: It wasn't just the other person, it was me too, Like it was I was both bad. It's like wow, that was just yeah.

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Speaker 1: I mean I wanted to say it just like name it awkward.

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Speaker 3: And I kind of imagine I mean, again, I'll pull on your expertise here, but the fact that Jesus pulls in someone like the Disciples, right, people that on paper should really have no reason to be together. Right, you have a zealot that's also you know, working with a tax collector. There's no reason those two people should be anywhere near. I mean, talk about someone saying, well, that was awkward. I didn't think he was going to be at this meal. And yet the awkwardness that we talked about this earlier, that the struggle through it is actually a means of actual growth both yeah, maturity sanctification through the process. I wonder to what degree even the Disciples is a a bit of a paradigm for consideration of how do we I don't think you need to have one hundred and twenty or seventy, maybe not even twelve, but there is circles of influence that Jesus had with his disciples of closeness, even had one that was you know, on his bosom, as it were, in terms of the closeness, it wasn't always about the numbers, but it was about the intentionality who he connected with. I gotta wonder if there's something there that we can pull on as an exemplar for what we want for today as well.

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Speaker 1: So let me ask just one other question, because I find this to be I'm going to use myself as a paradigm for other people, which is always a little scary. But you know, we have we have four kids. My son is a twenty year old, he's in college. My two daughters are seventeen twins, and they play lacrosse. We travel for a lacrosse an awful lot. And then we adopted a five year old. So we've decided to make our lives more chaotic and so so part of what I what I find as my wife and I are both still employed and have you know, jobs that are fairly busy in and of themselves that it's like who's.

00:24:22
Speaker 2: Got the time?

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Speaker 3: Yeah? Right, yeah?

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Speaker 1: How do you do you run into people who just have that sort of like cadence of life kind of stuff where it's like, no, I can have work friends, I can have colleagues, I can interact with my kids and obviously my wife, but I don't really have a lot of time for anybody else.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, this is where my cynic comes out a little. Be honest. Now, I need to temper that in the therapeutic moment. I need to earn the right to enter into the cynicism. Let me say this way. Every Sunday, I think because on my iPhone, I have a screen time report that comes up and it shows me how many hours I've spent on my phone, tells me what apps I've been on my phone, it tells me specifically how many times I've picked up my phone. The research is quite clear. We are we have the most luxury time ever in human history than any other civilization, the amount of time we have. Now again, I want to I want to meet them at their perception in that I'm so busy. I don't want to deny that as a reality. That yes, work, family, church, demands of community, those are all pressing for our attention. And we have more luxury time afforded to us as a civilization than has ever happened in human history. The technologies that we've advanced, the structures that we've created, affords to us more time on our hands than we've ever had. And that's proven to me on a weekly based when I get that screen time report. And so that's why I say the Inner City comes out a little where when someone says to me, I just don't have the time, I'm like, Okay, listen, unless you're like the Pope and you've got literally like every minute scheduled out of your life. Yeah, and most of us aren't, or the president or some other high dignitary that literally does have their entire schedules mapped out for them. Right, The question is not do you have the time? The question is what are you putting your time into? Right, And you've probably heard the expression you can find out what you love by two things right, your calendar and your checkbook. The question is are we convinced? Are we not just theologically and cognitively convinced, but are we affectionately convinced that this thing called community, this thing of intentional stepping into awkward places and go on, that was weird, like all the messiness of relational connection is actually better, not just good, but better because I think that will then reorient how I use my calendar, how I use my time, in a way that actually helps people say it's not that I have a lack of time, it's just where I'm putting my time to begin with. Yeah, that's I would argue ninety five percent of us we have the time. It's just how we then position it in a way that again looks different for different people. Like you said before, it doesn't mean that you have to have tons of friends necessarily, you need to have someone, you need to be intentional somewhere in a way that says there are some people, some key people in my life that I can really count on in a reciprocal fashion, both that can rely on me and I can rely on them as well. But I think that that that's a reordering of not just our time, but our passions to then correlate to the time.

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Speaker 2: It's interesting.

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Speaker 1: I mean, I've had that discussion with so many organizations when I consult, because their way of saying we don't have the time is we don't have that kind of resource, right and like you do, you actually do. You're just spending it over here like you've got it. You just you're spending it in all the wrong places, I mean, right, and so I mean I think.

00:28:08
Speaker 2: That's a really good a really good word. But like.

00:28:12
Speaker 1: I I tend to agree with you. I don't have the screen time thing on my phone. I'm not going to because I don't want to know. I'm happy to be blissfully ignorant. Yeah, I don't need to know that information. But h but no, I mean it makes intuitive sense to me that for ninety five percent of people, you know, when they're really saying I don't have enough time, what they're really saying is the way I've allocated my time brackets out friendships and community exactly.

00:28:37
Speaker 3: You know, it's a great way of saying it, exactly.

00:28:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, that's funny. Well, any other like pro tips.

00:28:46
Speaker 2: I mean.

00:28:48
Speaker 1: I think that, you know, getting back involved in church intuitively seems like what I'd want to suggest to people. I don't want to say, hey, go get involved in church. But then I kind of sit back and I'm like.

00:29:04
Speaker 2: Well get involved.

00:29:05
Speaker 1: How yeah, right, because it's easy to get involved in the church and be like, you know, busy yourself with something in the church and never actually make any real connections. You're just like the door greeterer, and so you say hello to everyone who comes in or you're you're working security, and unless somebody mouths off, you don't have to do anything with it, you know what I'm saying, Like, there's all these different ways where you can be involved and still not actually engage anything.

00:29:32
Speaker 3: You can be really really involved and still really lonely.

00:29:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, kind of like we talked about previously. I mean, even small groups. I think it's sort of like that. It's like, and I don't have anything against small groups, but I would say, just for me, it's easy for me to use that as a checkbox and go, well, I went to small group this week and just sort of be there and relatively checked out because I don't really enjoy it as much as I think other people might.

00:29:59
Speaker 2: And I'm not you know what I'm saying, Like, I.

00:30:03
Speaker 1: I think part of it is just I'm a huge geek, and so a lot of times I have trouble setting that aside in a context where we're studying the Bible, like I lose myself and right, I would take total blame for it, right, but there's just something about being in that small group and and like, you know, you're looking at this passage, and I'm like, I wonder what the Greek says there, like.

00:30:28
Speaker 2: Like I know no one else wants to know that.

00:30:30
Speaker 3: I was just say, you're saying no one else is asking that question.

00:30:33
Speaker 2: No one else is asking that question.

00:30:34
Speaker 1: But in my head, that's where my head goes, and so they don't tend to work.

00:30:39
Speaker 3: Well for me.

00:30:40
Speaker 2: I'll say it like that.

00:30:41
Speaker 1: Those are like it's almost a lot of effort for me to be there and be present, and that's challenging.

00:30:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, so yeah, what would you what would you suggest?

00:30:52
Speaker 1: Like, is there a way to be involved in church again that sort of find what you like or find what you love.

00:30:57
Speaker 2: And find other people who love it kind of ideas? Is that sort of similar within the context?

00:31:02
Speaker 3: I think so, right, And I think this is the beauty, the struggle, and the beauty of the local church. Right. When Paul talks about different members, different abilities, different different gifts, I don't think I don't think I try to dig into that enough at times. Let me give you an example, I too, am a self proclaimed geek. I like geeking out on stuff like that. I think this is why I enjoy coming to your podcast, because I love these conversations that. I tell it to my wife later, She's like, and he did them on purpose? Like, why what would you do that for? Gas? I love it. I there's something about me finding people in the church that are non geek. I need the non geeks in my life to round me out, to sanctify me, to rub off those hard edges. And I also love finding the other geeks in church. Yeah, there's something about that that just enlivens my heart in a way that helps me then reckon, I what can I bring to the table. Here's something that they're bringing the table. There is this mutual joy that we find in this geekdom of whatever it is that we're talking about, right, And that doesn't have to be that for me. It's also music. I love involving myself in the ministry of music in the local church. I'm not a great musician, but I love getting together with good musicians and utilizing that common shared language of music in a way that just builds my soul up in a way. And so similarly, when I hear other musicians that don't do it well, I'm like, ugh, really like, oh man, that's hurting my soul. And I need that because I need to then how do I temper patience and long suffering and all those other things. But there's something about finding other people and the loves that you have that again, Yeah, I keep on referencing Lewis. A good friend is when you find someone else and they say you two, and you find someone that likes the same things you like and you make this bond. Or as Jerry Seinfeld says, when you walk outside your front door as a little kid, is you live here too, Let's be best friends. And that's how you form your early friendships is because you are in this proximity of right, this is where we're living. I kind of imagine there's something about that that that we need to kind of push into as well. Find the ones that you resonate with. Know that it's not the entirety of the church, and you need to res as we're engaged with others. That's take a place to start right to find the things that you really love, really can either geek out on or play with others, or engage in ways that go beyond just attendance. Being there that really engages your mind and heart as a good place to start as well.

00:33:51
Speaker 1: Very cool, Well, I think those are some good ways that we can kind of ease our way into, well, not ease our way into, maybe ease our way out of therapy, and sort of said, why don't I try some of these tears first?

00:34:05
Speaker 2: Let me go make a friend.

00:34:06
Speaker 1: Let me find somebody in my proximity who's also loved sarcasm and you know, wry humor and in the.

00:34:15
Speaker 2: Off the Bible, right in the office, right. Let me find that.

00:34:18
Speaker 1: Person and and develop some relationships before I decide No, I have something more serious I need to deal with, and this does require some therapy. I think that's a good word. And because I don't think it's sustainable the way that we're using therapy or even spiritual directors or any of those things, I just feel like those are and not to put design and maybe you'll disagree with this, but the word that comes to mind, it's like we're creating a transactional economy around getting self help. And I don't think that's what it's intended to be.

00:34:54
Speaker 3: No, it's it's intended it's meeting the need. Yeah, but it's not good to sustain the need.

00:35:02
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Yeah, that's a good way to put it.

00:35:05
Speaker 3: I think we need to be here to help in the moment of struggle of both depression and or existential dread. Listen, I think there's a place for that. If we continue to look at the mental health industry and all its corollaries as the only main way to sustain that, I think we're in a world of hurt because it's not it's not structured, it doesn't it can't provide the resources to sustain those larger, onto logical issues. So it's a good place to meet the need, it's not a great place to sustain the need.

00:35:38
Speaker 2: That's perfect.

00:35:39
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's good, Ben, Well, thank you for your perspective on this. Really appreciate you thinking it through with me. And we'll call it an episode there. We'll come back next time. We've got some other topics we're going to be discussing. But the next one's going to be around addiction and numbing and some new some of the new drug trends, and so we're going to dive into that. I know that there are a lot of Christians who have questions around these issues.

00:36:03
Speaker 2: Used to be a much bigger.

00:36:03
Speaker 1: Deal, I think within Christianity and using these sort of drugs to alter your brain, now we sort of alter our brain all the time and we don't even think about it, so that's fantastic. But we'll dig into that a little bit in the next episode. But thanks for being here, Thanks everybody for listening. We'll catch you on the next episode of Thinking Christian. I just want to take a second to thank the team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on the Thinking Christian podcast. If you go to lifeaudio dot com, you'll find dozens of other faith centered podcasts in their network. They've got shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting, and more.