Speak The Truth

Episode Notes: ◎ The church is struggling in helping their congregations with spiritual disciplines.◎ Helping our people how to study scripture, practice meditating, having a praying life, and the relational aspects of being a follower with accountable relationships. ◎ Prayer quote, “To be a Christian without prayer is no more possible than to be alive without breathing.” Martin Luther. ◎ Spiritual disciplines grow from duty, as a discipline, to a matter of devotion…..to the point where you dont feel right when the disciplines aren’t practiced. ◎ Many people come to counseling with a desire for practicing spiritual disciplines, but they don’t have any direction. So they don’t practice much as a family, so leading the home as men are called to do, doesn’t happen outside of going to church. 

Gen Z Perspective on being Christian in the culture - their culture. ◎ Our two sons, Dustin (18), Jaxson (13), give their perspective of being Christian in their context. ◎ Their perspective on youth group night, their experience and thoughts on what’s talked about verses not talked about, what's missing from the youth context, etc. 

Episode Notes: ◎ Growing up between both households felt like two different worlds.◎ Having one strong side towards the faith and having the other side nonexistent was difficult. ◎ In encouraging the church to help with families in blended families, I would focus on the youth and talk more about what our struggles are. 

Episode Notes: Principles 11-14: 1. False gods. Principle: you are parenting a worshiper, so it's important to remember that what rules your child’s heart will control their behavior. 2. Control. Principle: the goal of parenting is not control of behavior, but rather heart and life change. 3. Rest. Principle: It only rests in God’s presence and grace that will make you a joyful and patient parent. 4. Mercy. Principle: No parent gives mercy better than one who is convinced that they desperately need it themselves. Remember to email us topics at topics@speakthetruth.org Also, please leave us a review and rate the podcast.....Thank you! Episode Resources:On the Road with Saint Augustine: A Real-World Spirituality for Restless Hearts - James K.A. Smith

Principles 6 - 10:1. Process - Principle: you must be committed as a parent to long-view parenting because change is a process and not an event.2. Lost - Principle: As a parent you’re not dealing just with bad behavior, but a condition that causes bad behavior. 3. Authority - Principle:  one of the foundational heart issues in the life of every child is authority. Teaching and modeling the protective beauty of authority is one of the foundations of good parenting. 4. Foolishness - Principle: the foolishness inside your children is more dangerous to them than the tempation outside of them. Only God’s grace has the power to rescue fools. 5. Character - Principle: not all of the wrong your children do is a direct rebellion to authority; much of the wrong is a result of a lack of character. Email us at topics@speakthetruth.org with any topics you'd like us to discuss!!Episode Resources: Association of Biblical Counselors - Resources 

Episode Notes: First 5 Principles1. Calling - Principle: Nothing is more important in your life than being one of God’s tools to form a human soul.  The Why. 2. Grace - Principle: God never calls you to a task without giving you what you need to do it. He never sends you without going with you. The How.      Lelek Quote “God’s grace is more committed to their transformation  and good than we will ever be.” 3. Law - Principle: Your children need God’s law, but you cannot ask the law to do what only grace can accomplish. 4. Inability - Principle: Recognize what you are unable to do is essential to good parenting. 5. Identity - Principle: If you are not resting as a parent in your identity in Christ, you will look for identity in your children. Episode Resources: Parenting: 14 Gospel Principles That Can Radically Change Your Family - Paul David Tripp  

The Cultural and Moral Crisis:  Terrorist Identity In their book, The Terrorist Identity, Michael P. Arena and Bruce Arrigo (Arrigo is a Professor of Crime, Law, and Society at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte) share their research on the social variables that influence what they call the terrorist identity.  They are considering this issue through the lens of Social Identity Theory (a theory that only considers the Biological and Psychosocial strata).  Regarding what they refer to as the martyr-identity developed by many terrorists they write:Perhaps the most poignant illustration of the role that significant others plays with respect to instilling the martyr identity within extremist militants is observable in a photo in Hebron in 2002.  The photograph featured the gunman’s infant son dressed in military fatigues complete with a suicide bomber’s harness.  Although not all significant others in a fledgling martyr’s life are supportive of such an identity, classmates, teachers, fellow recruits, parents, and family members serve to repeatedly remind some of their shaheed path, obligation, and destiny.  Indeed, the social martyr and the extrinsic gratification one receives from significant others causes one to become more committed to this identity.  This heightened and intensified commitment increases the identity salience and its proclivity to be activated in a variety of situations (p. 149). (maybe mention the idea of the identity that is “on-line”).Summary:  Sadly, while these authors offer helpful insight, they also view such people as socially constructed machines prepared to activate a specific identity in particular situations.  I find this heartbreaking.  But, in reference to our current inquiry, we must ask the question:  Within the realm of what Transpersonal Psychologist, Ken Wilber, refers to as Flatland, or what I’m referring to as the domains of the biological and psychosocial, on what basis does anyone have the right to strip this young Muslim man from self-identifying as a martyr, finding purpose in that identity, and then carrying out the impulses brought forth by this identity?  The materialist idea that the ethics of right and wrong required to judge this young man’s actions are effectively cultivated by culture falls short here.  If I immersed myself with this individual for 30 days, it would become profoundly clear that his culture is unquestionably shaping him with an ethic specific to and reasonably prescribed by his culture.  If I witnessed his little brother mutilated by an American drone missile and the social response and reinforcements on his identity that such tragedy evoked, then of course his actions are reasonable.  According to social theory, who could deny him of this identity and on what basis? Therefore, operating from his self-identity, the idea that it is good and right to kill self and others is sufficiently in accordance with his socially constructed self.  To attempt to apply the label of deviant to his identity and actions, within the realm of Flatland, is inconsistent. Who is right?  Is anyone right?  How do we know?  Isolated in the biological and psychosocial domains, we are left to either reside in what Harvard philosopher, Charles Taylor, describes as the “self-delusion”—a place where we assume all morals are on the same level.  In this delusion, we are required to place the self-identity (and the actions pursuant to that identity) of this young terrorist on the same ethical level as our own.  Tragically, we must submit to the reality of nihilism.  Otherwise, we will need to reconsider the notion that self and culture are sufficient reference points for fully understanding identity and morality.  The Empirical Crisis:  Limits Cited in the Literature The final limit of self-identity that I will propose is acknowledged by experts in the field.  While considering this issue from the lay-level our culture may assume that the case for self-identity is closed, however, a cursory reading of the literature would indicate otherwise.  Consider three experts on the matter:Dr. Daphna Oyserman, Kristen Elmore and George Smith (2012) of the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan state the following:A rich array of social science theories assumes that the self matters for life choices and behavior, but a similarly robust body of evidence that this so has yet to be assembled.  The theory-evidence gap means that, to date, self and identity theories may or may not provide robust models of what self and identity do and how they function…given a large number of publications evoking the self and identity as explanatory factors, failing to attend to the theory evidence gap means that the field as a whole has not made as much progress as might be hoped in understanding self and identity as mental constructs and as forces for action…At worst, the self may not matter at all.     Dr. Jeffery Jensen Arnett of Clark University offers another limitation in the Oxford Handbook of Identity Development (2015).  He notes regarding adolescent development research:…the vast majority of the research on adolescents so far has been conducted in the United States and Canada, and Western Europe.  What I have called the ‘neglected 95%’—the vast human population that lives outside the United States—has been almost entirely neglected by research on adolescent identity development.Finally, Dr. Michael Gerson of California Lutheran University points out the following:The self and identity have an extensive history in the psychoanalytic literature, as well as general psychology and sociology, and have received renewed attention in the neuroscience literature…Furthermore, these terms figure prominently in discussions of adolescent crises and conflicts, wherein self and identity represent significant distinctions regarding how one knows one’s self or how one is known to others.  Neither term, however, has consistent usage in the psychological literature, despite the fact that they appear in tens of thousands of citations.    Citing Westin and Heim, Gerson then concurs with them “that self is a construct suffering from identity confusion.Summary:  Considering the plethora of studies within the literature in the area of identity, we may conclude that many insightful advances have transpired.  However, a final conceptual understanding of identity and self-identity are far from resolved.  According to just three experts cited above, much more will be required to prove what the various theories in the field purport in their theoretical supposition.  We are limited in our empirical development.    Beyond the Bio-Psychosocial—The Spiritual Order:  Johnson explains of this order, the spiritual stratum has to do with the ‘things above’ (Col. 3:2) or the realities in the heavenly places.  This order points us to the conclusion of St. Augustine in his Confessions:  “Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee!A biblical understanding of people and identity does not exclude any of the previous orders discussed in t...

Episode Notes: What do I, as a Christian, believe about Self-Identity, and are there limits?Orders of Meaning (Johnson, Foundations of Soul Care, 2007).  The Biological Order:  “...the platform for all higher psychological functioning” (Johnson, p. 336).  Genetic determinants (i.e., height, eye color, male/female)Pre-natal developmentNeuronal maturationNeuronal structuresBrain-structuresThe Psychosocial Order:  By psychosocial order, we are referring to the immaterial dynamic structures that originate in social interaction (Johnson, p. 337).  SensationsPerceptions Stimulus-ResponsesImaginationsConceptsSchemasSummary:It is these two strata that sociological and psychological research on human nature, identity, and self has exclusively focused. Logical positivism dismisses anything that cannot be measured or empirically validated through the Scientific Method.  Therefore, the sciences of the self are limited to these two strata.The self becomes the ultimate reference point.Limits to Self-Identity As I See Them (these 1st two strata are informative)The Ontological Crisis—a crisis in my sense of being.  If all that exists is the Biological and Psychosocial strata then there can be no claim of an actual self. Who you are and who I am are merely mental constructions formulated and organized through our neural networks as we engage in our social environments.  When I, Jeremy Lelek, was born, I did not possess a self.  I was simply a human with the potential to become a self.  There was no inner “I” to discover or an inner “I” knowable by God, rather, who I am today is a complete cognitive construction.  In other words, existence precedes essence.  If this sounds far-fetched, consider the conclusions of the experts. Dr. Daphna Oyserman, Kristen Elmore, and George Smith of the Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan wrote,  “Self and identity theories converge in asserting that self and identity are mental constructs, that is, something represented in memory” (p.75)...They also assert that the assumption of a stable self is “belied by the malleability, context-sensitivity, and dynamic construction of the self as a mental construct.  Identities are not fixed markers people assume them to be but are instead dynamically constructed in the moment” (p. 70).  Sheldon Stryker, Indiana University, Bloomington writes, Identities are self-cognitions tied to roles and, through roles, to positions in organized social relationships.  Steven Hitlin, University of Iowa writes, The self is a socially constructed product of symbolic actors interacting with social environments.Bruce Hood, Professor of Developmental Psychology, the University of Bristol and former Research Fellow at Cambridge University writes, This core self, wandering down the path of development, enduring things that life throws at us is, however, the illusion.  Like every other aspect of human development, the emergence of the self is epigenetic—an interaction of the genes in the environment (p. 114). Summary:  If self is an illusion, then this leaves us all in a very uncertain predicament.  If, as the famed psychologist, William James has said, we have as many selves as the people with whom we interact, and if we are continually forced to reconstruct ourselves based on cultural or contextual situations, and if we are simply material beings driven by natural selection, then we exist in the reality that we are mere cogs in a machine genetically motivated by ultimate survival.  We are destined to exist in an illusion as though it ultimately matters.   The Existential Crisis—The Crisis of Stability and MeaningSelf-Identity is innately egocentric and individualistic and tends to follow the individualization thesis which, according to Dr. Rob Whitley in the Harvard Review of Psychiatry, “posits that people in post-modern societies are becoming increasingly detached and disembedded from traditional institutions, including extended family, religious congregations, trade unions, and local communities.  These ‘mediating structures’ are posited to provide fellowship, identity, and meaning to life. While Dr. Whitley mentions some benefits to the post-modern ethos, such as new freedoms for formerly restricted groups, his article cites various experts in the fields of sociology, philosophy and psychology who articulate grave concerns regarding the collision of post-modernism and egocentrism.  These concerns include:The emergence of the idea of the “empty self” “devoid of meaningful content and connections, a self that is filled up by consumerism and other activities specific to postmodernity. A diminished capacity to securely navigate risk and unpredictability leading to a sense of despair.Rise of substance abuse, personality disorders, and associated para-suicide in Western societies.Acts of self-harm as a means to fill the “empty self”Developing anorexia and bulimia as a means to forge a distinctive identity.Whitley concludes that in the West especially, “…individuals must engage in constant self-interrogation vis-à-vis day-to-day living to ensure that their current social roles and identities are commensurate with wider values and appropriate changing contexts” (p. 356).Summary:  It seems that one element of the new age in which people are seeking identity within the biological and psychosocial strata exclusively is that many of them are struggling to find a genuine sense of meaning and a secure sense of self.  As I read through various articles citing similar concerns as mentioned above the words of the celebrated French existential philosopher, Jean Paul Sarte, came to mind: “No finite point has meaning without an infinite reference point.”  Or T.S. Eliot’s chilling poem, Hollow Men, in which he penned:We are the hollow menWe are the stuffed menLeaning togetherHeadpiece filled with straw.  Alas!Shape without form, shade without color,Paralyzed force, gesture without motion;…The 3rd Crisis brings us into Dr. Johnson’s Ethical Order—What are our values? The Psychological Crisis—What is my epistemology?If Self-Identity is simply a mental construct, then by what standard do I judge my constructs as being true or false, accurate or inaccurate?  How do I know what I know?  Is society my standard?  Is self my standard?  How do I know either of these are correct?  This not only creates a problem for the individual person, but it creates tension for the fields of psychiatry, psychology, and sociology as well.   For example, the ethics of psychology and counseling encourage what is called a value-neutral stance when working with others.  Bringing one’s personal value judgments into the process of therapy would be unethical.  Let’s consider the psychological struggle this creates for the individual as well as the practitioner seeking to help him/her.     Body Dysmorphic Di...

Pete’s Pastoral Journey ◎ Corban UniversityWestern Baptist College◎ Being a pastor was about preaching, or so he thought. ◎ Has been involved within a lot of ministry groups.◎ Biblical Counseling◎ the staff went through the equipped to counsel◎ They also went through Self-Confrontation ◎ Learning to apply the word/counseling to the hurt of man◎ Using Self-Confrontation and equipped to counsel as resources - systematically, and practically ◎ Biblical Counseling has really helped him as a pastor/shepherd◎ If I was bringing in any staff, I would have them go through some sort of regimented curriculum of biblical counseling, especially pastors/teachers because it's more than just teaching, it's caring for souls. ◎ come in and earn the trust of the sheep.◎ His pastor poured into him and discipled him. ◎ Having a heart for the people, it's not just teaching the people. ◎ It’s the work of the ministry before its the teaching of the ministry.  Episode Resources: Corban UniversityWestern SeminaryMade To MinsterSalem Heights Church

Journey started as homework components that were created as counseling was happening. Application questionsTheological concepts that continued to come up regardless of the formatDrawing out charts with those who were being counseled, turning that into charts that could be reproducible. The counselor can actually use the book with those receiving biblical counseling - starting with the gospel and building on the gospel with theological tracks. Establishing the fundamentals with the counselee’s; who is God, what do they think about God, do they know how scripture reveals God. Each chapter has reflective questions that can be used with the counselee that interacts the material.  The resource was written to bring someone along; a lay leader can use this resource with someone in the faith, at work, or someone who is beginning biblical counseling. The counselee’s use this book by reading the chapter as a homework assignment, talk about it, how it may have applied to the counselee’s life, and then answer the reflective questions, and then discuss them in the next session.  It helps the counselee notice when they lean back into a man-centered perspective instead of a God-centered perspective. Episode Resources: Journey: A Path To Biblical Change - Laura ChicaMade To Minister Website - ResourcesExperience Bible Studies - Emily Dempster & Julie Bernard