Steve Brown, Etc.

Steve Brown: Hey, what steps do you take when you can't take one more step? Let's talk about it with Tish Harrison Warren on Steve Brown, Etc.

Announcer: She's an old white guy, an author, broadcaster, and seminary professor who's sick of religion. And he's brought friends. Please welcome Steve Brown, Etc.

Steve Brown: Hey, we're so glad you're here. And you should be glad that we are here too. If you're wondering, I'm Steve, the aforementioned old white guy. Matthew Porter is our executive producer, and he's here. Matthew had been feeling aimless, without purpose, not knowing what the next step was, but then the NFL preseason just arrived, so he's better.

Matthew Porter: I was on the verge of introspecting. It was touch and go. I almost watched soccer. Thank you, NFL.

Steve Brown: Our producer Jeremy's in the little glass booth. Jeremy just returned from serving at a music event put on by the NAACP. Jeremy, you're not a DEI hire, are you?

Jeremy: That's pretty deep. I'll have to ask somebody above my pay grade on that one.

Steve Brown: Our one-man IT department, John Myers, is in the tech bunker. John says if your ears are burning, that means your laptop is talking to Google about you. And Dr. George Bingham is the president of Key Life. George says fast-food restaurants, and I agree with him, should have a special line for people who already know what they want.

Dr. George Bingham: I'm a preacher and I do a lot of cussing in those lines when they just decide they're going over a menu that's been there for 40 years. It's not Sophie's Choice.

Steve Brown: And Cathy Wyatt is the soft feminine side of the program. Cathy, we're recording this just before your birthday. So, happy pre-birthday.

Cathy Wyatt: Thank you very much.

Steve Brown: We've got a great guest, Tish Harrison Warren. She's an award-winning author and writer whose work has appeared in The New York Times, Christianity Today, and Comment Magazine, among others. She serves as the C.S. Lewis Theological Writer in Residence for the Anglican Episcopal House of Studies at a Baptist university, Baylor, specifically at the George W. Truett Theological Seminary.

She's also a senior fellow with the Trinity Forum and an assisting priest at Emmanuel Anglican Church. And her new book, which I hold in my nicotine-stained fingers, is *What Grows in Weary Lands: On Christian Resilience*. Why did you write this? Were you up against a wall? Preachers, when they preach sermons, if they're smart, they preach them to themselves. Did you write this book for you or for me?

Tish Harrison Warren: I always write books that I need to read. I write to figure out my life and I write to figure out what I think. Most people can have a conversation with a friend, but I have some genetic disorder where I have to write 80,000 words and edit them to be like, "That's kind of maybe what I believe." It just takes that to know where I am.

I was actually writing a different book that I was contracted for. I was working on something else, but in the middle of working on this other book, I was just in a place of feeling spiritually disoriented, not certain where I was. It felt like God was distant. I was struggling with doubt.

My last book, the one before this, is called *Prayer in the Night* and was explicitly about suffering and questions of how do you trust God. What was confusing to me is that there wasn't like a recent tragedy or deep loss. Things were okay, but I had been working for The New York Times and left really tired, but also I would say spiritually weary.

Out of that, I was looking around for how to understand even where I was and did not find a lot in contemporary Christian work and writing. Then I ended up, really by accident, stumbling upon a book in our house that was *The Sayings of the Desert Mothers and Fathers*. I picked it up and I was amazed at how this experience I was having of a desert season, weariness, or disorientation, was something they expected and talked about so much.

I wrote this book to try to figure out where I was, but also to try to give some of the resources I found in the historic church to Christians who are in a similar place to where I was and, to some extent, still am.

Steve Brown: We're kind of provincial. We think that we're the only people; that's a part of our culture, weariness and confusion and doubt. It's just something that our present culture experiences, but it's always been true, hasn't it? Was that a surprise to you?

Tish Harrison Warren: That was a surprise, how often Christians have always talked about this and expected this. You see this in Protestant Reformed writings, also Catholic writings, and Orthodox writings. You see it everywhere where folks who want to know God and are praying and are reading the scriptures hit a space where it feels like the way God has worked in their life before doesn't seem to be working.

Often, God seems distant or prayer seems empty or hollow. It feels like the line has gone dead or, for listeners under 40, like the call has dropped. It was an experience of wanting to know God and not knowing how to keep going in a way that was honest and not just faking it.

I was surprised how much Christians just talk about this, not only as inevitable, but as important. It is a really important part of spiritual maturation that you hit a space where things don't seem to be working and you learn to keep going. You learn to seek God, not for spiritual feelings or for an experience of God, but for God himself.

I was amazed at how often this was talked about. I've been to seminary, I'm ordained; if this is talked about so much, why didn't anyone warn me? Why didn't I know this was coming? If you're from an evangelical background at all, we talk so much about conversion and newness and being on fire. We sometimes have room for the gurus, the people at the end of life that have all the wisdom and have made it.

But there's this middle part of discipleship, these middle stories that are not often told, and I was just desperate to tell this middle story. Historically, it's talked about so much. Even things in the secular culture like distraction, irritation, and boredom are talked about. I found these fifth or sixth-century monks that were talking about being so distracted. What did they even have to be distracted by?

Steve Brown: When I read the desert fathers for the first time, I realized that they constantly dealt with that and with fantasies that kept distracting and pulling them away. And yet most of us, if you're from the more evangelical branch of the church, probably sang, "I've got joy, joy, joy down in my heart." I sang that. If I didn't feel it, I smiled anyway. You didn't want anybody to know that you didn't have joy down in your heart.

If you don't have joy down in your heart, you've got to get this book. You can get it in a brown paper wrapper so nobody will know that you're reading it. It's called *What Grows in Weary Lands: On Christian Resilience*. It'd be a great book for small group study in your church. And who knows, in that small group, you might get honest, and while that's scary, trust the old guy, it'll be good for you.

Announcer: Welcome to The Vault, your home for classic sermons from Steve from the '90s, the '80s, even all the way back to the early '70s. The Vault is a one-of-a-kind online experience where you can explore more than three decades of grace-filled messages. Get the details and check out our free audio sample at Keylife.org/vault.

Steve Brown: Hi, this is Steve Brown, in case you didn't know. One of the main reasons Key Life exists is to remind believers that God isn't mad at his children. Why am I telling you this? Because our weekly email, Key Life Connection, takes the best of the videos and articles and puts them right in your inbox. We'd love for you to try it. It's free. Go to Keylife.org/subscribe.

Hey, thanks for joining us. We're talking to Tish Harrison Warren. Her new book is called *What Grows in Weary Lands: On Christian Resilience*.

Matthew Porter: Tish, in the first segment, you were kind of juxtaposing broadly spiritual ennui versus grief and trauma and tragedy. It's such an interesting contrast because as bad as some of these kinds of things are, there's support, everybody knows about it, and there are casseroles involved, versus this where you feel like it's probably just you, and it's very lonely.

In developmental stuff with kids, there's this thing of object permanence, where kids have to understand if Dad or Mom disappears around the corner, they're still there. You can't see them, but they're still there. Are there any parallels there? Is there a stage in our spiritual development where God says, "You know me, you trust me. Now, you're not going to see me in order for you to gain this spiritual sense of object permanence"?

Steve Brown: Thomas à Kempis said, "Sometimes thou dost withdraw thyself from us so that we might know the sweetness of thy presence." So that's good.

Matthew Porter: Asked and answered. Thank you. Thomas à Kempis spoke to this.

Steve Brown: And in fact, he's going to be our guest next week. We will need a Ouija board.

Tish Harrison Warren: I agree with Steve and Thomas à Kempis. John of the Cross, a 16th-century Spanish mystic, wrote about this experience. He uses the analogy of how we lay aside swaddling clothes, that there is this developmental shift, like a child growing up, that has to happen in the spiritual life. That experience feels frustrating to the kid. It feels like your parent is withdrawing from you or feels unloving.

But in reality, if my six-year-old was still in swaddling clothes, something has gone very wrong. I tell the story in my book about how different parts of the Christian tradition talk about this in different ways and use different analogies. I talk about when the Psalm mentions a weaned child. It says, "I am at rest with God like a weaned child; like a weaned child is my soul at rest." I've always resisted that. Why a weaned child? It seems like a nursing child is more dependent and connected. Certainly, we are needy; we ask for daily bread. What's the deal with the weaned part?

It drove me nuts until I was weaning my three children. There was this time where you realize your relationship has shifted, where your kids aren't coming to you necessarily for what you give them anymore. They're coming to you for you; they want your presence. We have to learn to come to God not for the milk, but for God himself. The desert season burns away the desire to control God or treat the spiritual life as an exchange. We learn to come to God for himself and to receive God's love out of mercy, not because of anything we've done.

Steve Brown: I think it was Saint Therese who said, "Help me to love you if there is no heaven and to fear you if there is no hell." In other words, just you. That's a hard place to get to because I've got stuff that I need to explain to him and I expect, because leaders have told me all my life, that he'll meet those needs. When he doesn't, the whole system can crash, except that he's sovereign and he won't let it.

Tish Harrison Warren: We talk about the prosperity gospel and the worst examples of this are people who say, "If you pray and give me a donation, God will give you a new jet or a new car. If you're not healed from cancer, it's because you don't have enough faith." I reject all of that. But I realized that we can have a spiritual prosperity gospel, where we think, "If I do my prayers, if I show up to church, and raise my kids in the faith, then X, Y, Z needs to happen spiritually in my life." We feel it needs to feel a certain way or be exciting.

Even that can become something we demand. We can demand a sense of God's presence. Of course, it's not wrong to want that, just like we want healing and good things. But we can instrumentalize God where we're after a particular spiritual reward instead of God himself.

Steve Brown: You've got to get this book. We've talked about negative stuff, and if you're not a believer, you're probably saying, "Are you crazy? I'm doing fine, a lot better than you are." God does neat stuff too, and surprising stuff. Sometimes he shows up at a party when nobody expected him to be there. This book is good because it's not only about the weary land, but resilience too. It's titled *What Grows in Weary Lands: On Christian Resilience*. It'd be a great book for small group study in your church. And who knows, in that small group, you might get honest. While that's scary, trust the old guy, it'll be good for you.

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Steve Brown: Hi, this is Steve Brown, and I'm excited to tell you about a new offer from Key Life called Living with Steve. I travel with you wherever you go. If you need an entertaining conversation or even a sermon, there I am. That's the good news. The bad news is it would cost a million bucks. But wait, there's more good news. You can get everything I've just described with the Key Life app. And for a limited time, it's free. Try it now at Keylife.org/app.

Hey, thanks for joining us. We're hanging out with author Tish Harrison Warren, and you can keep up with her at Tishharrisonwarren.com. And on X, it's @tish_h_warren.

Cathy Wyatt: Tish, during the break, you were finishing up a little bit because there was so much with the whole issue of aridity and acedia. So I wanted to give you an opportunity to finish up if there was anything else you wanted to say about it. And also, one of the things that you mentioned was the fact that the remedy is really the same thing.

Tish Harrison Warren: I distinguish aridity and acedia, but I don't spend a ton of time trying to get people to figure out which one they are because I think they often go together. In my own experience, when God feels distant, it's obviously easier to be more tempted to give up on the faith. If something feels demanding, it's harder. The other reason I didn't go deep into the differences is because the remedy is very similar.

I think of them as comorbidities, like heart disease and diabetes. They often go together and are different and need to be understood in different ways, but a lot of the solutions are the same. The solution for both that the monks constantly talked about was staying in your cell. We would understand that as fortitude or resilience. It's the idea that when you are feeling like God is distant or when you would rather do anything in the world rather than have to love your neighbor or pray, you actually stay in.

It's a comprehensive idea of staying in your literal place, but it's also staying in the things that God has called you to, staying in your vows, staying in the rhythm of prayer, and staying in your community. It is the idea of sticking with God and sticking with prayer but also your work. It's a little more comprehensive than just "keep having your quiet time." It's this idea of practicing patience, perseverance, and fortitude that I scoop together and talk about as resilience.

That's the response to aridity and acedia. It's the way of getting through it, which I don't even like to talk about because part of what it means to battle these things is to surrender to the idea that we don't know how long this will last or what the other side will look like. We are seeking God in the moment we're in. That's what the monks recommend for both.

Matthew Porter: Tish, part of this is not just "staying in your cell" or gritting your teeth and white-knuckling it. It feels like an important component is embracing the idea that this is not outside of God's plan. There's just a purpose to it. It's not just meaningless pain. If you can hold on to the fact that God's going to use this, even if you don't know how, then you don't even need to be looking toward when you are going to get through this, just what God has for you right now.

Steve Brown: I really recommend readers read the book. But I also recommend when they read the book to keep reading. Read the whole thing, particularly after the third chapter. There are some Christian books that if you read the first two chapters, you get the gist and they sort of repeat that again. I honestly think if you just read the first three chapters of my book, you will get a view of Christian resilience, but it will be incomplete to the point that it might be harmful.

I hit resilience and fortitude hard because the historic church and the scriptures do. But then I say, "How do we do that in a way that isn't just white-knuckling it or stoicism?" I spend a lot of time distinguishing what Christian hope and Christian resilience are from the stoic "life is hard, suck it up" mentality. I think that if we get those confused, we end up almost worse off. I spend time talking about the need for strength and perseverance, but then I take a turn in chapter four. The rest of the book is about how we do that in a way that is honest, hopeful, and not just going to burn us out or grind us down. How do we do that in a way that is actually aimed at Christian flourishing? Because it's not just weary lands; it's growth that happens in the midst of that. I don't think that's automatic; it requires intentionality. That's what the second half of the book is about.

Steve Brown: The first three are the desert chapters. That is such good stuff and so wise. One of the Moravians said to Wesley, "How can I have faith if I don't have faith? How can I preach it?" He said, "Preach it till you get it. Then when you get it, you'll preach it because you do." That sounds like "fake it till you make it," but it's more profound than that. You just said that and you say that in the book. This book is not just truthful; it's helpful in a very pragmatic way. It's called *What Grows in Weary Lands: On Christian Resilience*. Tish, you're great. Thank you for spending an hour with us.

Tish Harrison Warren: I really loved getting to be with you tonight.

Steve Brown: You know an asset you get for doing this is three free sins. So be careful how you use them.

Tish Harrison Warren: I've already used them up today.

Steve Brown: We all have. Again, the name of the book is *What Grows in Weary Lands: On Christian Resilience*. The author, Tish Harrison Warren. It's a good book. Get it. We're coming back to tell you who we're going to do it to next week.

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Steve Brown: Great hour. You know why it was a great hour? It's a great hour because it was an honest hour. We've got to quit pretending. Religion can be a disease and it can really mess with your head if you let it. You get with people who are all joyous and happy and living the victorious Christian life, and at least half of them are lying, and the other half are going to experience something that's not victorious later. If we just said that to each other, it would go a long way in being very helpful to a lot of people. The Bible is clear about that.

Tish quoted the 131st Psalm about being weaned. There is a time when you say, "Look," and the disciples did that. Everybody was leaving Jesus. Jesus is easy to leave because some of this stuff is really messy. And then Jesus said, "Are you going to go too?" And Peter said, "Where are we going to go? I don't know anyplace else to go." You read Mother Teresa's book published after she died and for years she didn't sense God, but she was faithful. She was there. Maybe that's what we need to hear; sometimes, as Thomas à Kempis said, "Sometimes thou dost withdraw thyself from us so we might know the sweetness of his presence." Every Christian I know knows that's true if you'll stop and think about it a while. So let's be honest with each other. It would be very helpful. Leave the lying to me, okay?

Matthew Porter: And don't discount the power of a donation.

Steve Brown: For a certain amount of money, all of this stuff is irrelevant. Who's going to be here next week?

Matthew Porter: Next week, we have somebody brand new to us. His name is Doug Groothuis. His book is *What if Jesus is Right?: Examining Jesus' Claims About Himself in a World Full of Falsehoods*.

Steve Brown: That'll be a great program. We'll be here. We have to be. And you should want to be. Same time, same place next week. And between now and then, don't do anything we wouldn't, and that gives you a wide, wide berth.