Ep. 13 Navigating an Evolving Faith in Relationships with Cindy Wang Brandt and Kathy Escobar

Sep 16

Hosted by Sarah Bessey and Jeff Chu

Featuring Cindy Wang Brandt and Kathy Escobar

For the first - but not last time - we’re featuring a double-header of talks from Evolving Faith. First Cindy Wang Brandt explores parenting while your faith is evolving, placing the priority on giving our children spiritual autonomy and the freedom to explore and thrive. Then Kathy Escobar addresses what we gain in the wilderness when we are honest within our relationships from learning to live with disapproval to the opportunity to be a healthier, more integrated person. Finally, Sarah and Jeff have a conversation about how Sarah’s raising her kids with an awareness of her own evolving faith, Jeff’s experiences within a more communal culture rather than an individualistic culture, and what it means to untangle our view of our parents or faith tradition from God and live honestly in relationship.

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Show Notes

Evolving Faith
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You can find Jeff Chu on Instagram and Twitter. You can also subscribe to his newsletter Notes of a Make-Believer Farmer at jeffchu.substack.com.
You can find Sarah Bessey on Instagram and Twitter. You can also subscribe to her newsletter Field Notes at sarahbessey.substack.com. Learn more about her books here.

Cindy Wang Brandt

Kathy Escobar

Website
Book - Practicing: Changing Yourself to Change the World and Down We Go: Living Into The Wild Ways of Jesus
Book - Faith Shift: Finding Your Way Forward When Everything You Believe Is Coming Apart
Walking Wounded: Hope and Healing for those Wounded by Church and Ministry (through TRANSform Network)

Transcript

JEFF: Hi, friends, I’m Jeff Chu.

SARAH: And I’m Sarah Bessey. Welcome back to the Evolving Faith Podcast.

JEFF: This is a podcast for the wanderers, the misfits, and the spiritual refugees, to let you know you are not alone in the wilderness. We're all about hope, and we're here to point each other to God. No matter where you are on your journey, no matter what your story is, you are welcome! We're listening—to God, to one another, and to the world.

SARAH:: The story of God is bigger, wider, more inclusive and welcoming, filled with more love, than we could ever imagine. There's room here for everyone.

JEFF: There is room here for you.

JEFF: All right, friends. Welcome back to the Evolving Faith Podcast. It is Episode 13!

Before we begin, come follow us on Instagram! We are at @evolvfaith. The Evolving Faith conference happens soon. Following along on social media, you won’t miss any conversations, content, and connections when we gather virtually in October. And if you ever talk about Evolving Faith on Instagram, make sure you tag us. We love to hear from you there, whether you’re saying nice things or not so nice ones?

SARAH: Not true. Only nice things. I only want you to tag us if you’re saying nice things and review us if you love us. That’s it. That’s the rule.

JEFF: Sarah!

SARAH: Is that not how this works?! All right, so today, we are featuring two incredible leaders. Both of them are focusing on how to navigate an evolving faith within relationships. So first, we’ll be hearing from Cindy Wang Brandt, as she is well known to many of us. She is the author of Parenting Forward: How to Raise Children with Justice, Mercy, and Kindness. She is also the founder and leader of a thriving Facebook community called Raising Children Unfundamentalist. And she has a podcast, also called Parenting Forward. Cindy is from Taiwan and she was sent to a school for missionary children there, which is where she converted and spent her formative years in conservative evangelicalism. She went to Wheaton and seminary embarked on a full-time career in missions. But then her faith began to evolve. And she has two kids herself. And so her work in this space was really born out of her own curiosity about how to navigate an evolving faith while also raising your kids. And that’s a conversation that has popped up a number of times in our Facebook group, the Evolving Faith After Party, and so I think that this will serve particular members of our community really well right now. And then after hearing from Cindy, we’re going to go right into listening to a dear friend of the Evolving Faith community, Kathy Escobar.

JEFF: Kathy co-pastors the Refuge, a Christian community in Denver, Colorado. She’s the author of several books, including Practicing: Changing Yourself to Change the World, Faith Shift: Finding Your Way Forward When Everything You Believe Is Coming Apart, and Down We Go: Living into the Wild Ways of Jesus. Kathy is a trained spiritual director and has a deep passion for those on the margins of life and faith as well as for healing and transformation in community. Kathy is such a gracious and warm presence. And she will be talking through a wider lens of relationships as our faith evolves.

SARAH: You know, this is the first time that we have featured two speakers in one episode, and so this might run a wee bit longer than usual. But when we were at Evolving Faith in 2018, Kathy and Cindy spoke in the same session and they had such a flow between their talks, and so it felt weird to take them apart for the podcast. So both Cindy and Kathy’s words about navigating relationships—whether that is with raising children or our wider networks of friends and families and communities—a lot of the content here can be applied to a lot of different relationships. And so even though some aspects might be directed towards those of us who are raising children, there are a lot of things that will serve the whole community. The principles, the postures, the model that they present of an evolving faith includes a lot of stories and I hope that there’s room here for everyone here. But since we don’t want this episode to run too too long, we’ll try to keep our conversation both now and after we listen to Kathy and Cindy a bit shorter. You all know it’s hard to do because Jeff is SUCH a chatterbox and LOVES podcasting with his whole heart but I will do my best to rein him in.

JEFF: Yeah, that’s really true, Sarah. All I ever want to do is to hear myself talk. You know me so well. I rebuke you. I rebuke you.

SARAH: I love it.

JEFF: Okay, friends. First we’ll hear from Cindy and then from Kathy, both speaking at Evolving Faith 2018 in Montreat, North Carolina.

CINDY WANG BRANDT: Oh, I get claps just for traveling on a plane! Okay. I’m going to talk to you about parenting and evolving faith. So like many of you, my faith evolved without asking for my permission. Turns out that when you're a woman, and a person of color, and you have a transgender brother, it doesn't take long before you realize the evangelicalism of your childhood is laced with racism, sexism, and homo/transphobia. And deconstructing those toxic elements feels like a choice, but also not much of a choice for those who hold marginalized identities.

We all have different timelines and journeys when it comes to parenting and shifting faith. So for me, it started when both my kids were born. So I had these two babies in the house. And I started to feel that rumbling, you know, that rumbling, that feeling that something isn't quite right, right beneath the surface of your soul. And I knew that to confront it would mean that a whole house of cards would fall down. So strung in this tension, feeling like something big is about to happen.

So here's what I did: I sat my kids down, and I said, Dear children, Mommy is about to have a gigantic faith meltdown. If you could do me one big favor of not growing up. Stop forming your identity for a minute. Don't think any thoughts whatsoever about life or death or purpose or meaning. And don't ask me any questions about God, the Bible, church, Jesus, because I'm going to need a little time to figure it out.

So my kids are 12 and 15 today, and I'll let you take one guess as to whether I figured it out. I started my Facebook group Raising Children Unfundamentalist because I wanted to know if I was the only one feeling like this, that parenting and evolving faith is like a really hard thing to do. Evolving faith, as we know, is not just about a change in beliefs. It's about a make, you know, shaking up your community. It's about disorienting all those values that we thought were true. It's about, you know, all these anxiety and angst, and trying to manage all that is like a visceral experience, is a full-time job in and of itself. And we're expected to raise human beings? I mean, our children are over here in the stage where they're fusing their faith. This is Kathy Escobar—fusing their faith. Where they're integrating their faith, they're putting down values for the first time of their identity and their values. And we are over here disintegrating, taking apart our faith piece by piece and examining it and figuring— so how in the world are we supposed to help them form their faith when we're literally falling apart? Um,if you are parenting with an evolving faith today, I would like you to know that you are not alone. And I agree with you that there is definitely a flaw in this design. Right?

I'm not here to any expert advice, because my kids, like I said are 12 and 15, so I don't have the final grade yet, just the progress reports. But I've been through a few years of this, both parenting and evolving faith, so I just want to give you a few thoughts that I hope can be helpful to you.

Okay, so first of all, I want to say that our children are not us. We are the best frame of reference for our life, for our faith, for our spirituality, and for our spiritual wounds. But our children don't bear our spiritual wounds. So let me give you an example. My kids when they were little they went to Christian school and Sunday school, and they would come home with these Bible worksheets that have white Jesus on them. God bless the Christian publishing industry. They're trying to create good, healthy resources for children's ministry, and I can connect you with them if you're interested. But let's just say for this year of our Lord 2018, we are still dealing with Bible worksheets that have white Jesus on them. And flannelgraphs.

So when I look at these worksheets, I you know, I get I'm like, Why? Why? Why so long, oh Lord?

But I think mostly it reminds me of the child in me. And it dredges up the wounds of me when I was vulnerable as a child in evangelicalism to these toxic teachings. And I'm reminded of all the work that I've done, this painstaking inner work, to get free all these years. And the more I think about it, the more panic rises in my heart. My breath gets shallow. And I've got this pain and this bitterness and this rage. And all these choice words at the tip of my tongue, because I am on Twitter, ready to lash out, and my kids who are just looking up at me, with their big wide eyes, saying, “Mommy, where are the coloring pencils?”

So you see, I'm not saying that we don't try to push for change, and put some melanin in white Jesus. What I am saying is that our children have not yet fought the culture-war battles that we fought. And this is not to say that they're a blank slate. They are learning from these worksheets and navigating their faith environment, but they're doing that in their own time, according to the issues of their day. In other words, our kids are going to cultivate their own spiritual baggage. And because they're going to do so, it's not really fair for them to have to bear ours too.

So what's the alternative? Do we do nothing in the face of white Jesus? You take deep, cleansing breaths. And when the kids are distracted from coloring, you, you take those worksheets and you recycle them real good.

I get asked often, What kind of faith do we give to our kids? And I think this is the good work we're doing, right? In this conference, we're trying to figure out a way forward that is healthy for us, that's good for the world, and that's worth passing on to the next generation. But the problem with so many of us is that we were raised to believe that faith is a system, that it is a set of propositions, and a list of rules, and a math equation in which you plug in the right formula on this side and you get the right answer on this side. And so we go into parenting our children and faith with that same mindset. And we say, we ask ourselves and our religious leaders, what is that right formula we can plug into our kids so that they turn out to be the right kind of kid? But I think you and I both know that's not the way it works, because that's what happened to us. Our religious leaders tried to plug in the formula into our minds and our souls and our spirits. And we lived our one wild and precious life. And we said, “No, we are not a math equation. We are human beings.” And so are our children. So if we're not a math equation, then what are we?

We are story.

You can tell that I'm a humanities person. Hashtag humanities for the win. For people who love math, please keep mathing; we do need you. Our kids love stories. They would much rather hear your story than your Twitter rants, believe it or not. And you know, the one thing I am so sure of everyone in this room today is that you all have really interesting faith stories. You have stories that contain wild plot twists. You have faith stories that have exciting incidents, and conflict, resolution, and for hopefully, some of us redemption. So this is the permission slip that I want to give to each of you who are parenting with an evolving faith: You do not have to teach your child about faith. All you have to do is tell them your faith story.

So this is well and good for, you know, private conversations and dinner around the dinner table. What about church? Do we have a responsibility to raise our children in a religious tradition? And if so, what kind? I can't answer that for you. There's too many variables. Where do you live? What churches are in your area? How old are your kids? What are their needs? And where are you and your evolving faith? These are really good questions to ask. And we should all wrestle with them within our families.

But I want to get us to reframe the way that we ask these questions. Remember I said earlier that our children are going to cultivate their own spiritual baggage. And that's because our kids don't enter this world in a faith-neutral vacuum. I think, sadly, for so many of us and myself included, if I'm honest, is that we've been so wounded by the toxic religiosity of our past that we feel sure the best thing that we can do for our kids is to keep them away from church and from any toxic religious teachings. But there's a couple of problems with this. First of all, depending on where you are, that just might not even be possible. So, for example, here we are in the South, in the Bible Belt, they're going to learn about it from billboards, from church signs, from playing with a Southern Baptist boy next door. And the second problem is that if we shelter our children from any toxic religiosity, then like the child who was raised in an overly hygienic environment, they're not going to build immunity and resilience. So that's the key word, right there: We want our kids to have faith resilience, because resilient faith can handle multiple perspectives. A resilient faith is not afraid to question, to dissent, and to doubt. A resilient faith thinks critically and engages wisely. A resilient faith has the capacity to evolve.

So how do we do that? We don't do it. We construct an environment in which our children do it themselves, because the only way our children can gain a resilient faith is if it rises out of their own inherent and intrinsic agency. So think about a playground. We have playgrounds because we want kids to play, we want them to take risks, we want them to use their bodies to have fun, but we have safety protocols. We want to make sure that they're rolling around in grass and not on a bed of nails. So everything about a playground can be, you know, adjusted. It can be changed and adapted. And sometimes, if it's really a hazard, scrapped, right? So when we think about church, church is one element of a child's spiritual playground. So is reading the Bible. So is worship. All these things are tools which our children can use to express and explore their inherent spirituality.

But the playground exists for the child. Okay? So I think the fatal error in the history of religion is that we have placed the institution above the human being. We’ve valued orthodoxy above human lives. So I do not want us to repeat this mistake with our children. So don't be afraid to let them play. Don't be afraid to let your children play in church and outside of church. Don't be afraid to let play with the Bible. Let them play with prayer, let them play with song, let them play with Christian friends and atheist friends and Buddhist friends and Muslim friends. Tell them your faith story. But don't forget those safety protocols. If you're taking your child to a church that violates their inherent dignity and worth, or if it limits their spiritual autonomy to play, then it's time to update the playground.

So instead of asking ourselves, should I raise my child in the church? Let's put the focus on our child: Does my child have the spiritual autonomy and freedom to explore and thrive? So, that’s all I have.

KATHY ESCOBAR: Whew. Okay. How many of you do not have children at home any longer? Woohoo, empty nesters! I just joined two months ago. How many of you still have children at home? A lot of you. It’s really important: Whether you have children or you don't have children, we all wrestle with how to live out an evolving faith in relationship with other people. When we do have children, though, the disclaimer on the intro is that I just said we didn't screw them up too much. But we screwed up our children. We did.

I have five of them. My oldest is 26. I have four boys and a girl—26, my daughter is 24, almost 25. I have a 22-year-old and then I have twins who are just turning 19. So we had a lot of children along for the ride on our shifting faith. And it's not lost on me that it was hard for them. It was harder for the oldest ones. The little ones, we learned a lot on the way. And so I just want to acknowledge right now those parents in the room who you're maybe a little bit like me, and it's like you're really wrestling with stuff that we did to our kids by being in the systems that we were in. And then for those of you with little kids, you know, you're terrified of screwing them up.

The other group that I want to also acknowledge in this room are those of you in the room who have broken relationship with people that you used to be so close to, you used to work alongside, you used to live alongside, you used to serve alongside, believe alongside. And now because things changed, you just don't have— there's a rift, there's a brokenness, there's a disruption that hurts.

The other people that I want to acknowledge in this room today are just those of you who are in spiritually abusive systems. And so something that I want to say about that in relationship to relationships is that you don't have to go back to them. You don't. So some of the things that I'm going to be talking about related to parenting and relationships and becoming more whole people, so some of this is in relationship with ourselves. Please hear me: You don't have to do it. There are people that you don't have to go sit at their feet again. You did. But it is very important to own your story. And I'm in the words of the opening, it's just: Be open to healing in some way.

But just a little bit about my story. I know some of you and I'll just stay, seeing you all here just makes me want to cry. And the reason why is because my whole faith came apart 12 years ago. It had been shifting for many years before that. And honestly, I never really thought there was going to be a gathering like this. Because it's so hard to get us in the room together. So most of the conversations that I've been familiar with and engaged with and journeying alongside are in, like, covert conversations and coffee shops. You know what I'm talking about? Online conversations where you use a different handle. I know a lot of us, they take our Walking Wounded class and use different names. Because it's so hard to bring our full self into these conversations out of fear. And so I just want to acknowledge this is really special— I want to acknowledge the people who pulled this together who I've kind of watched through online all these years, that it's a gift to be together. And I know a lot of you are engaging with this at home by yourself or in little pockets. And I do believe that an evolving faith, a shifting faith, a deconstructing and rebuilding faith—you can use the language of unraveling—this faith is meant to be shared and experienced together. And the biggest problem in the world is that for the most part, our structures, and our systems don't provide for that. And so most of us are left feeling so lonely, and so disconnected, and so ashamed, and so afraid.

So my hope for all of us is when we leave, when this thing is all over, that just in some way you met somebody that you did not know, that you shared a little piece of your story, that you heard a little piece of somebody else's, and that you felt the collective thing that's happening, because Christianity is in a radical faith shift. And it's time for something new. And it's emerging. And I do believe in what was shared earlier by Rachel about those who adapt, survive. But I also know that a lot in this process is we feel like we're not going to make it to a new place.

And so just a little bit about me. Some of this is in the book Faith Shift and online. I've been writing for a long time online because I needed to just say some of the things that were inside of me. As a practice, to be more honest. This family that I grew up in is a very broken family, a very dysfunctional family. I'm an adult child of an alcoholic. There was just crazy stuff in my family. My mom married my dad. He’s her second husband, so I have two half brothers. And the part that's really important to know is that I came to Jesus apart from the system. And it's one of the things that I've held on to a lot because it was really pure. My family is not Christian. They like me better now than they did in my really narrow years. But the truth is that someone gave me a Bible and I read the Book of John, and I felt it.

It wasn't until later that I ended up going to church with my boyfriend in high school. And I started to feel something different inside, and I started to kind of walk that path slowly. But I didn't have structures around me. I went to college, it was a Christian college, a conservative Christian college. I was one of the only Democrats. Like, they raised their hands, I was the only one. I went to Pepperdine in Malibu, and I was one of the poorest girls there. But something did start to happen to me in learning some of the rails that you need. And the fusing part of our faith, and I'm really glad for that. I celebrate it. But here's what happened to me when I went all in on Christianity, is that all the things that I was valued for my family—good girl, peace keeping not peacemaking, putting on a good face, being totally split was totally valued in my Christian experience. And in fact, fanned into flame.

So just fast forward: As I started to do some healing work, shameful things I had done. shameful things that had happened to me, being more honest about my family. Honestly, the systems I was in just didn't like it. I kept pushing, pushing, pushing for healing and relationship. That's my thing. That's my gig. That's what I believe is missing in the church is healthy relationship. We were not taught it. We put in a lot of years in this room. And a lot of us don't know that basic thing of healthy, free, authentic relationship, where we're not all enmeshed and codependent with other people and then we're not completely separated. That we live the art of interdependence.

So just fast forward did it all, was a super good Christian girl, cutest little Christian family you've ever seen. And the more honest I got, the more healthier I got, the more the systems I was in couldn't tolerate it. The more I started to call out patriarchy, started to advocate for equality, started advocating for marriage equality, all of it—it just all came apart. And I experienced a huge faith unraveling. And it was the best thing that ever happened to me. But it was also one of the hardest things that ever happened to me. Because in unraveling, when you lose beliefs, then you lose structures that support those beliefs. And then you lose relationships. And then what's underneath it all? Our identity. And I had a lot invested in being a good Christian woman and wife and mother and ministry leader and human.

A lot of my work has been centered on just helping people remember they're going to be okay. And that you don't feel okay. There are some of you in this room that are doing okay— you are. You are right now and I just celebrate that. And there's others of you, I know, you are on the floor in the fetal position. Because when certain beliefs started to shift about the Bible, about humans, about Jesus, about church, then you couldn't go anymore. And then you have family members who are worried for your soul. For reals. Again, my family was like, “Thank you. I’m so happy.” But I need you to know: I lost friends along the way. I am an Enneagram Two—all the twos in the room, we do good in church! The reality of those losses have just about killed me.

Because I thought our relationship could withstand differing views on theology and practice. And they just couldn't.

So I talk about the losses all the time, and I want to switch gears for a moment. And I want to remember that even though we lose so much, we gain so much. Jen spoke about this earlier, and I'm just going to bring it down to some relationships and parenting things that we gain even though we lose so much: We lose certainty and conformity and belonging and affiliation, those things that we held so dear.

Here's what we gain. Here's the first thing: We gain the ability to be healthier human beings. More integrated, more whole, more firmly planted. With feet not on a rock in the same way, but on solid ground that has good soil. And for a lot of us, we were just really taught to split, so there was an inside life and an outside life. It got us into a lot of trouble, got me into a lot of trouble, not telling my real story sooner.

The best thing that ever happened to me after baby number two is being honest with my husband about things from my past that I just couldn't say, because they're so shameful in the church. You don't talk about past abortions freely in the evangelical church. But that's a part of my story. And when I started to say it out loud, it lost its power. And I began to be more integrated. This is the thing we can gain: We can do the work. I love that Melody Beatty was quoted. I will always say, Do anything you can to work on codependence. The church thrives on codependence. We think that that's only for 12-step meetings and people who are in relationship with people who are alcoholics or addicts. It's not true. So much of our work to be healthier parents, healthier friends, healthier sisters and brothers and daughters and sons require us to become people who are willing to heal unhealthy ways of being in relationship with ourself, with God, whatever language you want use, and others.

The second thing that we gain is the ability to change a legacy. And I am so thankful. I wish I had my five cute kids to show you; they would hate this event. But I wish you could hear their story. Because the number 1 thing that they say is, “Thank you, Mom and Dad, for changing.

We are so thankful that you changed.” And for us to switch from shame-based parenting to parenting that was filled with the values which I believe are part of rebuilding after unraveling, which is freedom and mystery and diversity. They're better for it. They are not without their wounds. But they're better for it. But we changed the legacy and our family. And it's not without a cost. But it's a huge gain. My kids embody Jesus without the language of Jesus. And that's enough for me.

The third thing that we gain that is so important and so hard is we learn to live with disapproval. And we need to learn to live with disapproval. Our systems taught us to find ways to be approved of and that our worth came from that approval. And so a huge thing that we can learn is untangling God from people. So somebody’s disapproval of you does not mean God's disapproval of you. And as a, you know, consummate recovering people pleaser, it was also tangled up for me—and you know, it still is, after all these years. I've been doing this for twelve years. And once in a while, you know, I'll get a comment from somebody that I really respect, who is maybe in a different place than me in terms of their theology. It's more rigid, it's more confined. And I hear them and I, I wonder if they're right. And I feel that need to explain myself and to try and get them to understand. And I’m like, No: What's the first one? Learning how to stand on our own and be more integrated people. I can live with their disapproval. I'm not saying it isn't hard. I'm not saying that it doesn't make me so uncomfortable and I don't spin around in my head before I go to bed, replaying that conversation. But we learn how to live with disapproval and it's a good skill.

And the last thing I want to say is that it gives us, related to what we gain, it gives us a place to practice a new way. And I have a reader—I met him on blog land, and then I've met them in real life, and he's one of my favorite parents because his kids are all grown, and when he read Faith Shift, he had his wife read Faith Shift. And he gave a copy to five adult children, and they all talked about it. And they're practicing a new way in their family. The thing that I'm practicing a new way and my family, I told you, my family's like happier that things came up. But I also— my husband's family is in a different place. And so I'm learning how to just live with boundaries. Imagine that.

We can say no. I don't see it that way. I honor your perspective, but I have a different one. And that is good practice.

It will be hard. It's why we need each other. We have to be able to pick up the phone and say, Oh my gosh, that was so hard, I had this hard conversation. You know, this came up at dinner. And I survived. But it was hard. That's why we need each other.

So if there's one thing I could leave you, it's this: Be so gentle with yourself. That's not woo- woo. It’s not. Well, it's a little bit woo-woo. It’s probably a lot woo-woo. But the truth is, is that we have to be more gentle with ourselves. We're expecting it all to come together fast. I've been doing this 12 years, and I still struggle. But I'm finding my way and I am finding freedom and peace. And the other thing is, I think we need to be more gentle with some of the people in our lives. And it's hard. I'm not talking about that related to abuse situations. I'm talking about my mother-in-law, who is afraid for us from a sincere place. And that deserves to be respected.

The last imagery that I want to share is just this. And this is when it's overwhelming. So I bought this in Nashville. It’s kind of pretty. And that really unraveling, it's just a big hot mess. It's a big hot mess. And you know what we want because we think dualistically? Is we want just to pull a string and have it all come together. And the truth is, the best advice I can give you is that sometimes you just have to work on a little piece. That relationship you really need to work out? We chose our kids first. And just work on that, and leave the rest for later. And that's okay. It'll probably come in time. But you can't do it all at once. And you can't pull one thread and make this all come together.

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SARAH: If you’ve been listening to and loving this podcast, please do join us for Evolving Faith 2020, our Live Virtual Conference on October 2 and 3, which is just a matter of days away.

JEFF: Many of us are engaging in good, hard, holy work right now to dismantle white supremacy, to cultivate love, to reimagine and to build a faith that works not only for us but for the whole world, and find our way in the wilderness. We need to be reminded of what matters and who is alongside us. We need connection and inspiration, good conversation and laughter and, who are we kidding—we are who we are—probably (definitely) even some tears.

SARAH: We need some hope. We are gathering not in spite of these turbulent times, but because of them. Our speakers for this year not only us but Jen Hatmaker, Sherrilyn Ifill, Audrey Assad, Kate Bowler, Padraig O Tuama, Propaganda, Nadia Bolz-Weber, Barbara Brown Taylor, and so many others. We hope you’ll be able to join us.

JEFF: And don’t forget: your registration gives you full access to all of the content until April 1, 2021. We have set a big, rowdy table in the middle of the wilderness, and together, we are having a feast. We have saved a spot for you. So go to evolvingfaith.com and register today. You don’t want to miss this moment with this community. It’s pretty special. Okay now let’s back to our show.

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JEFF: One of the things I appreciate about both of these talks is that they remind us that our faith is never just about us. Our faith affects those we’re in relationship with, and undoubtedly, our faith is affected by those we’re in relationship with. Tristan and I don’t have kids ourselves, but we have nieces and nephews, and we have goddaughters, and we have so many dear friends with kids—and so we’re cognizant of what we might be modeling to all of them.

SARAH: I love that. I mean, I’m a parent myself. As we record this, my kids are ranging in age from high school to kindergarten, and there’s four of them, so no wonder I’m tired.

JEFF: I can’t even imagine. I just have a dog. Speaking of which, since we’re talking about parenting, I’m going to make a gratuitous plea here for everyone in the whole wide English-speaking world, never to refer to Fozzie as my fur baby. That is apropos of nothing, but it just feels really important to name.

SARAH: [Laughter]

JEFF: What, Sarah?

SARAH: I’m glad we could make space for this moment.

JEFF: I’d like you to hold space for it. Please.

SARAH: Oh. I’ve learned so much about parenting from my friends and family members and people in my community who maybe aren’t parents themselves. So I love that you and Tristan are having that posture and being able to have that sense of openness. But just for that note, I do want you to know I’m going to be sending you a baby book for Fozzie.

JEFF: You know he’s like the equivalent of an eighty-year-old man.

SARAH: I do. He’s so dear. Raising children when you are yourself trying to figure out what you believe or know or maybe even hope for about God or your faith, it can be really disorienting and scary. I hear that from a lot of parents. And so that’s why I was so happy to have Cindy joined us for Evolving Faith that year but also the reminders and words she had there, and one in particular: that your kids don’t have all your spiritual baggage. Don’t feel this need to assign them all your spiritual baggage.

JEFF: So how candid have you been, Sarah, with your kids about your questions regarding faith?

SARAH: That’s a good question. I think I’ve been very open, but at appropriate times. We probably could talk about this for days, or at least I could. But I really agree with Cindy that we need to let our kids lead here. And one thing that was really helpful for me early in deconstruction was some advice I got from a parent who had already raised her kids. And I remember her telling me, “Answer the questions that they are asking.” That I don’t need to saddle my kids with questions they aren’t asking yet. Right? Letting them lead, meeting them where they are, answering questions when they ask. When my son was in middle school, he really wanted to ask more about the origins of the universe and so that was when we got to talk more about how we see Genesis and creation, how it looks to embrace science while still loving the stories. I didn’t have that conversation with him one time - there have been a million conversations for what feels like years. He’s very into astrophysics!

JEFF: That’s your area of expertise.

SARAH: We are learning together. But the thing I want to model is less “right opinions” and rather good questions, good conversation, curiosity, having a learner’s spirit. And I think that we do that together, you know, even though physics is way above my pay grade. For instance, my older kids have read my books by now and are pretty well versed in my faith story. But my little kids, not so much. Right? They’re just not there yet.

JEFF: It must be so hard to let go of that desire for control and to admit that you can’t guarantee a particular outcome, whether it’s happiness or steadfast faith or success, whatever that means to you, for these little humans whom you love so much. I sometimes try to imagine how my parents, who hold much more conservative theology than I do, must feel, for instance, when they look at my life and wonder about my salvation. And I have a lot of compassion for them. It must be so hard. I also wonder what it might have been like for my parents to be more open about their struggles, but that’s not Chinese culture. So much of what we’re talking about is cultural.

SARAH: That’s really true. That’s really true. We each have such different social and cultural locations that we bring to this conversation. That means talking about them will never be simple or formulaic or one-size-fits-all. So I’m wondering if you can say more about this.

JEFF: Chinese culture, or at least the subculture that I was raised in, because, well, there are a lot of different kinds of Chinese cultures, doesn’t highly value emotional expression and openness. Collective harmony matters a lot more. And it’s a parent’s job to maintain steadiness and harmony. It is not harmonious to talk about what’s not going well in your heart or your soul or your bank account, and it’s certainly not something you do with your kid. That is not the kid’s responsibility. So I grew up with this notion, which I know friends of mine in all different cultures share, that my parents had it all together when I was a kid, because they usually didn’t let me see otherwise.

SARAH: You know, I wonder if that connects to her words that no matter where we find ourselves, people do respond more to stories. And being unafraid to tell your story, to integrate it, to welcome others, even our kids, into it when it’s appropriate to do so, matters. I remember Nish Weiseth—we had her on the podcast a couple of weeks ago—she used to always say, “Giving others your opinion is easy, and telling your story is hard.” Because we really hide behind our opinions when really the invitation is to enter into each other’s stories, with each other.

JEFF: The storytelling piece of this is hard and that’s cultural too. I think it can be a marker of a more individualistic culture than the one I grew up in. In my upbringing, it was the collective story, the family story, that really mattered most, not you and your own personal story.

SARAH: I see a lot to love there, and I think there’s a lot to receive there, for those of us who maybe came of more of an individualistic sort of culture—being part of something bigger than yourself. Because even our faith evolutions are part of a wider story God is telling in the world and that reminds me of that we aren’t just islands in the wilderness. Right? In some ways it reminds me of one of my favourite mantras about raising kids, particularly raising kids in some form of faith and hopefulness: It’s that it’s more caught than taught. For us it’s been about inviting them into that journey with us, into what we hope for and the world we want to build and the sort of people we want to be and the wider story that we are connected to and a part of.

JEFF: Right. So how can we see it not as either our individual stories or a collective story, but maybe as both/and—our individual stories woven into a much bigger narrative? It can be really tough to parse that out, especially for those of us who live at the intersections of cultures.

SARAH: That is a real reality, I think. When I turn towards Kathy’s talk, though, I think everyone can see what we meant about how it felt impossible to separate these two conversations from each other. They overlapped and complemented each other so well. And one thing that Kathy talked about then was learning to live with disapproval. And that applies to almost all of us. Learning to live with disapproval is a big part of this journey, whether it’s individual or collective or some place in between. And she talked about the systems that taught us to find way to be approved of and to find our worth in that approval. So I’m wondering how that has looked for you.

JEFF: I don’t know what to tell you, because I don’t know how to live with disapproval, most of all yours. I think, isn’t that what I’m trying to practice every time we record a podcast episode?

SARAH: You have my unconditional approval and love always.

JEFF: I know, and sometimes it’s overwhelming. Seriously, though, I think this is something we have to wrestle with, whether we come from more collective culture or from a more individualistic one. It’s a lot to carry either way. And having a healthy sense of our belovedness to God is probably the only thing I can think of that begins to point us in the direction of a healthy relationship with human approval or disapproval.

SARAH: That’s good. You know, it’s like what she said, right? Untangling God from people. So then that means that somebody’s disapproval of you doesn’t mean God's disapproval of you. And that is really good and hard work.

JEFF: And what does it mean for those seasons and moments when God seems silent? Or when God seems far away? For me at least, distance can feel like disapproval.

SARAH: I don’t know if this exactly fits. But it makes me think of something I realized when my children were quite tiny. Because the instinct that a lot of people have when a kid is being naughty or difficult or testing boundaries or whatever—you know, being a kid—is to isolate them, right? Time outs, go to your room, get away from the family. As if connection is a prize that only good kids get. And so one of the things that I learned when I was studying attachment theory when my babies were little was that what they actually needed most in those moments was more connection. They needed to be seen, to be loved, and to be included. And so as much as possible keep them close, pull them close. Time, attention, affection, love, connection, fun. You know,a nd I don’t mean to simplify very complex things and obviously every kid is different with very different needs, but it has proven to be true for me, for us, that when a kid is most difficult or resistant to love, that is when they need love the very, very most. And so, drawing them near, drawing close to them. And so that’s actually been my experience that this holds true even for our perception of God. Because often our parents or our caregiver are the very first “face” for God that we get, or experience, maybe, even of God. And so if you were given a version of God that is, you know, punitive and angry, that you were sent away or isolated or ignored or punished anytime you were needy or naughty or whatever, then of course you perceive the wilderness as God’s absence. When the truth is that this is where intimacy with God is formed. Oftentimes we are drawn into the wilderness because this is God drawing near to you. That it is when we are needy and longing and fearful and complicated that God is the sort of parent who draws near. It reminds me of the story of the prodigal sons, God is the parent who runs down the path to the kid who broke their heart. God is near to the brokenhearted. It may look different than we were taught or conditioned to expect though.

JEFF: It’s a tricky metaphor, right? Especially for those of us who have had complicated relationships with our parents. How do we not hold against God the things that our parents might have done or not done? So there’s that level of careful disentanglement that we have to do too. I think one point is this: So many of us crave connection and belonging—with and to God and with and to one another—and whether kid or adult, we’re still not good at figuring out the mechanics of that. It feels almost impossible, for instance, to make a mistake nowadays, especially on social media. Because where is the mercy? Where is the grace? I think that makes for a natural transition to something in Kathy’s talk that I wanted to mention: I appreciated, even as I still struggle with it, Kathy’s reminder to be gentle with ourselves. My immediate reaction when someone issues a reminder like that is to say: Does not compute. What is this “gentle” word that you speak of? But 2020 has been really hard, and a lot of life is just hard, and still I struggle with this concept of gentleness. One of the things I wonder is, Where’s the line between being gentle with yourself and being complacent or wallowing? How do we make sure that we’re not just rationalizing or making excuses under the guise of being gentle with ourselves, such that the rest of my life is just me collapsing into the spiritual equivalent of fluffy duvets, because I want gentleness? Not that there’s anything wrong with a fluffy duvet. To be clear, I don’t sleep on concrete under a pile of hay.

SARAH: Well, thanks for clearing that up. I think for a lot of our community - who often experienced a more punitive or rigid form of faith, and not just from their parents, but even from their broader faith tradition or culture—we have a lot of people within our community who were themselves parented that way as well, right? And they’re even going back to their kids who are now grown and saying, Okay, we need to navigate this now, of the things that I’ve learned and am learning about God. And so of course gentleness is going to feel foreign. Or indulgent. Because we were taught that love is tough, love is hard. But I think that’s why what Kathy says is so important. Because gentleness is a position of strength. That it’s not about striving for approval or numbing or disengaging. But the seeds that gentleness - towards others but also towards ourselves - is what allows us to be okay with disapproval and to love unconditionally.

You know, Kathy has been such a good guide, particularly for people I think who struggle with gentleness toward themselves. We’ve talked a lot about her book Faith Shift; it’s deeply practical and fantastic. But I did want to mention as well that she actually has a course she leads in Denver called Walking Wounded for those who are wanting to heal from a more traumatic experience in church or in life. So that might even be a good resource as well.

Now, before we wrap up this episode, one thing I did want to mention with great tenderness and love is that Kathy has endured a tremendous loss since we were together at this conference. Her youngest son died last year. Jared was just nineteen years old. He was an uncommon soul, bright, beautiful, wild. And so to wrap up today’s episode, we just wanted to take a moment to honour Jared Luke Escobar, who was deeply loved, whose life touched so many lives, and who is missed by Kathy, her family, and everyone who knew him every single day.

JEFF: We love you, Kathy.

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JEFF: You can find all of the links mentioned today, including info about Cindy and Kathy and their work in the world as well as a full transcript in our show notes at evolvingfaith.com/podcast. Sign up for my newsletter at jeffchu.substack.com and find photos of Fozzie and me on Instagram at @byjeffchu. The Evolving Faith Podcast is produced by us, Sarah Bessey and Jeff Chu, along with Lucy Huang. Thanks to Audrey Assad and Wes Willison for our music.

SARAH: You can find me at sarahbessey.com for all my social media links, my newsletter, and of course my books. Join us next week as we listen to another double-header of an episode with Jonathan Martin and Kaitlin Curtice. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Evolving Faith Podcast, friends. And until next time, remember that you are loved.

Sarah Bessey