Neuroscience and Spirituality

Kasey Olander:

Welcome to The Table Podcast, where we discuss issues of God and culture, brought to you by Dallas Theological Seminary.

Welcome to The Table Podcast, where we discuss issues of God and culture to show the relevance of theology to everyday life. I'm Kasey Olander. I'm the Web Content Specialist here at The Hendricks Center. And today our topic is neuroscience and spirituality. What relationship does our brain have with our spiritual life? And we are joined by Dr. Ekpedeme Wade. She is a DTS professor at the Houston campus. She's also an MD and she's a therapist and founder of Twelve-Two Counseling. Ekpedeme, thank you so much for joining us today.

Ekpedeme Wade:

Thank you for having me, Kasey.

Kasey Olander:

I'm very interested in this conversation. I think that you who are listening are going to find it riveting as well. So I guess we'll just start off with, Ekpedeme, what is neuroscience and then how did you become interested in its intersection with spirituality?

Ekpedeme Wade:

So neuroscience is the science, the study, of the brain, and all things that that encompasses. And I became interested in it, intrigued by it really, because I see our spirituality having so much to do with the way our mind works, what we think about our emotions, how we see the Bible, how we view God, naturally. A lot of it is kind of based on how our brains develop. The trauma, the experiences, the modeling that we have, that shapes our brain, that affects how we view God and our relationship with God. And I just think it's intriguing and I love studying it and talking about it.

Kasey Olander:

Yeah, that is very interesting. I guess let's dive right into what impact can our, I guess are you talking about our lived experiences or more biologically what we're made of? What are the things that impact the way we view God for example?

Ekpedeme Wade:

Both. Both, really. But in my line of work, I tend to talk to my clients more about our lived experiences, about our childhood experiences, the modeling we had with our family, our parents, our guardians, the training that we had, what was spoken into us, what wasn't spoken into us, how God was presented to us or not presented to us. All of those things absolutely shape how we view God and how we enter into a relationship with God.

For some of us, it's very easy. For some of us, those experiences, so childhood experiences, were positive and so we see God in this positive way and it's easy to believe the Bible and know that it's true and have a deep connection with God. For others, it's not as easy because of how God was presented or what was told to us or experiences that maybe communicated there is no God or God doesn't care about you or this situation is too big for God to handle. There are kids and adults that have experiences that those kind of thoughts and words are spoken and so it makes it a little bit more difficult to have that deep connection and trust with God based on those experiences.

Kasey Olander:

Okay. So then why don't we get into if you have these early childhood experiences, let's say the ones that teach you false things about God, that He doesn't care about you, for example, then is that just an insurmountable obstacle or what happens after that?

Ekpedeme Wade:

Yeah, definitely not insurmountable. It's difficult, for sure. And I think for a lot of people it takes intentionality. But it is doable. The brain is neuroplastic. So it changes, it forms. So as our brains are developing from childhood onto early adulthood, those messages and those experiences are actually doing something to our brain. Those neurons are connecting in a specific way. Those neurons are firing in a specific way based on our experiences and based on what we're learning. But it doesn't have to be permanent. When truth comes in, if those neurons are connecting with lies, "I'm not good enough. I'm not worthy. There is no God," when truth enters, you say that truth and if you believe it enough, you read it enough, you experience it enough, those neurons can learn to rewire and fire in a different way.

Kasey Olander:

Yeah. Neurons being what comprises the brain physically?

Ekpedeme Wade:

Yes. Yes. So they're the nerve cells. They're nerve cells. We call them neurons, and the brain, and we have billions of them.

Kasey Olander:

Okay. Yeah, and then the more that they fire together, then they wire together and create these pathways so that if at first it was about something that wasn't true about God, then the neuroplasticity you're talking about is what actually is really hopeful because it can reform different pathways to make us recall what's actually true about God, that He does care about us, or that He does love us and exist even.

Ekpedeme Wade:

Correct. Correct. And that's why we talk about different spiritual practices. Those spiritual practices help actually reshape, reform, our brains and the way that the neuron fires. If we talk about meditation, meditated on His word, meditated on His promises, meditating on God's character, the more you do that, the more you read that, the more you say it out loud, the more you sing it, it becomes truth. It is truth, but you actually start believing that truth and your nerves, your neurons, start believing it as well. And so they're firing a different way.

Kasey Olander:

And that is really interesting that what we do physically, and we think of them as spiritual disciplines, what these things do actually impact the way that our brains are, which is fascinating. But let me go back to that, the idea of meditation that you brought up, because isn't this getting a little bit into maybe some Eastern ideas or what is it about meditation?

Ekpedeme Wade:

Yeah, so I think there is a often preconceived notion that mindfulness and meditation are Eastern or new age. But if I look into the Bible, I think that they are definitely biblically rooted and they are long-standing practices in the Christian community.

What I see as a difference is that kind of the Eastern way of meditation talks about emptying the mind, emptying your mind, and maybe not going anywhere. But what I see in meditation and mindfulness in the Bible is filling your mind with, again, God's promises, the truth of the Bible, being present in the moment, being mindful of God's presence, His words, his works.

Kasey Olander:

Okay. Can you tease that out for me one more time, the difference between. You talked about meditation as you can do it by saying things out loud or by singing, or over and over, but then also can you distinguish one more time between what mindfulness is?

Ekpedeme Wade:

Yes, good question. So meditation, so the Hebrew word meditate literally means to mutter or to speak quietly. So meditation in my view is not an emptying of the mind, but it is thinking through, pondering through, speaking through, or like I said, singing through. If we're talking about from a biblical, from a Christian standpoint, everything that has to do with God.

So if you are reading the Bible, saying it out loud, if you're singing a song that is a Christian song that's based on scripture, that is meditation. If you are thinking through biblical passages and verses and saying them, reciting them to yourself or even to your friends in passing and conversation, that to me is meditation. It's not an emptying, your mind is going nowhere. But it's literally speaking, uttering, these words.

Whereas mindfulness is more of being in the moment, being present, understanding what is happening in the here and now. So with my clients, a lot of that is somatic. What is happening to your body right now? What is happening to your emotions right now? It can be an emotional present. So not thinking through what happened yesterday or what's going on tomorrow, but being present, being mindful in the here and now. And I think sometimes we think, "I'm here, I'm talking, I know what's going on with me." But are my shoulders tense or not? What's happening to my voice? Being mindful in your body, in your emotions, in your thoughts, in the here and now.

Kasey Olander:

And that's a really helpful distinction because the word mindfulness sounds like it's only a mental thing, but you're pointing out that it has to do with your entire body, like your entire person. How do you help people cultivate this self-awareness for what if I don't know that my shoulders are up here by my ears?

Ekpedeme Wade:

Yeah. It takes intention. I mean, I think we live in a culture where it doesn't help us to be mindful. We're always onto the next, what's happening next. And so if we're present in the moment, we feel like we're missing out on something or we're wasting time. So I don't think we live in a culture that cultivates mindfulness. So it does take intention to stop and recognize what is happening right now.

And I think one of the ways that we do that is by simply asking the question. A common question that I ask with my clients is, "What's happening in your body right now?" Because they might not notice it. They might be talking about something and I notice maybe that their body shrinks down or gets riled up. And so asking them, and that forces them to stop and think, "Wait, what is happening to my body right now? What is going on with my body right now?"

Sometimes it takes pointing it out. I do that. Sometimes I point that out to my clients and I'll say, "I noticed that your shoulders went up a little bit. Oh, I noticed that your head hung down. What's happening right now with you?" And these are questions that you can ask yourself if you are working on being intentional, when you're feeling something, when you're noticing, "I'm having a bad day," you can ask yourself, "What's happening right now in my body? Where do I feel that in my body?"

Kasey Olander:

Yeah, and that increases our self-awareness to then, "Okay, maybe next time I notice my chest tightening, then I can realize, 'Oh, I'm more anxious about this than I thought I was.'", for example.

Ekpedeme Wade:

Exactly. Exactly.

Kasey Olander:

Are you looking to assign meaning to these things? When we look physiologically, like what's happening with our bodies, do they always mean something?

Ekpedeme Wade:

They usually mean something, yes. So recognizing them is the first step, and then we get to assign a name or feeling to it, and then you go a step further and start to understand why. So if my shoulders are tensing up, then what feeling is associated with this response, with this physiological response? It could be anxiety, it could be fear, it could be stress. You get to assign what that is. And then you go a step further in why. Why am I feeling stress in this moment? What about my environment or the words that were shared, what about my thoughts, what about what is going on right now is causing this emotion which is causing this response?

Kasey Olander:

And all of this together encompasses mindfulness?

Ekpedeme Wade:

Yes.

Kasey Olander:

Okay. Very cool. So what impact does it have if hypothetically we all had little tiny devices that beg for our attention every few minutes?

Ekpedeme Wade:

You mean like a-

Kasey Olander:

Like a cell phone?

Ekpedeme Wade:

Like a what?

Kasey Olander:

Like a cell phone?

Ekpedeme Wade:

Yeah. I mean, that takes away, that steals the mindfulness that we could have. Our attention is being pulled in so many different directions with electronics, with work, with family, stress, I mean everything. And so we have gotten, as a community, as a culture, we have gotten into a pattern of just busyness. That that is the norm for us now is just to be busy every second. And if we're in line in the grocery store, then we're wasting time if we're not on our phones scrolling through something or if we're stopped at a stoplight, we have to be doing something. And I think that that, it's not good. And I think again, it steals from this what the Bible talks about meditating on His word day and night. Even if it's not meditating on God's word, like the stillness and the quiet that we have in so many moments throughout our days allows us to hear God. And it's so difficult to hear God if we're busy 24/7, if every second is filled with our phones, our laptops, our devices, our watches.

Kasey Olander:

And that's a great point because silence and solitude are like classic historic Christian disciplines that have been really, I mean a lot of times, neglected in today's age. A lot of us are so rarely silent. There's always music or a podcast, no judgment.

Ekpedeme Wade:

Yeah. And the thing is, silence is so uncommon, it has become so uncommon in our culture, that silence is uncomfortable to so many people.

Kasey Olander:

Right.

Ekpedeme Wade:

That if there is silence, it's like, "Wait, what's wrong? Why are you not talking? What's going on?" But I urge people to become comfortable with silence because again, I think a lot of the times we become uncomfortable with it because when they're silent, then our thoughts go.

And so we see a lot of anxiety come up at night, when people are busy, busy, busy throughout the day, and then when they lay their head to go to sleep, there's stillness and there's quiet and then their thoughts go awry and then they ruminate, and it's like, "Oh, wait, I can't go to sleep because my thoughts are going a thousand miles an hour." Because now your thoughts can, because they're silent. But if we allow that silence and that stillness to pop up throughout the day, then it doesn't have to accumulate at night where it becomes overwhelming and you can't go to sleep. But a lot of us are uncomfortable with silence because then we're left with our own thoughts.

Kasey Olander:

And if your own thoughts have been neglected for X amount of time, then of course they're uncomfortable or overwhelming or it takes a lot to sift through.

Ekpedeme Wade:

Right. Right. You have to deal with them. Sometimes we distract ourselves with life because we don't want to deal with our emotions or our thoughts.

Kasey Olander:

How do I really feel? What do I actually believe?

Ekpedeme Wade:

Exactly.

Kasey Olander:

Yeah.

Ekpedeme Wade:

Exactly.

Kasey Olander:

So how do you help people to cultivate this awareness, but without judgment of themselves? Because I think that that's a lot of, "Well, if I'm aware of my own thoughts, I'm not going to like it or whatever." But how do you help people to wade through that?

Ekpedeme Wade:

Yeah, building an environment, building a space where they understand and they know and believe and experience that there is no judgment. That understanding your thoughts, and that some of them may be ugly or you may not like some of them, it's okay, we're human. But in order to change the things that you want to change, if those are thoughts that you want to change or grow from, we have to recognize them and we have to talk about them.

Kasey Olander:

So I guess you would encourage people to not only become self-aware, but then also to share these thoughts with other people, to actually live in community and be known.

Ekpedeme Wade:

Yeah. And that is the scary part, because some of us don't want to admit our thoughts, our beliefs, our emotions, to ourselves, but then having to admit that to somebody else is even scarier. But in the past few years, loneliness has become an epidemic. And I think one of the reasons why loneliness is so rampant is because this sharing of our innermost thoughts and emotions and beliefs with loved ones or in safe spaces is so difficult we don't do this. So we sit with our own stuff and then we feel like, "Well, I might be around people all day, but they don't know me." That's because you're not sharing yourself with them. And so helping people to take that step, it is a very courageous and very scary step to take. But doing it in baby steps, sharing just a little bit of yourself with people, with safe people and practicing that helps to build that connection and helps for you to deal with your thoughts. And what we experienced a lot of times is people are like, "Oh, I do that too. I think that too." And that helps build connections.

Kasey Olander:

I think maybe it's C.S. Lewis who has a quote about that friendship is born at the moment when someone says to another person, "You too? I thought I was the only one."

Ekpedeme Wade:

Yeah. Exactly.

Kasey Olander:

Yeah. So then I noticed that you made an important distinction that you're sharing with safe people and loved ones. You're not sharing with the whole world. And it's not like just throwing a social media blast out there is what's going to help me be known.

Ekpedeme Wade:

Yeah.

Kasey Olander:

So how do you help people identify who is safe to start sharing with as I'm trying to develop this appropriate vulnerability?

Ekpedeme Wade:

Right. Right. I ask. I ask. Who around you do you trust? Who around you do you feel comfortable sharing this information with? And unfortunately, a lot of people don't have that many safe people in our family or in our social circles. And sometimes it's a matter of engaging with people to build that trust, to build that connection, so that you have a safe person. If there's nobody there, I encourage people, "Why don't you grab this person and go to lunch and just start talking about anything?" Because those little things start to build a relationship and hopefully a trusting and caring and safe relationship.

And so it's just trying it out for some people. And there may be a couple, and if it's my mom, my grandma, or somebody, but none of my friends, well, start with your mom and your grandma. Share this information with them and then slowly build some of your friendships to be safe relationships. But I think that's why counseling is so important and so different from just friendships and relationships, because counseling, when you're in that office, it should be a non-judgmental zone. People are free to be themselves and to say things that they've never said to anybody in their entire life and get to experience what say that out loud and not having judgment come back at you feels like. And hopefully that builds some of the courage for them to take that outside to their daily life and try that out with other people.

Kasey Olander:

Yeah. Almost like a muscle that you're working gradually and gradually and that it takes time and you have to be patient.

Ekpedeme Wade:

Exactly, exactly.

Kasey Olander:

I would love to be able to lift 50 more pounds tomorrow, but.

Ekpedeme Wade:

But you got to start with a five pound weight today and then build up to that.

Kasey Olander:

Yeah. So how do you help people to decide? I mean, I know that obviously when somebody comes to you for counseling, they've chosen you as their counselor. How do you help your students, for example, to pick a counselor or even anybody else in their life that they're going to start this next step with before they move to either friends or family or whoever for sharing? How would you advise people to choose a counselor, a minister, a doctor, or anything like that?

Ekpedeme Wade:

Yeah, that's a great question. I am a big proponent of trying people out. So I think most counselors will cooperate with you if you say, "Hey, I just want to have a five or 15 minute chat with you to see if we're a good fit." Because the counselor is a very important part of that counseling relationship. And I do believe that there has to be a connection there, that you have to feel that this is somebody that I can open up to, this is a place where I feel like I can be myself.

And you don't have that with everybody. You can have a great counselor out there, but there's something about them, whether it's their gender, whether it's their age, just something about them that doesn't fit with every client. And so you just have to find who is a good fit for you. And so calling, researching, maybe consulting, asking for five or 10, 15 minute consultation just to find out a little bit more about them. And then choose. And it's okay if you do a session or two and you feel like it's not a good fit. That's okay. That's not a fail. There are more counselors out there that you can seek after.

Kasey Olander:

Yeah, that's hopeful. Again, that goes back to that patience. You'd love to find the perfect counselor today and just have the exact right safe people to be vulnerable with. But I mean, the reality is that a lot of those things take time, and it seems like an indication of health a lot of times, that it's not just to spill your entire life story the first moment that you meet someone, but to take steps at a time.

Ekpedeme Wade:

Yeah. And I think their theoretical approach is also an important one, and that's something that you can ask if you are calling for a consultation, "What's your approach? What do you specialize in? What's the primary focus of your therapy practice?" Those are important aspects to building a strong counseling relationship.

Kasey Olander:

Sure. If I want to work through trauma, then I want to find somebody who specialty is in trauma, for example.

Ekpedeme Wade:

Yeah.

Kasey Olander:

So shifting back to the areas that we were addressing earlier, what difference does it make to see ourselves as we enter into this, like, ""Okay, I'm looking to be known and to grow as a person." What impact does it have that we're material and immaterial beings as humans? We talked about the spiritual practices and we talked about the way that it physically, physiologically, changes our brains. What impact can that have in our just, I guess, relationships with other people, but also just in our ministering?

Ekpedeme Wade:

Yeah, it can have a lot of impact, honestly. There are studies out there that show that meditation and mindfulness, for example, increased stress reduction, the increase compassion, if you're doing a loving kindness meditation, it can increase compassion and pro-social behaviors and that impacts your relationships. Decreased stress, it impacts your relationships. If I am focused on my spiritual practices of meditation and being in the word, I may be less apt to get stressed and yell at my kids. There's that space that's created from an initial emotion to a response where that space has been created to where I'm able to think through, "Okay, this is what I'm thinking. This is what I'm feeling. This is how I usually respond. But I'm going to take a step back." And so it can impact all of our relationships and our social well-being.

Kasey Olander:

Yeah, because if I'm more compassionate, then okay, that's the way that I interact with not just my husband, but also my co-workers, and also the people at my church and also whoever, my students or whoever I'm around.

Ekpedeme Wade:

Yeah. And there's some things that we just can't help. We live in this busy society and burnout is real. And a lot of us, especially in the helping professions, if you're a pastor, a counselor, a teacher, and you are constantly having to give and give and give, burnout can happen very quickly. But if we are rooted in God's word, and if we, again, with mindfulness and meditation, that busyness is there and we may not be able to get away from it, but there's something that we can do about it to help ourselves and those around us live in it a little bit more peacefully and godly.

Kasey Olander:

And that's really hopeful too, that I don't have to forsake all society and go live by myself to do these things.

Ekpedeme Wade:

Right. Right. That's one way to do it.

Kasey Olander:

I could try.

Ekpedeme Wade:

That's one way to do it. But if we are to be in this world, we don't have to be of this world. We can maneuver through it a little differently.

Kasey Olander:

Yeah. There's practices that I can do while I still maintain all of my, whatever things might be stressful like work or family or school or whatever. I can still have those things to steward what God has given me, but also having these practices of mindfulness and meditation can maybe anchor me so that I can move through them without being overwhelmed by them.

Ekpedeme Wade:

Yes. Yes.

Kasey Olander:

Okay. So I guess, where do we see mindfulness in meditation and scripture? We touched on it a little bit earlier, but as we're looking at the Bible, where do we see these things play out?

Ekpedeme Wade:

So I see a lot of it in the Psalms. Even just Psalms One where it talks about delighting in the law of the Lord and meditating on His law day and night. A lot of mindfulness and be still and know that I'm God, meditating on His precepts in the Psalms. Meditating on His promises IN the Psalms. I mean, it's there. And again, I love if someone was to go out and study kind of meditation in the Bible, what I see is that God is telling us what to meditate on. Again, it's not an emptying of the mind, it's, "Meditate on me, on my presence, on my works, on my word, on my promises." He tells us what to think about, what to utter, what to say aloud, what to think about. And so I see that a lot through the scriptures, especially in the Psalms.

And when we talk about mindfulness, I love using the example of Jesus where Jesus was always leaving to go to a solitary place to go pray. Just again, being in that stillness and that quiet. Early in the morning, He would wake up to go be with His Father and pray to His Father. And so I see that mindfulness there with Jesus. But then I think also in the scriptures, there's a lot of verses about using your cognitive abilities. Our relationship with God is not just an emotional one. It is a cognitive one as well. In James One, it talks about thinking about our trials and troubles in a positive way. There's so many scriptures about what to think about, where our mind should go. And I think that in itself points to mindfulness. Philippians, it talks about whatever's true, whatever's honorable, whatever's pure, think about these things. Paul tells us to take every thought captive. So there's that cognitive part of our brain that is an absolute relationship with God as well.

Kasey Olander:

Which is a really good point that we can engage the Lord intellectually. It's not just physical where I can pray on my hands and knees, for example, or it's not just emotional where I can feel God's comfort, but it's also intellectual, which is, I mean, a fun thing for us, we're at DTS, which is an academic institution and so I think a lot of us are interested in that already. But I think that for me, you keep highlighting these multi-dimensional aspects of our relationship with God.

Ekpedeme Wade:

And I love that because God created us as a whole being. And so our entire being, our whole being, needs to be in relationship with God, not just part of us.

Kasey Olander:

Right. Yeah. And I mean, that's beautiful because He wants our entire being too. It's not like, "Man, can you keep that mess to yourself?" It's like Jesus came for the messy parts of us and came to redeem us and give us relationship with Himself.

Ekpedeme Wade:

Yeah.

Kasey Olander:

How would you help our listener to understand the, I don't know if I want to call it attention or maybe a relationship between thinking and feeling? We've talked about mindfulness as awareness of our emotions, but we've also talked about this cognitive facet of our relationship with God as highlighted in scripture and so our thoughts really matter. I think it's easy to try to prioritize either one over the other. Either your feelings don't matter, we can't listen to them, they're not reliable, or it's not just an academic exercise. Our relationship with God is more than academic. So I guess how do you reconcile these things?

Ekpedeme Wade:

Yeah, I think it can be difficult for some people to delineate their thoughts from their emotions. It's very interesting when I ask my clients a lot of times, "What are you feeling right now?" That's a very counseling question that you get in every session. What are you feeling right now? A lot of the times the response will be, "I feel like this." And if you're answering, "I feel like X, Y, and Z," that's not a feeling. That's a thought, that's an assumption. That's not a feeling.

And so I point that out. "I feel like that person didn't understand what I was saying." "Okay, well, that's an assumption." Just in the way that you answer that question can delineate what is a thought and what is a feeling? And sometimes we have to go back to basis, which is not bad at all. In my counseling office, I have a list of emotions. And so when I ask people how they feel, sometimes I bring that out and have them point to, "What are you feeling?" "I feel powerless. I feel unworthy. I feel unloved. I feel unsafe." Those are very specific emotions and emotion words.

And our thoughts are not any more important or less important than our emotions. I think those two go hand in hand. Cognitive behavioral therapy thinks that, that our thoughts drive our emotions, our emotions drive our responses. So they're all interconnected. And so it can't be a matter of just having to teach what is the difference between your emotions and what is the difference between a thought or a belief that you have.

Kasey Olander:

That's really interesting, and that's really helpful, like, "I feel like, oh, oh. Okay." That's a good trick.

Ekpedeme Wade:

Yeah. Yeah. I feel like is usually not followed by an emotion.

Kasey Olander:

Nobody says, "I feel like sad."

Ekpedeme Wade:

Yeah.

Kasey Olander:

Yeah. So we've talked a lot about, you can correct me if you don't like the term negative emotions, but we've talked a lot about emotions that are a bummer for people, like powerlessness and feeling unloved and these kinds of things. So what value is there to exercising these same practices of mindfulness, but about more positive emotions, or at least emotions that we enjoy feeling? What language would you use there?

Ekpedeme Wade:

Yes. So that's where we want to go. If you're experiencing positive emotions, understand what's bringing out that positive emotion and do that more. And if you're experiencing "negative emotions," figuring where that lies, how do you usually respond to that? And then I usually, I don't like to communicate that "negative emotions" are wrong and we have to get rid of them.

What I like to highlight is those negative emotions are there for a reason. If you're feeling sad or if you're feeling unloved, there's usually a reason for that. We're not walking around wanting this emotion. There's usually a valid reason for that, whether it's past experiences, whether it's true or not, it's there. It's valid. And so what we want to focus on is our responses to these emotions, because these emotions can be very overwhelming and can drive a particular response that may not be healthy, may not be helpful.

So we recognize the truth, and then we change our responses, carrying these negative emotions with me. So if I feel sad that something happened, and I usually respond by isolating and eating a tub of ice cream, I can recognize the truth that, "Yeah, I'm sad. Because this thing happened and it's okay for me to be sad, but I'm still loved and valued." Okay, now how am I going to respond based on being loved and valued and not based on being sad? Well, I'm going to engage with my friends. I'm going to go out. I'm going to take a walk. And so that is a healthy response to a "negative emotion."

Kasey Olander:

And that's-

Ekpedeme Wade:

I can still carry that sadness with me as I'm with my friends, as I'm taking a walk.

Kasey Olander:

Right. That sort of goes back to that non-judgmental, just an awareness of being sad, for example. That doesn't mean we have to be sad about being sad. It's just mindfulness allows us to realize that we are sad and then maybe make a choice to respond with a healthy coping mechanism instead of a tub of ice cream.

Ekpedeme Wade:

Yeah. Yeah. That's very true. I think one of the reasons why our negative emotions can feel overwhelming or can feel pervasive is because we don't validate them for ourselves. We call them bad and we feel guilty or shame, or we feel like it's wrong, and I shouldn't feel this way. And so it makes it even harder to get out of that where it's like, "No, you're sad. Okay? Bring that sadness along with you and let's go do something about it." Validate those emotions that they're there. They're there for a reason. But we do get to choose our responses to those negative emotions.

Kasey Olander:

And you highlighted the Psalms earlier, which just run the whole gamut of emotions. There are plenty of Psalms of lament, and it is not just happy-go-lucky, but there are a lot of, a lot of, different emotions about, like feeling, "Lord, why have you abandoned me?" Is not the same as thinking, "That's my theology."

Ekpedeme Wade:

Right. And we see what the writer of the Psalms did with those emotions. He went to God with them.

Kasey Olander:

Right.

Ekpedeme Wade:

He presented his emotions to God. Not shaming himself or not feeling guilty or not isolating, which are very common responses to negative emotions. But if we present them to God?

Kasey Olander:

Yeah.

Ekpedeme Wade:

That's doing something different and He will do something different with them.

Kasey Olander:

And going to God, He's not like, "Wow, this is a complete surprise to me. What brand new information." He already knew, even if it's news to us.

Ekpedeme Wade:

Yeah. I mean, this is Philippians Four. "If we're anxious, in every situation God is saying by prayer, by petition, by petition, by thanksgiving, present your request to me." And then what will happen? The peace of God will guard your hearts and your mind. Like, "If you're anxious, if you're stressed, if you're burnt out? Come to me"

Kasey Olander:

Yeah. What a comfort that God accepts us as we are because of Jesus, that we get to go to Him in whatever emotions, whether we consider them positive or negative.

Ekpedeme Wade:

Yeah. And that's the opposite of what for a lot of us our natural instinct is, it's if I'm stressed and anxious, it's let me get myself right before I can enter back into, before I can have my quiet time, before I can read, before I can pray. Let me handle this stress and emotion myself and figure it out and then I'll go back to God. And that is the opposite of what God tells us to do.

Kasey Olander:

Right. Yeah. He invites us to come to Him. So what resources would you recommend for people who are interested in learning more, either about mindfulness and meditation or about us as integrated physical and spiritual beings? Anything that we've talked about today.

Ekpedeme Wade:

Yeah. So one book that I would recommend, and I think a lot of people have read it, but The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry.

Kasey Olander:

That's great.

Ekpedeme Wade:

By John Mark Comer. Have you read that book?

Kasey Olander:

I have.

Ekpedeme Wade:

Yeah. It's a really good book. And I think it just helps us understand the culture that we're in and what we view as normal shouldn't be normal.

I think another book, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality, is a good book. There are also, if we're talking about meditation and mindfulness, there are also Christian based meditation apps that are out there. Abide is one, Soultime is one. Calm is out there. Calm is not Christian based, but it is a meditation app that I think some people have found helpful. And then there's a lot of teachings out there on meditation and mindfulness I do like, by The Bible Project and the teachings that they have on there.

Kasey Olander:

Yeah, that's great. We could do a whole nother episode on using non-Christian "resources" because all truth comes from God and if it helps us to slow down, then we are able to fill our minds with scripture and things that we know teach us God's truth.

Ekpedeme Wade:

Right.

Kasey Olander:

So that's really helpful. Ekpedeme, do you have any closing thoughts? Anything you want to leave our listener with?

Ekpedeme Wade:

I encourage the listeners to focus. I am in this space where I'm looking at the characteristics of God that we as human beings usually ignore. And I think rest is one. God talked about rest and when you look at the scriptures there's so much about that. I would love for our listeners to study that out more and just embrace this rest that God talks about, that God is.

Kasey Olander:

Yeah. That is a countercultural way of looking at things, like feeling that our identity is in our own productivity or in how many emails we send or respond to or anything like that. I think that the resources that you named will be really helpful too.

So we've talked about mindfulness and meditation and how those are biblically rooted practices. We've talked about our minds and our bodies and how spiritual disciplines can inform us in our relationship with God, but also can impact us physiologically. And we've talked about how in all of those things, that awareness of our thoughts and emotions can help us to draw near to God, which is what He invites us to do in a variety Of circumstances. So, Ekpedeme, thank you so much for being on the show today. It's been a great conversation.

Ekpedeme Wade:

Thank you so much for having me, Kasey. I've enjoyed it.

Kasey Olander:

Yeah. And we want to thank you, our listener, for being with us. If you like our show, go ahead and leave us a rating or review on your favorite podcast app so that others can discover us. And we hope that you'll join us next time when we discuss issues of God and culture to show the relevance of theology to everyday life.