The Messyness of Truth
For the last podcast of the year Brad and Wayne spend some time in the old mailbag to let their listeners add their input. The conversation eventually settles on how truth does set us free, but not before it messes with us and our illusions. The process of opening our eyes to God’s reality often involves the unraveling of lies that we’ve used to navigate through life. As they implode we can be overwhelmed with anger or frustration. But of those signal the very end of a process that allows the light and love of God to win our hearts into his reality. It is a marvelous, if sometimes painful process, but if we can appreciate it we can relax easier when it happens to us, and cheer others on when its happening to them.
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What begins with Wayne’s disillusionment about sports success and its hidden costs, ends up in a conversation about the hurt and anger that often comes from people who start to see through the religious lies they were taught. What allows us to live freely in the moment, even when things aren’t turning out the way we want or hope? Brad and Wayne find peace in the simple reality that God is always with them in whatever mess they are in, whether or not it comes out the way they desired. Without certainty that God always remains faithful, even if we are unfaithful, we are left to live by our own performance, which will never be enough. 
This one begins with sexual orientation politics in California and the ongoing debate in Christianity over the reality of hell, but soon Brad and Wayne settle into a conversation about how easily our insecurities can be manipulated by religion. Instead of inviting us into a transforming relationship with Jesus it provokes our guilt and sense of responsibility to drive us into a variety of activities that weigh us down and undermine what God really has in mind. People driven by religion are usually obnoxious in human relationships instead of being as endearing as Jesus was to the people around him. Only by finding our security in God’s love for us, can we find the freedom to truly be his light in the world simply by the way we live and love. 
Can we trust God to watch over us even if you’re not doing all we think you need to do, or even if things don’t turn out the way we hoped? Because Wayne and Brad couldn’t get their schedules together, Wayne invites Renee Lockey, an OB-GYN from Austin, TX and a previous guest on The God Journey, to be the guest co-host for a conversation that began in Wayne’s living room about growing to trust God in the real issues of and opportunities of life. The conversation explores the joy of finding community with other brothers and sisters in less managed environments, how busyness an distract us from what’s most important in our lives, and dealing with the nagging accusation about whether or not we are “doing enough” to be part of what God is doing in the world. 
What do you do when your dad is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease? Will his healing hinge on your faith or prayers? In a romp through their recent emails, Brad and Wayne bite into these questions and a few more. Why do we have a difficult time living in uncertainty and going on a daily adventure with God and instead seek false security in some pat answer, ritualized technique or immutable principle? The truth is we are more secure in him than any of those things can offer, and learning to live there allows us to be part of an unfolding adventure in our lives rather than grasping at illusions of security that only disappoint in the realities of this broken world. During this conversation they talk about physical healing, inner healing, and the prayer of faith that we can engage with God as his work unfolds in our lives. 
Steve Jobs’ last words before his death and a recent clip from “Through the Wormhole” has Brad and Wayne talking about the joy of living in wonder at the reality of God that easily transcends all of our powers of reason. If our scientists can’t see, measure, or understand 95% of what makes up our universe, then maybe God is more intimately involved in his creation each day than we know. Embracing his mystery beyond our own ability to understand, is a far more freeing way to live than getting stuck in our frustrations when God doesn’t do what we want or expect. They also talk more about prayer and how Jesus said we can connect with this transcendent God in the simplest expressions of our love and desire for him. 
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What do you do when you realize you’ve climbed the ladder leaning on the wrong wall? A comment Mike made in our last podcast about his “feeling lied to” by those he knew who helped him learn how to run the religious treadmill, opens a discussion with Brad and Wayne about how we think of the people and places that were part of our lives while we trying to serve God religiously. To many it does feel like they were duped or lied to. For others it felt like they had too much invested in the old ways to even consider another alternative. In time, however, grace does its work in us and we find ourselves thinking very differently about those who are still caught in the system of religious obligation. 
