Are Christians Satisfied? Pt 1

0:02 Looking at our world from a theological perspective. This is the Theology Central podcast making Theology Central. Good afternoon everyone. It is Saturday, April the twelfth, twenty twenty five. It is currently one h one pm Central Time, and I'm coming to you live from the Theology Central studio located right here in Abilene, Texas. Let me ask you a question. Are you truly satisfied with your life? Are you happy? Content? You never complain, you never grumble. You just have this overwhelming sense of satisfaction. You you you never hunger or thirst again.

0:53 You just have found true satisfaction. You have everything you could ever want and everything you could ever need. There is happiness, there is contentment. There's no anxiety, there's no worry, there's no fear. You have found the secret to life. You had a hole inside of you that's now been filled by God, and everything is perfect and everything is wonderful. Does that describe your life now? Depending on the setting, I think you may try to claim that is your life, especially if you're amongst a group of Christians, or in church or in small group or in Sunday School. You may try to kind of sell that that's your life.

1:34 But is it really we're going to be talking about. And I don't know how many episodes. I didn't really desire to get into a kind of a mini series here, or I may put this in, may place this in another series that we've been doing. We're doing a series on mental health in Christianity. Maybe I'll put it there. I don't know. But we've talked about recently fear in Christianity, and we looked at the subject of fear from a law gospel perspective, because once again I was not happy with the way most Christians and most churches handle the subject of fear. I just think that their approach is law based. I don't think it's realistic. I think it's ridiculous, and so we challenged that. Then we found ourselves kind of talking about Christianity and pornography. It really wasn't so much about pornography. It was about, once again, the way Christians handle some of these cultural and social issues and sin issues. And again it's very law based. In so many cases it misses the deeper issue. So here's what happened.

2:40 I was looking on the sermon's two point oh app and I saw a sermon entitled Spiritual satisfaction, spiritual satisfaction, and I thought, oh, there's the subject of satisfaction. I wonder how. I wonder how this sermon is going to handle the subject, because I can pretty much guarantee how it's going to handle this subject. So I asked Artificial Intelligence to give me its prediction and how this sermon called Spiritual Satisfaction will handle the subject of satisfaction. What do you think its thesis will be? And AI basically said, well, this is how most Christians approach the subject of satisfaction. And I was like, I I don't think so. So then me and Artificial Intelligence had a long conversation. I was going to review the sermon, but I felt like that it really is not going to be beneficial or helpful.

3:32 So what we're going to do over the next few episodes is we're just going to talk about the subject of satisfaction and how Christianity approaches it. And I think all of the problems with how Christianity approaches it, and maybe a great amount of hypocrisy is built into the way Christianity approaches this subject. Now, I can assure you most of you are going to disagree with me. I can assure you that this is going to put me in con with about ninety nine percent of Christianity, which is not unusual for me to do on this program. But I hope you will give this some serious thought because I think we're going to really get into some very important issues. And it may be some things that maybe you need to hear or maybe maybe you don't.

4:17 Maybe you need to hear it, but you don't want to hear it. But I think we're going to have to well, we're gonna have to face reality. And I think that's what I try to do a lot. So much of what Christianity says, I believe is nothing more than a denial of reality. And we create this fictional world, and we all pretend to be operating in this fictional world. That completely that our realities completely contradict everything we're claiming, and that bothers me greatly about Christianity. So let's talk about Christianity and satisfaction. And I think we need to go back to nineteen forty three. That's where I think we need to go. We need to go back to nineteen forty three. And in nineteen forty three, there's a psychology.

5:01 His name is Abraham Maslow, and he produces a now famous model of human motivation known as Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Oh, come on, you've learned about Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Somehow, I think the churches completely forget that this exists. But it exists. Now the first time I can remember really learning about Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Now, maybe it occurred somewhere in school. If it did, I have no recollection of it. My first time of really going wow, this is interesting. I was outside off it Air Force base. I don't even know what school I was attending and what we were, what training school I was in, but I'm in a training school, and the instructor for that day I said, all right, guys, we're going to go outside.

5:52 So we went outside to what we call the parade ground, right, It was kind of across where the building was where we were doing our training. So we go outside and he starts talking to us about Maslow's hierarchy of needs. That's the first time I really remembering it, trying to explain what it was, it's impact, it's significance, because we were talking a lot about mental health and a lot of things along those lines. In that particular training, and that's where I really began to go, huh, this is interesting. Not that point, I still wasn't really I kind of kept it separate, right Like, I kind of, well, this is kind of what I did. Here's Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

6:32 In some ways, I kept it separate from Christianity. I didn't really try to, like, how do these two things. Here's my theology, my doctrine, my faith, here's Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Do they work together? But I think ultimately what I did, oh well, Maslow's hierarchy of needs are completely met because I'm a Christian. Basically kind of the approach I took, which I think is what most Christians do. But let's learn a little bit about this, all right. So it's nineteen forty three. Psychologist Abraham Maslow proposed, I probably said I'm reading now, I was just kind of going with my own words. I'll read, proposed a now famous model of human motivation. I may have said produced, but proposed a now famous model of human motivation known as Maslow's hierarchy of needs, and now un quoting at its foundation are our most basic survival needs food, water, shelter and safety. Above that are emotional needs like love, belonging, and esteem, and at the top are the higher longings of the human soul, purpose fulfillment, and transcendence. It's a model that resonates across culturals, cultures, and worldviews. Most people understand instinctively that you feel whole and human. I'll say

8:07 this again. Most people understand instinctively that to fill whole and human, you need more than just food. You need touch, physical touch. You need connection, you need meaning, you need hope, and most suffering at its very core is the experience of living with one or more of those needs un met. Now this is critical, I really now. I know right now, you're gonna be all with This is just a bunch of psycho you know, Psychology is a bunch of you know whatever. I don't care about this. I only care about the Bible and theology. I need you to think about this, all right. So I'm gonna read this entire paragraph again, right, and I'll read it better than I did the first time. Right here we go. So this model Maslow's hierarchy of needs. It's a model that resonates across cultures and worldviews. Most people understand instinctively that to feel whole and human, you need more than just food.

9:15 If you're gonna truly feel whole, if you're gonna truly feel human, you need more than just food. That's like basic survival. You need more. You need things like physical touch, you need intimacy, you need connection, you need meaning, you need hope, and most suffering at its core is the experience of living with one or more of those needs unmet. Now, I think typically within christiandom the way it is, Oh no, no no no no no no, no, no, no no, you just need Christ. Oh you don't have this need met, you don't have this. You die to yourself just to find your fulfillment in Christ. That's all you need. Now that preaches good sermons, and everyone in the congregation will say amen. And I think all of the amens and all of the sermons are the very peak of absolute complete hypocrisy. And we'll try to get there, and I'll try to explain it. But so everyone at instinctively knows I need more than just food, I need more than just shelter. If I'm truly going to be whole, if I'm truly truly going to have some kind of satisfaction.

10:27 Am I'm truly going to be complete? Typically, Christianity says no, no, no, no, you can do without almost all of that. As long as you have Jesus, as long as you have food, as long as you have shelter. That's all you need. Christians love to say that, but oh, we'll work through that. I just I just get so irritated by that, that way of thinking. And you'll you'll see why now I quote. Here's where things get interesting. Christianity claims to offer a different solution. Many sermons, books and worship songs tell us that when we come to Christ, we gain a complete soul level satisfaction that transcends and even replaces all these needs.

11:19 This is typically the way to creation approaches. We now have Christ. So what we transcends all of those needs. Those needs are irrelevant. You die to those needs. You have Christ, so you have everything. You have this sole satisfaction, You have joy, you have peace because you have Jesus, So you don't really need those needs. Those needs are irrelevant. That's what the psychologists talk about, that's what lost people talk about. That's what the world wants. But no, not as Christians we don't need those things. We can live without them. We can die to those needs. That sounds good again. I probably preach that concept five hundred times in my Christian life because it preaches so good, and it's gonna lead to some conviction, and it's gonna and people who are suffering and not happy and not content and depressed and discouraged and filled with anxiety and worry.

12:13 You'll be like, you know what, that's right. All I need is to die to myself and I just focus on Jesus and I'll be happy and complete. That's the solution we typically give people. I'm going to challenge that in this series of episodes. They say, this is typically what is said within Christianity. Jesus is enough that he fills the void, that if we truly believe in him, we won't hunger or thirst anymore. That his word, that his presence are more fulfilling than food, than sex, than safety, are human love. You can do with all that without all of it. I mean, you need food to just survive, but that's all you need. You just need your needs. Man, All that other stuff is irrelevant. Because we love God always that our affections on things above we seek first the Kingdom of God. We die to sell. Oh. It preaches so good, and everyone in the congregation will say amen, and it just drives me crazy. This idea is deeply rooted, deeply embedded in modern Christian thought. There's no way to separate modern Christianity from these ideas. It's preached constantly, and it's typically built on verses like John chapter six, verse thirty five, Psalm sixteen eleven, Philippians four eleven through thirteen.

13:46 The message is typically clear and modern day Christianity. If you're still longing, if you're still restless, if you're still hungry, it must be because you're not going to Jesus rightly, or possibly you're not even saved. Oh it sounds so good. Oh, oh man. I could preach this all day. I could create fifteen different sermons on this, and I could preach it. And depending on the type of church, especially if it's a church with an altar call, I could probably get fifty percent of the people that come to the altar going to mare. Yes, I've got to fix this problem because deep down, people aren't truly happy, They're not truly satisfied, no matter what they say. But here's the problem with all of this. Most Christians are even remotely honest with themselves.

14:39 They still hunger, they still thirst, they still desire, They're still not happy, They're still not satisfied. Most Christians still ache for connection. They wrestle with loneliness, they long for intimacy, They fight fear, and grieve the absence of safety, love, or meaning. And when those needs aren't met and the Church tells them Jesus should be enough, it doesn't lead to joy. It leads to guilt, It leads to shame, it leads to silence, and it leads, worse of all, to pretending. Oh, there's so many issues with this, So maybe we need to ask this. Does the Bible actually promise that Christ will meet all our deepest needs now in this life? Because that's how Christianity's typically sold, or possibly has modern day Christianity misunderstood the nature of satisfaction, confusing future hope with present experience and spiritual truth with emotion fulfillment. What if the Gospel doesn't actually erase hunger, doesn't erase these desires, doesn't erase these needs, but it

16:11 actually meets you in the middle of your well struggle and not being satisfied and not being content. What if faith doesn't actually eliminate the need, but holds fast to Christ in the middle of the longing. That's that's what we're gonna consider. Now, just a reminder for anyone who doesn't know, because I just reference Maslow's hierarchy of needs. I didn't go through it. It's really typically I think they've added I think there's six now. There's really five kind of levels in this hierarchy of needs. I think they added a sixth with which is now identity and transcendence.

16:53 I don't think that was in the original five. So I think there's six now. But first, a cycle is physiological all right, Physiological needs all right, And the physiological needs are food, water, shelter, rest, food water, shelter rest. Right, there's kind of a physiological a food, water, shelter rest. Everybody has those needs. Everybody has those needs. Now, many Christians will say God will always meet those needs of food, water, shelter, rest, but I think we have too much proof in church history that that's not the way. It always turns out. We have Christians who are starving, who don't have basic shelter.

17:35 So right there, already creates some major theological debates within Christianity. Safety, security, stability, protection. Again, many Christians will claim that God will get well protect you and you're gonna have you have security, you have stability, But we have plenty of cases in life whe Christians are murdered, killed, things burned down, So you don't have the supposed protection that Christians often claim. Love belonging. So we'll just call it so the first one. The first group is physiological, that's food, water, shelter, and rest. The second is safety, that's security, stability, and protection, and the third level is love and belonging. This is intimacy, physical intimacy, mental intimacy, emotional intimacy, friendship, community. Right, there's a sense of love and belonging. Next number four esteem, respect, recognition, and purpose. There's a sense. We need some sense of esteem, so feeling that we're respected, feeling that we get recognized for something, having some purpose in what we're doing. So number one is physiological, number two is safety, number three is love and belonging. Number four is esteem, and number five is self actualization meaning creativity, fulfillment, meaning we want to be able to do different things. We have some sense of fulfillment. You can make that as a hierarchy

19:07 of needs. You can you can create a little chart if you want. Again, at the very base levels, physiological this is food, water, shelter, rest, you've got to have that. Then safety, security, stability, and protection. Then the number three love belonging. This is intimacy, physical intimacy, mental intimacy. You get the idea of friendship, community number four esteem feeling some sense of respect, recognition, and purpose. Number five self actualization meaning creativity and fulfillment. Now, when one or more levels, this is very important, when one or more levels of Moslow's hierarchy, when they're missing, just one of one or more.

19:54 If they're missing, we will not experience full satisfaction. And that absence often manifest in powerful, visible, and sometimes destructive ways emotionally, relationally, spiritually, and behaviorally. I cannot stress this enough. I cannot stress this enough. You've got the hierarchy of needs. You can look at those hierarchy of needs. You can identify them, you can classify them. You know them because you have them, you experience them. You know that. Look, you can try to wrap this up in all the spiritual language in the world. You can pretend you can try to be all godly and spiritual. Well, we'll try to get to that. But the reality is you strip it all away, you and your church, your family, everyone, you know. Those needs are there, They're ingrained inside of us.

20:47 There's psychological needs, there's biological needs, there's physical needs, there's emotional needs. Those needs exist, and when one or more of those needs are missing, you will not experience full satisfaction. That you can say, well, that's a worldly perspective, that's a psychological perspective. You can say that. Christians will say, no, no, no, no, no no, I can be missing these needs. As long as I have Jesus, those needs are fulfilled, I have fulfillment. Even if those needs are not met, I can have complete satisfaction. This is the conflict philologically. Christians say, who cares, Oh, you didn't get that need met, you don't have that need met, you don't have that need met, or you've got Jesus that's all you need. But is that really true?

21:42 Because you look at the lives of Christians just look inside of marriages, look inside of relationships, look inside of churches, look inside of Christians at work. So much of what you see and their words and their actions and their behaviors. Clearly something is missing, that one of those needs is missing. Because when one of those things are missing, I cannot stress this enough. Not only are you not experiencing full satisfaction. I'm going to quote here this is very important. When one of those lef one or more of those levels are not are missing, this is very important. The absence of those needs, it's going to manifest and I'm quoting here in powerful, visible and sometimes destructive ways. This shows up emotionally, relationally, spiritually, and behaviorally. Sometimes when you look at how someone is, what someone is doing, either how they're acting emotionally, what they're doing in their relationship, what they're doing spiritually, what they're doing in their behavior, many cases you can trace it right back to Maslow's hierarchy of needs. That's missing, that's missing, that's missing, that explains the the attitude, the thinking, the emotions, the feelings, the discouragement, the depression, the action, the anger, the bitterness. Something is missing. Now,

23:12 the church never wants to address this because the Church is just like, get over it, you don't need it, you got Jesus, just be happy and be content the end. Die to yourself and you'll fix all your problems. Now we can ask if that's a true philological solution or not. We can really ask ourselves if that's the case. But the point is clearly no one's figured out how to do that. Now. Here's why this is true because Maslow's model reflects a basic truth of human design. We are embodied, we're in a body. We are relational, we are emotional, and we are spiritual beings. You can't get around this right as human beings because the way we are created.

24:07 We have a body, so you're gonna have those physiological needs. Can't get around that. We're a body, and those needs can are for a lot of things. For the body has these needs. They're like hunger, like like there's there's these needs. Nobody wants to talk about these actual needs that are built. You didn't ask for those needs. You didn't ask to have the need for hunger. You didn't ask for the need for sleep. You didn't ask for the need of maybe physical intimacy that's built into you. It's there. It's you didn't ask for it, it's there inside of you. Relational, We didn't You didn't born and just go hmm, you know I I, and find yourself longing for relationship, longing for intimacy, longing for a companionship.

24:56 You didn't ask for that to be there. It's just built inside of you. You're You're emotional. You didn't ask for emotions. You didn't ask to have depression and pain, and and and heartbreak and you you would if we didn't have any emotions. Can you imagine what life would be if we just didn't have any emotions? How? Probably, how emotions can make your life a roller coaster up and down and even you can go from one day you can find yourself moping around and unhappy and the next day you're filled with un just, unbelievable joy. You didn't ask for those. Those emotions are way outside. There's something inside of you, built inside of you, and we and you. You basically have to learn to try to control your emotions. Don't allow your emotions to govern your life.

25:44 It's always a battle with your emotions. But you didn't ask for the emotions. The one thing you can do is just get rid of them. And then we're spiritual beings. Now, this is where atheists would probably disagree, But we're spiritual beings. There's something in side of us that that I think, we know there has to be more to this life. We ask those questions. We have some sense of spirituality is inside of us. That's where no matter where you go in human history, you start digging into ground looking for the next civilization that we didn't know about. You uncover that civilization almost inevitably, in every civilization, what do you find some deity, some belief in something spiritual you didn't ask for that. That's just how we are. So we are embodied with physiological needs. We have these relational needs, we have these emotional needs, and we have these spiritual needs.

26:36 It's somehow deep inside of us. If one part of our human makeup is deprived, the whole person fills the impact. If one area something's not right, it impacts every other part. Every other part is impacted. You just take one part of the massows hierarchy of needs and you go, Okay, we're gonna have a little bit of this, a little bit of that boom. The entire person is impacted, whether they can process it, whether either even conscious of it. It's there, and Christianity doesn't ever want to talk about there's something deeper. No no, No, it's just like, don't do it, don't do it. It's law, law, law, law, law, law, law, Get over yourself. Just you don't need that, you know it doesn't. You've got God, that's all. Just raise your Bible more, pray more, go to church more. Just be better.

27:27 That's that's our answer to everything. You're like, well, well one minute, we've got some really deep there's there's a layer here that's not discussed. Let's consider some examples of how lacking anything and Maslow's hierarchy of needs, how this, how this lack of fulfillment, how it may manifest. Let's just go with first one, the physiological or safety needs. Let's go with physiological and safety needs. If the physiological or safety needs are missing, well there's some things that can happen here, So I'll try to go through these. Hunger or a lack of sleep or homelessness. Our financial instability can lead to things like irritability. I think that makes sense, right, Oh, come on, you never been irritable in your life? Did you only got four hours of sleep?

28:22 Is it? Does that ever make you irritable? You haven't eaten, you missed breakfast, and you for some reason lunch got messed up. Now it's like three in the afternoon. Do you get irritable? Do you get frustrated? Where is it coming from? Just be a good Christian? Come on, you believe in Jesus. You should just be over it, right, die to yourself. You shouldn't be irritable. You shouldn't be frustrated. Get over it. Oh but trust me, you're gonna be feeling it. And if you are missing, if you're hunger, lack of sleep, or homelessness or financial instability, it leads to chronic stress. Well no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no no, don't worry, don't worry. Don't give any thought about what you will ware or what you will eat.

29:03 That's what we will quote thinking that. And the solution is just obey that. It's very law based, and again that's why we need a law gospel perspective. But okay, So it leads to irritability, chronic stress. It can lead to anxiety, It can lead to panic. It can literally lead to physical illness. It can lead to difficulty. It can lead to difficulty concentrating. It can literally lead to difficulty and praying. It can even lead you to spiritual despair. Where is God? You start taking away some of those physiological and safety needs, you start stripping them away. Oh man, things begin to crumble, Things begin to crumble. A little bit of financial instability. How many people have to go to counseling, and our marriages begin to fall apart because there's financial issues all of a sudden, And you can just have conflict in your day just when something goes on about about food or anything. These are basic levels and you will see the impact almost immediately. So that's what happens when you're missing physiological or safety needs. How about the missing love or belonging, Well, what happens If you're missing love and belonging, well, then this is what happens.

30:35 You start obviously, then you're experiencing loneliness. You're experiencing rejection, you're experiencing absence of intimacy. So if you're experiencing loneliness, this is missing love and belonging. If you're experiencing loneliness, you just alone. You just feel like it's just you yourself, and that's it. That's you're living your life basically alone. You feel rejection, feel like you're being rejected, an absence of intimacy. There's no intimacy. You're just again, you're living your life alone. You know what that leads to? Number one? It leads to depression. It leads to emotional numbness, leads to insecurity, leads to desperate relational choices. You can get desperate, so you end up attaching, maybe yourself to someone you shouldn't.

31:30 Maybe you become code dependent on someone you don't really feel you can function without this person. Because you've been alone, you have no intimacy, so you attach, you become co dependent. It leads to sexual sin. This deep ache for connection, that's what it's going to lead to, This deep ache for connection, for intimacy, to be to belong to love, to not be so alone. You're gonna have this ache. Guess what. It's not gonna be silenced. Even though Christianity will tell you just read your Bible, just pray, just focus on the things of God now. The people who always say don't even I'll get into that later, oh man.

32:23 The Christians who say this stuff to it ticks me off so very much. But this deep ache is not gonna be fixed by a quiet time. It's not gonna be fixed by listening to five sermons, listening to a praise song. You can try to play all of the little psychological games you want, it's not because it's not meeting the actual need. The actual need goes unmat. I know. Christianity says that's okay, you can be alone, you can be isolated. No love, no intacimy, intimacy, no touch, just get over it. You've got Jesus, be happy now. Typically the people saying that have the very things that the other people don't. But don't even get me started on that nonsense. So see what happens. If you're missing the physiological and safety needs, boom immediately manifests itself. If you're missing the love belonging, you end up feeling lonely, rejection, and absence of intimacy. It leads to these other things.

33:20 It's the inevitable result of it. Christianny will just look at it from a very moral perspective and not even being willing to go well, there may be something deeper is going on. No, no, no, no, we can't even expect it. We can't even talk about that. No, no, no no, it's just sin. It's just wrong. We like black and white. We don't like nuance. We don't like layers. No, no, no, no, no no, we don't want to deal with that. What happens number three, If you're missing esteem, you start feeling unseen, you feel undervalued or unvalued, or you feel you feel maybe a sense of being incompetent. You're just your esteem is shot. Your self esteem is gone. Now I know what Christianity says. You don't need self esteem, you need christ esteem. You just need to find your self worth in christ. Don't look to yourself, don't look at what you do, don't don't look at anything again. The people who say that typically have lots of reasons to have self esteem, even though they tell you don't need it, they have it. No, don't talk to me until you don't have one of these things, until all of it's gone for you, don't speak to someone else. I get sick and tired of that. Within Christianity, you've got this, you've got this, you've got this, you got this, and you tell everyone else that they don't need these things because they've got Jesus. Well, it's easy for you to say, because you've got all the other things. Oh, I get so ticked off by that. But when you feel unseen, when you feel unvalued, when you feel maybe a feeling

34:51 of incompetence. Well, then you start having self doubt, you start comparing your your yourself with other people, You become bitter, you can withdraw, or you turn to a very performance based religion. You turn to a very performance based religion because now you're going to build your self esteem based off your religious performance. Oh, that is my Christian life right there. If you want to say, wait, what was your Christian life at the beginning, it was right there. It became a performance based religion because that was how I was going to find some form of self esteem. Being raised in the family that I was, I was beaten down, told I was stupid and idiot, a moron, that they did not love me because I was not good enough, and all the horrible things that happened to me growing up. When I became a Christian, then it was like, I'm gonna find my self esteem and being a I'm going to be the best Christian. I'm going to read my Bible more than anybody else, I'm going to know theology better than anybody else. I'm gonna be able to win any spiritual debate I'm gonna know this ofuff.

35:55 I'm going to be able to teach it. I'm going to be able to preach it. I'm going to get more degrees than anybody else and know more than anybody. No Christian can step to me, and I'm gonna find my self esteem and how good of a Christian I am. And it became nothing more than a performance based religion to build my own self esteem. Well, I told everyone I was doing it for the glory of God. I was doing it nothing more than to lift up myself. And I know many times the only reason I do podcasting, the only reason in many cases that I preached as long as I have, is for my own ungodly, fleshly self esteem. I can stand behind this podcast, this microphone, and I can broadcast for five hours, six hours, and then I can be like, hey, I may be a failure here, and I may be a failure here, and I may not like this about myself, and I may not like this about myself, and I may hate myself this and I may not have this. Oh, but I can feel a sense of self esteem because who can broad cast more than I can? Who can say that they're I mean, look, I've even mentioned it on this podcast.

37:07 We're at my statistics for how many episodes I've done. I'm in elite territory. No almost no podcast has as many episodes as I have. I've blown past everyone. Oh, my podcast is in the top five percent of all podcasts in the world. You don't think I find self esteem in that. I'd be a liar if I don't. And I know that. I know I do a lot of it for my own self esteem. That's why I try my very best that when I mess up and I said, well, you hear it. When I mess up or stumble over a word, it bothers me. Sometimes I'll come back and offer an apology. It's all because of my self esteem. But what I try to do is I try to leave my mistakes out there. I try to leave the bad episodes out there because I have to try to crush my self esteem because I know very much that it's a monster that I've probably have been.

37:58 It's so much of my Christian life. There's probably been more about that. And then once you start realizing, and then I have probably had major crises of faith because I try to be perfect. I keep realizing I'm not perfect. Well, if I'm not perfect either, I've got to hide the end perfection so I can still have the self esteem, at least in the eyes of other people. But once other people know that I'm a mess and I'm a failure and that I've committed great sin, well, then all of a sudden, well who cares about my Christianity because Christianity. I'm no longer finding my self esteem in my Christianity because I'm a failure and I'm a sinner. And that's what happens when you get involved in a performance based religion. It's all great as long as you're performing, but the minutes you start coming to face to face with the reality that your performance is really not that good, especially when you compare it to God, which is be holy, Be holy, because He is holy, then you're going to realize your performance is all a facade, it's all lie, it's all nothing but filthy rags, and you're a fraud.

38:57 And then you're going to be like, well, then what happened to my self esteem? And then your self esteem is left and broken in a million pieces and you realize the piece of trash you really are, So you can either withdraw because you have no self esteem, or you throw yourself into a performance based religion. I think a lot of people who are so gung ho about their religion it's because it's they're compensating for low self esteem, and they're trying to find their self esteem and their performance, and so they get loud and boisterous and condemning of everyone else, thinking that they're better than everyone else. Oh oh, I know. People say, you're getting too psychological on this. No, we're getting to some really reality here. So much of what we do religiously is far more for us than it is for the glory of God or for anybody else.

39:51 It's for us. It's for us. I say the same thing about love. We love people because of what we get from it, not because of what we give, because if we didn't get something, we wouldn't love them, we would walk away. When you're missing the self esteem, here's what happens. This hunger for affirmation can get masked within Christianity as a zeal for ministry, as a zeal for God. You're just covering up your own hunger for affirmation. That's all you're doing it. I got a zeal for God, You got a zeal for affirmation. You want to be told how good you're doing, and this can show up.

40:40 And look, I'm relating it to Christianity and ministry and broadcasting because obviously that speaks to me. I'm being very open and transparent about my own sin and psychological mess that I am. Look, I say it all the time. I'm just a center with a microphone. I try never to pretend to be anything other than that, but it shows up in your own life. You do a lot of things because you're missing this the Masso's hierarchy of needs. When it comes to esteem, something has caused an issue, something is missing, and you try to compensate for it. It all whenever something is missing in this hierarchy of needs, it manifests in your life. It's going to show up somewhere somehow. You either can admit that or you can just lie, but it's going to show up. So we talked about what happens when you're missing one of the psychological or safety needs. We've talked about what happens when you're missing one of the some of the love or belonging needs. We just talked about what happened when you're missing self esteem or esteem. Number four, What happens when you're missing self actualization or meaning, you have no sense of purpose, maybe no sense of agency. You know what does this leads to? Leads to a feeling of deadness, restlessness, or boredom. You can lead to addictive behaviors, can lead to apple, can lead to what someone will refer to as a midlife crisis. It can lead to a quiet spiritual crisis, like does any of this even matter? What

42:11 am I even doing? I'm wasting my time. I cannot stress this enough. There's going to be impact. Now Here's what you need to know. Scripture never denies that we are creatures of need. I would argue, it affirms it. We all grown Romans eight twenty three, We all grown, right? Are we long for a city that is to come? Hebrews thirteen, So Romans eight, we grown, We long for a city that is to come. We're always longing for something?

42:57 Are we always longing and desire for something better? We always want something better, And maybe sometimes we're looking towards heaven as Christians, but we're always looking, We're always longing. The Bible acknowledges that we're still in exile. We're still pilgrims and strangers here that this is not our world, this is not our home. So I think the scripture affirms that we are creatures of need, that we're creatures who fill this same If you go through the Bible, you see people all the spiritual all the psalms of lament are people showing their need, their desire, and their lament is a spiritual cry that they're maslow of a hierarchy of needs is not being met. I think the Bible is filled with showing people with need and desire and want, and they constantly struggle with that. So when Christians teach that you should feel satisfied even when one or more of these needs unmet, I think they're often ignoring basic human design. I think they are completely ignoring the psychological cost of deprivation. When you're when you when you're deprived of one of these things, there's a psychological cost.

44:13 There's something going on there. And the philological reality is, Hey, we're not in a glorified state yet, we're not home yet, We're we're far away from home. We're in a broken, sinful world, and we're in a broken sinful body. So when a need goes unmet especially one as foundational as love, safety or meaning. Real satisfaction is elusive, it's not there, and that that dissatisfaction eventually leaks out into our emotional life, our relationships, and even our spiritual outlook. Now, this doesn't mean people shouldn't endure their unmet needs faithfully, because we're called to meet those unmet needs faithfully even though we're we know ultimately we're not going to because look, let's be honest, we're already sinners by nature. So if we have an unmet need, it's very unrealistic to say we're going to be faithful in that unmet need. The reality is we're going to send because even if we even if we endure the unmet need faithfully externally, we know we're not meeting that unmeatt need internally in a faithful way.

45:34 We're griping, complaining, we're upset, and we're bitter, and we may we may be filled with lust and desire for the very thing that we don't have. So even if we don't do anything externally, we're already guilty before God. So I think the real we are called to try to be faithful in the unmettate needs. But we know we're not the only one who's ever faithful is Christ. But you, as a Christian, you should expect the ache. You should expect it, and we should not treat it as some psychologically abnormal thing. This is what happens. And I don't think we should condemn that need because those needs are built into us. There's Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

46:24 That's the foundational point here. Now here's what happened. I took all of this Maslow's hierarchy of needs, how Christians talk about satisfaction, and me and artificial intelligence just started having a conversation that lasted about three hours. Now, this conversation, I feel what I'm gonna do is try to share this conversation because I feel like the conversation it unfolds naturally. Right, You'll just as I share the conversation, it's gonna unfold in a way where you hear someone with these questions in real time. You're going to see how I was wrestling with these questions in real time. With artificial intelligence, You're going to see us go back and forth on this.

47:10 I think it's going to model being honest with it. It's the kind of conversation we need to have with one another. I think you're going to see that it models honesty at models exploration, and models exploring it. Rather than starting I didn't start with a rigid thesis. I started with just struggling and exploring this. I think it will allow you the listener, to follow the progression of thought instead of being told what to believe. Instead of just saying, hey, here's what you should believe, I want you to just walk through it with me. And I think the conversation is a balance between psychology, theology, scripture, and personal reflection. I think it brings it all together.

47:53 There's a psychology, there's theology, there's scripture. You're going to hear my own personal reflection, just like you heard right there just in the opening. I know this is like a forty eight minute introduction to all of this. Well this is the introductory episode. I think what you heard right there is just me acknowledging my I can look at massholds hierarchy of needs, think about my own Christian life, and go I can see when some of those needs weren't being met and exactly what happened. Now that doesn't I'm not excusing what I did. I'm acknowledging what I did, but it's sometimes good to understand the deeper reason behind it, other than just I have a sinful nature. Clearly, the sinful nature is the ultimate cause. But the unmet you take, you take unmet needs, mix it with sinful nature. I think you know where it's going. So what you're going to learn or hear over I don't know how many episodes you're gonna hear a conversation I had about the idea of spiritual satisfaction, that's what you're going to hear now.

48:56 I wanted to keep going, but if we're right at fifty minutes or well forty nine minutes, so if I keep going, then it's going to turn into a mess. So we'll stop right there. I want you to consider Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Really, I want you to write get you can look at up online. Just understand Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Outline what those needs are, put them on the refrigerator, right, put them on the refrigerator, and just every day look at it and just ask yourself, which of those needs are not being met in your life? And how is that manifesting in your life? Next time you have a fight, or you're arguing, or you're unhappy, are you're mad or you're frustrated, just stop which need is not being mad? There's something deeper now you can approach it. Just stop just because your need's not met, that's no excuse. Just stop sinning, be good, and just die to yourself. You can go oh with that kind of very law based approach. I don't think you're gonna get anywhere. I don't think you're gonna get anywhere because you can tell yourself all day be good, be good, be good. But those those unmet needs, now you're internal.

50:13 Now it's dealing with your emotions, your mind. You man, you can, you can. You can condemn it all day long and tell it to stop stop acting bad and be good. You're not gonna get anywhere, all right, we didn't get any We didn't get See now, my you know what my unmat need's gonna be here. I'm not gonna feel any satisfaction because I don't feel like I did a good job here. So now that am I esteem? My esteem? So I can start breaking this all down. Right, See, I feel like I, oh, I didn't do I didn't do well enough I didn't do it was not a good episode. Oh man, all right, do I need to do the other episode immediately? Oh wait a minute. So yeah, Well, I'm not going to sit there and get into all of it. I'm trying to give you the idea of how you can work on all of that for yourself.

51:15 All Right, we'll get into this. We're going to have a I think when we dig into this, I think it's going to be a good thing. I think it's going to be a good thing. All right, thanks for listening. Maslow's hierarchy of needs, what happens when those needs are not met? How does that impact you emotionally, physically, mentally, and spiritually? Godless