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Jay Stringer on The Journey to Understanding Our Behaviors | The Jesus People Podcast Episode 58
01:03:57
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- [00:00]
A
I really, really want to stick to this diet. I really, really want to not yell at my kids anymore. I really want to stop looking at porn. Why is it that people can't do it? Why can't they commit.
- [00:26]
B
Foreign.
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A
Guys, welcome to the Jesus People Podcast. We have the honor of having Jay Stringer on the pod. Jay, thanks for being here, man.
- [00:35]
B
Ryan, thank you so much for having me to be here.
- [00:38]
A
This is one that I've been really excited about for a while because, you know, as you were just saying, people will affectionately refer to you as the Porn Whisperer because of this book Unwanted. But there's so much deeper to uncover of, really, why do we make the decisions we make? And you are a minister, you're a therapist, you're an academic. You've studied this. I would say that you are probably the foremost expert on desire, on sexual desire, on understanding what's really underlying a lot of the decisions we make. And I think a lot of people, even as we were just talking before this podcast, I'm like, I want to know why I do the things I do. And I think a lot of people are in that boat and so excited to unpack it.
- [01:18]
B
Yeah, it's going to be a good conversation for sure.
- [01:21]
A
Yeah. Well, this book's done phenomenally well. Unwanted. I had a friend send me this book, and, you know, pornography was a struggle of mine for over a decade. It was one thing where in college I shoot. Even after college, even when I was a pastor, I was struggling with it. I remember in college, I told my buddies, my accountability partners, which, you know, we'd have this accountability group, and it would be the classic. Like, we'd all get together and be like, I looked at porn this week.
- [01:47]
B
Me too.
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A
Me too. Me too. Okay, let's pray. And then we'd do the same thing next week.
- [01:51]
B
Rinse and repeat.
- [01:52]
A
Rinse and repeat. But I think where I healed was understanding why I was looking at the porn. And once I got to the root, it lost its appeal. And so that's been your study for a very long time now. And. And I would say you are probably the foremost respected Christian scholar on this idea. So I would love to hear from you. Like, where did you come to the point where you're like, hey, this is really what I want to dedicate my study and my time to?
- [02:23]
B
Yeah, it's like one of those. Like, when I think about, like, my middle school self talking about this publicly, my middle school self will be horrified that these are the conversations I have. But, you know, I would Say, like, from a, you know, brief kind of background. I remember when I was in grad school, studying counseling, studying story. Like, just really wanting to understand, like, who are the stringers? Like, like, who? You know, where do I come from? I have both my grandfather's names, Jay and Elmer, but I knew nothing about them. Jay died a couple years before I was born, hence my namesake. And then Elmer. I remember being at his funeral, and I'm not sure if you've ever been at a funeral like this, but it was like I felt angry. Not at death, but the reality that I never knew him in his life. And so I was like, I need to get to know my grandparents, my grandmother. So I took my grandmother out to this cafe on her 90th birthday, and I gave her these three skeleton keys. And I said, grandma, these three keys symbolize three lunches that I want to take you out to, to learn more about your life.
- [03:29]
A
That's cool.
- [03:29]
B
You know, at the time, I'm thinking, that's cool. Like, this is such a great grandson gift. But my grandmother looked completely horrified. And she looked down at the table, looked back up at me. Five seconds pass. Ten seconds pass. And then she pushes the box back across the table at me and says, jay, there are some doors you just don't open. There are some stories you just don't. And so I feel that in my body, like, when it came to addressing this topic, it's like, yeah, my own sexual struggles, shame, pornography, history. Like, I should not ever talk about those things. There are just all these realms. So when I started getting into my story, getting a sense that, you know, some of these behaviors that I was dealing with weren't random. So it was kind of a personal story. But then I became the sex therapist for the city of Seattle. So these were men that had been arrested for soliciting women in prostitution. And one of my first clients, he said, jay, don't get me wrong. I love the power of buying sex. I love the pleasure. But the ritual that brings me into that is getting in my SUV and just kind of cruising around the neighborhood trying to find women's eyes. And he said, that's what I do more than anything. And so he tells me that in the first session. Then a couple of weeks later, we're processing his story, and he starts telling me about how his parents worked a lot and got him a Schwinn bicycle. And he said, jay, I loved my Schwinn. And I said, well, tell me about why you loved it. And he said, I used to get on that bike and just cruise around the streets of my neighborhood just trying to find girls in my class and my friends, moms. And I said, you use the same language of cruising as a middle school student as you did for the exploitation of. Of women. Like, what do you see the parallel? And it was kind of like that matrix like, moment for him of like, oh, it's always been about the eyes, like, trying to find eyes. And he said, you know, in porn, that was it for him as well, is like he could scroll for hours just trying to find those eyes. And I think what was happening for him is that he felt some level of shame and judgment about what he was doing, but had no understanding that his behaviors were not random. And so, you know, coming out of, I would say, purity culture, I went through Southern Southern Baptist high school when I was going through puberty. It's not an experience I would recommend on anybody. And so growing up in that kind of lust management, and that's what I would say most people that are coming at this conversation in a Christian context are coming at it from lust management. And that's, I'm going to bounce my eyes. I'm gonna slap a rubber band around my wrist. I'm gonna get into some accountability or Internet monitoring. But as you know, my old youth pastor said, jay, when I've been having the same conversation with my accountability partner for 15 years, something isn't working. And so that was kind of the defiance inside of me as I had all my own porn history struggles. And yet so much of what I was reading, particularly in the Christian space, was just not helping people. And so it was just, do we manage this behavior? Rather than saying, embedded within the behavior that we're trying to get rid of are clues to our healing and growth. So that was kind of the background is there is meaning in these sexual behaviors, in these sexual fantasies. And that kind of launched me into a lot of research and study into why do we look at what we look at? Why do we fantasize about what we fantasize what, you know, what do we search for when we go to our favorite porn site? What are the videos that really capture our attention?
- [07:28]
A
And what'd you find?
- [07:30]
B
We found some fascinating stuff. That's where some of my friends started calling me the porn whisperer. Because, you know, it. If you tell me the type of porn that you seek out, I can kind of predict something of your backstory, something of the unaddressed realities of your life. So a couple examples of this would just be, you know, we Found that this was true for men. Let's say that men sought out a sexual fantasy where there was a race that suggested to them some level of subservience or a petite body type or kind of that barely legal teen college category. What we found predicted that porn search was three primary drivers. The first was a strict parent. The second was a high lack of purpose in your life. And then the third were high levels of shame. Wow. So, you know, if you just play armchair psychologist for a little bit, a strict family is not. People will often ask me, like, what's the difference between a strict family versus one that had good discipline? And discipline. The. You know, the root word of discipline is disciple, which means to teach. So did you have a mother or father that helped teach you to understand your emotions, your anger, your sorrow, your entitlement, or did they begin to shame you for it? And so most of us grew up, up in families that were much more strict, much more rigid. And when you're growing up in that type of environment, what you experience is a lot of powerlessness. Like, it's kind of my way or the highway. It's kind of kids should be seen and not heard type of things. Yeah, but it's all this context of powerlessness. And part of the question that I raise is, where does all that powerlessness go? Like, if someone shames you and humiliates you, that doesn't just evaporate. That gets stored in your system. And one of the appeal appeals to porn is not primarily the issue of lust. It's also the issue of power. So in the world of porn, I can get exactly what I want. I don't have to feel powerless for seven or eight minutes. Like, however long most people are spending on porn, I can get exactly what I want when I want it. And nothing else in the entire planet offers you that. So, you know, if you're coming from a strict family, you've got to begin to work out the implications of where have you gone with a lot of that powerlessness? And that's where porn just becomes such a preferred way of going through life, because it gives you that power. And kind of same thing with shame. Like, most of us think that shame is a response to doing something bad or sinful or unwanted. But what is even more true is that the more, you know, judgment and contempt you hold for yourself, the more that you will pursue behaviors that reinforce that judgment against you. So let's say that you grow up feeling like I'm unwanted or I'm undesirable or I'M just a piece of crap.
- [10:37]
A
Yeah.
- [10:37]
B
If that is your self concept, you are going to intentionally and maybe unwittingly seek out behaviors that confirm evidence that confirms that core belief. So I think that these behaviors have some level of escape to them, but I think far more after you've looked at porn a thousand times, you know that it ends in judgment. And I think that's the point.
- [11:02]
A
Right.
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B
Is instead of feeling good, true, Beautiful. There's a sense of, I'm a piece of crap. And that confirms the core belief that you have believed in your trauma or in your heartache or in your sin. So, wow.
- [11:19]
A
So, like, it's kind of like as a dog returns to his vomit type stuff, it's kind of like, why does that girl keep going after those dudes that keep breaking her heart? Is that the same deal?
- [11:28]
B
Yeah. So, you know, part of where I would back up is to kind of say there's this kind of realm of what's called attachment theory, which is basically, you know, what. What creates thriving in the life of a child. And Dan Siegel says that kids need four core things to be seen. Safe, soothed, and secure. So seen as that experience of, like, you had a mother or father who knew your favorite slide in the neighborhood, and they would bring you to that blue slide and just say, have such a great day. We're gonna get a hot chocolate and go down the slide. Yeah. But as we age, there's also a sense that, for me, middle school is always a prototype of hell. And so that sense of, like, when you came home from middle school, did you have someone that saw your face? Like, if there was bullying, if there was some sense of abuse that was happening, if there was just some, like, you got a bad grade in algebra, or maybe there was just some level of anger that was kind of emanating out of you, did you have a mom or a dad that saw that? And that's what we need. We need attunement to our joy, and we need attunement to our sorrow. The next category would be safety, and that's, you know, digital safety. Nowadays, that's physical, sexual, emotional safety. And did you have someone that created a safe space for you to learn that you weren't learning because of trauma, you weren't having to. But there was a safe place for you to understand who you were, why you wanted, what you wanted, how to develop? And then the third category, which is really, really important for this conversation, is the category of soothing. So soothing is, you know, we need a mother, a father, to begin to kind of bring a sense of calm to our body when we are born, we are born so vulnerable that we need our parents bodies to regulate our own temperature. And then when a baby is distressed, they need to know that their mom, their dad will hear their distress and hold them. And so that's what co regulation is, is a sense of, when I am distressed, I know that there is someone that is looking for me. And so we're always looking for that person that's going to have eyes to see us to bring calm. The struggle. The dilemma for many of us is that not only was our parents not a place of soothing, they were actually the cause of our distress. Wow. And that will wreak havoc. So for a lot of us, we grew up in families where, you know, went to church every Sunday, but somehow our hearts were never known or explored by our parents. How'd that come to be? Or we grew up in a family where that rigidity and that strictness was actually a source of distress. Well, you have to figure out, like, if I am made to be soothed and seen, and I don't have that in my family, or I don't have that in my church community, that's where substances, alcohol, drugs, porn become something of. In some ways, it's the first experience of soothing. It's the first experience of, like, there is a substance, there is a screen, there's something that's allowing my body to calm down.
- [14:52]
A
Yeah.
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B
Wow. And so that's what I'm always trying to get people to kind of get a sense of is your porn struggle is actually telling a story. And most of us try and fight against it rather than get really curious about why is it that I'm drawn to this particular sexual fantasy? Why is it that this particular night or time of day is really challenging for me? Or why am I drawn toward this archetype in order to have an orgasm? And so that's what I'm always trying to invite people into is your porn struggles and the unwanted behaviors that define your life are telling a story. But I don't think many of us are actually listening.
- [15:32]
A
Right.
- [15:34]
B
Who?
- [15:34]
A
Yeah. I mean, I'm even unpacking some of my stuff. There is. You're talking.
- [15:38]
B
Yeah.
- [15:39]
A
I'm like, oh, yeah, what was I typing in the search bar? What was I looking for? And how was that informed by some of the wounds of my childhood, some of the sexual wounds of my childhood, some of the sexual bullying, some of the things that went on? Wow. That's fascinating.
- [15:57]
B
Yeah. Because the sense of how do we invite people to get curious about those things? And when I look at the Old Testament, after Adam has just, you know, eaten of the tree and the fruit that he was commanded not to eat from, what does God say, where are you?
- [16:15]
A
Yeah.
- [16:16]
B
To Hagar, who's just been traumatized by the first family of our faith. Like, it says that Sarai mistreated Hagar. And some scholars will say that's the same word that the people of Israel experienced under Pharaoh. Some scholars would even say it's a sexual assault. And so what we know is that the first family of our faith has traumatized an Egyptian teenager, and that Egyptian teenager has gone out into the wilderness and is going to die there. But it's there where the angel, the Lord shows up and asked, I think, two of the best questions any of us could ever be asked, which are, where do you come from? And where are you going? And I don't think we have that concept for the kindness and curiosity of God that, like, when God shows up in our story, we're often like, we should get our act together. How am I in seminary? How am I a pastor and struggling with this? And I felt that same way as well. I don't think we have much of an imagination for the reality that God's voice is kind and is drawing us in his kindness through his questions. To be more honest about where we come from and where is it that we really want to go.
- [17:30]
A
Yeah. Because the Bible is very clear that that's actually what heals your heart. That's actually what leads you to change. It's the kindness of the Lord that leads us to repent. Romans 2, 4. And so what I'm hearing you say is a couple things. One, we need to kind of repent. We need to change our mind about what God's voice sounds like. But that happens often through exploration of our past and realizing that maybe some of those voices that were spoken, those God figures, those fathers and mothers and, you know, even siblings that had spoken things over us, that was not the voice of God, but that has actually informed the way we hear God's voice that leads us into some of these behaviors and some of these desires.
- [18:07]
B
Yes, absolutely. Yeah. Wow.
- [18:09]
A
And so you've. You've kind of. Obviously, after writing the book, you've. You've become known as the porn whisperer. And this is just something you've unpacked.
- [18:19]
B
I probably shouldn't publicly say that, but, yes, friends have called me that.
- [18:23]
A
Friends have called you.
- [18:23]
B
Yeah. Because part of. Part of what it. What that was. Was. I think I was like, you know, having a coffee with some friends, and they were asking, like, how. How's it going with unwanted? And what I said was, it. I'm stunned because people from all over the world are writing in and saying, can you interpret my. My fantasies? Like, this is what I looked at last night. Can you interpret it for me? And some people were offering, like, five bucks, and I'm like, come on, like a psychic. Yeah. Yeah. And what I told my friends is, I'm not trying to create, like, an encyclopedia of this is your porn search, and this is exactly what it means. But I knew that it struck a nerve because it's resisting two of the. The problematic paradigms of our day. The first paradigm is lust management and the pathologizing of desire. The other one is just like, let's normalize the use of porn and nothing wrong with sexual behavior because we don't want people to feel shame and stigma. And so what I realized that this book was doing was that it was allowing people to get curious about their life and their behavior. And I think that's really where learning takes place, is why is it it that I want this? Why is it that I'm drawn to this? Even though there's a part of me that wants it, there's also a part of me that doesn't want it. And so that's where the porn whisperer came from, was my friends were like, you're essentially, yeah, well, you're unpacking it.
- [19:51]
A
Yeah. You're decoding. And I'll never forget someone said that to me, like, hey, like, what's in the search bar? Like, what are you actually typing in? Because that's going to tell you your wounds. It's like, whoa, that's amazing. But what you're talking about now is you've kind of moved into this realm of basically, why do people do the things they do? You know, you've written this new book, Desire. Talk to me a little bit about that. Like, if I were just to ask you, because this goes into food, this goes into habits, this goes into how I treat my wife. This goes into what job I take and how I treat my kids and everything. What is underlying the reason why we do the things we do? That's kind of what you've been exploring. Can you give me, like, a snapshot of that? Like, if I'm curious, like, I want to know, like, why do I do what I.
- [20:35]
B
Because.
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A
Because the Bible's clear. Like, even Paul says this. I do the things I don't want to do. And I think so many of us have that feeling like, dang, I really, really want to stick to this diet.
- [20:46]
B
Yeah.
- [20:47]
A
I really, really want to not yell at my kids anymore. I really want to stop looking at porn. Why is it that people can't do it? Why can't they commit to it?
- [20:57]
B
Yeah. Yeah. So, so many different directions that I could go with that. But I, again, I. I feel like part of today is that no one is teaching us how to want. Like, no one is discipling desire. So the conservative approach is that desire is selfish. It might, God forbid, turn into something sexual or the progressive world is kind of like, what do you want to do with this one wild and precious life that you've been given? Eat, Pray, love. But no sense of how to actually form desire. And so that was part of when I was thinking about like, what do I write that follows? Unwanted was like, what was the book I needed to write before Unwanted was out there? And then what do people need? And we need help understanding our desires and to intentionally form desire into something that can really lead us into the best version of ourself. Because that's what desire is. Desire can turn you into the best version of yourself or the worst version of yourself. But there's been so much fear in that realm that really hasn't allowed us to really get through the full potential of what desire could be. So let's talk about food for a second because it's, it's deeply personal subject for me. So I. When I was like 6, 7 years old, one of the things that would happen is my dad would like get out the Weber grill and get the charcoal out to get the fire going and we would have a barbecue. And I would get so excited as a six year old that I would have bowel movements because I was so excited. And I would sit on the toilet and I would just sing songs, songs about hamburger and hamburgers with ketchup and mustard. Like that was like six year old Jay was like full on desire. Barbecue community. Yeah, yeah. But then by the time I got to middle school and a lot of just the, you know, difficulties that I was going through in my home, my nickname was Donut. And so the reason for that is I showed up to the first grade, day of seventh grade with a jelly donut and it dripped on my white shirt. And this kid named Brian Mulroney kind stuck his finger, his index finger into my belly and just did the Pillsbury Doughboy sound, which was yeah, yeah, yeah. And so that became that sense of, you know, a small T trauma for me, of just being called donut kids putting their index fingers into my belly, and then me just hating my body. And I remember just flapping my stomach. I was really obese kid in middle school. And part of that, you know, conversation around being seen is my parents weren't attuned to that sorrow. My dad was a pastor, was very much, you know, attuned to the needs of what was happening on Sunday. There's this notion that our parents are often doing the best that they can. And all I can tell you is I don't believe that anymore. I think I saw my dad give the best that he could on Sundays. He did not give his best to my family. And that's been a place of like. Like a growth edge for me, of how do I honor that? My dad taught me how to see the world, to integrate the world. Like, so much of what I'm doing in the world today with integrating theology, psychology. Like, my dad taught me how to do that. But I could tell the truth about that. I could never tell the truth that he was more attuned to me when I was performing or when I was doing kind of good things that reflected well on the family. And so for me, middle school was just a horrible experience. And where did I go for soothing? Well, it wasn't porn at that time. It was Little Debbie cream pies. It was hostess cakes. And so for me, my gateway drug to porn was really that process of food. And so then I began to have all these desires for food. And then by the time I reached my 20s, I had a friend sign me up for a marathon. And it was like, oh, I can optimize my life, and I can run very long distances and get endorphins and get into really good shape. And then it became this kind of sense of, like, I'm going to desire mastery. And so that was part of the question around. Desire is like, how do I form my desire for food? Because when you go through trauma, what happens with trauma is you have fragmentation, numbing, and then eventual isolation. So fragmentation is the sense that, like, how do I trust the God of the universe when God put me in a family or in a context where I knew abuse or I knew bullying? It could be a sense of, how am I supposed to bring the difficulties of my life to my parents when they care more about how clean the house is or how the ministry is doing, but not me. So whenever we experience trauma, there's that sense of, I don't know who to trust? I can't trust my body. I can't trust God. I can't trust others. That's what we begin to conceptualize. But then the Greek word for trauma is wound. And so that sense of when you go through the woundings of your life and you don't have an attuned face, you don't have kindness, where are you going to go? Well, that creates the need to numb. And it could be porn, could be food, could be anything.
- [26:26]
A
Yeah.
- [26:27]
B
And then eventually, the more that you choose that thing to numb, the more isolation you experience, the more shame you undergo. And so for me, that was part of what I had to unpack with my desire, is that my desire started in a raw place that was good and true and beautiful of food and bringing that food to the neighborhood and to barbecues and to. But then in my trauma, food became a place of profound isolation and numbing, and I began to put my trust in that. But then the shame of overeating and obesity became the new strategy to combat shame, which was, I'll run a lot, and I'll optimize my health. And so even that desire for personal growth, that desire to get. Get to the gym more, to go for more runs, looks on the surface good. But all I'm trying to say is that it's also informed by trauma. So that's really what this new book is looking at, is why do we want what we want? And so one study that I looked at early on was they gave. Researchers gave these people basically word pairing. So they would say, okay, Ryan, you get the word pairing. Ocean and moon. Moon. And then 10 minutes later, they would say, ryan, what's your favorite detergent? And the amount of people that would say tide detergent. What did you say?
- [27:56]
A
I was gonna say ocean, moon. I don't know, make something up.
- [27:59]
B
But tide detergent, like, was statistically significant. And what the researcher said is that our desires and our preferences can be built up without any understanding that those desires have been primed into us. So that was just with two words, ocean and moon, predicting what types of detergent? So when we think about kind of the world of the porn industry, when we think about greed, when we think about, you know, even a desire for the kingdom, how have we been primed to want what we want? And to. And so that's what I really want us to explore is where do these desires come from? And instead of just pathologizing them or normalizing them, let's really think about where they're coming from and what Types of people they're forming us into.
- [28:51]
A
Guys, I want to stop and tell you about my ministry, share the struggle. I have for so long thought that the mental health crisis is the missions moment of our decade. And if you're needing support for your anxiety or your trauma or your marriage or relationships, we have coaches available that will pray with you, that'll do inner healing, prayer with you, that'll go to the scriptures and then provide the best in class therapeutic principles to help you move forward in whatever God has for you. So check that out. We also have courses you can go to sharethestruggle.org and get the relief you're needing. And so Ocean and Moon, let's say Ocean is a quote, bad thing. I was bullied. I was told I was weak growing up. So now I want to be the CEO because I want to be in charge. I want to be strong. That's why I go to the gym. Maybe Moon was. Maybe. Could it be a good thing too?
- [29:36]
B
Like, absolutely.
- [29:37]
A
Moon. I was complimented in this certain area when I was 10 that, oh, you're really f. So that's why I did track. Yeah. And so we're basically mapping our past and understanding why we do what we do now.
- [29:48]
B
That's a great example. Yeah. Yeah. So part of, part of that would be, you know, when Jesus says, blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted. Most of us don't want to have tears for what we went through in a formative season of heartache, whether that's in your adult life or in your childhood. Usually we're trying to numb or we're trying to kind of develop some level of mastery in our life to avoid vulnerability. So that example of that kid that was shamed, bullied, made fun of, and then, you know, develops, loves the gym, becomes the CEO. Like, that feels better. That provides stable ground underneath his feet from the fragmentation that he went through. So he begins to trust in the gym. He begins to trust in being an authority. But that's all good thing. Like we're, you know, it's that classic Chariots of Fire line. Like, when I run, I feel his glory or however it goes. Like, those are good things to be seen, to be complimented. But in the absence of grief, anything that you're trying to have some level of mastery around or optimization around, that's when it begins to get skewed and you become over indexed in a potentially good thing, but you become disconnected from your story.
- [31:09]
A
Got it. Can this become dangerous too? To a certain point of just like, just Trying to understand your past so much that's like, ah, I can't really move forward because I'm just like, I feel like a lot of people are going to counseling today and it's just like, they just keep running circles around like, here's what I did when I was a kid and I can't believe dad said this to me. Does it get to a point like, what is a healthy way to look at? Cause processing your past, past is very healthy. But I think a lot of people today, they have traded in proper religion with Jesus for therapy. And what would you say to that end? Like, what is, what is the balance there? What is the proper way to see processing your past?
- [31:52]
B
Yeah, it's a great question. And I mean, I think there's something about, you know, story and processing that like part of what we're learning about trauma in a community. Again, back to know. I'm going to go back to this and then I'll come back to your point. But, you know, is that sense of, is everything trauma these days? Right. So if I went through something difficult, is that a trauma? And part of what we know is that trauma is not just this event that happened to us long ago, it's the ongoing imprint of that event on you today. So most of us.
- [32:27]
A
What does that mean?
- [32:27]
B
Yeah, so most of us don't know our traumas through our memories. We will experience our traumas through our reactions, actions. So let's say that you are someone who is more in the red zone. You're more fight, flight, aggressive, you're combative in your personality. Or let's say that you're in more the blue zone and you're just sad. You're prone towards despair, paralysis. Most of us look at those as just adult traits. But in many ways, those traits and our reactions, the way that we relate to other people in our world, they are informed by our story. And so that's what I'm really trying to get us into is, you know, these behaviors, these patterns in your adult life are not random. They are clues. They are trying to get your attention so that you can go back, so that you can eventually move forward. So an example of this would be, you know, I live in New York City, a lot of really great bakeries all over. I love apple fritters. I love, love donuts, I love pastries. And so for me, healing is not just about like, okay, I was bullied, I was, you know, ridiculed. For me, it's the sense of I will, you know, on weekends that I'M in town, I'll wake up on Saturday morning and I'll run 5, 10 miles to a great bakery out in Brooklyn. And when I'm running, I'm thinking about, I'm with the six year old boy that loves food and loves, loves the table. But then I'm also running with this 13 year old who feels a lot of shame and a lot of judgment. But then I'm also running with this 27 year old that was trying to optimize his life in every way. But Now I'm also 42 and I'm bringing what I loved back to my family. And to me that's like what all that was about is like, okay, I'm understanding my story so that it actually serves the process of joy and allows me to move forward. So instead of saying I can't enjoy, enjoy food or instead of saying I need to hide my eating, it's how do I connect these raw desires in me to the table, to community, to what is good and true and beautiful. And so I think that's the importance of knowing your story is that it shows you what themes matter. But you always have to bring that sense of integration into your life of how do I move this story forward? So all of us have multiplicity of selves. We have a six year old boy or girl, we have ten year old boy or girl inside of us and that's part of the play that we get in moving forward is to be able to say I'm 42 and I'm so glad I get to move towards that six year old and I get to move towards that 13 year old and bring some level of goodness and beauty to these desires instead of just letting them be a traumatic past or something that was more hidden and shameful. So I think I'm yeah, moving forward through that process of integration.
- [35:38]
A
Yeah, yeah. I, I, I'm again like this is like live therapy. But I'm, I'm thinking through moments in my life, especially in marriage where like we had this dresser when we, when we, we first had our first baby, we got this baby dresser and this thing just would not move, move like it was, it would get stuck. And so I'm up in the middle of the night and we're sleep deprived and I couldn't get this thing to close to close. And so I would literally start like donkey kicking this thing so mad. And even after it was closed I'd keep kicking the thing because it was just anger. And my wife would be like, what is happening? And then, you know, I try to fix like a doorknob or something and I couldn't get it to fix. And I'd get. I'm not typically a rageful person. I don't have these outbursts of anger often, but. But in these moments I'd get so mad that I couldn't fix this stupid thing.
- [36:28]
B
Yes.
- [36:28]
A
And I began to realize, like, wow, I get really angry when I feel really incompetent. And then I started kind of exploring that. I literally went to therapy and I'm like talking through it. And then we started exploring some of my past and how like, oh, there were moments where you felt really stupid and that stupidity was reinforced by people in your life. And so when you feel incompetent, like even last night, like my wife made a comment which was a totally healthy, great comment about something that I could have done better, but I found myself in my body feeling like stressed and feeling just like. I don't even know what the emotion, like shame. I think it was shame. Yes. And it was just a total flipping comment. Shouldn't have been a big deal. Is that kind of what you're saying is like, now that I can understand, like, oh, when 10 year old Ryan couldn't get his math problem right and was yelled at. That's. That's informing.
- [37:23]
B
That's playing out today. It's playing out with the doorknob. It's present. Yeah.
- [37:28]
A
And so it's. Yeah. So that those. There's negative things there, but there's also some positive things potentially.
- [37:34]
B
Yeah.
- [37:34]
A
Of like, why do I like the things I like? Can you speak a little bit more to that?
- [37:38]
B
Yeah. Why do I like the things that I like?
- [37:42]
A
Yeah, yeah. Like, like because desire is healthy. It's a God given.
- [37:45]
B
Absolutely. Absolutely. So a couple of places there, like there is this author by the name of Annie Dillard and she says, I never knew I was a bell until the moment I was lifted up and struck. And so what she talks about there is like, what are those bell like moments in your life where like something is like, this is exactly why I've been put on this planet. And so like when you are processing this now, it's like, where do you come alive? Like, where is the sense of, of like you feel utter delight and joy in just being able to be a human being. And that could be deep guttural laughter with a friend. It could be when you're writing poetry, it could be when you're baking, but then also that, you know, the other side of it is like, what enrages you like, when you see something happen of injustice or someone relating to someone in a way that just like pisses you off, how is that really informing something of where you come from and where you saw harm? So I think that's are really good. Desires to act on is like, what brings your heart, life, and then also what are the things that break your heart. And so for a lot of us, again, I think childhood provides some really good clues of, you know, it may have been like, I want to be like Mike. Or maybe you played electric guitar and you imagined playing or you read novels. And then at some point in your life, you realize, I'm not going to be LeBron James or Steph Curry. I'm not going to be you two. And so most of us begin to kind of suppress our desire. And we don't really move towards the things that bring life. We just kind of like, you know, I've got to get through, I've got to earn an income. And so a lot of us are engaged in, I would say, like a civil war of desire. That desire is responsible for all the best things in our life, but then also all the shame and sin in our life. And so we don't know what to do with how alive we can feel with desire, but also how many problems desire creates for us. Yeah. And I think that's where most people. People suppress their desire and live with a level of depression to be able to contain that life force.
- [39:56]
A
Right, right. And you would define desire as like, just the things I want? Is that, is that kind of how you define desire? Like, is that what I'm hearing that can be both informed by negative things that have happened? Positive things.
- [40:09]
B
Yeah, it's this like, mysterious engine that is beneath, like, why do we want.
- [40:15]
A
What we want or do what we.
- [40:17]
B
Do and do what we do? Like, what's motivating us? I mean, we're making north of 30,000 decisions every day, most of them unconscious. Yeah. So part of what the research is showing is that a lot of those things are primed into us. But I also think that that's where it. We have to go back to. Like, what does it mean that we are made in the image of God, that the God of the universe has put desires in our heart that are very different, like, in terms of, you know, some of the work that you've done in Africa recently, some of the work that I've done in the realm of childhood sexual abuse, like, God gives desires inside of us to be able to honor. And so most of the time we're looking at, like, you know, I need to not have these desires because desire is selfish. But it's like, no. If the God of the universe is full of desire and wants, wants goodness and beauty and truth everywhere, how are we not also part of creating more of that everywhere we go? So that, to me is such a tragedy with Christians is how are we not known as people who love desire? It's so sad to me because desire could unlock so much in our life. Like a desire to serve the poor, a desire to love others better, a desire to come fully alone, alive, and to excavate all the passions that God has put inside this heart for me to discover. But we fear it, and we don't seek it out. We don't excavate what's been placed inside of us.
- [41:54]
A
Yeah. And to me, it feels a bit ethereal. It feels like, I understand. I have this deep longing to know, why do I do the things I do?
- [42:03]
B
Yeah.
- [42:04]
A
Like, why do I spend my time, spend my money. Money. Choose the friendships, eat the food. Why do I do all of these things? But what's ethereal to me is that concept of desire. I guess I just don't have a category for it. So, like, this is. You're creating a category for me. And the category, I think, based on what you're saying is it has to live underneath the action. There's a desire that's underlying every action. And it sounds to me, maybe help me with this, the call to action is just to get curious about it. Or what is the call to action as it pertains to that desire that's underlying?
- [42:40]
B
Yeah, it's to get curious about why do you want what you want. So instead of indulging it, instead of shaming it, I mean, this could save you tens of thousands of dollars. It could also cost you tens of thousands of dollars. Yeah. And so, yeah, if you're able to get curious about why do I want what I want? So an example would be, like, green grass. We don't think anything about. About it, but, like, why do people want good green grass? Well, it dates back to 17th and 18th century. Wealthy aristocrats in Europe who had so much extra money that they had people develop green fields for them. And we can draw a direct line to that. So again, green grass, I'm all for it. It's fun. It creates context to play. But what if you want, like, a Japanese rock garden? What if you want something else? How could you imagine if you want, weren't preoccupied by that? And so part of what we're learning from the porn industry is that, you know, things like, you know, just abuse, assault, even things like sexual choking have gone up significantly. I don't have the exact data in front of me in terms of percentages, but the amount of women that have experienced some level of choking in an otherwise consensual sex act has gone up dramatically. You can trace that to porn. So that sense of, you know, these things that we are watching and experiencing in life, some of our desires are not random. That we're always kind of, in the words of Rene Girard, it's mimetic desire, meaning it's a, you want that or you have that, and I want that too, is a lot of where desire can come from. So if we see someone else have something or want something or doing something, that's part of the way that we're wired, is, oh, I want that too. And so that can be unto destruction. I also think that can be unto godliness and beauty. So, yeah, that's a little bit of the discipleship war that we're in today is that we have a lot of examples of greed. We have a lot of examples of sexual immorality. We have a lot of examples of narcissism in our culture. We don't have a lot of examples of people giving their life to confront the herods of our day. We don't have a lot of examples of people who are serving the poor and giving up everything of their life to be able to find this one precious field. And so if we had more examples, I think as a culture, we would start desiring what is good, true, and beautiful.
- [45:19]
A
Wow. Yeah. Two random thoughts come to mind there as you're saying. That one is. Have you. Do you know Jay Jamie Winship?
- [45:27]
B
I don't. Okay.
- [45:28]
A
He wrote a book called Living Fearless.
- [45:29]
B
Okay.
- [45:30]
A
And he. He talks a lot about what you're saying. And. And it was very, like, category breaking for me, like, just to get outside of these constraints, these boxes that I've lived in, and to just kind of pay attention to, like, why do I believe the things I believe? And, you know, another example is, like, Kanye West. Kanye west is. I mean, the dude's. I think you could say he's crazy. He's a genius. He's all of the things.
- [46:01]
B
Yeah, but, like, points in his life.
- [46:03]
A
Right. All of the things. I just watched his documentary, and the one thing that I was really fascinated and actually inspired by is the fact that he's like, I want to break all of this to see what is really good. And what, what expression looks like.
- [46:19]
B
Yes.
- [46:20]
A
And I think that that is a beautiful thing with the foundation of the word of God and the foundation of the kingdom of God. Because then you can look at things and say, there are desires in my past and look at them objectively and go, okay, good, bad, whatever. Those are real desires that came from somewhere. Now let's order them. Because desire informs behavior is what you're saying. And so you could say, I have a desired outcome for my life. I have a, A, a kingdom that I want to serve. I have a, the word of God that I want to follow. But I do the things I don't want to do. And that's informed by my desires, by the trauma of my past, by the things that I was told were valuable when I was seven years old, and by just the God given nature. He's, he's, he's made me in his image. He's made me like certain things that he's made you not to like or to, you know, for you to be gifted in and Richard to be gifted. That's the body of Christ.
- [47:18]
B
Right.
- [47:18]
A
And so I think making sense of all of those things together and saying, how do I really live in freedom.
- [47:24]
B
Yes.
- [47:24]
A
How do I really understand my past and understand the things that I want to properly order them in the kingdom of God, to place them on the altar and then to say, okay, Lord, like, like what is your way? And how do I walk in that way? And how do I walk in my lane in that way? And how you've truly created me? Did that make sense at all?
- [47:43]
B
Yes, yes, absolutely. So in, you know, part of what we would say as therapists is that we are always trying to negotiate authenticity and belonging. So authenticity is like this kind of drive, this desire in us to be our most authentic, real, genuine self. The dilemma is that sometimes the more honest you are, the more that you live out there, the less you feel like you can belong to a community. And then sometimes in belonging to a family, belonging to a church, there's a sense of like, I actually have to give up some of this authenticity in order to belong. But I want you to think about like, this category of like a, let's say a symphony. Let me talk about narcissism, and then I'll go to the symphony. So narcissism, at least when I was in high school, was like, this is someone who was full of themselves. In my high school. It was like they needed to have a Ford Mustang Cobra they wore like Tommy Hilfiger. They had to have, like the most attractive girlfriend in the. In the county. And so that was like the narcissist was someone that was full of themselves. But clinically speaking, narcissism is not a fullness of self. It's an absence of self. And so what happens with narcissism is that I don't know who I am. I don't know whose I am. And so I look to my success, I look to the amount of influence, you know, subscribers, followers I have, how many likes I have, how many books I've sold, what my 401k looks like, my salary. And all of that is a reflection back to me of my worth. So I don't know who I am, but when I look in the mirror of these external validations, I have a reflected sense of self. And that's really what destroys intimacy, that destroys passion, because the things that you desire are about, I don't want to feel fragile, I don't want to feel small, I don't want to feel insignificant. So I over index and all these external desires to validate who I am, and that becomes a lot of people's desire in life is, how do I not feel that? The symphony, on the other hand, if you think about a symphony in Dallas, a symphony in New York, one of the reasons why that's so amazing is because your violinist is the best violinist in the entire state. Probably you want your clariness, your percussion team to be the very best. You don't want them coming in with broken strings. And I'm just traumatized. And I don't know how to play it like they have done the thousands and thousands of hours of work to progress from stumbling to struggling, to working through boredom. And they are exceptional. But the magic of a symphony is not just that this violinist is differentiated and has an individual authenticity. The magic of a symphony is this fully developed, stunning violinist is able to play together with some of the other best instruments in the city. And when they get together, they create stunning music that is a picture of the Kingdom of God. That's a picture of a good marriage, that's the picture of a phenomenal friendship, is we are fully developed people that get together and create beautiful music. And so when you think about CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien's friendship, it's not that they were crappy writers, it's that they were both good writers that had different understandings of how do you infuse the Christian narrative.
- [51:19]
A
Yeah.
- [51:19]
B
And Lewis would say, you know, you put the Aslan character in there, and that's the way to do it. And Tolkien would say, no, you don't need to be explicit about that. You just need to be so immersed in the Christian story that of course, all the characters are going to have elements of dignity and humanity, but also they're going to have a sh. Shadow and sin, and that's the goodness. Yeah. So you have these two very developed writers coming together. Yeah. And I think that's what's being lost today is like, in a culture of narcissism, in a church culture that doesn't really encourage people to develop themselves. Because if you develop yourself, you're spending too much time, resources, and energy on something selfish. And it's like, no. Like, the best artists.
- [52:04]
A
Yeah.
- [52:05]
B
The best creatives in our world have taken the hours and thousands of hours to develop these gifts. Yeah. And so to me, that's what desire has the potential of doing. Like, yes, desire can become dangerous real quick.
- [52:20]
A
Yeah.
- [52:21]
B
But it's also, I think, the most stunning power that God has given to us to develop.
- [52:28]
A
What do you do when your partner or your friend just doesn't have a desire to be their best self? Like, you're saying, hey, I want to understand why I do the things I do. I want to conquer this addiction. I want to follow the word of God, but my partner doesn't. How can you help them walk into that?
- [52:46]
B
In many ways, you can't. But whenever we make a unilateral decision to change, we influence the other person more than we would believe. So I remember my. My wife used to see her therapist on Wednesdays and on Tuesdays. There was always a sense of like, oh, I need to be on my best behavior. I don't want to be the subject of her therapy session. And then, like, Wednesday night, kind of just like, how are we doing? Kind of just uncertain. And part of what I realized is that the more that my wife changes, which I wanted her in therapy, I wanted her to grow. But the more that she changed, the less she looked away from family of origin stuff, the less she looked away from difficulties in her own life, the more that she was actually calling things out in me that I didn't want to engage. So that was the dilemma that we were in in our marriage for that year, was, I want you to change. I don't want you to change. Because if you change, I have to change. And so I think just even we. We profoundly underestimate the power of just the desires that we move towards. And so even if people are not joining us, I think that that creates a level of disruption in people. So, you know, I think of the Joseph story of, you know, this man that had a coat of many colors and what happens to him, it's not good. Not good. He ends up in a ditch. And so, you know, even Ryan, like, getting to know you, you. You have a lot of colors to your. To your coat. There are conversations in Africa and in LA and in Dallas that you're wanting to have. Like, there's so much energy in you, and yet the reality, if people were to be friends with you and connected to you, there would be a sense of, am I even doing anything significant with my own life? And so there's a sense of. Of, you know, the envy that we bear through being a person of desire is meant to provoke. It's meant to say, okay, if Ryan has found his passion, where is my own? And it doesn't have to go to another continent. I could get a microscope out and discover a world there that I don't know. But I think, you know, my best friends are those that have allowed their lives to be disrupted, that actually want something. They want hospitality industry to be disrupted. They want better work done for survivors of trauma. So I almost don't care what it is. But we're meant to provoke people into a type of envy, a type of disruption. So I think we underestimate the power of kind of living our most authentic self. But I think any unilateral change that you make is going to mess with the relationship, because that's what happens. Like where, you know, most couples or friends, we meet at a certain level, and if you stay there, that's really when the relationship begins to get really boring and begins to implode. So there's always the sense of, I want more. And that's a good thing.
- [55:51]
A
Wow.
- [55:51]
B
Yeah.
- [55:51]
A
And that's. That's really the goal of this podcast, too. When I was praying about this podcast and felt like the Lord said, dude, you know, this isn't going to be the Ryan Miller Show. This is going to be the Jesus People podcast. Go find the treasures of the kingdom. The picture he gave me was when the four Minute Mile got broken. And then the next week, every other runner broke the four Minute Mile because the category got broken in their minds. Like, oh, if he did it, you know, I'm not that much worse than he is, you know, and so what I'm hearing you say is, you can't change that person in your life. It's up for them to change. What you can do is Start breaking some 4 minute miles in your life. And that's going to influence them, that's.
- [56:25]
B
Going to disrupt them. Yep, yep, absolutely. And that's. I mean, I think that's part of what the Bible is trying to say is, like, if we are the body of Christ, there's. There's so many different expressions of that. And I think it's as we pay attention to the fields that we're in. And that could be social media, that could be science, that could be climate, that could be politics, that could be baking, hospitality, hotels. Like, it doesn't matter what you're in. Jesus, people should be. Some of those violin players that I mentioned earlier, like, Martin Luther was once asked, like, essentially, like, how do you become a good Christian cobbler? Like, you know, person that worked on shoes? And he would say, you just commit to being the best cobbler in your city.
- [57:14]
A
Right.
- [57:14]
B
And so, you know, I think that's part of what's missing in our world today is, yeah, to be Jesus, people should be people who love desire, who love serving, who love hospitality, who love virtually everything there is, because all of this is God's world. And so I don't think that. That we can ever become too desirous for God. I mean, if God is the author of desire, which I believe he is, we can never become too full of desire. We can never become too fully alive. And so that's what I would love for discipleship to look like, is how are you actually not sitting on these nine, 10 talents that you've been given? Because desire are forms of talents, and most of us have buried our talents because we've buried our desires.
- [58:09]
A
I'm so excited for this book.
- [58:11]
B
Yeah.
- [58:12]
A
Guys, we're going to put the link in the show notes to desire and unwanted. Go check them out. Jay, this was an honor. Are there any specific ways we can be praying for you?
- [58:22]
B
Yeah, I. You know, when I. When I wrote this book, I came under kind of some investigation just because I was disrupting some of the porn industry, that there were people that came out at me and just kind of tried to ruin a lot of things for me. And so just even that sense of evil comes to kill, to steal, and to destroy. And so I think I've had some, you know, some level of anxiety coming into this next season is kind of like, yeah, if we're really getting not just into an unwanted realm, but something that's so core to the human heart, like, at what cost does that come? So I think just kind of pray through.
- [59:07]
A
Yeah, yeah, let's do it right now, because, I mean, our audience, they're prayer people, and I believe it. You're charging one of the mountains of the enemy, which is pornography and desire. He wants to keep us stuck.
- [59:24]
B
Yeah. And to own the realm of desire so that when we think about desire, what we think about is things like porn or greed or all these selfish things, instead of the untapped potential of what God has put inside us. Amen.
- [59:37]
A
Amen. Well, let me. Let me close this prayer, guys. As you're listening to this or as you're watching this right now, would you pray with me? I just think there's so much. So it's just the firepower we could have as we. Where two or more are gathered. Right. Well, we got thousands gathered right here listening. So let's. Let's pray for Jay. Let's pray for your ministry. Let's pray for your book Desire. And I'm praying that God would see a harvest of people who are not only walking in freedom, but walking in fullness. Because when you can understand why you do things and you can understand how God's created you to be your core identity, like he's made us in our image, and we're all uniquely crafted in that image to be the body of Christ man, that's. That's what's going to set the world on fire.
- [60:18]
B
Yeah. And one last note on that is, like, this book is not a Christian book. Like, you know, this book was with a Christian publisher. And one of the reasons why I did that is, you know, had this conversation with Tim Keller before he died, who is a, you know, famous pastor in New York City city. And just remember asking him one day, like, you know, are there any Christians that are leading the world in desire or sex or longing? And he kind of answered as he typically did with regard to, like, the defeat or beliefs of Christianity that, you know, there's things like the Crusades or the record of Christians on slavery. And he's like, you know, we're split on that. Yes, we have done. Done horrible things in the name of God and religion, hence the Crusades. But he also says, like, who are some of the first people in the entire world to raise the idea that slavery was wrong? Well, it was the Christians. Right. But then he said, when it comes to desire, I don't know of a lot of people that have the same respect as like, a Bryan Stevenson or a Francis Collins in the realm of health or science, and Bryan Stevenson the realm of justice. And so that kind of. Of that really struck me and planted a seed Inside me of what would it look like to create a book that Christians and non believers could read to be able to get a sense of how do we form desire? And that's what I'm after. So even if it's easier to send a book out to someone that you think could really grapple with it, I want to change the conversation in the church and in the mainstream world around this topic because I really think that desire could become the apologetic that we haven't tapped and so would love to kind of just see Christians be known as lovers of desire.
- [62:16]
A
Well, you need extra prayer then, because you're. Right now you're going into enemy territory, whether it's a Christian book, quote unquote or not. It's a kingdom book. It's the truths of the kingdom. Yeah. So let's pray now. Jesus, I just thank you for Jay. I thank you for the. The life you've given him, to unpack these truths at a deep level, that you've given him divine insight from your Holy Spirit. I pray for spiritual protection. Right now, we cover him. Everyone watching this video, listening to this, this podcast. We cover you right now in the name of Jesus, Jay, with protection with warring angels, with the blood of Jesus. We. We ask, Lord, that you would go before him, that you would nullify any attacks of the enemy against him and his family and his life. And we ask that you do far more than we could ask or imagine with this book desire. And that you would not only allow people to break free from the chains of bondage they've been living in, but you would give them their core identity, their understanding of their core desire that you implanted in them, Lord, that you have formed in them, that you were sovereign over their childhood, that you allowed those things to happen. What was intended for evil, you have used for good. And we can understand that moment of what was intended for evil. We can unpack why we do the things we do today. And so thank you that Jay is. Is a forerunner in this, that he's charging the gates of hell with this. That he is. You've just given him the wisdom. You've given him the anointing to. To steward this message and to steward this truth. So we thank you for that. In Jesus name, amen.
- [63:48]
B
Amen.
- [63:49]
A
Amen. Thank you for being with us. Yeah, that was fascinating. I got to chew on that for a while. Guys, thank you for tuning into the Jesus People podcast. We will see you next week.