Joshua Noel engages in a profound dialogue with Dr. Peter Beck regarding his recently published work, "The Dark Night of the Soul". Central to their discourse is the pressing issue of mental health, focusing on topics such as PTSD and the tragic prevalence of suicide among veterans and clergy. Dr. Beck candidly shares his personal experiences with these challenges, revealing how they have shaped his understanding of faith and resilience. Throughout their conversation, they explore the complexities of suffering and the importance of acknowledging one's struggles, emphasizing that seeking help is not a sign of weakness but rather an essential step toward healing. This episode serves as both a testimony and a call to action, urging listeners to foster greater empathy and support for those grappling with mental health issues.

In a deeply introspective episode, Joshua Noel converses with Dr. Peter Beck about his latest book, "The Dark Night of the Soul". This engaging discussion navigates the complex landscape of mental health, particularly addressing issues such as PTSD and the tragic reality of suicide. Dr. Beck shares his personal experiences and challenges, offering listeners an intimate glimpse into the struggles that often remain hidden behind closed doors. The conversation prompts critical reflections on the importance of mental health awareness and the necessity of creating safe spaces within communities, particularly in faith-based environments, for individuals to express their vulnerabilities.

Dr. Beck's narrative is woven with harrowing statistics that highlight the urgency of addressing mental health concerns, particularly among veterans. He emphasizes the need for churches to be proactive in supporting their members who may be suffering in silence, advocating for a compassionate approach to mental health that transcends mere acknowledgment. The dialogue serves as a clarion call for faith communities to understand the profound implications of mental health issues, offering insights that encourage empathy, connection, and a willingness to engage with these difficult topics.

Moreover, Dr. Beck's reflections reveal how the journey through despair can lead to spiritual growth and renewed faith. He challenges listeners to confront their understanding of suffering and God's presence in times of crisis. The episode ultimately serves as an invitation for individuals to share their stories, fostering a sense of unity and support that can significantly impact those struggling with mental health issues. Listeners are left with a profound sense of hope and encouragement to reach out for help, both for themselves and for others, reinforcing the message that no one is truly alone in their struggles.

Takeaways:

• Dr. Peter Beck's book, 'The Dark Night of the Soul', addresses profound issues of mental health, including PTSD and suicide, which affect many individuals today.
• In our conversation, we acknowledged the importance of recognizing that everyone faces their own burdens and struggles, often hidden from public view.
• One of the key lessons discussed was the significance of understanding that our experiences, even painful ones, can serve a purpose in the broader context of our lives.
• Dr. Beck emphasized the necessity of seeking help and being open about our mental health challenges, thereby fostering a supportive community for those in need.

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Hey everybody, Joshua here. Just want to give you a quick heads up in the following episode. I didn't actually do much editing.

I left all the pauses and gaps in there just because I think it's important to hear the actual reactions that I had in this conversation. It gets pretty personal and I think it's important that you guys hear the full conversation. So we didn't do a ton of editing this.

There's going to be some gaps. This is my interview with Dr. Peter Beck about his upcoming book. We're going to some pretty heavy subjects.

If you are with really young children who you do not think are ready for conversations around how a lot of veterans and pastors around the world are taking their own lives, maybe tune in another time because this one is going to get pretty deep into some of those more pressing and sensitive topics. So thank you guys so much for listening. I do hope that you find this conversation as challenging and beneficial as I did. Thank you so much.

Hebrews 4, 14, 16 in the Christian Standard Bible, Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heaven, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast to our confession. We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weakness, but one who has been tempted in every way as we are yet without sin.

Therefore, let us approach the throne of grace with boldness that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in time of need. In the book of Hebrews, the author is explaining the nature of an evolved faith from Judaism in light of the person of Jesus Christ, our Lord.

So in this pericope, specifically, the author claims that we can go to God boldly in prayer because we know that Jesus has gone through struggles that are similar to our own. Dr. Pete Beck how might knowing that Jesus has also suffered help us in our own time?

I think it's just a good reminder. In fact, I'm thinking about another book project already that reminds us that we're not alone.

There are others who are walking the same journey right now.

But the fact that he did it and he didn't deserve it, you know, that's always that reminder for us that, you know, yeah, I got punished, or I was wrongly accused, but not really in the grand theological sense to things. Jesus didn't deserve any of it, volunteered for it, which makes ours in one sense, not less, but it puts it in a great perspective of eternity.

And I think that kind of changes some of the sting that comes with it.

Yeah. Oh, death, where is your sting? Hey guys, welcome to The Whole Church podcast, possibly your favorite church unity podcast.

But if it's not, that's really fine. We're not, we're not envious. We're not going to compete with other unity podcasts because that seems self defeating.

Instead, we're going to encourage you to listen to all the unity podcasts you want. We hope you enjoy all of them. I am Joshua Noel. I'm here to introduce tj, but he's not here, so my job will remain incomplete for the day.

I am, however, here with the return guest, one of your favorite return guests, one of my favorite return guests, one of my Favorite former professor Dr. Pete Beck is one of my professors. When I attended Charleston Southern University. He was my systematic theology professor. He's a longtime friend of our show.

Friend of Myself, I think, hence also the pastor of Doorway Baptist Church in North Charleston, South Carolina, and has a book releasing soon that we're going to be talking about today titled the Dark Night of the A Journey of Faith through the Valley of Despair. And in this book, he details some of his own personal experiences, coming to terms with PTSD, finding strength in weakness, etc.

We're going to get into a lot of what that book is about, but for now, Dr. Beck, thank you so much for joining us again, man.

I'm glad. Beer. I appreciate you talking to me about this today.

It's an important topic, I think for a lot of folks who like myself maybe don't realize they're carrying a burden and maybe hearing somebody else talking about it will get them to open up and share their own grief.

Yeah, yeah, I, I do feel like you undersold it a little and we'll get to it later. Like, like, so mind you, we were, we were in a roundtable, I think, when you first told me, so it was not really time to build it up.

But you're like, oh, yeah, I wrote a book and I knew it was about ptsd. And I got a hold of this PD the PDF file and I was like, okay, this will be about him going through. And it's like recent and, and huge.

Like it's emotionally deep. And I was like, oh, he was, he was going through it while I knew him and I didn't realize it and I don't know. It. It hit.

And I was like, ah, I feel like I needed like a, like a warning. Like this is going to hit you in the emotional gut.

Well, I appreciate that. You know, the, the editor kind of made similar comments. Not that I knew her in the way that, you know, Me. But, yeah, it's. I'm still going through it.

But, yeah, this all started a couple years ago, which I know you want to get to. But, yeah, it's. It's. It's real. And, you know, people ask if the book was meant to be cathartic, you know, does it. No, it's.

In one sense, you can't escape it. So this is really, again, I'm hoping, a ministry to others who are maybe dealing with their own burdens or demons.

And so, yeah, I mean, I'm encouraged in a sense that it hit you where the feels are. But, yeah, it's.

You know, like so many other folks who struggle with PTSD or other issues, we often don't want to let people in inside, and so we hide it. And what I've discovered is I don't hide it as well as I thought I did.

When you were my student, I had other students probably the same time asking me, what, 12 years ago, 15 years ago, hey, Dr. Beck, do you have PTSD? And I denied it for years. And, you know, the date you're going to bring up here in a little bit. It got to a point where I could no longer deny it.

Yeah, yeah. Which, yeah, we'll get to that in a second. But that date was after some of his appearances on this show.

So for those who've been following the show, you might have a similar experience where you're like, oh, this is. Yeah, yeah.

Some people don't just reach, like, a point where they're a theology professor and everything is perfectly fine and they can tell you stories of how life used to be hard. It turns out people still go through life even after they're a pastor professor. Yeah. For now, though, I got to do TJ Sports. I am so bad at.

This is why TJ does this stuff to keep us on track. We need you guys to check out the websites and, you know, rate, review the show, that kind of stuff.

We have new T shirts and stuff out now that are comfort color shirts. So for those who know what comfort colors is, apparently a lot of people do. I don't. I didn't until I had one. I was like, oh, this is a nice shirt.

And they're like, yeah, it's a comfort color shirt. Oh, cool. Anyway, I like some of the designs. Check it out. I did the design, so I should like them.

And now we're gonna do a silly question because that's how we start this show. You cannot be in division without silliness. And it does feel weird jumping back and Forth talking about this book.

It's a really serious topics, but, you know, God created us with a sense of humor and with levity. And I kind of believe that God has a little bit of silliness in him.

I feel like it's there, but we're going to use this to lighten the mood and then get right back to the heaviers. I did not remember writing this question. Interesting. Okay, so if Disney made a satire of a Marvel character instead of Darkwing Duck.

So in the 90s, they made the satire of Batman titled Darkwing Duck. It was just like a duck that was being Batman and they were making fun of Batman.

Which character do we think would be the most interesting for such a series if they did a Marvel character? I'll go first, give you time to think about it. I wish I would have had tj made him go first, give me time.

I kind of think, mind you, did they did a recent, like, series of like, what if Disney characters were Marvel characters? There is like a what if Donald Duck was Thor kind of thing or worthy of the Thor's hammer. I think it would be really fun to see.

I think it would have to be like Spider Man. You know, it's a character that everybody loves. So I feel like it needs to be a recognizable character that's also entertaining.

And a Spider man satire would, if nothing else, be fun because of the villains. Like, there are villains that should not be taken serious in Spider man that they try so hard to make serious. And that. That's what I need to see.

So that's where I'm going. Dr. Beck, Disney satire of a Marvel character.

Man, this is such a Gen Z kind of question, Josh. I don't know where to begin. I really want to come up with something not so much a Disney character, but a Disney Persona.

I wish I could come up something that Britney Spears could do. I mean, who would Britney Spears be in the Marvel universe?

But since we can't do that, since she's not a character per se, though she probably could use all the help she could get from the characters. What about Ursula from the Little Mermaid? One of the great evil characters of all Disney films ever.

Yeah, yeah.

What about Ursula as the she Bolt rather than the she Hulk, kind of the anti Hulk character, even though she herself is Hulking.

Yeah, yeah. Well, because then you could also do the fun satire making fun of, like, how Marvel has to always create a she version of all the same characters.

Exactly.

They can be fun themselves with that.

You know, if the Hulk is green, you know, can the she Hulk be black or blue or. Or whatever's the opposite of green?

I mean, there's all kinds of weird things we could do to hear and violate probably all kinds of copyright laws in the process.

Yeah, it's fine. They don't mind. I hear that Disney's fine with people taking the breath. Oh, my God. All right, so silliness out of the way.

There is simply not a good way to transition. So I'm not even going to attempt. I'm just gonna tell everybody. No transition.

So we've had you on the show before and after that date, on roundtables, interviews, different things like that.

So for those who've been following along, could you kind of describe how did this date change the way you approach faith in life since the first time that we had you on the podcast and kind of just, I don't know, maybe you could walk us through that day and why it was such a pivotal moment?

Okay, yeah. I mean, seems like a random date.

There's nothing significant to it for most of us, you know, in fact, when I first started writing this book, which would have been about 14 months after that date, I had to go back and double check the calendar because I hadn't memorized the date per se. I could describe the day, but not the date. But then it dawned on me.

No, it's too important in mine and my wife's journey, if nothing else, to ignore the date itself. But, yeah, it was a normal Sunday. I'd been to church that morning.

We had had, you know, we do every fifth Sunday where we let the music run the whole service. And so I kind of had the Sunday morning off, but we had been to church, come home, eaten lunch.

We were going back that evening, but it was going to be kind of a low key kind of evening as well. So my wife and I just took advantage of the offer opportunity and watched a movie that afternoon, which we don't often get a chance to do.

You know, again, you were saying earlier how busy you are. Not often, you know, this. I can watch a movie or take a nap. Naps usually when.

But we chose to watch a movie and we chose to watch, or maybe I chose to watch the movie Devotion about, you know, the Korean War, the black pilot and the white pilot and whole race integration issue back in those days. And we watched it and it was well done. And then when it was Over.

I don't ruin the movie for anybody who wants to now walk, go back and watch it for themselves.

But when it was over, I was kind of struck in my head, just kind of playing over what had happened and how the whole scene had finally played out at the end. And my wife got up, was in the kitchen cleaning up, and I just, you know, for lack of a better way of saying it, lost it.

You know, the feels hit, then kind of that choked up feeling in your throat when, you know, you really want to lose it and you're trying to hold it and couldn't.

And next thing I know, it was probably 15 minutes later, 20 minutes later, I was curled up in a fetal position on the couch, bawling, with my wife basically kneeling in front of me trying to help, you know, and the words that she said echo in my mind. You know, she was trying to, okay, did one of the dogs hit you in the head? Or whatever? But she said, you're scaring me.

And then that's what it kind of, you know, the overwhelming sense. And from that moment on, in one sense or another, this has been an everyday thought process challenge.

I mean, that was the starting point to realize I actually did have a problem.

And, you know, it was such a thing that I'm not one to ask for help like a lot of men and certainly a lot, like a lot of pastors, why pastoral suicide numbers are so high. But, you know, the next morning, I called the VA hotline. I said, I need help.

And then, you know, that when I did that, I knew something was different than anything ever before, and it's just kind of cascaded and snowballed since then.

Yeah, yeah. No, reading that, that's one of the ones that really shook me up a little bit. I think it's because.

And it's funny because I know you better than this.

I know you well enough to know you wouldn't have wrote what I think I was subconsciously expecting, because in my mind, and you kind of write, a lot of people view you kind of similarly. Used to be a Ranger. He's a theology professor.

Anything I've asked him before, you pretty much have known, you know, so I'm like, this is like a hero among heroes. This is his book on how he just defeated ptsd. And I'm like, oh, no, that's not how this works.

And I knew that, and I knew you wouldn't have even bothered writing such a book. And I'm like, oh, like. Like, I don't know. It's like, I Think subconsciously. I didn't prepare myself to hear that from yet.

Have you had any other students read it so far that you kind of had similar.

I actually taught a class this last spring semester on suffering, the theology of suffering, and we looked at various characters and Bible passages.

And so I had them read, you know, a pre publication edition of it, as well as one of the other professors who, when we came time to have a classroom discussion on the book, I wanted the students to feel free to discuss whatever without hurting my feelings, whatever. So I had actually read it, and he came in that day and led the discussion, and I left the room so they could kind of run with it.

So in addition to that, I've had a couple other students read it for me, just kind of as another set of eyeballs to make sure there's no weirdness. But yeah, it's. It's not what you expect in a lot of ways for me. I mean, the emotional openness, you know, just the. The.

Maybe even the story itself, but bits and pieces of the book started off as church newsletters and kind of, you know, bringing the church up to speed once we let them in on what was going on. And so that's kind of what started it. And I think people at church were impacted by it a lot, lot of different ways.

But I think those little brief newsletter articles helped some folks. And so the thought became, okay, can God use this? And of course, it's a stupid question, can God use this?

But can God use this for good, for other people? Because the reality is, and I mentioned in the book, you know, just like you can't forget or put away what happened in the past.

Your past is your past. You don't get healed from ptsd. You learn basically learn to deal with it. And so this was not about me being cathartic.

This is not about me going, look at me. I've got it all figured out. It's, look at us and, you know, if need be, let's walk on this journey together.

Yeah, yeah, no, that's. And. And it's effective and. Well, we'll get to some of the. The other leaders. Even the formatting of the book, I just. It was really well done. It just.

Yeah, like you said, I didn't expect that kind of emotional openness that I think was really prevalent, not just there, but throughout the whole book, but that really kind of set the stage. So I'm glad we could ask. Started with that here.

So in the book, you're honest about not having answers, even as a pastor which is a little weird, you know, since we're the podcasters that like to ask you for answers a lot. But how is this journey that you've been on so far?

I know you're continuing on it, but how has the journey reshaped your theology of suffering, God's presence, and your understanding of the mysteries of the faith?

It's, it's going to sound cliche. You know, I won't say it's life altering, but in a sense it's been life altering. You know, it's changed.

You know, again, go back to the obvious thing we just talked about, you know, the emotional openness with people. That's not me. You know, I don't cry.

You know, my daughter, probably when she came in that afternoon on the, you know, in January, she was there with my wife also. It probably freaked her out because I think it may be the first time she'd ever seen me cry.

And, you know, not just a cry, boo hoo, but, you know, sobbing and racking and such. But yeah, I mean, it's easy to say theologically, I've got it all figured out. And of course, when you're younger, it's easier the older you get.

You tend to get a little softer and fuzzy around the edges and go, you know what? I think this is the right answer. Or at least here's one stand.

But, you know, for example, I have had no problem, maybe from my military time, maybe from playing sports way back when, of accepting the idea that God is king, God is sovereign, what God does, God can do, right? He's not asking my opinion.

But this, all of a sudden now I'm thinking about God's sovereignty in terms of, okay, he's still sovereign, but now it's me. And you know, okay, God, you're sovereign. What are you doing here? And you know, I talk about in the book quite a bit.

Job asked the same question and God never answered it. And I know that well enough to go, okay, I know he doesn't owe me an answer.

So how do you proceed accepting God's sovereignty when all you can see in one sense is the weight of it, or since the weight of it. But you don't see the sunrise, you don't see the, you know, you're just going through it. It is literally the dark night.

You know, you're in the valley and the walls are close by and you can't see light for it.

And so some sense, this has been a question of just, okay, buddy, you say you believe in the sovereignty of God, you know, I've always imagined hypothetical questions, what if? But I still believe it. That's not changed. But now the question is, okay, how do I respond to it?

And in one sense, again, as a pastor, as you asked, as a professor, exemplify it for those who are watching. You know, my fear is I've not done it well. But, you know, we're often most critical of ourselves.

And so, based on things I've heard from other folks, maybe I'm doing it better than I realize I am. I. I feel defeated and going, okay, God, I don't know why you're breaking me, but, you know, help me find a way to rejoice in it. And that's hard.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I am, I imagine, because I, you know, I remember enough from theology that we.

We probably would have some disagreements around, like, what we mean by sovereignty of God or, like, maybe even, like, nuances of, like, what omniscient means, that kind of stuff. Because, like, you get into weird stuff of, like, what is time? And, you know, weird stuff.

I think I actually wrote my paper for your thing about doctor who, but that's fine. Thinking about it, though, I'm curious because, man, maybe I'm being pessimistic.

Were there ever people who knew what was going on with you who were like, well, then maybe you should question your view on sovereignty and stuff, or, you know what I mean? Like, did anybody try and, like, take advantage of that?

Because I feel like I see that kind of stuff a lot, and to me, I'm like, the time to question your beliefs aren't when. You know what I mean.

Right. In fact, no. Not that I can remember it. I've been surprised, and I guess I shouldn't be, in a sense.

Maybe that's my cynicism coming through, having been in the secular world and army and as a pastor. But, you know, people have actually been far more gracious than we anticipated.

And I say we because my wife and I, you know, talked for months about, do we tell people what's going on? And the fear was that people would take advantage of that. You know, oh, he's weak or he's struggling or he's distracted.

But, you know, people have been gracious. You know, the day that I told the church, about four months into this, we. We did a special service. People came in, they noticed something was up.

The pulpit had been moved. I just had a. Basically an armchair on the stage and a little table, and so they knew something was up. Because I'm, you know, I'm a firm Believer of.

You preach. You preach from a pulpit. You know, a pulpit, too, not a music stand. So they knew something was up.

And then when the service started, I walked up on the stage and I sat down and kind of introduced it as kind of a fireside chat. But as I talked about it, and it was just basically a overshare moment, or for 40 minutes, overshare.

When I did it, there were sobs and tears in the audience. And even afterwards, people coming up with crying. And, you know, we didn't know and how could we help you?

And, you know, we don't pray for you often enough. And so we have. We've been overwhelmed over and over. How gracious people have been that way instead. And so I've actually had.

Other than in the class, you know, where we talked about suffering as a, you know, academic subject, I've had very few people bring up the question of, you know, where does this fit in your schema? Instead, I would argue probably wrongly, but instead I've had folks talk about, your faith is so strong through this.

Or, you know, I've had, and I don't say this, pat myself on the back in any way. I've had several students comment about the fact that I'm the strongest person they've ever seen.

And, you know, and here I am thinking, no, right now, I'm not the most defeated person you've ever seen, but it's got to be close. And so it's been good in that sense, you know, that I've not been taken advantage of or pushed, you know, to just walk away.

Instead, it's, how can we help it? Walk with you Kind of things.

Yeah. Yeah. I am well purchased. Personally, I always felt like you, like, exuded strength. And I don't even know why. It's just.

You just feel strong, you know, But I think I find that's really encouraging to hear that people didn't do that. And it's. It's like.

I think it's CS Lewis who talks about this where he's like, you should definitely question your beliefs in God and all that stuff, but you shouldn't change your belief because of an emotion or because of a whim or what's going on in your life. If it's like a genuinely. You rethought it. And I think that's where I like. I don't like the idea of people pushing in that moment.

And in fact, I feel like those moments are what test your beliefs. And it seems to me like, even if I don't, I'm like, well, maybe I wouldn't completely agree with how you use that word or whatever.

I'm like, well, whatever you believe is helping you and has to have some truth to it. That just kind of would be.

My thing is sometimes I like theopraxy more than theology, and it might be because I understand it easier, I can look at it, you know, so on my own personal journey, because I have to make it about myself. So having you as a professor really did help me a lot, and especially in coming to terms with like, adhd. I think I've always known I've had adhd.

I just mostly ignored it because I grew up at a time where a lot of people are like, that's not really real or whatever, or you don't really need help for that. Just focus, just do that. And had a lot of those kind of terms.

But seeing you, you were open about having ADHD when you were my professor or you mentioned it. I don't think it was a joke. I didn't take it as a joke anyway.

Right. Yeah, I was never diagnosed, but it was one of those because I'm older than you. Oh, you're just a kid is how we heard it.

But yeah, I mean, I'm a little adhd, little scatterbrained, little ocd.

You know, how much of that's coping mechanism, how much of that is real diagnosable, you know, oh, there's something else going on here, and I'm afraid to ask. So I don't ask the doctors.

Yeah, it's the Alphabet soup. Yeah, exactly. No, but having you, it helped me not feel less than, I guess, because I always was, like, felt bad about myself for being that way.

And I still didn't get medicated. Even when you were my professor, I wasn't until much later I was like, I need help.

But that was, I think, the journey for me of kind of accepting it and not trying to ignore it or feel bad about it. What's interesting, so in your book, you talk about hypervigilance and how that was like a means of escape from your PTSD symptoms.

So as someone with adhd, hyper focus is kind of a symptom of adhd, where, like, you can get right now with my Disney trip is what it is, is like I have a really hard time focusing on anything else. And I will hyper focus on that and be like, oh, man, it's been hours. And that's literally the only thing I've.

What would you say the difference is between that kind of like, hyper focusing with me? And Disney. And that's like kind of a symptom of adhd, as opposed to the hyper vigilance that you talk about as a means of escape that you kind of.

Yeah, that's a good question. I think part of it is. And again, we know you said earlier we use words different. I wouldn't necessarily use it as a escape.

Maybe I said that way in the book. But what I was driving at, what I think people might want to hear here, is that hypervigilance is this situational awareness on steroids. I'm the guy.

And a lot of military folks, men and women, police officers, probably firemen as well, to a certain degree. You go to a restaurant, you sit facing the door. You know, you notice who comes in. When I'm going to the gym, I'm working out right now.

When you go to the gym, I'm not staring at you like I'm, you know, ogling you. I'm sizing you up. I'm, you know, who's in the gym, who's around me, who's doing this? Oh, I can ignore that noise.

And so in one sense, it was not an issue of, you know, how do I escape, get over it. You know, like fantasizing.

But the hypervigilance, and probably similar you're describing as hyper focused, is where you're so aware of what's going on that, you know, I'll tell people when I was in, really before they started. I'm, again, I say it in the book. I'll say it here for the sake of your listeners. I'm medicated.

Pretty heavy dosage of, you know, a cocktail of things, trying to help find some balance. I know a lot of Christians would disagree with that. Your faith ought to get you through it. But Paul begged for deliverance. I think it's okay.

But, you know, when I was really in the deepest, darkest part of that valley, I heard every conversation going on around me. You know, in. In hindsight, it was going on all along. Probably, you know, people at church would be shocked. Well, how did he hear us say that?

Well, I was over here having this conversation, but I heard you also. And I'm watching what's going on down the hall while I'm preaching.

You know, the most fun example of it, the one of my deacons points out, is he was running the soundboard one day, and I texted him while preaching about a sound problem. And he said, you didn't even miss a beat. And so it's not so much for me escaping, it's just so all consuming, all the other concerns go away.

You know, they're there. I just not noticing them because I'm busy noticing what color of shirt that person's wearing. I'm surveying that person's hip.

Are they carrying a weapon? You know, what are they talking about? Why. Why is he so tense? You know, do we need to kind of diffuse this? Or.

And so to me, it's not so much an escape as in, oh, like, you know, let me forget that anything's going on. It's just.

That becomes so overwhelming that, you know, with your adhd, it's hard for you to focus because you're so, you know, what you're supposed to be doing and what you're really doing are two different things. Similar in that sense.

I could be sitting at a restaurant, have eaten my meal and gotten nothing out of it, so to speak, because I've been aware of everything else going on and, you know, realizing I must be really horrible company right now, because I'm not paying any attention to any of you all. I'm paying attention to everything else.

And that's why, again, when you were a student about that same time, one of my older students, who's retired army, asked me one day in class or after class, Dr. Beck, do you have PTSD? And I said, no, no, no. I only have a reason. And when I told her about after, you know, January 23rd, she goes, oh, I knew it all along.

I said, I know you knew it. How? And she said, I watched you. And I turned to another veteran in the class. She said. And I said, are you seeing. She said, yeah, he's on the edge.

And it's because even in the classroom, I'm watching everything going on down the hallway, and I'm watching you take your pencils out.

And so not so much an escape, but in another sense, maybe a burden that I was so busy doing other stuff, I didn't know there was something actually bigger brewing underneath.

Yeah.

Part of me does wonder now because I know there was a few times I talked to you about stuff in the class afterwards or something, and you would ask a question and be like, is it this, or are you really feeling this way? And it's like, that's exactly what I just said not too long ago to someone else. And now I'm like, I wonder if he just heard me say that. Man.

Yeah, it is interesting. Just kind of thinking of the differences between those two for now. And this isn't like a psychology podcast, so I'm gonna move on from this. But the.

For me, when I started taking my medicine, it felt like the difference was I would hyper focusing on, you know, whatever, like this Powerade. And I'm just fully. That is the only thing I can focus on.

And I'm in the middle of class and I don't want to focus on the powerade, but my brain is stuck on that. It's like stuck on loop almost. Right. And being medicated has let me choose what I focus on.

So, like, I still could get distracted, obviously, but I feel more like I have a choice when I'm medicated, it feels a little bit different. Like what you're saying is, it's not.

You were focused on the Powerade in the classroom, but you were having to focus on literally every single thing in the room. Is that kind of the difference?

Yeah, I mean, I was literally. And not just I. Again, anybody with PTSD or similar type things. I was constantly in threat assessment mode. What's that noise? What's going on?

Even to the point? And, you know, here's. That's not the psychology podcast.

But, you know, one of my therapists made the comment, she says, you're prone to catastrophize. And I went, I'm prone to what? And because I'm aware and watching, I'm also in my mind framing an answer of what I'm going to do in this situation.

If that person pulls a gun, what am I going to do? If, you know, that person fell down, what do I do? And I'm always jumping to the worst possible because, again, it's part of the ptsd.

It's part of also the fact that when I was in the Rangers, I was a medicine. And so you have to be quick to respond. You have to be on your game.

You have to take control of the situation to treat the injured and the wounded or whatever. And so I'm listening to everything. And so rather than waiting till the event happens for my adrenaline to get going, I'm already up on adrenaline.

You know, again, it's kind of like your adhd, the hyperactive side of it. I'm already amped. It's just a matter of where's the amp going to get released.

And so, you know, I'd come home exhausted and doctors, oh, maybe you have sleep apnea. And I'd fall asleep in my chair on my office for an hour. And I was probably just draining my battery quickly every day and not even realizing.

I thought I was just, you know, a hard worker, and instead I was scatterbrained. You know, I Thought I was an overachiever.

No, I was probably coping and compensating that if I could stay busy enough, I could silence, quote the voices that were, you know, in a sense, haunting me. And so I was wearing myself out, you know, literally burning the candle. Not at both ends, but it, you know, in the middle, on the side.

Yeah.

All as a way to kind of keep moving.

And then, like I said and you said earlier in the podcast, you know, in that day in January, hit that coping mechanism, quit working, and now it's okay, what do we do? And it didn't get rid of the symptoms. It's just now I recognize, oh, hindsight, that's a symptom. Oh, that's why I felt that way and so forth.

So the, you know, realizing what hyper vigilance is has been freeing in that sense. Because now I'm going, oh, you know, doesn't solve it, but at least I can, you know, put a name to it.

Yeah, yeah. I'm going to backtrack a little bit here because I thought of this earlier, and I don't remember why I didn't ask you.

Earlier you mentioned that this might be the only time your daughter saw you cry. Was that moment unique?

And maybe that you don't have an answer to this, but I'm trying to wrap my mind around because it's been, from my understanding, a while since you were a. A medic in the rangers, and that's a relatively recent thing. So is that the first time that it ever got to the tears, or is it just.

You were really good at not letting people see it, and if I'm probing too much, let me know. I'm sorry.

You're good. No, I just. Emotionally, I don't want to say I was stoic, but controlled. You know, part of that power, part of that exerting.

My dog's just giving an example.

Okay, good.

People are probably mowing my yard.

I mean, in my adult life, I could probably listen before my kids were born, maybe one or two other occasions, period, where tried just. But I also, you know, you may not remember this from class. You know, while I joke around a lot in class, I don't laugh a lot in class.

You know, you say something funny, I might giggle or I might give you the look like, okay, Josh, shut it. But, you know, it was that, you know, Again, hindsight, me controlling what little I could actually in one sense, control.

And it just finally, all those different emotions, there were a lot of others going on, and I talk about some of them in the book. They all just kind of came to a head, I guess they'd been festering and finally boiled over.

And just not only, you know, oh, Dad's crying at a Hallmark commercial, you know, boo hoo, dad is broken, and something serious is going on here.

She's never said it, but I suspect my daughter probably later that evening went in and texted her brother and her sister, sister in law and said, you're not going to believe what I just saw. And because neither of them have ever asked me about that day, but I suspect they know. And so I just wonder if my daughter's going, things are bad.

And that was the, that was the giveaway.

Yeah, it is. I'm not sure entirely where to go from there. The. Well, I will say one thing that is interesting.

I remember the first time you were on the show because I kind of like, obviously TJ and I talk beforehand, and if I know somebody ahead of time, I kind of like fill them in a little bit. I do remember telling him that you and him had.

I thought I had a similar sense of humor because it's kind of like that dry humor where you make like a good joke and just kind of move on. So I definitely remember that you did that. I just thought that that was like just, you know, good dry humor. Like the Brits, I don't know.

Well, there's some of that. And, you know, and I was the class clown in high school.

You know, I, I still laughingly say I'm the person who says what everybody else in the room is thinking. But, I don't know, you shouldn't say it. But, you know, I think a lot of it is that almost gallows humor.

You know, the way to deal with, you know, the old saying is, you know, comedians are often the most depressed people, you know, because that's their way of dealing with it. You know, mine was kind of this cynical, skeptical.

I mean, even one of my bosses in advertising, when I told him I was leaving advertising and going into seminary, you know, we had a little talk and he was a Christian.

And one of the things he kind of gently complained about or, you know, critiqued me on, on the way out the door was, your cynicism isn't often very helpful. And I thought, well, I don't think I'm a cynic.

But then I realized a lot of times What I thought was funny was probably me dealing with it insanity of, you know, working in the advertising world. And so I made fun of things that other people just, you know, mumbled and grumbled. And I found a way to kind of make light of it.

And so there is a dryness, but part of it underneath may just be that, yeah, this is the way I'd cope with it.

Yeah, I do. I remember. This is super random memory, and I'm gonna move on.

I remember whenever I was at CISPAC Theology 1, because I didn't really know you back then because I didn't take you for New Testament. I actually had that at print college. But you made a joke about Pentecostals early on. And back then, I was still part of the Pentecostal Church.

And I spent the entire semester afraid to mention I was part of the Pentecostal Church because I was like, man, he thinks Pentecostals are dumb, and I don't want him to think I'm dumb. And I think I told you about this like a year, maybe two years later.

And you definitely were like, that's not very Pentecostal of you not to speak up. I always thought that was so funny.

Well, the question is, was I right?

I mean, I'm not Pentecostal anymore, so you must have been wrong with that. But, yeah, Yeah, I mean, T.J. still, you know, the. No. So you. You mentioned a lot of stuff here, like hyper vigilance.

We're talking about how, for you, it wasn't a single traumatic event. It kind of built up a lifetime of build up almost Right. Is what you're talking about.

I trying to figure out how does understanding some of this maybe help us better talk to other people who are experiencing ptsd.

Yeah. I mean, and again, maybe this is God humbling me, because for years I've been skeptical of some people's claims about ptsd.

You know, again, ex Army Ranger, you know, jump out of airplanes, hua. And all that. And I'm going, and you have 100% disability because you worked on an aircraft carrier. Come on.

And you know, and I've literally in the past dismissed people's claims. And I think a good reminder for all of us, self included, as I'm learning a lesson now from the other side is.

And I have a T shirt that even says this that everyone is dealing with problems that you can't understand and you'll never know about. And so I think one of the helpful reminders here is you think about people at church or at work.

You know, I know A lot of your listeners aren't ministers or professors. They're people who go to work. You know, as you're dealing with somebody at the cash register, you don't know their whole story.

Obviously you never can. And obviously some people are really jerks, and they're just being petty for the sake of being petty. But you don't know what's going on inside.

You know, the fact that they're not very friendly, maybe they've been sexually abused by a stranger. You know, maybe the fact that they don't want to shake hands is not them being rude. It's, you know, something else going on.

And so I think part of it is just that realization that we're not alone in this, that there are others. In fact, the sequel to this book is probably going to be something along the lines of, you're not alone.

And I want to look at biblical characters who, you know, often wondered, where is God? And why isn't God talking to me right now? But, you know, being aware of hyper vigilance.

You know, are you hyper vigilant because you're just aware, or are you over the top? You know, my wife and I laugh because she would ignore what I think, or, oh, there's a red flag, that guy's dangerous. And she'll go, what guy?

And I'm going, the guy with a gun in his hand. But, you know, me jumping and turning at every sound. You know, me being able to tell you what car just drove by. I mean, perfect example.

One night we were driving back from Tennessee, stopped in the upstate to get gas. It was late. We walk in, you know, she does what wives do. She had to go check out the restroom to see if it's clean first.

You know, I'm loitering in the store. She comes out. Do you need anything? No, I'm the only thing. We just go and go, and we got the car. She goes, what was the hurry?

And I said, didn't you notice when we pulled up there's a car parked right in front of the front door with the engine running and no one in it? And she going, I didn't even notice the car. And I said, I can tell you the license plate number.

And there's a difference between being aware and hyper aware. You know, same thing with, you know, quote, flashbacks.

You know, we all have memories, and if you got a very vivid imagination, you probably have more informed memories than other people. But if they keep coming back or, you know, one of the other symptoms is avoidance.

Do you avoid riding in a car because you were blown up by an IED in Iraq. That's an obvious one. But do you avoid, you know, white people on the street at night because you were mugged or whatever the case might be?

Now we've moved from, okay, that's a normal response. I'm nervous because I've been bugged, to I'm avoiding, you know, X. I don't go out at night, I don't answer the door or whatever.

And so I think part of it is, as we think about this, not only are you not alone, and we need to be a little more empathetic to those around us. For some, like you said, they may be listening to this and they've got issues and they don't know it themselves.

And so maybe it's part of that exposure to, hey, here's the host of potential symptoms. We have to be careful there.

Because I did it is when that student kept mentioning to me over and over, and she did it for years, even after she graduated. You know, I went on the websites, okay, what's ptsd? Okay, I don't have that. I don't really have that.

They're much more obviously nuanced than just a simple word of, you know, I have flashbacks. I don't have flashbacks to what I thought they were. But now you're going, okay, yeah, that was probably a flashback. You know, hyper vigilance.

I thought it was normal until I realized I was beyond normal with what I was doing in terms of being aware. You know, the question of, you know, for example, avoidance.

I don't avoid things, but, you know, part of my trauma event, which I don't want to get into, had something to do with medical stuff, obviously, and I didn't avoid going to the doctor. I had what a lot of people call white coat hypertension.

My blood pressure would be through the roof at the doctor's office, and I could go take it in the car on the way home, and it's perfectly normal. And, you know, doctors would just all, white coat doesn't exist. Yeah, it does.

And maybe while I was not avoiding the doctor, maybe that was my having an emotional reaction to a physical situation rather than my body, you know. Oh, you have high blood pressure. Well, no, maybe there's something causing it.

And so being aware of what the symptoms are is helpful, but you also need to be aware that they're much more nuanced than that.

You know, the doctor who finally officially diagnosed me for the VA, she and I met 12, 14 times, and we probably met 12 of those 14 times before she gave an official diagnosis because she said, you're unique in that you got. And as you. You'll see in a footnote in my book, you know, here's the real title. What I got is about four miles long.

Rather than just these four letters. It's 17 letters. Because mine's unique. Somebody else with PTSD will look different. Somebody with ADHD may be different, you know, and so it's a.

It's an interesting thing when you start not becoming, you know, Freudian and getting into psycho babble, but realizing that mental health is just as important as physical health. And for us, as we talk about the whole church, spiritual health.

Because if I'm mentally not on the key today, that's going to impact my spiritual life. In the last two and a half years, since this all really exploded the forefront, I still have a hard time at church.

I don't sit up front until the last minute before I preach. I stand in the back and I come down front, sit in my spot for a minute before I stand up to preach.

Yeah.

And so, you know, some people may not notice that, but my church, because they're aware, you know, they know, don't come up and pat the preacher on the back when he's not looking at you, you know. Yeah, that would be bad.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I imagine. Yeah, it is. Interesting. So, yeah, ecumenically, I just. I do think the stuff's important, especially because the church.

Some churches have more resources than others, and being able to work together for those things, even when we disagree, is vitally important. And so I'm not. Want to make it about me, but I don't want to, like, not say stuff.

And people be like, this seems like you are dishonest for not mentioning things. So I have had a car accident. I don't think I have ptsd, but I know I have mental health issues.

I'm addressing other mental health issues at the moment, but, like, I definitely do that thing where, like, I avoid certain intersections that look like the one that certain things happened at, and I had some memory loss due to it. So sometimes I have, like, memories. I don't think they're flashbacks. I think they're memories, but I won't rule it out.

I just don't want to, like, not mention that. And people think that I was dishonest for not mentioning it. I don't know what I have, but I am addressing my mental health issues one at a time.

And that's the challenge. Right.

And for us, individually or as a church, you know, is we live in a culture that everybody wants to be a victim, and obviously not everybody, but we live in a victim mentality.

Yeah.

And so I think all of us are, to some degree or other, suspicious of other, quote, victims, you know, or again, me think about some of my former students tell me, do they have ptsd? I'm like, yeah, right. Or, you know, oh, that's the trendy thing.

You know, because I'm old enough, the diagnosis of PTSD did come out till after I was actually out of the military. I mean, as a clinical definition, that's late 80s. Before that it was shell sock or, you know, combat, whatever.

Now, looking backwards, you probably go, okay, those guys had it. Those guys had it. I'm going to argue we put the label on it. Soldiers throughout history have probably had it. We just now have a name for it.

But as a church, we have to make sure we don't go that cynical with people. Oh, they're just, you know, you know. No, you can. But like I said earlier, you don't know their story.

You know, one guy may get blown up and lose an arm and he's mentally strong and. Okay.

Another person could be in a car wreck and it just shake your mentality, you know, A couple years ago, can't remember whether this before January or not, I was out walking for fitness walking, like at 10 o' clock at night, because the only time of day I had, you know, to squeeze it in, and I saw a car go across an intersection. The road doesn't go there. What an idiot. I kept walking and as I got closer, realized the car's in the woods and I hear the tire spinning.

So my first thought is, all that idiot stuck, and now he can't get out the trees. Got a little closer, realized, oh, there's something going on. Now I'm hypervigilance. Catastrophizing.

Long story short, I went up, broke into the car, basically put it in park, turned it off, you know, checked the guy's vitals, stopped. Somebody had them call 9 11, told them where to find the accident scene. Yeah, A lot of people go, how do you deal with that?

Yeah, don't even flinch at it. But you. It may shake you to realize that the guy that, you know, I don't want to say I saved his life.

The firemen did when they showed up with the Narcan, but had I not taken that step to go into the woods, would that kid have OD'd and died in his driver's seat?

Yeah.

And so as a church, we have to be careful we don't poo, poo, or dismiss. Oh, oh, that's just fill in the blank.

Man. Yeah, no, that's. Yeah, well. And that's where God. Their strength and weakness. God uses what the enemy meant for evil.

You know, all those verses people are used to hearing people quote too often. But, you know, I do think it's true.

I think my ability to hyperfocus allows me to do podcasts in a way that people who don't have ADHD might not be able to do. You know, and, yeah, in that situation you were in, I probably wouldn't have been much help with that car.

And I'm really thankful that you were there. Not thankful that, you know, things happen to you. But I think that God does work some of these things for good.

And just because someone has Alphabet soup of whatever variety does not make them, you know, lesser or anything else or, like, doesn't mean that we don't trust God. It's just, you know, everybody has different lives and we're learning more about the human brain and addressing it differently. I know we're.

I could talk to you forever, but since your book is titled what it is, the Dark Night of the Soul, I have to ask you some of these questions. You titled your book after John of the Cross's poem.

So I need to know, how has this poem inspired you or helped you or, you know, just as you go grow through all of this? Yeah, it's a weird question for me to ask you because I wouldn't know this poem if I didn't take your theology class.

I had heard it just like you had in class. Not the poem, just a title or, you know, or even almost as a figure of speech. Oh, he's going through a dark night of the soul.

Just like, you know, my next book's going to be probably something about, like, the Hound of Heaven, which is another poem. And I kept hearing it and, you know, again, I'm ex advertising guy. I think marketing, in a sense. You know, what will help market this book?

You know, how do I reach out to people and go, oh, I know where you're coming from. But it was one of those that, yeah, I thought, okay, this kind of parallels the Psalm 23 experience, right?

Going to the valley, the shadow of death in that kind of language. And so I thought, wow, what a great handle to put on all this.

And then as I was working on the book and I, you know, most people won't believe it and won't know it because I don't Think I mentioned the book. I wrote the entire book in three weeks. I sat down over spring break and just. Information dump. But in the process, I went, you know what?

I've never read that poem. I know of it. I know who John of Cross is. And so I actually bought a modern English version of it. It's somewhere here in my office at home.

And I read it. And as I read it, I'm going, man, you could write an entire book just about this poem. Because the guy I was describing, my family's at home in bed.

They're safe, is kind of the way he's describing it. They're asleep. The covers are pulled up. He can't sleep. He gets up, talks about crawling out the window, almost like a dream or whatever.

But he leaves home and realizes he's out on his own in the dark, you know, and it's dangerous, and he's walking through alleys and whatever. And then he realizes, you know, spoiler alert for that poem. He's not going home. This is his journey.

And the end of the journey is ultimately going to be death, right? It's the dark night of the soul.

But he realizes on that journey that death is just a passageway, a rite of passage to what is really, truly life, which, of course, is what Psalm 23 is really driving out all along, right? You're going through the valley. What's on the other side? A much greener, safer valley. And so dark night of soul to me became that.

It's like, okay, I'm going through this.

I don't know when the journey ends, which has been a learning experience for me because I've always argued I can put up with anything if I know when it's going to end, right? I can put up with basic training if I know I graduate the next date. I can put up with Ranger school because I know it's only 63 days long.

You know, we're out here and we're deployed to wherever. As long as I know the helicopter's coming, I can put up with this for 12 more hours.

Part of the struggle with this has been, this is why, again, the second book's kind of in the works of my mind is there is no end, right? You're never going to not be adhd. I'm never not going to be impacted by what's happened over the years.

But I don't know if it's going, you know, it's going to quit in two years, two weeks. You know, I thought going to therapy when I first started therapy, 10 weeks that'll get me through the dark night.

And what I realized was, no, the first 10 weeks of therapy was showing me it's dark, you know, and the next one. And that's where the darkness, I think, is so overwhelming. I think it's why the character, Job, beginning of the book, you feel sorry for him.

Middle of the book, you want Job, shut up.

Yeah.

And at the end of the book, you go, holy cow. He never got his answer. He never figured it out. But he says there in chapter 42, I'd heard of you with my ears, but now I've seen you with my eyes.

He had a new encounter with God because of what he'd been through. And so, again, there's that kind of the meandering, dark night of the soul kind of imagery.

Yeah. I obviously never want another dark night of the soul. Kind of like, terrible thing to happen to myself.

But just going back through my own life, I remember there was a time right before I went to Charleston Southern that I went through some dramatic stuff. I don't want to get into it now.

And then your class was the first time, you know, I had ever realized I. Worshiping God with my mind means, like, I can study the God and study the Bible, and that is worship. Not, like, something I have to do so that later I know how to worship. Right. You know, And I just. I can pinpoint, like, my accident.

I can pinpoint, like, just different things that happened throughout my life that I'm like, I wouldn't believe what I believe now. I wouldn't be who I am now if these nights didn't happen. So it's almost like a. Not that I want more, but it's like, I can be thankful for them.

And now when stuff happens, I'm less like, I'm never gonna get through this and more curious how God's gonna keep pushing this along. It's like, wow. This part of the story was.

I keep thinking, and I know I'm young, so it sounds foolish, but I keep thinking I'm like, well, all the bad stuff seems like it's done. Like, I don't know. Like, I feel like now I'm at the point where, like, I'm happily married in the neighborhood. The end.

It's never at that point, actually.

Yeah. And you probably remember from the book, so.

Because it sounds like you really poured over deeply is, you know, I make a comment in there about a pastor's wife, dear couple to us, that, you know, she heard me years ago, and we're talking 30 years ago now, you know, talking about what I call the wasted years. Oh, the years I wasted in advertising.

The years I did this, you know, if I could only have been a pastor soon, junior or gone to college when I was younger because I didn't go to my 30s and you know, and she basically scolded me, this little five foot nothing sweetheart of a lady getting on me. Don't ever say that. God doesn't waste anything. All those things are part of who you are, good, bad or otherwise.

You know, the ugly breakups, the failed test, you know, the time you were grounded or your car accident. Yeah, I mean, we have to be careful not, you know, go Romans 8:28. God works all things together for good.

Yeah, but while that's not what that verse is about, we do know that's still true, that God does work all these things together for good. And who you are is this amalgamation of all these events for better or worse. And oftentimes it's worse until you learn to deal with it.

And then that's when God begins to use it. Maybe for good, not necessarily for your good, which is a hard lesson, but for good, for others.

And that's where the question becomes, do you trust God to be doing that when you can't see the end of the dark night?

I'm going to pull a weird thing from Taoist stuff because I have learned a lot from Taoism. And then I'm going to go back to Bible to make everybody comfortable. There's an image that's shared in different Chinese cultures and stuff.

And it's not just Taoism, but it's something that's always to me where I was like, okay, because a lot of times you hear these verses like God takes the bad things and work them for good. So you're like, okay, this is the bad stuff, that's the good stuff.

And like, I just got to get through this one more thing and then God will make it good. You know, whatever the image, it's Lao Tzu, Confucius and the boot, the Siddhartha, I guess, drinking from vat of vinegar.

And you have the Buddha, he's like making this bitter face. And Confucius is like curious like, how can I turn this better?

And then you have Lao Tzu with this giant grin on because the vinegar tastes like vinegar. That's what it's supposed to be. And then there's this, the verse in the Bible. This is where make people comfortable.

Again, I don't remember exactly where this is and maybe my professor can help me. There's a verse that says, what you reap in tears you will sow. Enjoy. Or I said that backwards. What you sow in tears you'll reap and joy and.

I don't know, I think sometimes the tears aren't bad. Not all tears are bad. I think that's what I'm trying to say. And it's not that there's bad things God works for good necessarily. It's more of a.

There's things maybe we don't like that are actually good.

And I talk about it all the time because, you know, I see my part of my role at CSU is to be the father some people have never had. You know, not just being a professor, but, you know, hey, guys, you know, I'm X years old now. Let me, let me, let me tell you what happened to me.

So you don't have to be the person that makes that same mistake that I made.

But, you know, I often talk about, you know, if the house is on fire, obviously get out, but don't be in such a rush to get through the bad times in your life that you don't learn the lesson that God put you in it for. You know, you're late for work, you get, you know, the guy in front of you doesn't go through the green light until it turns red.

And now you're stuck again and you're mad. Well, 10 seconds later, maybe you would have been killed by somebody running a red light.

And that bad thing, I mean, say it lightly here was actually meant for good. Not far from where our cabin is in Tennessee. Little two lane road, probably really a lane and a half.

One day several years ago, we were driving up to our place. There's a dog in the road. We stop. We love dogs. We're not going to hit the dog. Road's not wide enough. I don't want him to accidentally hit, you know.

So we stop. Ah, isn't that cute? It gets out of the way. We start to edge four. He comes back out some more like your dog, you know, right there.

Yeah.

You know, and this went on for probably several minutes. And finally he gets out of the way and we start to move forward. And here he comes charging out of driveway.

We could have gotten mad in that case because we love dogs. It's like, okay, whatever. But finally the dog did get out of the way. We started going up the road and maybe 50 yards up the road is a blind turn.

And before we got to the corner, a car came from the other direction, probably doing double the speed. Limit on our side.

Had it not been for that dog providentially placed in the road in front of us, we could have been in the middle of that curve when that guy came through. And so what we kind of saw at the moment is an inconvenience, was maybe God graciously sparing us something far worse.

And so, you know, I'm not a fatalist. You know, God has done this to me because that's going to make me better. You know, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger kind of thing.

I mean, I believe that's to a certain degree true, but, you know, why rush through it if something good can come from it? And that's how I viewed this book.

And as I think about the, you know, the quote, sequel to the book, you know, I'm thinking about calling the Hound of Heaven God chasing you, you know, and where. Where's God in the silence? Why aren't you talking to me? God kind of Job's experience.

I think people there, if it's going where I'm going to think it's going to go, they won't be necessarily as shocked about the emotional outpouring, but the spiritual honesty of. Here's a pastor professor who spends a lot of time wondering, where's God at right now?

Because I think that's where a lot of Christians are at, and they just don't want to admit it. And again, that, hey, you're not alone. Let's walk through this together. Maybe something like that will come from all this.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I'm trying to circle a few wagons here. And then I got just like one or two questions. We can wrap this up.

Yeah, just everything you're talking about. I also not to be like, hey, we're just going to be sharing some wisdom or whatever. But when you talk about just wasted years.

I remember the first time I worked at Chipotle feeling like, why is God I'm here. I'm just wasting my time, whatever. And people would ask me about God because I'm going to do a Christian podcast.

And we would talk, we'd have good talks, and we did all this. And then a job came up with a nonprofit that was part of the ministry. And I was like, oh, cool, now I can do something closer to real ministry work.

And it wasn't what I thought. Right. And it wasn't to me. It wasn't nurturing for me. I didn't feel like I was actually really helping people.

I learned some stuff that was happening behind the scenes, and I was like, Is this ministry? And now I'm back at Chipotle and I love every minute. Like, I love when this. I know there's a guy who's going to ask me about my podcast today.

Tomorrow he's going to be like, what'd you guys talk about? And I'm like, this is ministry. I'm wearing a chef's coat, being the manager of a little, you know, quick service food chain.

This is ministry, you know. You know, so sometimes. Yeah, yeah, circle in that wagon some of the others talked about.

Since you mentioned the dog, you know, my dog was shot last year at our last house and almost died. It was, it was a whole thing. There was a gang shooting outside my house and I. What's crazy?

So this is going to circle a couple of stuff you talk about, like, as far as like wondering where God is. Uh, I do this podcast. I meet open theist, I meet Hyper Calvinist.

I, you know, I meet, you know, all from all kinds of place people like the Paul Tillic, Grod's, the Ground of Being.

And I remember like I wrote out a paper of all these different things of like, what people would tell me where God is and try to find one that just didn't make me mad and it didn't exist. They all made me mad.

Like, like, like you guys keep saying this is comforting that God couldn't have done intervene because he doesn't know the future. And I'm like, that kind of pisses me off because, like, why, why do I even believe in this God? Like, I just go with the. It all made me mad.

And now I'm able to look back and I still don't have the answers of like where God was. But I'm like, you know, when I really think about it, this dog, which you've heard in this podcast, I'm not going to edit it out. He is loud.

And if he had not been there because I was out of town, I was in another state. If he had not been there being loud and screaming when these people were outside my house, they might not have left as quick as they did.

It might have been worse. And you know, would I have preferred my dog not been shot in my house, not have everything, you know, like everything has not happened, of course.

But I am also looking back at it going, it's a little harder to be mad at him when he's so loud these days. You know, like, you know, if you weren't so loud, I don't know. So just kind of circling those wagons.

I don't Know that doesn't give answers, but I thought it was a helpful anecdote. The last thing I wanted to ask specifically about the book. And then I won't give you a chance if there's anything I missed, but you structure.

This book is 22 meditations, one for each veteran who takes their life, which I didn't know that number. And that's like, one of the first things that you say in the book is like, this is why I'm doing this, and here's what it's about.

And I was like, okay. And since we did this podcast, I couldn't read one a day because I didn't start 22 days ago, so I had to read it all at once.

But I kind of want to go back and try to do one a day like that. How did writing it with this framework influence the way you told your story?

Well, a lot of it is, Josh, just that very realization that most people don't know. I mean, I think as a culture, we're more aware of it than we were, say, 30 years ago, for example.

I mean, you would never talk about pastoral suicide, soldier suicide.

And so eyes open, you're going to see a little more comment on it, you know, and it is a national tragedy, maybe even a national shame, that that number is that high because we're just not helping people either because they're not asking for help or not looking to help them. But that was part of just the realization that, you know, there but by the grace of God go I.

You know, some of these guys had maybe worse experiences, traumas, maybe some had lesser. Doesn't matter. That's where they ended up.

Just like, you know, a lot of alcoholics end up where they're at because their coping mechanism didn't work, you know, so they ended up, you know, drinking. I think that's the case of my wife's father, who killed himself years ago. I think in hindsight, probably a military veteran. He was Korea, ptsd.

He coped with alcohol, and it quit working one day. And so there was part of that, but a lot of it was. And this is with, you know, the. The.

The honest, you know, are you sure you want to ask this question? Kind of moment.

Part of it is just realizing that there's just a very thin veil maybe for all of us between sucking it up and get over it, moving on, keep driving on in quitting, whether marriage, quitting your job.

But in this case, we're talking about, you know, quitting life that, you know, if it wasn't for all those so called waste years, maybe I would have already offed myself, you know, if it wasn't for my wife's support, which I mentioned in the book and with the dedication, you know, maybe I wouldn't be here today to be doing this podcast. Be no book.

You know, it'd just be a story that maybe remember that Dr. Beck we had years ago and you know, realizing how close emotionally I was, you know, I was never to point with a gun in my hand, though it wouldn't be that hard because I'm not, I'm a, I'm a second amendment fan.

But, you know, realizing what they call, you know, in PTSD language, suicidal ideation, you think about it, you don't necessarily are planning it, you don't have a suicide note, but been there, done that mean too many times.

In hindsight I can tell you about, you know, being either in Gatlinburg or in Seattle at the top of the Space Needle and just being in a funk, not being able to explain why, just I'm off today and refusing to step up to the rail to look because I was afraid I'd make an instantaneous decision and that'd be it. And so, you know, what's the difference between myself and the 22 kill themselves every day? Is it my faith? No. Is it my God? Yes.

But you know, if this book, my openness can help somebody else not become that statistic, that's what was kind of driving every chapter with the idea with the hope being perhaps as you read chapter five or 12 or whatever you go, I didn't recognize this other stuff, but that's me to a table, been there and done that. And maybe they'll sense again. I'm not alone. Maybe I need more help than I realize. I missed a lot of those symptoms early on in my journey.

You know, just thought, wow, that's weird. I'm thinking about jumping off space needle. Looking back on, well, that makes sense now. But what if I didn't miss them?

What if I would have just given up?

And so the book, the hope from my standpoint is that the book will encourage some Christians, encourage some churches to get involved, maybe speak to an unbeliever somewhere. Somebody just passes the book on because the goal is the book to come out by Veterans Day.

Maybe somebody will buy it for a veteran in their family and they'll go, that's me. And you know, I don't have to be that 22nd person today.

There's not a good way to follow that. And I don't want to be the student who asks you, hey, is this a sin?

So I kind of want to tell you a story I know of and just kind of see what the response is. Yeah.

So a friend of mine, and I won't say who because he's been on the show and people might know him, I met him months after his dad had committed suicide and his dad had a lot of mental health issues that led to that. His dad also worked with the Billy Graham Crusade, was like a devout Christian, did all this stuff. Right.

Years after, you know, I met him, I was there, I worked with him. He's part of the Pentecostal Church.

And as much as I love the Pentecostal Church, there are some parts of it and people who I think get a little strange for my own liking, I will say.

I remember one point praying at camp, he was praying with somebody and this person was allegedly, you know, whether you believe it or not, demon possessed. And the person spoke to him and said, I know where your dad is. Hahaha. He's having such a good time, you know, whatever.

And then later, that same camp, someone prayed with him and said, no, the Lord told me what happened with your dad. He's good now, he's whatever. And you know, for me, a lot of it, I'm like, both sides of this, you guys are crossing a line.

And you know, in my opinion, I'm like, unless the Lord is taking over your body and saying that I feel like you shouldn't tell somebody, you know, that someone else is fine, but okay, yeah, Dr. Beckham, what do you do with that? Because when he was telling me all this stuff, I'm just like, hey, I love you. I know God loved your dad. And I hugged him. I was just with him.

But I don't have answers for that kind of situation.

Yeah, I mean, suicide in general is Catholic Church is treated as an unforgivable sin. Right. You've usurped the sovereignty of God. You've died in sin, therefore you've lost your salvation if you had it.

You know, I've never accepted that, but you know, I do believe it is a serious sin issue, as is adultery and serious other things. But not just myself. And you know, I'm just fine or aren't I a good guy? But you know, I've known several pastors who have killed themselves.

And I've had now a couple former students kill themselves.

And for example, the pastor, when I was in still in advertising in St. Louis, he had been hiking somewhere like in Colorado, took a shortcut through a tunnel, got hit by a train, lost his legs, came back eventually got back into pulpit. Everybody said, oh, look how strong brother so and so is. And then, you know, six months into it or whatever, killed himself.

Public Persona, real Persona, issue. Friend of mine from seminary, he'd been maybe 50, 55 years old, so not a young guy.

Been to church on a Wednesday night for prayer meeting, business meeting.

Came home, talked to his wife for a few minutes, said, I'm gonna go out and work in the garage, and went out behind the garage and blew his brains out on a Wednesday night. I'm in no position to say his faith was fake any more than I can say his faith was real.

What I can say now, from this side of the Dark Knight or in the valley of the Dark Knight, is it's not a far, far, far thought from a lot of people's mind. You know, the fear of leaving their family, the fear of the unknown maybe stops them. Maybe it's. They don't want to hurt their family.

You know, for a long time I was wrongheaded about even this, you know, and thought, oh, you know it. Suicide is the ultimate selfish act because you're done. You're leaving it on everybody else's lapse. I still think to a certain degree that's true.

I don't want to say it's selfish, but it does. You know, it's your escape. You're out and you're leaving behind the mess on those you love.

But at the same time, you know, if here I am, you know, the model of sanity and, you know, pastor and professor and wise, and.

And I'm sitting on a Saturday while my wife's at work, laying in bed till noon, trying to get the thoughts out of my head, or I'm going to call it va. And two things stopped me that day, other than obviously hand of God behind it all, but two cogent thoughts. One is, I don't want to call my wife and tell her I'm taking myself to the hospital for this. She'll freak out.

And my other thought was shallow, silly, goofy. I know if I go down and present myself at the ER with this, they're going to put me in a padded room for a week. That's minimum standard policy.

I can't afford to miss school for a week. And the sobering thought, finally, was, something's wrong, and that's your excuse not to get help, you know?

Fortunately, I was able to fall back asleep. When I woke up, things were a little better.

This is before my medicines Those thoughts of, I won't say they've ceased since I've been medicated, but they're certainly not as rampant or as wild as that day. But, yeah, so I don't think you lose your salvation because of it. You know, people go, what about Judas? I would argue Judas never had salvation.

Peter could have killed himself, but Christ offered him forgiveness and Peter accepted it. Judas killed himself with no sign of any repentance or remorse. I think that's the larger issue.

You know, the Puritans often get a bad, you know, rap because people, all the purists, were always afraid of losing their salvation. Most of the Puritans did not believe you could lose your salvation. What the Puritans were concerned about was, did I ever have it at all?

Back to your orthopraxy. You know, that's the question I think we all need to ask ourselves, even if we're not in the dark night. Is my faith real right now?

Not what I did as a kid. Is it real right now and is it making a difference in my life overall?

Just because I'm struggling with this thought or this temptation doesn't mean I'm evil. It means I live in a fallen world and God is not done sanctifying me yet.

Yeah, and I feel like some of this, I'm going to move on if you're okay with it. But some of this goes to the same way. We don't understand the Trinity and never can fully understand the Trinity.

You know, they're three, but one and like, huh? Question mark.

Some of this with like, mental health, physical health and spiritual health are similar for me, where I'm like, I don't know where one ends and another begins. I know that there are certain conditions where something happens to someone's brain.

And all of a sudden they went from like a good Christian person who's, like, when I say good Christian person who's, you know, I don't mean only Christians are this way, but stereotype who, you know, never cusses, sweet old lady, only sips tea, you know, whatever. And then all of a sudden happens to their brain and they think they're a whole different person.

All of a sudden they're swearing and doing all these terrible things and I'm like, I don't think your brain is your soul. Like, I think there's something different between those two things.

But cases like that make it really hard for me to say where one starts and the other stops. And maybe it's above my pay grade. I do know that all Health is important and God has lots of grace for everybody.

And that's three. I mean, you know, people, are we body and soul? Are we body, spirit and soul? And they'll try to apply it here. Go there if you want.

If you're a trichotomist, dichotomist, in terms of what do you believe about human nature? I think the more important thing here is we're one being. We are physical and we are spiritual, we're temporal and we're eternal or immortal.

You know, we're going to live on beyond this. And if you don't take care of one part, it impacts the other. Right. If you're physically unhealthy, it's going to impact your emotion.

If you're emotionally erect, alcohol or depression or whatever you know, comes to that. And so I think, again, come back to your question about the church. This is where the church needs to step up.

We are not just taking care of people's eternal souls. You know, they come to me because they're having a marriage problem. That's my ministry. I have to take care of that.

While we may not be able to afford to have a counseling clinic at our church, I am, as a pastor concerned about your mental well being as well as your spiritual well being. And maybe we need to add in there. We need to be also more concerned about our people's physical well being as well.

Not just, oh, he's got cancer, let's anoint him with oil. Maybe we need to go to somebody and boldly say, this is a stewardship issue.

God has given you one life and you are physically wasting it and now it becomes a sin issue. What can we do as a church to help you turn this part of your life around also?

Yeah, yeah, I like that. Well, I'm just going to just point blank, is there anything else you think we need to address or say before head to the normal stuff that we do?

Probably nothing that we haven't already said, but just a good reminder, you're not alone. Everybody around you is hurting one way or the other. Some are dealing with it better, some are dealing with it far worse.

But as I think I may have mentioned to you the previous email, your trauma is your trauma. I can't tell you it's not a big deal because maybe it's a big deal to you. Don't be ashamed of who you are and what you've been through.

Be honest about it and if it's your fault, obviously work on it. But a lot of life doesn't happen because we did it. A lot of life happens to us and I think we need to admit that and accept help when people offer.

And maybe that's the last bit of advice for me at this point is when people offer help, accept. To not do so is pride, and that's a sin.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't have anything to add to that.

Where remind us the name of your book and if you have a preferred place for them to look for it or to pre order it at, what are they looking for?

Easiest bet would be Dark Night of the Soul, you know, then the Journey Through Darkness and all that. Again, my name, Peter Beck, and it'll be available on Amazon once it gets sent to the printer.

Part of what they do is they give you the barcode and all the stuff that goes with Amazoning. Yeah, it'll be available for pre order on Amazon probably mid October.

And the goal is to have it available in people's hands before Veterans day, which is November 11th. And so just go to Amazon, look for Dark Night of Soul, look for Peter Beck, should be right there available to you.

If not, it's coming out through Courier Press, which is the Baptist Southern Baptist magazine newspaper here in South Carolina. They could probably also direct you in the right direction if you can't find it there, but should be on Amazon soon.

And if it helps you reach out to me through the CSU website, I'd love to hear it.

Yeah, it's not on there yet on Amazon, but I will keep looking and then Courier and yeah, I have your email and I already have the PDF, but I have to have to buy a copy. Yeah. So thank you so much.

At the end, we usually ask for practical action that has to do with church unity and how can we better engender Christian unity. I want to ask you just the weight, with the weight of all this, what's. Because we never know what people are going through.

We never know when this is someone's last straw, the last day. This is when they're going to, you know, whatever, practically with the weight of that in mind, how do we be there for people?

You know, you know, like, because we don't know who it is. So how can we just be there for those who we are around?

Well, remind ourselves constantly that it ain't about us, that, you know, life is about others. You know, what is love?

But one should lay down his life for his brother and the other one is be spiritually sensitive if you've got this urge, that sense, you know, here's, here's the Baptist Coming out. If you feel like the Holy Spirit is pushing you to say something or to go talk to that person, be obedient, follow through.

Because it might be, that's what that person needs to hear that moment. And it may change their life, and it may change their life for eternity.

What happens when we all start doing that? We, we feel the spirit. We start actually speaking to people when we feel like we should.

Because I think a lot of us have these moments pretty regularly and, you know, ignore them, or the pipe, Caribbean meme, you know, like to wave on them as they go by. What if we start actually embracing these moments? What do you think would change?

We'd actually start being the church. Back to your all's argument. Unity, the whole church.

But I mean, even in your local church, there's just you, you and 50 friends and family members, you know, little country church. When we start loving each other, Jesus, that's how they'll know. You're my disciples.

And so maybe part of what we struggle with today as a church is we preach one message and we live another.

And maybe if we start doing these things, people around us would see the gospel as well as hear it and recognize that, yeah, this thing works and I want to be part of it.

Yeah. Yeah, man, I like that. I like that. Now I gotta try and do TJ's parts. He wants us to do a God moment at the end and he wants me to go first as usual.

I'm gonna do the annoying cheat. I don't do this often, so I feel like it's okay when I do. This is gonna be my God moment is this current podcast.

You know, I went into it a lot of times with the book.

If you've read it well and you're talking to somebody who's like, wrote it and really well thought, you know, it's like, oh, this could be a quick podcast. We're gonna get this done really quick and be in and out.

And I'm thankful that the moments hit and I kept asking questions and that we're still doing this is a little bit of a longer one, but it moved me and I'm glad to have heard your voice talking about these things. So this is my gut. I cheated. But what about you?

Cop out.

Yeah, yeah, I'm sorry.

I'll do the same thing. I'll take a cop out moment by going public at school. You know, the way I introduced this was one day, but maybe two semesters after all this started.

I went to each of my upper level classes. Not my Bible Surveys.

But, you know, my discipleship class, my church history class, finished the lecture, I sat down, said, hey, guys, I want to share something with you, and shared it. You know, every class responded almost the same way. Every class, a student asked, can we pray for you right now? Afterwards, several came up.

Can I hug you? Which is incredibly sweet.

These people see me as a person, not just as the professor, but the God moment is how many folks after that started coming to me not to burden me with their problems, but to admit, Dr. Beck, you've encouraged me. I've got issues I've never told anybody about, and I need help. The guy who years ago wouldn't have sent you to counseling? Hardly. For anything.

You know, I've now referred multiple people. You need to get help. You know, I'll pray for you, I'll talk to you.

Let me encourage you to take the next step and, you know, do as I say now as well as what I'm doing. And so God has humbled me in a lot of ways.

And I've already seen how my experience has impacted a bunch of 18 to 20 year olds who can't understand my experience, but they know they've got their own. So that's my God thing, that God is already using this to bless others. Like God used Job's curses to bless his three friends.

You reminded me I got one. That's not a cop out. I. Mine is. I don't know how to classify it. It's not like a challenge or a blessing or anything.

So I actually do have a little notebook that's like my prayer book that I write everyone I have to pray for in because I don't have a great memory and there's just people I want to make sure that I say my prayers for in the morning. And I got that from my dad. My dad always did that.

And as a young kid growing up in a Pentecostal church, I was like, man, the Spirit will lead you what to pray for.

And I always thought my dad was crazy and that he was either not spiritual enough because God will tell him what to pray for, or he doesn't really need to pray for all that many people. You know, like, why do you need a book? And now I'm like, man, I just kind of want to be more like my dad. And I guess I am, but it's just weird.

So that'll be my other. My not cop out. And with that, we'll go ahead and wrap this up and I'll try and do all of TJ's lines and everyone will forgive me for not doing it.

But if you enjoyed this episode or found it moving or important, check with a friend, an enemy, a veteran, or a cousin or some combination of those would be interesting. You know, you might have a friend who's a cousin and a veteran. I feel like that seems likely.

If you're listening to this on the Onazole Podcast YouTube channel, be sure to hit the like button and subscribe. You know, I mentioned that merch earlier. Check that out. Comfy shirts, cool designs, link in the show notes, description, whatever.

Check out the other shows in the Anazole Podcast network. You know, me and TJ are both on systematic ecology. The homily with Pastor Will Rose is over there. We got a few others, new ones coming up.

Kung Fu Pizza Party with Brandon Knights over there. So it's a fun time. Check it out. We hope you enjoyed this episode.

Next week we're going to be having Dr. Ernest Lucas, a biblical scholar and vice principal emeritus of Bristol Baptist College, join us to discuss the books of Daniel and Proverbs and the Bible and the relevance for church unity in our modern times. And after that, we're going to be joined by Pastor Will Rose, Ryan Doze, Josh Patterson to discuss cursing, cussing and telling dirty jokes.

The interesting one. And then we'll take a short break as we prepare for a new series. We're going to be doing the whole church science fair.

We're going to be exploring the relationships between faith and science and the diversity of the church today. So finally, at the end of season one, Francis Chan will be on. If someone tells him about it, he still doesn't know about it.

Someone's really got to get on that. It won't be me.