Doubting Your Faith? You’re Allowed to Ask That: Brant Hansen

Brant Hansen: I’m walking and talking with God and my mind drifts. Instead of beating myself up for it, I take that thing that my mind just drifted to and assume it must be something important to You, so I start praying about that. Prayer is just you and God talking together about what you’re doing in life together. That’s it.
Ann Wilson: Welcome to FamilyLife Today®, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I’m Ann Wilson.
Dave Wilson: I’m Dave Wilson, and you can find us at familylifetoday.com. This is FamilyLife Today. I don’t even remember who said this to me in the last couple weeks, but they said, "I was watching you play bass the other night in the worship time at church, and I could tell you weren’t into it as much as everybody else in the room was." I was shocked. Did I show that? I remember the night. Everybody’s arms were up. There were a couple people on their knees singing. It was beautiful. It was emotionally powerful. I was resonating with the lyric of truth, but I wasn’t feeling what a lot of the emotions and expressions were in the room. This person called me out, not in a bad way, but they said it was noticeable. I felt like I had to fake it.
Ann Wilson: Which is interesting because one of our sons was at a Christian school and they had a chapel. They were doing worship. He was 12 and very analytical. A teacher came up to him and said, "You need to sing." He said, "I’m listening." She said, "No, you’re going to sing and you’re going to fake it, or you’ll be out of here." Those are the kind of things where he felt like a misfit.
Dave Wilson: We’re going to talk about that today with Brant Hansen, back again, the author of *Blessed Are the Misfits*. Brant, when you hear those stories, what do you think?
Brant Hansen: It hurts. I relate to it. It hurts because at least half the people listening are like this. I think a lot of people have these emotions during church, but church is set up for that in a lot of ways. Not all traditions, but in certain traditions, it’s set up to produce emotion. There are a lot of people that don’t go in those places because they don’t understand what’s going on. It doesn’t compute. It doesn’t make sense. If you can imagine going to Branson, Missouri, where they have all these theaters set up along the road, and people say they like this show or that show, not everybody is going to Branson. They don't want a stage show. They’re thinking about other stuff. They relate to God differently. It hurts because I know the Kingdom welcomes people who are more analytical and robotic. I don’t even mean robotic in a bad way, just different. God made us all different and we can celebrate that.
Ann Wilson: That’s what I like about the subtitle of your book: *Great News for Believers Who Are Introverts, Spiritual Strugglers, or Just Feel Like They’re Missing Something.*
Brant Hansen: I heard somebody say prayer is the thing we talk about the most and do the least. I think that gets at something because we all presume everybody else is praying all the time because everyone talks about it. The reality is once you start talking, it’s a real struggle.
Dave Wilson: One of the things you wrote in your book about prayer is where the disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray, and he prayed for 25 seconds. That’s such good news to me.
Brant Hansen: Think about this. Growing up, some church prayers went on and on. I’m thinking about the Cardinals game that afternoon, what we’re going to eat, and the girl over there. I’d think, "What’s the matter with me?" But they’re still going on and on. I love that when Jesus is teaching them how to pray, he goes for 20 or 25 seconds. If you say the Lord’s Prayer, that’s how long it takes. He covers enough. He knows we have short attention spans. He’s not mad. My mind drifts; it happens. When I wrote a chapter about that, I think a lot of people were relieved. Think about how tender that is of God to recognize our attention.
Ann Wilson: We feel like we’re not as spiritual as the person up front praying. You hear people say they get up at 5:00 and pray for three hours. That’s awesome, but I’m not there yet. I might never be there. But look how kind God is to let me play anyway. My attention span is not there.
Brant Hansen: What you do when your mind drifts—I go for a walk in the morning, and that’s my prayer thing while I’m walking the dog. I have a golden retriever named Cozy. She’s a sweetheart. I take her out and I struggle to pray. I don’t feel God’s presence. It’s not a strong feeling for me like it is for some people, but I do it anyway because I know the truth is the truth. I’m walking and talking and then my mind drifts. Instead of beating myself up for it, I take that thing that my mind just drifted to and assume it must be something important to You, so start praying about that. Fold it back into your prayer. If it's grocery shopping, you’re grocery shopping to take care of your family. You can say, "God, help me get the stuff done today that needs to get done."
Ann Wilson: That’s part of the Lord’s Prayer: "Give us our daily bread." Women often travel to our kids or grandkids. We’re thinking about them, so pray for them. That’s something you’re passionate about. Do you think God cares about what you’re passionate about? Maybe God took your mind that way. Instead of beating yourself up for being a bad prayer, remember He cares about what you care for. That’s why you can do this. Some people are so relieved. How many people say, "I sit and pray and then my mind wanders," and they think they're not a very spiritual person? You are, but just go ahead and fold that back in because God cares about this stuff. In fact, He says you can cast your cares on Him because He cares for you, whatever you’re anxious for. I think it’s important to say that if you feel like the best time for me to pray is walking because I’m not a sitter. I’m always doing, I’m going, I’m active. So my best prayer time is walking. My mind is more centered and I don't wander as much when I’m walking.
Dave Wilson: Ann runs into trees because her head is bowed and her eyes are closed. That made me think because I’ve had people at my church say, "When you pray on stage, your eyes are open." I like to look at the congregation because I’m so grateful. I say, "God, look what You’re doing. It’s amazing." As I’m talking to God, there’s nowhere that we’re told you have to close your eyes and bow your head. Sometimes that’s the way to do it and it’s reverent, but she loves creation. She feels God in creation, so she’s looking at God as she’s talking to Him.
Brant Hansen: I do the same thing where I’m commenting on how He made light and how it reflects through the trees. I love the different greens I can see right now.
Ann Wilson: It’s Romans 1:20, that we see Him in His creation. He reveals His nature and that He loves us. He didn’t have to make everything so beautiful. He didn’t have to make music. Why would He make music? What does that have to do with anything other than beauty?
Brant Hansen: Why are things beautiful? He loves us. We can see that He loves us through the things that have been made. To have your eyes open and talk to Him about that seems like a perfectly human thing to do. I keep my eyes open when I talk to my wife most of the time, and friends. If you want to close your eyes to concentrate, that’s great. But this thing where we feel like losers because people give this impression of super-spirituality—maybe they are super-spiritual in some way that we’re not. They’ve got a gift. But that’s not all of us.
Ann Wilson: Let's talk about introverts. Do you feel like introverted people feel like misfits in American church culture?
Brant Hansen: In some traditions, you can. This could be controversial, but I want to propose the idea that a lot of extroverts feel like they’re in charge of things and they tell us what we need to be doing based on their gifts. They say, "Evangelize, evangelize, evangelize." Okay. Now, that is something I do want my friends and neighbors and everyone for their own good to know who the King is so that they can have peace. I want that. But the idea that I’m the one who has to be on the street talking to strangers terrifies me. It terrifies me. So you feel this guilt as an introvert. Some people have a gift of evangelism and they need to use it. Others of us have different gifts, and that will be mainly where we’re concentrating. If I’m good at hospitality or teaching, which is what I enjoy doing, why can’t we have different members of the body that really concentrate in that area and they’ve got a gift for it and they can operate in that gift really well? My son is on the spectrum and I’m on the spectrum. My son is at Yale Medical School and is going to be a brain surgeon. Can’t he use that in a missions context? To go to a door would feel like death to him. Honestly, I had to sell cheese and sausage in middle school to raise money for band uniforms. I still tremble at every doorbell. I had a brochure of cheese or crockery pots and people felt so sorry for me, a little kid with glasses. I wouldn't even make eye contact. You can see how some people are really good at something and they say everybody has to be doing this all the time, like that’s all that matters. That’s not necessarily true. Think about all the letters that Paul writes. Is he telling every single member that they better be out there evangelizing door-to-door, or does he say you’ve got this gift, that gift, or this other gift?
Dave Wilson: You are evangelizing every day as an introvert from a room by yourself with a producer. It’s just a different way. Jesus did say to go make disciples, so we are called whether we have a gift of door-to-door or not. You're doing it in a beautiful way and it fits who you are.
Brant Hansen: The cold call thing can make people feel like they have to do it. Again, I know people have different views. But if you find Paul saying that to everybody all the time, I can’t find it. He does talk about members that have different uses in the body and we should all support each other. Some people are given to have prophetic voices into the culture, some are given to be evangelists, some are given to be teachers, and other people have this pastoral gift. All of that is a disciple-creating mix. I’m all for it, but we don’t do that with other gifts.
Ann Wilson: Is that the biggest piece of introversion you’re talking about in the church? Are there other aspects of being an introvert that you can feel like the misfit?
Brant Hansen: Being made to be a greeter at church. I would hide behind the folding door. I didn't mean to, but I’d just find my body drifting. Again, some people are so good at it. Why not let them do that?
Ann Wilson: Dave and I are both extroverts and our kids were old enough that we could figure out what they were. We didn’t even understand what an introvert was. But we saw this in our son since the day he was born. He’d be around people and after a while, you could tell he was stressing out. Once we got alone and put him in a room by himself or with one of us as a baby, it was almost like, "Okay." As he got older, we realized he needs to recharge and be alone at times. To go on a spiritual retreat at a church to him was so overwhelming after a while that he was like, "I need to come home." We told him he needed to take some time out of his day to get away and be by himself to recharge. It’s good for the leaders to understand other people have that need to be alone. They’re not less spiritual; that’s just who they are.
Brant Hansen: Conversely, I have to say this for me as an introvert. I enjoy teaching Sunday School, but it’s not good enough for me to just do that and say, "I’m an introvert, so I’m not going to be a people person." No, make yourself a people person over time. You have to care about people. It may not be that you enjoy the crush of a full weekend with a bunch of people. That exhausts me, too. There’s mutual submission that can happen here where as an introvert I can't just say, "This is who I am, too bad." I’ve got to love people. I’ve seen that with some leaders. He’s a great speaker but he’s not really a people person. He needs to become a people person because we’re supposed to love people. As far as the back-slapping or hanging out with 100 people and small talk, that’s not going to happen. But I can ask people questions and genuinely care. I can do that as an introvert. I’ve got to change, but I think church culture could do more to accommodate because there are a lot of extroverts that are drawn to the stage. They wind up making these decisions for everyone else without realizing this isn't where everybody else is coming from.
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Dave Wilson: One of the things you get into in the misfit book is doubt. Can we talk about doubt? That often is not allowed.
Ann Wilson: You like this topic right here, don't you, Dave?
Dave Wilson: Part of it is because I grew up in a church with my single mom taking me to church and doubt was really viewed as sin. Again, I’m sort of skeptical, so even as a young boy, but especially in my teenage years, I started to voice questions. I wasn’t antagonistic; I literally had real questions that I just wished I could get some answers to. They were never like, "Yeah, that’s a great question, let's talk." It was, "You’re not spiritual. We who are spiritual don’t have questions like that. We don’t doubt." Brant, did you ever feel like that?
Brant Hansen: In college, I took some religious studies courses and a couple of them were just all about tearing down the Christian faith. I went to a secular university, but it was all reductive criticism and I’d never thought about that before, like the different sources of the text and all that. It really threw me for a loop. Thankfully, I had somebody smart from my past I could call and say, "What do you think about this?" He explained it and then I read a couple books countering it. That made my faith really strong. What hurts me now is people who don’t express doubt and then just leave the faith. If you would have just asked me, I’ve probably struggled through this and thought about it, because I’ve doubted about everything. We could talk about it, and then I think you would have walked away thinking, "Oh my goodness, God’s better than I thought." When you go an inch deep, you have these questions, but you have to keep going. I also encourage people that doubt can be good, but be an equal opportunity doubter. If you’re going to question the Bible and question Christian ethics or our history, that’s fine. You should question things. But you better question the culture, too.
Ann Wilson: Your son is super smart and he’s on the spectrum. He’s going to Yale. I’m guessing he’s had doubts. I’m thinking of a listener who’s thinking, "My kids are expressing so much and they’re listening to YouTube all day and they’re hearing these things that feel like the truth." As a parent, how would you face that?
Brant Hansen: If they asked me questions, I’d be so thankful. If they’re expressing doubt, let's talk about this. Otherwise, you’re shut up with this other stuff one-sided. If you don't know the answer as a parent, find it. You could say, "I haven’t thought about that before. That’s really interesting." You can do that because of the strength of the truth. You don't have to have all the answers. You just know God’s good and you don't need to be worried. All truth is His. If we keep researching this, we’re going to land in a place where we’ve actually learned more and our faith has increased. That’s been my experience. As a parent, if they’re asking questions you haven’t thought about, a lot of these questions are an inch deep. They sound smart and then you realize someone can make fun of stuff in the Bible or make a meme out of it.
Dave Wilson: I remember feeling like a misfit because I doubted and felt like nobody else in church culture ever doubted. I don’t know when it was when I first came across Thomas. He says, "I’m not going to believe unless I can see the nail scars." I was reading the scripture and I expected, because of my church background, that Jesus was going to shame him and say, "Dude, come on, you loser. I can’t believe you don’t believe." Jesus doesn’t shame him. Jesus says, "Hey, Thomas, you need evidence? Here’s the evidence." I’m in. I fit.
Brant Hansen: He’s so gentle with us and he knows we need to be reminded. John the Baptist himself doubted. What does Jesus call him? He doesn’t go, "You’ve got to be kidding me. Good grief." No, he says, "Remind him. Let's go back through this. We know the Kingdom's here because of this." That’s a really tender thing for God. He understands it, he gets it, and he honors us anyway.
Dave Wilson: I think he’s excited that you’re asking questions. You won't believe this, we were in Branson, Missouri, speaking at a marriage conference for football coaches. Saturday afternoon was off, so Ann says, "Let's go to *Queen Esther* at Sight & Sound® Theatre." We had been told it’s fantastic. We go and it’s really well done. They acted out the biblical story. Anyway, they have an intermission. There was no one like five seats beside me. I’m sitting there during the intermission and this guy sits down beside me and leans into me, some stranger. I turned and said, "Hey, dude." He says, "You remember me?" I said, "You look sort of familiar." He goes, "I talk about you every time I give my testimony. You led me to Jesus. I was part of your church in Detroit 20 years ago." I looked at him and said, "You’re the guy in the lobby at the men’s retreat, the skeptic." He goes, "Yep." I’ll never forget this because I was speaking at our men’s retreat. A session is over and I’m walking through the lobby near the door and this guy comes up to me and goes, "You know what? I don’t believe any stuff you just talked about. I’m a skeptic." He quoted somebody, I think it was Dawkins, a very well-known atheist argument. He goes, "And that’s why I don’t believe." I looked at him and I said, "Oh yeah, I’ve walked through that whole argument as well, and here’s the three reasons I think he’s wrong and I think you can believe." He goes, "I went home and I researched what you said, and I gave my life to Christ. I talk about you every time I give my testimony. Here’s my wife, here’s my kids, my whole life’s transformed." I thought, there’s a doubter who said, "Is this true or not?" God loves it when we bring our doubts to Him because He’s got the truth.
Ann Wilson: As you said, He’s not afraid of our questions.
Brant Hansen: So we need to not be afraid and trust God’s truth. Even if we don’t have the answer, let's find it together. Let's do a mutual inquiry into the truth. I don't debate people, but I will do a mutual inquiry into the truth because I’m very confident where that truth leads. If you really want to search for truth, I’ll do it with you. I don't have all the answers, but I know where it goes. I’m very confident.
Ann Wilson: That’s a really good reminder, especially for me as a mom because I would worry about my kids when they were in high school. But we don't have to worry. We can pray even when we don't feel like it.
Brant Hansen: You take your anxieties to Him, tell Him what you need, and remember what He’s done.
Dave Wilson: Sit down with your son or daughter tonight and have a real conversation. That’d be pretty cool. What a great day with Brant Hansen again. His book is called *Blessed Are the Misfits*. You’ll love this book. You want to get this book for yourself or somebody else. Just go to familylifetoday.com, click on the link in the show notes, and we’ll get it to you. We want to hear from you. You can leave us a voice message with your questions, concerns, praise reports, or whatever. Maybe Dave said something that you totally disagree with.
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