Rejecting the Gospel of Self-Improvement: A Conversation with Ruth Chou Simons

what is the false gospel of self-improvement is it possible that even some christians are embracing this false gospel if so how do we get out of it is it possible that some non-christians falsely view christianity as a means to self-improvement rather than about a god who loves us and who gives us grace these are important questions today and i have a wonderful guest to talk about this ruth chow simons is an entrepreneur she is just a social media behemoth for lack of a better word you've got an awesome following on social media shout out to my sister heather you are one of her favorite just speaker she loves you so much and i'm glad you and i met a few years ago at a summit on gen z and we immediately realized we care about theology we care about biblical literacy and we care about the gospel and so thank you for coming on all the way from your home in colorado to talk about your new book when strivings sees thanks for coming on ruth i'm super honored to be here sean well let's jump in you had me at the opening quote in your book you quote tim keller and tim keller said this buddha's final words strive unceasingly jesus's final words it is finished why start there yeah i i that quote stopped me in my tracks because you know with the eastern religious background in the asian culture i was like okay i want us i want to begin here but really buddha's words is really something that we all experience right now the idea that if we just run a little faster improve ourselves a little bit better be the best kind of optimize ourselves we will reach the happiness that we're looking for and jesus's final words being it is finished really encapsulates his whole plan redemption which is lay down everything that you think you can do to save yourself and i i'm literally the one who will save you personally so you need to submit and surrender yourself to me is jesus is literally like i did the whole thing and buddha's words are basically keep trying keep trying just optimize yourself be the best version of yourself that will save you and um what a contrast i think so too it's one versus saying you're saved by your own efforts another one says you can't by your efforts will you accept what god has done for you and that contrast is sharp now before we get into the false gospel of self-improvement would you share your own journey to faith and becoming a follower of jesus yeah this is the first time i've been able to share a little bit more of my personal story i was born in taiwan and immigrated to the u.s when i was four and immediately was caught in between two worlds you don't have to be from an asian-american background to understand that we all have some kind of influence in our lives about just a formula for seeking approval a formula for belonging a formula for how you find your purpose in this world and i got caught in between two cultures one my asian american background of very being a high priority place on achievement and success and being the best and playing the piano and the violin and being really in getting straight you know i had kind of that cultural paradigm going but also my western um context was one where i was constantly trying to wear the right jeans bring the right lunch and really now as an adult it still continues get the right followers make sure that you're beating the algorithm and just doing all that you can to find your place and receive accolades and affirmation and approval from others in your life and so we all know that feeling and um it was such an oppressive and exhausting thing to keep up with in my life that when i heard when i finally was receiving the gospel and hearing about god's love for me i was having a really hard time processing how could it be that this gospel was about not performing and not bringing my very best to god as a means for his approval and it took so long for me to really understand grace that i finally put it on paper and hopefully can help others receive it better too how old were you when you first became a believer eighth grade was what i really understood the gospel but it wasn't and you know i don't have that perfectly clean story where i was like yeah i totally understood it from day one and i don't think it has to be that way i i know that i truly knew that god loved me and that i needed a substitute i needed something someone to save me from this this illness of sin but it really wasn't until college son that i understood romans and i understood the sermon on the mountain that i understood what jesus was saying to the pharisees that all your religious efforts all you're trying to be good enough because even when you come to faith you can still be confused and think that now is a time to be like well see you didn't save me in vain jesus i'm gonna like do good things and i'm to serve you right i'm going to read my bible for an hour a day to make sure you see how how hard i'm trying and those efforts even the religious efforts jesus had something to say about that right we see it in the sermon we know that um jesus was like you're not impressing me with your religious efforts all your good works they really don't save you and in fact even you thinking that you're keeping the letter of the law actually does not even come close to truly being holy and righteous before me you need jesus you need christ's righteousness on your behalf because you're never going to be good enough or jump high enough and i think that's a really hard message for our generation right this not being good enough not measuring up that's that's taboo in our generation i think it's amazing he became a believer in eighth grade in college it becomes real in a sense but then you write in your book during covid when things slow down some of these maybe insecurities some of these efforts of self-reliance come bubbling up in a fresh way and you one of the things i love about your book number one it's beautiful you're an artist it's just everything you do like the appearance is important for the sake of beauty but it's also really raw you shared some things i was like wow i know this was hard to write what were some of those things that you began to realize years after becoming a believer during the pandemic that you were living in your own efforts in self-reliance that actually made things worse right i i really wanted to make sure that i was putting on display the fact that this is not a formula it's not a one and done we don't just like oh understand grace and then we never have to preach that truth to ourselves again in the midst of the pandemic when i wrote all 50 000 words of this book i found myself and you might even remember the very weekend when things were shutting down we were like oh this is the reality all my speaking engagements cancelled and did you feel it rise up sean that sense that like you're supposed to start a whole new mini series on how to help people oh my goodness i better maximize my efforts and make sure that i'm like creating a workshop for this moment and like all this striving started bubbling up because what we turned to what we had been turning to maybe we didn't even realize how much we had turned to our systems in our own comforts as ways to um secure our worth our being received by others and when those things were taken away it kind of became obvious what we suddenly feel anxious about right the anxiety besides not knowing what's going to happen with a global pandemic some of us start feeling anxious about well what's going to happen with my voice online how am i going to get my message out what am i going to do and it's and some of those things are good to assess but the anxiety that builds up is when you start going warning there's a flash a warning saying hey you're striving because let me just define it real quick because it's not that striving the worst driving is wrong striving in grace is a biblically minded perspective but striving in our own strength is anxiously trying to toil or manipulate or control our circumstances or just wield things just right so that we can achieve or acquire something that if deep down inside if we were honest we're not trusting god for so maybe in the middle of pandemic it said i don't trust that god will um really bring me the the the readers that i that he has for me so therefore i might strive thinking i need to turn this ship around to make sure i i secure what i'm scared that i won't have otherwise it's that anxiety that shows us oh goodness i'm exhausted and i'm toiling because i'm striving in my own strength and some of that popped up in the pandemic and i included it in the books just to be honest and say that this is a real process well it is very honest and and you're right and sometimes with the kind of audience that maybe you and i have there can be a tendency to just present a certain view that doesn't match up with the messiness of life and i read your book i'm like well i hear someone being really really honest and i loved it now you also shared a story about your father it's obvious that you love your family and you honor them but you also shared six words that your father spoke to and you remember those six words and how would they shape you and your life and your striving would you share that with us yeah so you know prior to my my parents came to faith around the same time i came to faith so they were adults i mean i was in eighth grade before they came to christ and so prior to that season i was a young middle schooler coming home bubbling over with all sorts of things that i really wanted my dad to hear and pay attention to in this one particular night and i document this and i say this in the book but i'm going off about what teenagers love to go off about you know like who's doing what and what's happening at school and i just wanted him to care and i couldn't i couldn't put it off any longer and i finally just indignantly like a little middle schooler i say why don't you care and why don't you ever listen to me and he looked up and without any real emotion he just said you haven't finished the dishes yet and it was the most stark strange pairing of words because his response to me saying am i not worthy do you not care don't you want to hear what i have to say was you haven't finished your duty and even though that was pre-christ in his life even though ultimately i know that he wasn't trying to scar me or hurt me or anything that wasn't his purpose but when i heard those words i think it really translated to kind of a process of thinking that it shaped a paradigm in me thinking that i'm only worthy when i do my job i only have the year of my father my heavenly father if i've kept my end of the deal like reading my bible or serving in church or forsaking that one sin that i said i was going to forsake and now you know he's not going to ever want to talk to me again because the guilt because i haven't done my duty and that's just not biblical and yet that shaped my thinking and i allowed a false idea of my heavenly father to define my relationship with god early on that was really helpful story because gave me pause as a parent i get frustrated if my kids don't do their laundry if they don't do the dishes and it's like just get it done and then we'll do this start to realize like wow am i pushing a narrative on them without realizing about love and acceptance and that's really worth thinking about so i appreciate your honesty now you've shared a number of stories but you call this the gospel of self-improvement something like i think you said it's jesus plus her efforts so what do you mean by the gospel self-improvement and i'm curious why you call it a false gospel yeah well the gospel simply means good news right and when i look around i'd say uh judging from what's popular on the bestsellers list and what lines bookshelves it would appear that our generation is obsessed with this falsely deceiving good news quote good news um of self-improvement meaning there's always a new formula out there how to rule your life how to make yourself happy how to optimize all your giftings how to live your best life i mean we've been hearing it for a while but even among believers i really kind of think wow it's amazing how we turn we think that grace god's grace we say oh jesus saves but then we don't actually somehow believe that jesus sustains because we keep turning we i just mean like the church at large and even just the this current generation we're constantly turning to other formulas and we think that we can find some kind of really good news life transforming news in those formulas those um new discoveries all the new things that we think will help us once and for all be the best versions of ourselves and really what it is is we're constantly just tweaking making improvements hoping that once and for all we won't struggle with belonging we won't struggle with feeling a lack of self-worth we're looking to something else to satisfy what jesus was what was meant to be given by christ alone i'm curious why you think this is so appealing because for me as i think about the times in life i've experienced grace from other people and stopped striving and been able to show grace to people it's so beautiful and some of the most rich experiences in life and yet we resist it and we keep striving nonetheless so what makes this false gospel just so appealing to us well we wouldn't keep doing it if it wasn't actually working at some level the truth is the gospel of self-improvement at some level is like a hit that actually like satisfies quickly like you if you strive hard enough and you don't rest and you keep on working through the night at some level you might get the results you want on social media you might get the results you want from your email list or from people saying good job sean you did a great job right you might get that little boost of yeah like if i just keep on hustling in this way i'll get what i want to make myself feel better that's the truth in receiving grace jesus formula is actually surrendering everything that comes with your own efforts and actually saying this belongs to the lord i will steward this but i am not the hero of my own story i am not the primary person who can control all things in my life and therefore i can rest therefore i can relieve the results to him therefore i don't demand my way that's just not as easy or as fun right it's more fun to say well if i just put in three more hours if i just take one more webinar on how to be amazing um i'll get the results i want and guess what the truth is everybody's promising that you will get the results and at some level they're right you might get it quickly but guess what the bottom line is that that paradigm and that um [Music] the tyranny of trying harder that regime really requires that you just keep trying harder it's a hamster wheel that never ends it's really an alternate form of salvation i remember this first came to my understand when i was reading i think how shall we then live or how now shall we live by coulson and nancy piercy they talked about how commercials are a form of salvation here's the problem here's how you fix it movies are a form of salvation we live in a world where everybody's got some form of salvation meant to heal us from our striving and our pain but it's false and we just go on we believe the next one we believe the next one and we believe the next one so what what happens do you think when someone keeps going through life and just continues to embrace this false gospel of striving i think there's only two places you can go with that you could either keep trying harder and never feel satisfied always saying if i just turn the next corner if i just do this next thing i'll measure up i will reach my goal i'll be who i want to be and the reality is i'd love to like has it ever worked for you it's never worked for me like just trying to be just a little bit better has never ever gotten me to the place where i know that i'm truly truly worthy and i'm settled and i'm my identity is secure that's never been the case when i'm striving in my own strength but the second option if you keep chasing that you're either bound to perpetual striving or you give up all together and you just say i want out i'm not going to strive i'm not going to try at all i don't care and spiritually speaking it means that you probably quit quit the gospel quit the church all together and go hey if if i think that this is all about me um trying harder and being better then and if you believe that god is hard to please then you're basically nev you're gonna either keep on trying or you're gonna stop trying to have a relationship with him altogether let's maybe take a moment here and give a word of encouragement to people who are listening to this thinking i'm not striving i gave up a long time ago and you and i in some ways i don't relate to that at this point in my life i'm like what's sometimes called an a personality go push work hard accomplish like when i read this book i'm like yeah that's me i needed this conviction and this encouragement but i also know a lot of people who go i don't think i can make a difference i'm done give up and we've had a serious increase in depression and loneliness what would your word of encouragement be for people experiencing that yeah well fear and guilt and um apathy has never motivated right nobody's ever said hey i'm so fearful so now i'm going to really like dig in and love the lord you know romans tells us his kindness leads us to repentance love is the greatest invitation and motivator and so all the change that we're wanting for that person who's sitting there going i gave up a long time ago in fact i don't even want to get up in the morning and you know fred whoever is listening and feels that way i gotta tell you we i think we're all struggling with some of that there's a low level of anxiety and disappointment and sadness going on for all of us whether you are a striver or not there's something in us that's calling i mean it's really a mercy that even though this circumstances are painful it's a mercy that we're realizing that the things that we maybe were clinging to before just don't satisfy and this is a good moment to go okay maybe what was getting up getting me up in the morning before was some kind of approval or some kind of um payoff that isn't there for me now and the the apathy and the depression or the just giving up the sense of giving up right now that i feel maybe is pointing to the fact that i need a different motivator and i'm here hoping that through this book i get to show you once again that through the word of god we're told that grace is the best motivator that god's grace his coming to earth and truly saying um you will stay you will you will never make yourself good enough i will do everything it takes to bring you back into my presence and make you worthy to be in my care forever you'll never have to be alone friend if you can really receive the truth of god's love there that will get you up in the morning in a way that no paycheck no accolade no um no payoff ever could and so it's complicated it honestly sean sometimes i wish i wrote a book on five steps to living your best life sometimes it would be easier if we were like you know what guys when you're feeling sadness during a pandemic these are the five things that will change your life and you know what i could give you five practical things and maybe we will talk about those but ultimately it's not it's your change of mind when you believe differently you will live differently and the thing that i think maybe i struggle with most in this message is that i wonder and worry if our generation has been so um plugged into the false gospel of the quick and easy gospel that we find online something just a quick fix for your day that we actually don't even know what the bible actually says about redemption and the grace of god and so hoping to change that narrative a little and help bring this generation back to understanding how amazing what's so amazing about grace you know what is amazing about grace is for those who strive grace says you don't need to strive you are loved and you accepted and you belong and then we can work out of that acceptance and belonging but it also says to those who feel like they've given up it's not your effort you don't have to try jesus has done this for you you are loved and god's spirit and the body of christ will then help you live the way god wants you to i think that's the beauty of grace now before we jump into some of these particulars you have a lot to say about the character of god which i just love that in your book and you've written other books on that but you say you're not calling people to get busy but for discernment which i love because if you said here's five steps study this do this it would almost undermine the entire message tell us what you mean by calling for discernment over doing all these things yeah well i have to say what changed my life was when i really understood the grace of god through much of what paul's written in the new testament and when i read what paul's written through any of his epistles he always starts with the character of god and from the character of god he says hey remember because this is who god is and what he's done through christ this is now who you are and then from there he goes on to all our favorite parts of those epistles like now walk in a manner worthy this is what you do put on put off love others forgive don't do this and do that like we always jump right to in the christian life we seem to jump right to what we're supposed to do but we forget that the way the apostle paul discipled his readers was please you've heard it before but remember again who god is and what he's done because until you really reckon with that you're not going to believe who you are in christ you won't believe your new identity and if you don't really know what your new identity is in jesus how could you ever obey and operate out of that belief and so it's a call to get discerning and not just to get busy because there are so many books out there that are giving us the formula for how to organize your life and optimize your hours and be the best version of yourself online and and be a great leader by showing these characteristics we jump right to what you should look like what you should sound like what you should be doing and i'm saying those are all good tools but until you know who you are in jesus those are all just little band-aids that you're going to put on here and they're trying to stop the the bleeding that um that true like sin and brokenness really will produce in your life until you find your ultimate remedy in christ you and i cannot change the culture in which we live which sometimes feels suffocating oh i've got a floss gotta change my oil got to get my kids to practice got to do the laundry it just feels like it's never ending but what you call for is a shift in perspective about who we are our relationship with god can change how we experience those things and as someone who's in process on that i appreciate that encouragement so you spend a lot of time talking about foundational truths of god's character and finding our identity in him why is that where you start to counter this false gospel of striving yeah well our lives are really mundane i mean you just listed off all sorts of things and you know today we have a broken axle on a trailer or then the the septic isn't working and we all deal with these things right and so the reality is the gospel isn't just at work when we're standing before hundreds and telling sharing on a stage or when we get to go across the pond and minister and evangelize someone who's ever heard it before it applies in our everyday lives and so the only way you can apply it in your everyday life is to actually recognize that the entirety of the scriptures is god's love letter to us about how he's been at work from the beginning to the end and every mundane and every big thing and every small thing and all the details and so i think i think one of the things that i i struggle with when i see young people like i just i hurt for those who don't recognize that the the story of redemption started at the beginning right right at the start and when we realized how vast and how much he's been pursuing us for for all of time we start realizing that this day matters this issue matters and how we turn to him and how we see his character in the way we respond to this issue is how we live out the gospel in our daily lives and so yeah i think that we have to preach that to ourselves and if you're in progress i certainly am like i'm constantly realizing like um i may know that in my mind but the first thing i have to do when i wake up in the morning is not check my inbox and pick up my phone i really have to rehearse that that truth rehearse the gospel to myself and say lord it's another day that you've given me and i'm so quick to forget and i still think that i'm the ruler of my own life today by the way i act by the way i think that i got to go tackle everything i clearly think that i'm in charge would you please realign my heart with who you are that you have been at work forever before since forever and that you're the one who called this day into order the fact that the sun rose and i had nothing to do with it shows me once again that you are god and i am not and so when the i'd like to say the greater you know i think toaster is the one that said you know it says so much about you what you think about god is the most important thing about you i think is what tozer said but um what the greater view you have of god the more he is going to be seen at work in in everything that you do and how the greater that grace will be and again i hate to be quoting so much but thomas watson's the one that says till sin be bitter christ will not be sweet right so if if grace doesn't seem very sufficient to you it's probably because you haven't had a high view of god and a real realistic view of your sin and so i know that doesn't sound super practical and helpful but i would tell you the number one thing that will change your day today is if you meditate on the greatness of god and get a clear and real vulnerable view of your sin and lay it before the lord and say i need you god because i'm a sinner in need of grace and watch your day change because of the high view of god that you start with now you don't necessarily go into this in your book but it lines up how there's a lot of research showing that we do have some control through practices to shift our thinking what we focus on and when we shift our thinking our emotions often follow along with it lines up with what you're saying also lines up with romans 12 when paul talks about not being conformed to this world but being transformed by the renewing of your mind so i just love that you're recognizing this false gospel that all of us are tempted to buy into christian or not saying the solution is to go to god's character start by right under rightly understanding who god is those of you just joining us we're here with ruth chow simons she has an excellent new book called when strivings sees she's an author a social media influencer mother of do you have five boys six boys and no girls and a husband right unbelievable that's a whole nother topic that would add to this conversation in so many ways my hat is off and respect to you for that but you have a chapter that you framed it by saying you dreaded writing this chapter and it's about shame would you talk about just kind of why you dreaded it and what you want readers and us to take away from that chapter yeah you know shame is that topic that nobody none of us really want to talk about and some of us go yeah you know i don't struggle with that i don't i've already dealt with my past and i don't have really regrets but shame is that thing that's like deep seated it's kind of like not just i regret doing something but it's that framework that makes us go oh because i struggle with this or because i screwed up in this way before it's really defining who i am and this is the way i think god sees me that's where shame festers right and um you know this whole book was complicated for me to write because this is not like i'm writing this from you know the end of my life looking back saying everything's perfect and clean this is me saying hey i've walked through this but i'm still in progress as all of us are and so um you know what i still remember writing that chapter and i spent some time reading about the prodigal son and i was in tears on realizing just maybe even the shallow way i had looked at that parable and recognizing how much again just like we just talked about how much the greater i understand the character of god the more my sin dissolves i mean my shame dissolves right because in that chapter i talk about and some some here listening may have already read some of these sources that have helped us understand that parallel better in context of the original ancient cultural context but you know that parable shares this uh about the father running across as he hears that his son is entering the the city gates he's running across and as you know in that culture you would have had to like pull up your clothes and run and bear and the father would have shown his legs which is super humiliating but what i didn't understand was that in that culture there was this ritual called kazaza and it was that the city that the townspeople would go to the gate and break this pot at the gate and basically saying stay out you've already wasted your inheritance you've already shamed our community you do not our fellowship's broken you do not get to come in that was a ceremony that was known in that culture it was called because i don't even know for sure if i'm pronouncing it right but i think so and they broke that paw to symbolize you are no longer welcome in this community and so when you now think about the father running running to his son it wasn't just this feel good like oh i missed you so much for the first time i really understood it was the father saying i'm not gonna let the townspeople get there and break this fellowship i'm gonna take the humiliation that was meant for him and i'm gonna beat them to the gates i'm gonna run i'm gonna meet my son before the ever the fellowship can be broken between us and i'm gonna welcome him home and i'm gonna say you know what i've bore the shame i let my legs show through the whole town and i'm running across and that moment sean for me when i was reading through that thinking on it and writing about it made me realize okay the reason why shame no longer needs to define any of us regardless of our past regardless of what has been done to us or what we've done to others what we've done at all because of the father's love and because he truly is that parable is told to demonstrate and show us that because he bore our shame we have total access we have been welcomed and there is nothing broken and again just going back to what we've talked about before i don't think there's any formula for dissolving the the lingering feelings of shame in our lives until we recognize god's great love for us love will um rescue us from the effects of shame amen you know you can't see it because where the camera is focused but on my side over here is a copy of the painting by rembrandt of the prodigal son and i've seen that painting in the hermitage in in you know in eastern europe and it's i believe it's about eight feet by 11 feet and it's this moment where the father is embracing his prodigal son and part of my story was growing up in a christian home didn't commit the big sins ruth didn't drink didn't have sex didn't listen to certain music and so there's a real sense of pride without realizing that i was better than other people and partly reading henry allen's book the return of the prodigal son broke me and was like holy cow because jesus had a lot more grace for sinners than he did who were so was self-righteous yeah they're two brothers in that story well yeah it's really the story of two brothers who both need grace and he goes out to both of them he goes out to the sun who's working in the field being diligent trying to add effort to his acceptance and that's a false gospel that the older brother so ironically this deep sinner we tend to judge was closer to the heart of god than this guy who was seemingly doing everything right yeah totally that was a humbling thought that that really really broke me now you have you have a quote i want you to give me some thoughts on and you wrote this i think it's a great line you said we can't know freedom if we express i'm sorry let me say it again we can't know freedom if we expect grace to make us merely better rather than completely new tell me about that well i was thinking about how i think there's another line in the book where i say that we sometimes treat grace like a cruise ship rather than a life raft um i just think that it's so easy for us to be like grace is that nice word that we put on mugs and in t-shirts and we're like give a little grace and we think that it's just a sweet friendly feel good like yeah everybody i talk to always says yeah grace is that we kind of don't think there's any weight to it we just think grace it's basically being liked and being okay and happy and oh my goodness when we look at the biblical definition of grace grace cost jesus everything and grace was the gift of god of unmerited favor i know i'm getting into churchy words but you know it is the favor that we did not deserve it's the welcome it's the come home and sit by my side and never be alone again and always have my presence with you it's having all that having not been amazing or done anything to deserve it and when we think on that and when we think about ourselves just the way we're drowning in sin and that grace is truly the rat the life raft that tells us to shore and gets us in on solid ground then suddenly we go oh there's freedom there's freedom because grace is the means by which i'll stop drowning and i will stand on solid ground but instead i think sometimes we think why don't i see change in my life well i think sometimes we go like i don't see change in my life because we're treating grace kind of like the way in which we're going to be like god give me the grace to you know accept my extra five pounds on my body or we just kind of think of it superficially like give me grace to like get through the day which it's valid like god's grace gets us through the day but it's so much bigger than that and i think we underestimate how much god truly chooses the gift of grace to be our transformation not just a way to like get through the next five minutes of things something we don't really want to do you know ruth i'm going to jump to a question because i think this is something i know you've thought about and on my channel no surprise people are like thinking theologically about this stuff but i think this is a this is a practical helpful one for you um mad chicken says how do we balance the grace of god with paul's clear action-based words that he instructs us to take throw off put on stand firm get rid of so we can become mature christians so since the pandemic you've been just as active and you're writing you're doing things how do we balance grace and the action christ calls us to well thanks for asking that question matt chicken because i think that the misdomer and the the the confusion is that sometimes people think that grace means that we sit back and we go by god's grace my inbox is gonna be empty today and by god's grace my children will obey and i don't really need to discipline or train or do anything i'm just going to sit here and receive the grace of god that is not even biblical that's not even what paul is saying and you're right matt chicken that um paul absolutely says put off put on and we just talked about that and so in case you're joining in a little bit later i'll just reiterate the whole point is that paul does say walk in a manner worthy of the grace that you received well do you know the do you know about the grace that you received and that's why paul spent so much time at the beginning of romans several chapters several chapters at the beginning of colossians anytime he's giving instruction in ephesians go back to where he begins it's always about god and the grace of god being your means of salvation when that's been established we can strive in grace not strive for grace that's the distinction the distinction is one says hey i'm gonna work real hard and i'm going to put on and put off and be holy and not never cuss don't smoke don't have sex i'm going to do all these things so that god will approve the other says wow because i'm a sinner in need of grace god's rescue through jesus has secured my place with him and therefore because i have access to that i have everything i need for life and godliness and my my stewardship of this one life back to him is that i'm not going to waste it on sin for which he died i'm not going to cuss and and treat my body poorly and treat others poorly i am going to put off these sins and put on righteousness because the grace of god is already mine that is walking in a manner worthy of the grace that you've been given and called to and striving in grace not for grace one of my favorite verses always been ephesians 289 that says it's by grace you've been saved through faith it's not from yourself but it's the gift of god not by works so no one can boast and then verse 10 is like you are a new workmanship a masterpiece so go out and create works exactly so you're not saying we work any less hard in fact you're not saying we don't strive look at paul he strived and he worked and he pushed himself but paul's the one who rooted himself in grace so the key is how do we find our identity and our character in grace and still strive which is only going to come from a big dose of grace and probably a lot of failures um well said so let me ask you this when you talk about i thought this is interesting very timely i know you use this phrase intentionally you talk about discovering your own truth which is a phrase people say live your truth discover your truth share your truth what do you mean by that and why is that ultimately an unsatisfying way to live yeah um well basically you know we you know because this is what you study all the time is that we are in a time where there are no absolutes except that there are no absolutes absolutely right and so um this idea that no one will make you happy but yourself so don't get in my way because i will be the boss of my life and whatever i need to succeed and make myself fulfilled is truth it's right it's good um and the the only bummer to that kind of thinking is you're going to be incredibly exhausted and lost and unfulfilled because that will keep shifting and that will change because in five minutes um what is required for approval and belonging i mean i think you guys were all here in 2020 where it suddenly shifted our belonging and our acceptance and our approval anywhere online shifted like this every five minutes right and so if you're basing your happiness your joy your belonging your self-worth on the metric that the world sets um you are gonna be endlessly chasing um that ever shifting metric and so yeah our identity is increased i mean we talk about that a lot but i think we underestimate how much um how much we have to be anchored to the unchanging truth of god's word if we are to have impact at all in our world like the fact that the fact that um we're talking about not being the hero of your own life i mean that's really hard and unpalatable in our society unless we present and and put on display how the truth of god's word actually does secure the actual belonging favor and welcome that our souls were made for and so i guess maybe more than anything i would just say um it's really easy to subscribe to shifting truth if you don't you haven't tasted and seen how good the truth of god's word truly is and so don't don't underestimate how satisfying it truly is when you've tasted and seen the truth of god's word i love that the idea of discovering your own truth living your truth assumes that meaning is found looking within and yet the heart of what you're saying is no actually when we look within we find sinfulness and brokenness and that's actually saying live your truth is advancing the very fake gospel that you're critiquing because if you live your truth that means you're going to have to justify yourself you're going to have to be good enough you're the standard yeah and that's not going to work it's only when we recognize the standard outside of us that we've broken and appealed to what jesus has done for us that we can stop striving and accept grace so it's it's really amazing to me i like that you use the word the false gospel of self-improvement because in my world we talk about different world views we talk about the prosperity gospel but i don't know that we talk enough about the gospel of self-improvement intentionally using that language calling it what it is so i hope one of the things that will come out of your book and you're talking on this is people start to realize like wow that's a false gospel that can lead to accepting lies in my life and have consequences with how i live so yeah i think we underestimate how much we're being discipled you know you kind of think that you're going to church and you're maybe doing a certain bible study but what you are exposing yourself to and what you're subscribing to who's speaking into your life the book that you're picking up off the shelf that's discipling you more than you know your instagram app your tick tock app is it's discipling you and so we're all being discipled we're all being changed we're all being shaped by what we are giving our attention to what our heart beats for what we're most excited about and so assessing that and discerning that is really important you have a section on the american dream and i found this interesting because i was born in america although i've traveled a good amount overseas you describe being born in taiwan and seeing that cultural shift so that might give you a certain perspective on the american dream that i might miss and others might miss but tell us why you think it's not working out and why that doesn't satisfy yeah whether you're an immigrant or not i think we all kind of have this picture in our minds that includes we think the american dream is basically being able to buy two houses have perfectly behaved children um you know retire at 65 or whatever you know we can think of having a certain 401k and you know like we have this image of our minds of achievement acquiring and having everything and i think in the book i even listed off having you know this perfect husband and having all these great friends and having a church community that is always so accepting of all your giftings and like we just have this ideal in our minds and i think we talk a lot of times about striving in our own strength and some of this book really speaks to your personality and mind sean the personality that's a little bit like we're achievers we're always going after something but the reality is we all have versions of striving when we're talking about some version of idealism perfectionism wanting other people to meet our expectations wanting a husband or a spouse to perform up to our standards wanting our children to perform up to our standards that may not seem like striving that may not seem like trying to have it all but that really is a form of achieving or acquiring for yourself what you don't trust god for and so i think once again let's not be deceived and think that striving is a message just you know ceasing striving is not just a message for the hustlers and the overachievers in this world it's really for those who are easily disappointed for those of us who feel like nobody ever meets our expectations or i think that so-and-so is disappointing somewhere in there it's still our pride thinking that we are the metric we are the standard and wanting everything to work out so that we have the comfort and the happiness that we think we deserve ruth here's a really personal one for you from albert chin i hope i said that right and he's looking for some personal direction he says how do i recover from being part of the self-help movement such as landmark worldwide tony roberts etc well albert i would say you probably at some point have felt like oh i felt a lot of pressure i mean i'm guessing that you probably feel extreme pressure you've felt a lot of anxiety about getting it wrong like did i take a left or right am i making the right career choices and i would just first say like the first step to recovering from that paradigm and that world view is to return to the word of god and just read literally remind yourself what god has offered you and a good place to start honestly albert is you know the psalmist is really good at putting on display how to preach truth to himself um psalm 42 psalm 103 declare what god has done how he's forgotten and thrown and just forgotten our iniquities and our shame and how he's loved us he's rescued us that's what the psalmist had to do he had to say to himself why so downcast oh my soul put your hope in god and so albert if you feel like my goodness i've been a part of a movement that's really put so much pressure on myself and put the whole idea of um succeeding and having living your best life on performance and being amazing i'd start by humbling yourself and saying okay god i'm i'm exhausted and i'm done being part of something that is perpetuating the idea that we are god and god is not and so we start by remembering and rehearsing what god has done and then honestly i would just even on a practical level albert i would say if you've been part of a movement whatever movement it is that is discipling you towards something that is false and deceiving and not satisfying um cut off that stream of content and don't allow yourself to be discipled by those voices that are not leading you to a greater reliance on jesus that's a good metric about any movement is this message taking me into a greater reliance on god or is this message taking me to a greater reliance on myself if you are landing at a place after you listen to any message if you're landing at a place where you want to worship your own happiness and you feel like you have to be in charge that self-reliance and that worship of self is a false gospel and so don't be discipled by that any longer ruth i've just got to point out and i i'm sure my audience is picking up on this because one of the things i try to do is be biblically faithful but just be gracious towards people in interaction whether christians are not and assume the best of people and you're modeling like here's somebody who's asking a question very honest that probably hurts and there's a story behind it let's go to scripture let's root out faulty ideas but i want to show grace and love to you and i just hope my audience of viewers isn't missing that so i appreciate that now there was a question earlier i wish i could bring it over but the question was how do i pass on to my kids god's grace to encourage them to strive to be the best that they can be without giving them this false gospel of you know kind of self-justification and self-reliance yeah oh that's a good one and we could be here for because i'm on mama to six i mean this is a topic that i could talk on for a long time but i'll just say real quickly first of all the number one thing we pass on is what we put on display every day as parents you literally i mean more is caught than taught you could sit them down and tell them what grace is and you could read ephesians two eight and nine and do please do that but ultimately they're going to learn more about the grace of god and our need for god's grace by how you live out your need for god's grace as a parent so first and foremost i mean i'm a mom i have a 19 year old and i have an 8 year old that's my range do i want them to fail at school no do i want them to get into good colleges and do great things in their lives of course but how i encourage to that end will show them what i value most what i worship and what i think is the means to get there so am i saying hey you will live you will be happiest if you go to an ivy league school so do that at all costs right it what am i saying how am i reacting and then if you're joining in late sean and i talked about earlier you know it's so easy as a parent to say things like you know basically i'll i'll be nicer to you if you or we act in a way that's like i'll i'll love you more i'll be nicer to you if you get good grades or if you do your chores man are we actually we may not say that with our words but do we act that way and so here's an alternative the alternative is guys this is me saying to my boys you know guys um i don't really want to make my bed either quite frankly i don't even want to do half the things that are on my list today and i'll just say there's a part of me that wants to just muscle my way through to prove that i'm good enough and i'm strong enough and that i feel like if i don't do it people are gonna be disappointed in me i don't want you to feel that way about your chores or your schoolwork you know why i want you to do well in school because your life is belongs to jesus and when you do well in school it is an opportunity for you to live to the fullest the very breath that god's given you but you're not gonna know how good god is until you first recognize that you are not the boss of your life god has created you for purpose on purpose and so guys i need jesus just as much as you do i am struggling with my attitude today i don't necessarily do things with the right attitude so let's together by god's grace ask him for the grace we need to even do the things he's called us to do today and in that let us do things with excellence because he's loved us so much and he deserves our very best we don't need to earn his favor but my goodness will he be pleased if we do this well that's the kind of conversation maybe i don't say that you know in one big monologue but that's the conversation i have with my kids all the time and i have to put on display that sometimes i do things with a bad attitude sometimes i don't want to do things at all and i will strive in grace not for grace and i can put that on display day by day oh i like that you said i will strive in grace not for grace in many ways that sums up this entire summary this entire discussion sums up your book i'm going to say it again i strive in grace not for grace that's beautiful now i have a range of guests on here i've had atheists i've had skeptics progressive christians mormons my last guest was a double phd and wrote an academic book on historical adam and i think people know what they would get if they got his book tell us about your audience and kind of the focus of when striving sees and i hope my audience will pick it up but just give them a sense of expectations yeah so you know my greatest desire is that i might make the gospel accessible to somebody who may not think that it's for them i deeply care about theology i deeply care about truth but i truly believe that we don't have to choose between beauty and truth we don't need to pick up a pretty book and go oh this is going to be fluff nor do we need to go for hardcore truth and miss out on the beauty so what i hope you get when you read when striving sees is a conversation with a friend i hope it feels like you and i are sitting down together for a few hours with a cup of coffee and i'll be vulnerable with um the real context in which i've had to learn some of these things and i'm gonna ask you some hard questions and hopefully you will be vulnerable too and in that journey together um it won't feel like somebody's talking at you it'll be somebody talking with you and through this process i pray that the pages cause you to linger along because i've got some artwork some hand-drawn artwork in there um but what i hope to accomplish is in 15 chapters for us to go through a journey in which you will be so dazzled not by my artwork not by my words but you'll be so dazzled by who god is and how great his love that the grace of god would be the gift that you can access every single day of your life and that you would walk away from the last page of this book and feel super empowered not because you picked up a book that gave you a strategy for life but that you picked up a book that gave you the truth about eternal eternal presence with him and so that's where transformation's gonna come from i don't know how else to put it i didn't make it up i'm just the messenger giving you some truth that came from the word of god but i pray that it will be accessible in a way that you've not seen before well ruth again i hope our audience will pick up a copy of when striving sees i want to personally thank you endorsed one of my other books i appreciate you taking the time you're busy with six boys in your own business i follow you on instagram thoroughly enjoy your posts but the most important thing to me is that you minister deeply to my baby sister who's 10 years younger than i am she reads everything you write she's joined one of your bible studies that started or that's coming up so my dad told me when i was a kid he goes he goes if you want to minister to somebody minister to their kids and i was like oh that makes sense then i became a parent i was like oh my goodness i get it well it's the same with a sister who's 10 years younger than i am so thank you for ministering to her and again pick up a copy of uh when striving sees before we wrap up if you are new to this channel make sure you hit subscribe here's just a couple shows we have come up friday i will be doing a live q a with the genetically modified skeptic drew and we're just going to go back and forth taking questions we get to pick them and then we each answer them and move forward so we want to model civil conversation and just help you see how one christian one atheist might answer questions differently next wednesday bringing back colby martin an author and progressive christian pastor who wrote a book on clobber and we're going to talk about the bible and lgbtq relationships and same-sex unions it's going to be a friendly dialogue but i think highlights some substantive differences got craig keener coming up he has a new book coming out on miracles today he wrote a massive volume in 2010 and has a more popular version coming out and over the past 10 years he communicated me he said i have had dozens and dozens of people send me documentable cases of miracles so we have a ton more than that but make sure you hit subscribe and if you've ever thought about studying apologetics think about joining with me and the team at biola there's information below we would love to have you ruth hang on one minute when we're done so i can say goodbye but to all of you thanks so much we'll see you at 11 o'clock friday for live q a with an atheist don't miss it it's going to be fun thanks again ruth

Channel: Dr. Sean McDowell

Views: 13,687

Rating: 4.950963 out of 5

Keywords: gospel, life, strive, effort, author, book, resource, grace, false, true, freedom, prodigal son

Id: pJKSJev-In4

Length: 58min 49sec (3529 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 29 2021