The Misfit Inquisition of Tullian Tchividjian
Big TAKEAWAYS...
- The journey of self-awareness often begins with the painful acknowledging our deepest flaws and failures.
- Confession and vulnerability are essential for healing, regardless of whether one is caught or not.
- Living with secrets creates an unbearable burden, leading to fear and isolation in our lives.
- True repentance often follows a confrontation with one's own failures and selfishness.
- God's grace provides unconditional love, allowing for honest self-examination and growth.
- The process of recovery is ongoing and can lead to deeper relationships and understanding of God's love.
#GRACE #FORGIVENESS #GOSPEL #GRACEforTheFLAWED #MISFITPreachers #CHURCHrebel #FLAWEDandFORGIVEN #FAITHnotRELIGION #radicalGRACE #UnfilteredFAITH #DEchurched #GRACEisENOUGH #FAITHonTHEfringe #OUTCASTSwelcome #GRACEforALL #CHURCHWithoutWALLS #BROKENandLOVED #brokenandlovedbygod #REHAB #OUTCAST #misfit #ALONE #MisfitPreachers #TullianTchividjian #GraceInTruth #ChristianPodcast #ProdigalPodcasts #SelfAwareness #HonestFaith #ConfessionAndHealing #GraceCentered #vulnerability
In this raw and revealing episode of Misfit Preachers, Tullian Tchividjian sits down with fellow misfits Jean Larroux and Byron Yawn to confront his own journey through scandal, grace, and redemption. With brutal honesty, Tullian opens up about the heavy cost of secrets, the painful process of self-awareness, and how his understanding of God’s grace has shifted through personal struggles and public failures. Together, they unpack how vulnerability and self-honesty are essential yet uncomfortable parts of faith. This episode invites listeners into a candid conversation about finding identity after loss, the misunderstandings around grace, and the challenging path of spiritual and personal growth.
In this episode we dive into:
▶ 02:30 Tullian's Journey to Vulnerability
▶ 05:45 Why Grace Causes Controversy
▶ 12:10 Reflections on Facing Criticism
▶ 18:35 Secrets and Consequences
▶ 29:45 God's Friendship Through the Storm
Catch this episode for a raw, honest, and inspiring look at growing through pain, rebuilding trust, and focusing on what truly matters. 💬 Tune in now! 🎧🔥
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Transcript
You're listening to the Misfit Preachers, Talian Chavidjian, Jean Leroux, and Byron Yan from ProdigalPodcast.com.
Speaker A:we're plagiarizing Jesus one podcast at a time.
Speaker A:Now here are the misfits.
Speaker B:Welcome to Misfit Preachers.
Speaker B:I'm here.
Speaker B:Stranded on Misfit island with two misfits.
Speaker C:You're blessed to be here, buddy.
Speaker B:I am the third.
Speaker B:The mayor of Misfit island is to our left.
Speaker B:This is Jean Leroux, the third, the mastermind of all of this.
Speaker B:In the history of bad ideas, this is probably the best.
Speaker B:And on my right, Tullian Chavidjian.
Speaker A:Good to be here, as always.
Speaker B:And I blew up the first run at this because I was so excited to get to this portion.
Speaker B:I told Tullian that his story was so powerful, I came to Christ.
Speaker B:Thank you for that.
Speaker B:But all joking aside, man, what I love about it is that you kind of gave us your soul in your internal struggles.
Speaker B:I've read your book.
Speaker B:I've heard you give this.
Speaker B:But you gave it in such a way that you were putting words to my experience, Jean's experience, everybody's experience.
Speaker B:So thank you for your vulnerability in that.
Speaker A:Yeah, you're welcome.
Speaker B:And now we're going to brutalize you.
Speaker A:Good.
Speaker B:Because people.
Speaker A:That's my love language.
Speaker B:Want so twisted.
Speaker B:It is.
Speaker B:You are glutton.
Speaker A:It's a learned love language.
Speaker B:You're a glutton.
Speaker C:It's like.
Speaker C:Like if you adopted a dog from the pound and you wonder why.
Speaker C:It's always.
Speaker A:It's because they've been abused.
Speaker C:Listen to episode one.
Speaker C:That's why.
Speaker B:You'Re not, weren't, and maybe aren't now.
Speaker B:Liked is a mild way to put it by a lot.
Speaker C:He's not what?
Speaker B:Liked.
Speaker C:Liked.
Speaker B:Liked.
Speaker B:Nor am I.
Speaker A:Well, let's clarify that.
Speaker A:I'm liked by lots of people.
Speaker A:I'm unliked by a certain kind of person.
Speaker B:Even better.
Speaker B:Even better.
Speaker B:More well said.
Speaker B:And regardless of what people think, they know, they don't know you.
Speaker B:They don't know you as a person.
Speaker B:In terms of personalities, your.
Speaker B:Your personality doesn't know how to whisper.
Speaker B:You know?
Speaker B:Yeah, it's just who you are.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker B:And I love that.
Speaker B:I love that personally.
Speaker B:And your boldness with truths that are.
Speaker B:You're just absolutely, utterly convinced of and shouldn't back off of.
Speaker B:But it.
Speaker B:It did rub, and it does rub people the wrong way.
Speaker B:And you really don't care.
Speaker B:You're not intentionally trying to poke people in the eye, but For a lot of people, the categories that you mentioned out there, you kind of didn't fit the mold, which.
Speaker B:That's what this is all about.
Speaker B:Misfit.
Speaker B:Misfit preachers.
Speaker B:Which leads me to present you with this idea.
Speaker B:And I want your response to it because I think it's.
Speaker B:I'm gonna say something that was probably on the mind of people when all this went down.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:There's some sooth saying going on here.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:So there are a lot of people that would have watched all of that happen, and they would have said, see it happened.
Speaker B:They saw this coming in you.
Speaker B:It was inevitable.
Speaker B:How do you respond to that?
Speaker A:They were more insightful than I was.
Speaker A:They saw it coming.
Speaker A:I didn't.
Speaker A:I was blinded by my own ego, ambition, sense of entitlement.
Speaker A:So if they saw it coming, they are wiser than me.
Speaker A:I think some of the reasons that they give for why it happened are wrong.
Speaker A:I think they assume just by looking at me, I don't dress a certain way because I'm trying to send a certain message.
Speaker A:I've dressed the way I dress since I was literally an early teenager.
Speaker A:I mean, it's funny, when my kids see pictures of me at 13, 14, 15 years old, they're like, dad, it's true.
Speaker A:You really haven't changed.
Speaker A:I mean, this is just the way I've always been in terms of external appearance.
Speaker A:And so I think they.
Speaker A:But in the church world, they would look at someone just on the outside that looks like me or has a loud personality like mine and go, he's so arrogant, he's so full of himself, that this is bound to happen.
Speaker A:I was arrogant and I was full of myself, but not for the specific reasons that they fought.
Speaker A:The other reason that I think people may have said that is because of what I said, the message that I delivered, which is grace, always grace.
Speaker A:And a lot of people think that grace is one small part, one small, dangerous part of the Christian faith, but it's not the hub of the wheel.
Speaker A:And I was saying, no, this is everything, right?
Speaker A:It's.
Speaker A:It's all of grace, all of it.
Speaker A:And so for people who are fearful of that kind of thing, they would automatically assume, well, this is the kind of thing that someone who wants to justify their own sinful lifestyle says.
Speaker A:So there was a prominent pastor in Southern California who a few years ago said publicly from his pulpit that mentioned me by name and said something along the lines of, I knew this was going to happen.
Speaker A:Because Tullian's theology of grace was clearly a justification for the sinful lifestyle that he wanted to fuel.
Speaker A:And that's just false.
Speaker B:Just that same prominent leader sent me a letter to the same effect and referenced you.
Speaker A:Yeah, and.
Speaker A:Yeah, and so that's the other reason why I think people would have said.
Speaker A:Some people would have said, I saw this coming because they didn't agree with what I was saying.
Speaker A:Other people said I saw this coming because of the way I looked or presented myself.
Speaker A:But then there were other people who immediately after the fact, people that I know, people who know me, people who love me, have always loved me and will always love me, they said we kind of saw this coming.
Speaker A:I had my oldest brother, who's a dear friend of mine.
Speaker A:I'm in the middle of seven kids.
Speaker A:I'm right in the middle.
Speaker A:My oldest brother is 10 years older than I am.
Speaker A:And he sat down with me a few days afterwards, very lovingly, in no condemnation, very lovingly, and just said, I.
Speaker A:Over the last 18 months, I saw you carry yourself with a bravado that seemed egotistical.
Speaker A:My oldest son, Gabe, about six months after everything happened, we were having a conversation.
Speaker A:He was probably 21 or 22 at the time.
Speaker B:21.
Speaker A:And he said, dad, I kind of.
Speaker A:I feared something like this would happen because I saw the way you were carrying yourself.
Speaker A:And they were both right.
Speaker A:So maybe I shouldn't have been surprised that it all happened.
Speaker A:I mean, after all, I was the guy who was saying things like, God only loves and uses bad and weak people who fail because there aren't any other kinds of people.
Speaker A:I was always the guy from behind the pulpit confessing my presence sins.
Speaker A:Not all of them, obviously, but some of them.
Speaker A:Trying to demonstrate for the people listening that I need God's grace just as much today as I did the day I was born.
Speaker A:So in that sense, maybe it shouldn't have been a surprise, but it still was to me.
Speaker A:I didn't see this kind of crash coming as.
Speaker A:As some other people did.
Speaker A:And some of that's just blindness.
Speaker A:Some of that's just complete out of touchness.
Speaker A:Some of that is just a complete lack of self awareness.
Speaker A:Just idiocy, foolery, ego, entitlement, all that stuff.
Speaker A:But overarchingly, to the person who says, I saw this coming, I would say, great insight.
Speaker C:Wow.
Speaker C:I love the answer.
Speaker C:Not because it's a curated answer, but because it's honest.
Speaker C:And as I sat here listening to you, having known you for years and hearing the story again, the most profound shift that I heard in what you said was that you really moved from self adoration to self awareness.
Speaker A:I still adore myself and will the day I die.
Speaker A:And it's a plague and we all do.
Speaker A:But maybe it's emphasis has shifted.
Speaker C:Self awareness.
Speaker A:I think the emphasis has shifted.
Speaker A:Self awareness was this.
Speaker A:And self adoration was this.
Speaker A:Now self adoration is this.
Speaker A:And self awareness.
Speaker B:Anyone who's self, aware, truly self aware, would never say what you just said.
Speaker C:And I think that's what's unsettling to people.
Speaker C:It's like the level of disclosure that you're willing to do when you've looked in the darkness of your heart and go like, people are like, oh, I mean, you're so humble now.
Speaker C:You're like, I'm more arrogant than I ever was.
Speaker C:Like, the truth is I'm more aware of it than I ever was in doing that.
Speaker C:And I think to be able to.
Speaker A:Say I'm not very self aware is a statement that only someone who is relatively self aware can say.
Speaker C:Right, agreed.
Speaker C:And so I think for folks listening, for myself, your willingness to hug the cactus and say, stop doing the.
Speaker C:I'm not spinning it.
Speaker C:I'm not giving rationalization, I'm not doing anything.
Speaker C:Like when you said to Byron, insightful, what do you do with that guy?
Speaker C:He just hugs like the cactus is his favorite plant.
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:I mean, the truth of the matter is I was fighting any sort of submission to God during that season.
Speaker A:Fighting, fighting, fighting.
Speaker A:I was going to put my life back together.
Speaker A:I was going to make it work.
Speaker A:I was going to get, I was going to build something bigger than ever to get back at all those people who bailed on me when I was at the top, all that stuff, I mean, I was just, I was on a vengeful mission.
Speaker A:So all of that stuff, whatever, whatever sort of depth and wisdom and humility and self awareness that God has developed in me to whatever degree, small or big, came after a long, long time of bitter resistance to anything God was trying to do.
Speaker A:Anything.
Speaker C:Yeah, I resonate with that.
Speaker C:And I think it's encouraging to people for whom life just doesn't fix with the snap of a finger.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker C:This is a process, right?
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker A:This is going to be a lifelong process.
Speaker C:This is going to be a season.
Speaker C:You're.
Speaker A:Sometimes I'll tell people, your willingness to admit your lack of improvement in some areas is a sign of improvement.
Speaker C:Agreed.
Speaker A:So it's true, you know, it's your willingness to tell the truth about yourself is the better that God is after.
Speaker A:It's not cleaning up the surface of your life, modifying Your behavior so that you're dotting every I and crossing every T, which none of us do anyway.
Speaker A:But it's your willingness to admit that stuff, to stop pretending to tell the truth about yourself.
Speaker A:And the only way you can do that is when you are absolutely convinced that you are loved by God unconditionally.
Speaker A:And when you know that God loves you unconditionally, you start caring less and less about what other people think.
Speaker A:And when you start caring less and less about what other people think, you're more willing to tell the truth about yourself.
Speaker A:Because I can tell you the truth about myself.
Speaker A:And if you.
Speaker A:If you walk away from me, as a result, I may not like it, but I'll be okay.
Speaker A:Because I know God will never walk away from me.
Speaker A:If you reject me, I may not like it, but I'll be okay, because I know God will never reject me.
Speaker A:So it.
Speaker A:It basically emboldens you that the truth of grace makes you bold.
Speaker A:It makes you more honest, not less.
Speaker A:It makes you more willing to tell the truth about yourself, not just put the best parts of you out there while working to conceal the worst parts.
Speaker A:You can take off the masks, and I think that's what we're doing here with misfit preachers.
Speaker A:We're taking off the masks and encouraging others to do the same thing.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:So if I'm still channeling the critic.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:You know, during that season of time, I'm.
Speaker B:I'm more than certain there are some within that group of people who are watching this go, well, he got caught.
Speaker B:He didn't come forward.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:He should have come forward.
Speaker B:Had he come forward without being caught, we could trust his contrition, his repentance, so on and so forth.
Speaker B:But he was caught.
Speaker B:Then it happened.
Speaker B:Can't trust it.
Speaker B:Right?
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And I heard that a lot.
Speaker B:What's your response?
Speaker B:What say Ye Tullian civilian?
Speaker A:I would say that most people, not all most people confess only after they get caught.
Speaker A:Somebody asked me that very question in California a few weeks ago when I was doing a Q and A.
Speaker A:And I said, who the hell confesses before they get caught?
Speaker A:I mean, show me.
Speaker A:I mean, I.
Speaker A:There are plenty of characters in the Bible that didn't confess anything until they got caught.
Speaker A:I mean, I was going to go to my grave with this secret.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker A:I mean, and.
Speaker A:And there are some secrets we will go to our graves with.
Speaker A:We don't ever get rid of keeping secrets in this life as a broken person in a broken world.
Speaker A:But in this particular case, I was going to Go to my grave.
Speaker A:I knew the cost involved.
Speaker A:I knew that if I got caught, given the industry that I was in, I would lose everything and I was not going to confess.
Speaker A:And so, you know, I think you're.
Speaker A:The point that you make, which is a very articulate one, is that we will never trust the contrition or sorrow of a person who gets caught rather than confess.
Speaker A:And I just look at Psalm 51, which is my favorite psalm in the Bible.
Speaker A:It's the psalm that David, King David in Israel wrote after he got caught.
Speaker B:Yeah, he wrote that one in his own blood.
Speaker A:He did wrote that in his own blood.
Speaker A:And he got caught having an affair with a married woman.
Speaker A:He gets her pregnant, he realizes he's got to fix this, so he has her husband essentially murdered and then takes her as his wife to cover it up.
Speaker A:And he was, he thought he had escaped.
Speaker C:Yep, I worked it out.
Speaker A:I'm in the clear.
Speaker A:Until the prophet Nathan confronts him and tells him that he knows.
Speaker A:And the Bible says that David's eyes were opened for the first time and he falls down on his face and pleas for mercy.
Speaker A:And then he pens Psalm 51, which is the most honest confession, most self aware confession of sin you will find anywhere in the Bible.
Speaker A:And so to say that someone's repentance or sorrow or contrition about something bad they did is invalid unless they confess first.
Speaker A:Doesn't even correspond to reality.
Speaker A:You're not going to find that in the Bible.
Speaker A:You're not going to find that in real life, and you're not going to find that in your own heart.
Speaker A:The people who say that kind of thing have never been living with a secret so deep that it would destroy their lives.
Speaker A:If they were, they can talk a good game about, I would have confessed that out of conviction of conscience.
Speaker A:I would have confessed and I call bullshit on that.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:Show me the list of people that are standing outside of the IRS office who said, you know, 20 years ago, I want to make this right.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker C:But when they're audited, and I think for me, what I in the question, I found the same thing.
Speaker C:It's the confrontation by another person or the Holy Spirit.
Speaker A:Sure.
Speaker C:That is always.
Speaker C:It never comes without confrontation.
Speaker C:Even if someone confesses they were confronted right beforehand.
Speaker A:That's right.
Speaker C:It was just by God, not by proxy.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker C:And I don't think proxy takes away the validity of the contrition, the confession.
Speaker C:But when the Holy Spirit does it and you like, I can't live another day unless I shake it.
Speaker C:We've all had those moments with our spouses, kids, whatever.
Speaker A:Well, and this is encouraging for someone who is dealing with the fallout of a betrayal of trust.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker A:Some way in a relationship where a person gets caught and this.
Speaker A:The other person, the victim in this case says, I can never, ever trust your sorrow, or that you're sincere about your sorrow about this, because you didn't come to me first.
Speaker A:You got caught.
Speaker A:And I would just encourage that person and say, real sorrow, real contrition, real change can and does happen, even to the people who would have never confessed had they not gotten caught.
Speaker C:Agreed.
Speaker B:Now, your.
Speaker B:Your story is little.
Speaker B:A little bit of the opposite of this, if I understand it.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:And you can clarify, you actually did go to leadership.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:I mean, with.
Speaker C:With the end of my first marriage, in doing that, had resigned in advance.
Speaker C:We were divorced, not working.
Speaker B:What was their response to you in the.
Speaker C:I think people were hurt.
Speaker C:They were disappointed.
Speaker C:There would be some who would say, oh, I saw this coming.
Speaker C:And to them, I would say, you saw it.
Speaker C:I didn't, because the arrogance.
Speaker C:I mean, I'm gonna, I think, have an episode where I get to tell my story.
Speaker C:But the underlying theme of the story is not that I found someone in Huntsville to have an affair with.
Speaker C:The person in Huntsville that I had an affair with was me.
Speaker C:Yeah, I was.
Speaker C:And it's Narcissus.
Speaker C:It's looking and like, that is what.
Speaker C:And so that is the overarching thing.
Speaker C:I've been in that.
Speaker C:In that sense, I've been an adulterer since the day I was born.
Speaker A:All of us have.
Speaker A:And I would say, having been pastored, pastors in the denomination that we were in.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker A:We've seen this up close where someone comes forward without confessing.
Speaker A:I mean, without getting caught.
Speaker A:They confess something, and in many cases, the church still blackballs them.
Speaker A:So, you know this.
Speaker C:I only have one guillotine.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:Well, in my case, I was out of the church.
Speaker B:The Chicago Tribune outed me, and the church still launched against me.
Speaker B:And I'll have the opportunity to tell my story and fill in some details as well.
Speaker B:But honestly, this is my response.
Speaker B:I don't care.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:I don't care how it happened.
Speaker B:I don't care that I had an overwhelming sensitivity of my conscience that just forced me to do it, which I wasn't going to do it at the time, or if someone leaked a story to the national media.
Speaker B:I am just glad it happened to me.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker C:There is a sense of relief.
Speaker B:Oh, there's no question.
Speaker B:It was.
Speaker A:No question.
Speaker B:Amazing.
Speaker B:Although I didn't let go of, you know, a dog with a bone for a long time.
Speaker A:Same with me.
Speaker B:But it's what I needed.
Speaker B:You know, I heard you say somewhere on the stage that, you know, some people just need a little nudge and others need two by fours.
Speaker B:Yeah, I was four by four.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:That sort of thing.
Speaker B:But I would say this.
Speaker B:Who cares if a person is trapped in sin and darkness and despair and is delusional?
Speaker B:If God, through any secondary means, wakes them up, it's miraculous.
Speaker B:And shouldn't we celebrate that?
Speaker B:Test but verify.
Speaker B:Test but verify, but shouldn't we be going?
Speaker C:Praise God.
Speaker C:I got to say this.
Speaker C:In Luke 15, the younger brother didn't have his accountability partner show up in the far country and say, you know, we missed you last week because you didn't dial in.
Speaker C:He was confronted by his own circumstances.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker C:God, who orders the stars and calls them out by name, is always in the business of helping us see what we cannot see.
Speaker C:And, dude, it doesn't matter how he does it.
Speaker A:Well, and seriously, I.
Speaker A:I think churches do a.
Speaker A:Have historically done a relatively good job of ministering grace and help to victims, people who are suffering because of what someone else has done to them.
Speaker A:The church has historically done a very shitty job of ministering grace and help to the person who caused the pain, and yet both are suffering.
Speaker A:Psalm 107, which is another favorite psalm of mine, describes two different kinds of people.
Speaker A:The person in the ditch because someone threw them there, and the person in the ditch who threw themselves there.
Speaker A:And the common refrain in all of these descriptions of these two people is, and then I called out to the name of the Lord and he rescued me.
Speaker A:So it doesn't matter why you're in the ditch.
Speaker A:It doesn't matter if you're in the ditch because someone threw you there or you're in the ditch because you put yourself there.
Speaker A:It's who am I crying out to for help when I'm at the bottom?
Speaker C:All right.
Speaker C:Can I ask you a question?
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker C:I love that.
Speaker C:So I'm imagining right now there are people listening.
Speaker C:There are people in the midst of an affair.
Speaker C:There's a guy who, last night his wife walked in and he was surfing porn on the net.
Speaker C:He got caught last night.
Speaker C:Somebody's stealing money from their.
Speaker C:I mean, we know who's listening.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker C:What would you say to them today?
Speaker C:Right now?
Speaker C:They're in.
Speaker C:I mean, they are still doubling down and nobody will find out.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:I mean, I would say the longer you keep your secret, the more you are building a burden in your own soul.
Speaker A:And like I said a few minutes ago, we will all go to our graves.
Speaker A:There is no one who knows everything about us.
Speaker C:Correct.
Speaker A:We don't even know everything about us.
Speaker A:And there's no one who knows everything about us.
Speaker A:God is the only one.
Speaker A:So all of us will die with secrets.
Speaker A:But when you are in the throes of something of that magnitude, I know people who say, oh, you're going to get caught or it's going to come out.
Speaker A:And I'm like, I know people for whom it's never come out same.
Speaker A:And for people who did successfully go to the grave, I mean, I have friends who have had affairs and their spouse does not know.
Speaker A:And no matter what I counsel them to do, they're like, dude, if.
Speaker A:If it comes out, I'll admit it, but I'm not admitting it if I don't have to.
Speaker A:I get that.
Speaker A:I've been there.
Speaker A:I know what that's like.
Speaker A:And that's God's business.
Speaker A:Whatever God's doing in the life of that person, that's God's business.
Speaker A:I would just say that the more secrets I keep, the heavier life is, the more fear I experience.
Speaker A:You know, is someone going to find out?
Speaker A:Is someone going to find out?
Speaker A:And that's just a miserable way to live.
Speaker A:Life is heavier and harder when you keep secrets, right?
Speaker C:They're listening and they experience the heaviness, the fear and the paranoia and the fear, the paranoia and the fear is.
Speaker A:Legitimate because they know if I tell my spouse, he will leave me or she will leave me or it will hurt my kids or I'll lose my job or whatever the case may be.
Speaker A:And in many cases they are right.
Speaker A:But I think in some cases they'll be surprised.
Speaker A:I mean, I confessed real.
Speaker A:I confess to my kids my own embarrassing decisions, and it hurts someone.
Speaker A:They love their mother very much.
Speaker A:And my kids never blinked.
Speaker A:We had every hard conversation.
Speaker A:We talked about all the hard stuff.
Speaker A:We've been doing that for 10 years now, but they never blinked.
Speaker A:They loved me still.
Speaker A:Now I know other people who confess something similar.
Speaker A:And their kids haven't talked to him in 10 years, right?
Speaker A:So the risk is real.
Speaker A:And, you know, I can't give any universal advice to people.
Speaker A:I've learned not to give universal advice to people when it comes to these things because each situation and each person is very different.
Speaker A:But God will lead all of us to the place where we need to be.
Speaker A:And all I will say is, the longer I lived with secrets, the more Fearful I became the heavier and harder life felt.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:There's a secular psychologist, wrote a book years ago, 30 years ago, called Whatever Became a Sin.
Speaker B:And he tells the story in the beginning of it of this guy standing on a corner with a sandwich board.
Speaker B:You know, Jesus is coming back sort of guy, bullhorn guy, quote, Rob Bell, excuse me.
Speaker B:And as people are walking by, he doesn't know any of them.
Speaker B:He's in a corner in Manhattan, he says to him, I know what you did.
Speaker B:And this person comes by and he goes, I know what you did.
Speaker B:And as he narrates it, as the people are walking, they immediately know how to locate exactly what he's talking about with him not even knowing it because it's true of everybody.
Speaker C:Right?
Speaker A:Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
Speaker A:Isn't that the Sherlock Holmes guy?
Speaker C:I think that's right.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Rumor has it that many years ago, he was testing a theory he had about this very thing.
Speaker A:And so he wrote a letter, an anonymous letter to three heads of state.
Speaker A:And all it said was, everyone knows, flee at once.
Speaker A:And all three of those people fled.
Speaker A:All three of them.
Speaker A:Not what are you talking about?
Speaker A:They all left.
Speaker A:We all have secrets.
Speaker A:I'm not saying it's okay to have secrets.
Speaker A:I'm saying it is a fact.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:And two, I don't want to frame this in such a way that people sitting in churches with faithful leaders or the leaders themselves, to mischaracterize it.
Speaker B:Not every bastards out there sitting on the thin ice of some secret about.
Speaker A:An affair, not every human is.
Speaker B:But to those that are sitting in that context, hoping it never comes out, it's never found out, they're going to take it to their grave.
Speaker B:They are in absolute misery, absolute misery, because they every single day, they live with that burden of what's going to happen if the Jenga of their life comes crashing down.
Speaker B:And we'll get to this eventually when we take this issue head on in one of our episodes.
Speaker B:But what I want to say to them is, in my experience, the grace of God towards me when I finally saw it founded, his forgiveness and affection infinitely outweighed my fear of what the fallout was going to be.
Speaker B:That was the leverage moment for me.
Speaker B:I was so desperate and exhausted and tired and weary.
Speaker B:The prodigal son at a trough.
Speaker B:I was 10 counties over at some other trough, but I was like, I don't care what it takes.
Speaker B:Give me that.
Speaker B:I'll do that.
Speaker B:And there's great relief and hope there.
Speaker B:Yeah, it is one hell of a hard road.
Speaker B:And you're going to lose pretty much everything possibly, but gain.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Everything you actually need and be transformed.
Speaker A:On a level, I agree.
Speaker A:I mean, I look at my life now because of everything I went through.
Speaker A:My relationships are stronger.
Speaker A:My care and concern for other people is greater.
Speaker A:My appreciation for God's grace is deeper.
Speaker A:Somebody asked me not long ago, in light of everything you experience, what's the one thing you discovered about God truly that you may have believed theologically but didn't really know?
Speaker A:And my immediate answer was his friendship.
Speaker A:Yeah, he has proven to be the most non blinking friend you could ever ask for.
Speaker A:I mean, he did not when I was at my worst blink.
Speaker A:He didn't bail.
Speaker A:He didn't leave me, forsake me.
Speaker A:He continued smiling over me with his arm around my shoulder.
Speaker A:It's not like any of this took God by surprise.
Speaker A: ,: Speaker A:God, this day, he knew all about this day.
Speaker A:Which begs the question, well then if he knew all that, why wouldn't we have stopped?
Speaker A:That's not the way God operates.
Speaker A:God is interested in showing us himself.
Speaker A:And sometimes we can't see him until we are in a black room at rock bottom.
Speaker C:Wow.
Speaker C:So good.
Speaker B:A couple more questions.
Speaker C:Yeah, this would be the last one I would ask.
Speaker C:So I'm flipping the script for a second and saying, somebody out there is listening.
Speaker C:That's the spouse.
Speaker C:Yeah, somebody's listening out there.
Speaker C:That's been the friend that closer than a brother.
Speaker C:They've relapsed, they've gone back to their affair partner.
Speaker C:They can't shake the addiction.
Speaker C:They can't do it.
Speaker C:Be the guy that this has made you to them.
Speaker C:You mean, like, what would you say to them?
Speaker A:Who?
Speaker A:To which one?
Speaker A:The victim or the perpetrator?
Speaker C:The victim.
Speaker C:Like the affair part, the one.
Speaker C:Because there are people listening to this going, you know, that asshole did all this to his family.
Speaker C:And he sits there on this podcast.
Speaker C:He doesn't know what it feels like to be me.
Speaker B:The pastor's wife.
Speaker C:Right, the pastor's wife.
Speaker A:And I would simply say, as cryptically as I possibly can, that I know exactly what it feels like to sit in that seat.
Speaker A:And it is worse than death.
Speaker A:Worse than death.
Speaker A:Recovery for me is happening on both ends of the spectrum.
Speaker A:And I don't have anything that I can say that would ease the pain.
Speaker A:I know, for instance, that my story.
Speaker A:Your story.
Speaker A:Your story is triggering to People in pain, especially if they're on the receiving end of some kind of betrayal like that there, it's triggering and what they end up doing is projecting.
Speaker A:So they hate you because you.
Speaker A:You're everything that my husband was.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker A:I hate you because you're my.
Speaker A:You're my abusive father.
Speaker A:So every person that has hurt them, we now embody because of what we've admitted to and what we've confessed.
Speaker A:And I don't really know what to say that will ease their pain.
Speaker A:There was nothing anybody could have said to me at that time that would have eased my pain.
Speaker A:Nothing at all.
Speaker A:I remember sitting at a red light maybe two, three weeks after all this happened.
Speaker A:And I mean, I was despairing.
Speaker A:I had never been depressed a day in my life, as far as I know.
Speaker A:And I was living in the slough of despond at this point.
Speaker A:I mean, I am.
Speaker A:I am experiencing a deep, dark night of the soul, real depression like I'd never experienced.
Speaker A:And I happened to look over to my left at the car next to me, and there was some.
Speaker A:I don't remember if it was a man or a woman, but they were in their car just waiting like I was for the light to turn green.
Speaker A:And my immediate thought was, this person has no idea how sad I am right now.
Speaker A:They have no idea how just hopeless and despairing I am right now.
Speaker A:I looked at them as if I don't know who they are or what they're facing.
Speaker A:Whatever it is is a hell of a lot easier than what I'm facing.
Speaker A:And I don't chastise myself now.
Speaker A:When I think about that moment, that's real.
Speaker A:That is the way you feel when you are suffering to that degree, when you're losing to that degree, when your whole world is coming crashing down.
Speaker A:And like the movie Sixth Sense, something happens in your life that forces you to go back and reinterpret your entire life.
Speaker A:Being confused is normal.
Speaker A:Being angry is normal.
Speaker A:Being sad and despairing, self pity, all of that stuff, it is normal.
Speaker A:That is not abnormal.
Speaker A:That is not something that you can just flip a switch on and off and get past.
Speaker A:I mean, there's.
Speaker A:There's no way to get past that without this divine intervention.
Speaker A:Really.
Speaker C:The work.
Speaker A:Do the work.
Speaker A:And.
Speaker A:And I.
Speaker A:I noticed that the.
Speaker A:The more.
Speaker A:And I think I've shared this with you guys off camera, but the more I was dead set on blaming other people because I wasn't the only one who sinned in my.
Speaker A:I mean, there were lots of people.
Speaker A:There were.
Speaker A:I was surrounded by sinners, right?
Speaker A:People's reaction to me feeling abandoned by friends, all of that's sin too.
Speaker A:But I was so preoccupied with their sin against me and the way they hurt me that I was not giving almost any attention to my sin or the way that I hurt them.
Speaker A:And it gave me all of the ammunition I needed to point fingers and to blame.
Speaker A:And I discovered that the more I shifted blame and pointed fingers, the heavier life felt.
Speaker A:And when I finally, through a series of circumstances and some good therapy, was able to offload the blame shifting and be able to look at myself and go, you are to blame.
Speaker A:Thou art the man, Tullian.
Speaker A:You are the one.
Speaker A:Everything started to feel lighter, which is counterintuitive because you think, if I can blame someone else for what I did or for what's going on, for the pain of my life, I will feel lighter.
Speaker A:It's the exact opposite.
Speaker A:The more you take on, in that sense, your own guilt, the lighter begin.
Speaker A:I mean, the load gets lighter.
Speaker B:So, last question.
Speaker B:I have 15 I could ask, but I'm not going to.
Speaker B:And I want to be careful with this because we've all been the subject matter of headlines above the fold and social media and cancellation, and it churns until the next thing comes around, the next failure, the next.
Speaker B:The next dirtiest leper we can stand next to.
Speaker B:And it's happened again.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:Prominent leader, not trying to pile on.
Speaker B:My heart.
Speaker B:Breaks for him.
Speaker B:Breaks from.
Speaker B:The question I have for you is, and this is, you know, attempting to be prescient, I suppose.
Speaker B:What mistakes is he about to make?
Speaker A:Faking sorrow.
Speaker A:That was me.
Speaker A:I know who you're talking about.
Speaker A:And I know in those particular circles, until your repentance is as notorious as your sin, you cannot be reconciled or restored, which is impossible, by the way.
Speaker B:Correct.
Speaker A:Especially in the world of social media and traditional mediums.
Speaker A:And I think the temptation, My fear is that this person is going to want to get.
Speaker A:I think in this person's case, his identity for so long has been so deeply anchored to his community and the way that community showers accolades at him.
Speaker A:It's almost like I need it back if I'm going to live.
Speaker A:I need it back if I'm going to survive.
Speaker A:So what are their rules?
Speaker A:Is.
Speaker A:There's no real concern.
Speaker A:I can't speak about him in particular, but in my case, there was no real concern about the state of my heart and sorrow for my own sin and how I hurt people I love.
Speaker A:There was just this.
Speaker A:I have to know what I need to do to get back to my familiar territory, because I feel lost without it.
Speaker A:I don't even know who I am without it.
Speaker A:There is no doubt in my mind that this guy is undergoing a massive identity crisis right now.
Speaker A:And he's older than we are by, you know, 20 years.
Speaker A:And he is undergoing a massive identity crisis right now.
Speaker A:And our immediate reaction, all of us, when we are undergoing a massive identity crisis, is to try to reach back and recover something that made us who we were, at least in our minds.
Speaker A:So I think, and here's the thing, it's the reason why Paul's all didn't blink.
Speaker A:He knew me when I was at the top.
Speaker A:He knew me when I crashed, and he's known me and loved me since.
Speaker A:But because he has a low anthropology, the reason he didn't bail was because he expected things to get worse before they got better.
Speaker A:He expected me to lie.
Speaker A:He expected me to try to manipulate the narrative.
Speaker A:He expected me to not tell the whole truth.
Speaker A:He expected that stuff.
Speaker A:So when I ended up doing those things, he was like, I knew this was coming.
Speaker A:That's exactly the way I feel about this guy.
Speaker A:I expect that this guy's gonna get worse before he gets better.
Speaker A:I expect in some way, shape or form that I Now I hope that this isn't the case for his sake.
Speaker A:But just knowing human nature and the human condition in my own heart the way that I do, I would say that he's going to spend the initial months trying to secure whatever he feels he's lost because he doesn't know who he is anymore.
Speaker A:What do you think?
Speaker B:I think you just described my own experience.
Speaker B:Yeah, that's what I would do.
Speaker B:It's what I did.
Speaker A:That's what I did too.
Speaker A:That's exactly what I did.
Speaker A:And I spent months manipulating the narrative, feigning just enough sorrow and sadness so that people would believe that I'm truly repentant.
Speaker B:I believe that I could sit down and within an 80% write out exactly what's about to me too.
Speaker B:Yeah, me too, brother.
Speaker B:Thank you.
Speaker A:Thank you guys.
Speaker C:Amazing.
Speaker B:Thank you so much.
Speaker A:Thank you.
Speaker B:You're next, pal.
Speaker C:All right, you ready?
Speaker C:I'm ready.
Speaker B:Thanks for listening.
Speaker A:You've been listening to the misfit preachers like subscribe and share more grace centered resources@prodigalpodcasts.com that's Prodigal P R O D I G A L podcasts with an s dot com.
