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Garden Church is a local community in Southern California. This podcast is a container to share stories from our community, conversations with our friends in ministry around the world, and major initiatives we are developing as a church.
We want to bless our community with the content of this podcast and for anything one interested in what God is doing here.
Hello, and welcome to Gardener's Podcast, part of Garden Church in Southern California. I know it's been a minute, but we're back in the saddle with something special. We have Pastor Bill Doctram with us today talking about soul care. Now, if you've been around Garden Church at all, you may have heard about soul care and perhaps have even learned a thing or two along the way. Soul care is part of the fabric of Garden Church, and pastor Bill has spent many years bringing this topic to our community.
Darre Galindo:So, first of all, we're hoping to continue the topic of soul soul care more consistently moving forward on this podcast. But today, we're starting this conversation fresh. Like if you've never heard about Soulcare before, which I found to be super helpful, especially considering how much growth our church has experienced over the last year. We want to invite you into this conversation as well, so if you haven't heard of Soulcare or just wanna find out more about it, you are definitely in the right place. So let's get to it.
Darren Gailndo:Well, welcome, Bill.
Bill Dogterom:Thank you.
Darren Gailndo:We're here starting out. I I will have to say, as as Seth and I were preparing for this, he was wondering in what direction we were gonna take the coffee conversation before we got started.
Bill Dogterom:Well, maybe we could take it in a completely known direction and not talk about it at all.
Darren Gailndo:There we go. You had coffee, I had coffee, and now moving on, but it's, have you been enjoying the weather?
Bill Dogterom:Here? Gorgeous. It's gorgeous. Right? Yep.
Bill Dogterom:Yep. Like a Canadian summer.
Darren Gailndo:Yeah. It crisp cool air, warm sun, and the, where we live in Long Beach, there's so many jasmine plants that are just blooming, and it everything not only does feel good, it smells amazing outside. Yep. Just don't park underneath them. Well, there's that.
Darren Gailndo:But but, luckily, it's it's, you know, it's down the street, and we don't have trouble with that.
Bill Dogterom:Right. Right.
Darren Gailndo:But, yeah, Bill, you have been, you're one of the teaching pastors here at Garden Church. As the story goes, Darren pastor Darren invited you for a short season originally, and you're still in that short season?
Bill Dogterom:Well, yeah, it it originally was pretty open ended even at the beginning. But we didn't know what that might look like or how it might evolve. So, yeah, it's been one of the great joys of my life to keep in partnership with Darren and Alex and the garden.
Darren Gailndo:Yeah. It's been a wonderful opportunity to not only, learn from you, but also have you speak into our community. And one of the things that you talk a lot about and that you have done a lot of work in is this idea of Soul Care.
Bill Dogterom:Right.
Darren Gailndo:And, tell me because that's that's the whole premise of this. We wanna have a continuing conversation about this. This is Mhmm. You know, one of the pillars. Maybe that's the wrong word to use, but this is a central theme at Garden Church Sure.
Darren Gailndo:Is this idea of soul care. And I think for a lot of people that have just joined Garden Church in the last year or since we've been here in Huntington Beach, they don't really know what that means or maybe not the depth of what, of what has been talked about, in the many years that you have talked about SoulCare. And so, Bill, I want you to to kind of like introduce us to Soulcare. Why is it called Soulcare, and what is, like, you know, your top down description of that as you get started?
Bill Dogterom:Sure. Well, maybe the easiest way to start is just to say, what's a soul? And that first appearance of that word in the Hebrew nefesh is chapter 2 verse 7 of the book of Genesis, so it's really early. It arises out of Sabbath rest. It's part of the second story of creation in which God, instead of the, creative voice, becomes the potter, the one who takes the soil, crafts a person breathes into that being the breath of life and the outcome of those two things, the dirt and the breath of God is a soul.
Bill Dogterom:So, in in essence, a human being, and so those 2 components, are essential to an understanding and maintaining the tension between the material world and the spiritual world, between the natural and the supernatural. We have bodies, material, but we are not body. We have a spirit, but we are not spirit. We don't have a soul. We are a soul.
Bill Dogterom:Soul is then body plus breath equals soul. And then in ways of thinking about that, of course, the the word in Hebrew is used for a variety of ways in a limited vocabulary language like Hebrew is it serves in a variety of places throughout the old Testament. So context has to determine what it is that we're talking about at any given point. That said, it is the kind of the catchphrase, the idea for when we talk about what does it mean to be a human being? What does it mean to be a person we're talking about soul?
Bill Dogterom:And then when I think about the ways of talking about it, and this is where it gets a little dicey, because even when we, you know, have these two elements, physical and spiritual, we might think that they can be separated, and they can't. If you take one away, then whatever you have left isn't sold. Similar and and we live in the tension between those. Right? We live in the feel the pull of the dirt, right?
Bill Dogterom:And we feel eternity in our hearts. So we're built for living in that in between space, that liminal space, which is why the narrative in Genesis 2 goes on, says that there is a place created for souls, for human beings called Eden. It's this in between space with material properties and with spiritual properties that is our true home, our garden, our paradise that, I mean, there's a lot to that that, we could unpack. So then when we dig into that a little bit further, we think, well, what are the when we those 2 primary components, physical and spiritual, yield in their tension Other ways of thinking that might be helpful to talk about. So we talk about the social dimension, Genesis 2 18, it's not good for the for the soul, for the man to be alone.
Bill Dogterom:So we are built for relationships. So the social dimension, the intellectual dimension, which is how we apprehend and process reality, how we assign it meaning, how we understand what beauty is or what, the meaning of something that has happened to us is, and then the kind of the dashboard indicator of the health of the system, which is the emotions, and they need to be calibrated to reality. They need to be understood for the purpose they serve. The 2 primary emotions are love and joy. The 3 secondary and protective emotions are, for our purposes in our conversation, at least anger and sadness and fear.
Bill Dogterom:Mhmm. So those are are ways of thinking, ways of talking. And, again, even when we assign labels to parts, our human perspective, our human tendency is to say, well, let's pick it apart, and it's always gotta be seen, No, the soul is the whole. So when we talk about soul care, then long way to get to the answer, we're talking about that whole person. Yeah.
Bill Dogterom:Social, intellectual, emotional, physical, spiritual, and and and being human, be being a person. So that's where we started, Genesis chapter 2. We become a living soul. We become a living being, and then Genesis 3, it falls apart. We lose the central defining connection that enables us to be human with our connection with God is severed.
Bill Dogterom:Now our connections with each other are severed, and our connections with ourselves are severed. We disintegrate. We become less than human. Mhmm. So soul care is a way of partnering with the spirit to restore us to personhood, to enable us to be human again, to enable us, to become more fully ourselves, who God has called and created us to be, which in the Christian understanding is to become more like Christ who got being human.
Bill Dogterom:Exactly. Right. So soul care is I, I think of it sometimes as, as 2 parts, so cure, how do we stop blowing ourselves up and soul care? How do we become righteous? How do we stop sinning and how do we become righteous?
Bill Dogterom:So those two elements are kind of gathered up under the title of Soul Care.
Darren Gailndo:There there is a there's a lot there, and you I can I can tell as as well as everyone else that's listening to this that you have spent a lot of time not only thinking about this, pondering it, wrestling with it, but also talking about it?
Bill Dogterom:Mhmm.
Darren Gailndo:And it's so helpful. So don't don't worry if you're listening to this and and you're wanting to, you know, to go back and relisten to it again already. I wanna I wanna slow down a little bit to unpack, some of that stuff. Sure. But I think the most helpful thing for us, as as you mentioned before, the Hebrew language and one word can be used for multiple different meanings.
Darren Gailndo:Mhmm. In our modern context, we are you're being very intentional with your word choices because this is a framework which it gets particular for different reasons. And I think, some big misses that we have, in in communication is that I can use this word to convey something that has nothing to do with that word. Yeah. And I think that I'm getting my point across, but it's getting lost in translation.
Darren Gailndo:Right. And so even the word soul, you know, can be associated with something that is, like, you know, emotions only Mhmm. Or something that is, like, you know, deep in an artist's heart that, you know, I I painted this picture from my very soul, or something that wants to convey depth or, you know, you put effort into something. Right. And so we're we're choosing to use the word soul in this context, expressed in those 5 different ways, which I want to get into, and, I'll try to I'll try to to stop you if I want to clarify some of the word choices in all this, but I I did want to to mention that, like, you're you're using intentional words, and let's slow down to make sure that we understand the meaning and the meaning of those particular words and how they fit into this larger framework.
Darren Gailndo:Because I can already see how each branch touches so many other things in relationships and mothers and fathers and
Bill Dogterom:Right.
Darren Gailndo:And and, you know, even at work environments and how we how we perceive ourselves, how we want people to see us Yeah. And manipulate. All the all the stuff is is just meshed in there. So let's, let me have you, say again the 5 parts of the soul.
Bill Dogterom:K. The two primary are physical and spiritual, material and spiritual, natural and supernatural, any way you wanna think of that. And then the 3 secondary are social and intellectual with emotional serving as kind of the dashboard indicator of the health of the system. You can, so you can think of soul as the, as the, as the combination of the whole and or the kind of, operating system that enables it to function. So in Christian circles, we talk for example, about soul, but what we often really mean is spirit.
Bill Dogterom:And so the soul care becomes about praying more, worshiping, or reading scripture, and all of those things are wonderful. But if we haven't attended to or are listening to our body, the outcome will not be health and wholeness. If we're not paying attention to our social relationships. And you notice how in scripture, God is very intentional on this. You can't have a healthy spirituality without it working its way out in a healthy community.
Bill Dogterom:You can't say you love God and not love your brother. So the social spiritual connection is made, right? And of course there's all kinds of ways of talking about this. So anytime we attach labels or titles to things, we are kind of glom onto them and hang on. And even in the use of those five terms, I'm aware that, you know, we could get stuck in, in thinking about it, but it's just a way of saying, what does it mean to be a person?
Bill Dogterom:What does it mean to be human and why aren't we, and what are the implications of that? And how do we get back home in in in wholeness, and what are the strategies and steps by which that might be accomplished?
Darren Gailndo:Yeah. So let's get started with one thing, is there's not a hierarchy is what I'm hearing. There's no hierarchy of what part is more important or Right. You know, for those of us that are wanting to really wrestle with this and engage with it, there's not gonna be this you have to start here and you have to end here, type of a snap. Yeah.
Bill Dogterom:Yeah. And each person's probably gonna approach Soul Health from differing perspectives and then think that's the only one that matters. Physical is a strong one in our current culture. Spiritual is a strong one in Christian culture. In psychology, we might think of the, the language of the emotions, right.
Bill Dogterom:Or, or family history. It's interesting again, though, when we come to the new Testament, the word for soul is psyche.
Darren Gailndo:So
Bill Dogterom:it's the same word that we understand is the root for our current understanding of psychology, which has also gotten hijacked, and in some ways. And so we have missed, I think, the holistic richness of of that term as well, potentially.
Darren Gailndo:Yeah. And and we'll we'll be careful, you know, to to make sure that we don't get hung up on words. Right.
Bill Dogterom:Because of But words do matter.
Darren Gailndo:They do matter, and but we don't want that to be a stumbling block. We want to invite people into the meeting.
Bill Dogterom:And and I think even having said what I just said, soul care includes, but is more than a psychological counseling
Darren Gailndo:Mhmm.
Bill Dogterom:For example. It involves that for those who are experts in that area. I'm not. I'm not a psychologist. I'm a pastor.
Bill Dogterom:So I need to have, an awareness of where souls, psyches, get get broken or hurt or wounded and what wholeness might look like in those particular instances.
Darre Galindo:So
Bill Dogterom:it's a a a fairly flexible, fairly fluid concept properly understood, but the outcome is always wholeness, which again, as disciples of Jesus, we find kinda gathered up in the understanding of Christlikeness.
Darren Gailndo:Mhmm. There's one analogy that I'm thinking of in my head that is helpful for me, and I'll share it. Hopefully, it will be helpful. I'm a drummer. I'm a percussionist, and the way in which you tune a drum, it relies on the the congruency of tuning on each lug that surrounds the drum head.
Darren Gailndo:Yep. And, you know, thinking in terms of each one of these 5 parts that contribute to the whole, is similar to the stretching that happens on a drum head trying to achieve a proper tone. Mhmm. If one of the lugs is too tight or too loose, the whole thing doesn't sound as awesome. And so, you know, thinking about all these, we can tend to wanna focus on one or the other, which is which is fine.
Darren Gailndo:We're not supposed to get it perfect the the first time around. But as we get started, that was something that was helpful. Like, we we want wholeness in all of this, and it it does require a level of, you know, awareness and intentionality with every part as opposed to just, you know, physical, and I'm gonna run a marathon, and I'm dedicating my life, and then I, you know, forget everything else. Right. My my soul is gonna be lopsided, and I'm gonna be out of tune in a sense.
Darren Gailndo:Mhmm. Alright. So I'm gonna I'm gonna test myself. There is physical, spiritual, relational, emotional, and intellectual. Right.
Darren Gailndo:Wow. I I'm so proud of myself. Yeah. Every time I hear you talk about it, you just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. But, okay.
Darren Gailndo:So the so I'm gonna say that again. Physical, spiritual, relational, emotional, and intellectual. Right. In no particular order.
Bill Dogterom:No. The I'm I mean, I think the the two primary ones are the ones intention. Right? The social and intellectual are the entry level ones. They're secondary, they're the friendship components.
Bill Dogterom:Right? But the 2 primary ones of, physical and spiritual are the ones that are are most intention and hold the rest and are served then by the rest.
Darren Gailndo:Okay. So, yeah, let's let's start there. In physical, I think a lot of Christians tend to veer away from conversations about body because Mhmm. There's so much of a primary focus on, you know, heaven or the new body or, you know, spiritual things and, you know, eating habits or exercise or how healthy your your physical body is is of very much secondary importance. But but speak to us about why our bodies matter in this holistic approach to soul care.
Bill Dogterom:Yeah. Of certainly. And I mean, that's the, that's the tension. We tend to emphasize the spirituality piece and our body is, is the is either is the kind of the platform of the soul's life. That is to say, it's how we apprehend.
Bill Dogterom:It's how we experience. It's how we are experienced. It's a primary gateway to intimacy, which I think scripture defines as to know and be known. Our first way of knowing other persons are through their voice or through their affect or through body language. And so bodies will always have a body to be a soul means always those 2 elements are in intention.
Bill Dogterom:The body we will have will change. Paul says that there will be a spiritual body, appropriate to the age to come following resurrection. And, but that still means a body and maybe one like Christ's was after his resurrection. And we can only surmise what that might be like and look like. So the body is, is, a, I mean, it body has its own memory.
Bill Dogterom:The body has its own way of communicating, and, and the health of the body, actually, the often the pain in the system of the soul often surfaces first in the body Mhmm. With physical ailments of, you know, a twinge in the neck, a tightness, a stress. Well, that's not the body stress. That's the body trying to manage the stress in the rest of the system. And so the body and, and care for, the body becomes an important part of soul care generally.
Bill Dogterom:So diet exercise, rest, paying attention to, the, the signals, the message, the body's trying to convey the book popular. Now the body keeps score, is a helpful way to start to think about this as more than, just, you know, the kind of the container, for the good stuff. And, and, and the danger of course, is that in my growing up in a Pentecostal holiness kind of tradition, the body was a problem. It was where desire that morphed into lust. It was where, all kinds of other, concerns dwelled and soul care wants to kind of restore the image of body so that it it is an adequate representation of what God created it for in the first place.
Darren Gailndo:Mhmm. What would you say to someone who is, perhaps hypersensitive or they naturally gravitate towards things about their body, just naturally.
Bill Dogterom:Yeah. So that becomes a primary way of disciple making then. Remember, we either have the outcome of conforming where we let structures and systems outside of us determine health of the body, appearance of the body, value of the body, or we are transformed, letting the life of the spirit speak truth to and validate and honor the the body as part part of it, part of the life of the whole. So, that's the that's the the challenge is to how do we maintain a healthy perspective without idolizing, but also without demonizing. So the flesh, different word, is the pro a problem.
Bill Dogterom:That's the the the rebellious self, this the self in self destruction mode. The is but the body, the disciplines, the practices, the spiritual practices that we've talked about in other places can help us, you know, partner with the spirit as he moves us away from self destruction towards wholeness Mhmm. At the physical level even.
Darren Gailndo:Yeah. I'm thinking about also, like, our our the position of our body can help, you know, initiate some imagination that helps us better connect with God. You know? There's a reason why holding out our hands Yep. During prayer, like, it means something because it engages our imagination.
Darren Gailndo:It it Yeah. Gets our attention.
Bill Dogterom:Right.
Darren Gailndo:And there's so many examples in the Bible of something happening to the body that God wants to use to draw us closer to him. Yep. I love that. So the the next thing, the the spiritual aspect of the soul, tell us a little bit more
Bill Dogterom:about that. The one that we probably think of as most and properly so, is the kind of the breath of God. It's the very life force of the body, that is the soul is built for the breath of God and Paul's regular admonition to people is to be being filled with the spirit. There's a breathe in, breathe out component here. So, the spiritual component has to be kept, light and flexible and open, and it is how we primarily connect with the supernatural aspect of our our being with God in prayer, is is our body prays, our emotions pray, other parts of us pray, but that that spiritual connection is established kind of a channel, if you will, through that spiritual aspect or spiritual realm, but it, again, has to be seen in tension with the other components.
Bill Dogterom:It's it can't be isolated. You can't become Peter Scarzaro's language. You can't become spiritually healthy if you're not also emotionally healthy. Mhmm. Spiritually mature if you're not also emotionally mature.
Bill Dogterom:So it's only it's unimportant, like all of the others, but it is the eternity in our hearts, longing, desperate for God. It finds its life in God. It's built for God, and often the language of the spirit throughout old and new testament is the language of hunger, the lang language of desire, of longing that, seeks relationship with God as the primary kind of ground of our being.
Darren Gailndo:And what would you what would you say to someone who is, you know, maybe hyper spiritual or, you know, sees demons or angels in every object or they want to always go back to it's it's all about, spiritual things.
Bill Dogterom:Yeah. I I think we need your voice. We need your contribution. We need folks who help us see that, but then we also recognize you need folks who see none of that, and, they're not thereby less spiritual. They just apprehend the spiritual realm in a different way.
Bill Dogterom:So it is a way of saying, maybe that kind of spirituality, that hyper spirituality is a distraction from wholeness of the soul because it's so feels so, esoteric. It feels so special to have had those experiences, that kind of moment that we neglect the rest of the system. And that then ultimately is is, is self, destructive as well Mhmm. And can become, really unhealthy.
Darren Gailndo:Yeah. Which part do you wanna move on to next?
Bill Dogterom:Up to
Darren Gailndo:you. Which one could I remember? I'll
Bill Dogterom:look at the social
Darren Gailndo:Let's look at the social one.
Bill Dogterom:Social one is we're built for relationship. You see this in 2/18 in the same passage in Genesis were built. It's not good for us to be in isolation. So the soul needs to be whole, properly boundaried in all 5 of those dimensions, so that it can, like a a a piece of a jigsaw puzzle, fit into place in relation to other parts of the puzzle, each contributing their own to the larger whole. So the social relationships are, how we orient and engage with, with other people and how we find ourselves in community and how we, manage, our our dependencies and our independencies and our interdependencies.
Bill Dogterom:We we come into relationships properly understood with a certain, vulnerability as well as a certain contribution factor. We bring things, but sometimes what we bring is our need
Darren Gailndo:Mhmm.
Bill Dogterom:Of relationships. And intimacy, the knowing and being known, requires properly boundaried selves in all 5 of those dimensions, because each social relationship we have, offers up layers of of knowing that is appropriate to to the relationship. The kind of intimacy that I have with a close friend is different than the intimacy that I have with a a professional, like a a doctor or a psychologist. The kind of intimacy I share with my children or my wife is different than the intimacy I share even with my closest friends. So, the coworker, the patterns of social relationships, that enable us to be human, and and then within that, those those really kind of aware that awareness of kind of circles of intimacy that because we can't have the same layers and levels of intimacy with everybody all the time.
Bill Dogterom:Jesus didn't. We can't. So not everybody who wants to get in gets in. I I but I do need to acknowledge my need of others. And so the social aspect is how we how we, begin to engage others, on on the journey to health.
Bill Dogterom:The intellectual, would you just wanna keep going with that?
Darren Gailndo:I have a follow-up on that one. The social one, I love. You you've talked a number of time a number of times about this where we as individuals are incapable of reflecting the whole image of God Right. By ourselves. Right.
Darren Gailndo:And there's no way that we can possibly have relationships without other people.
Darre Galindo:That's right. And that's what
Darren Gailndo:we're supposed to operate in.
Bill Dogterom:And we can't even be ourselves without other people.
Darren Gailndo:Mhmm.
Bill Dogterom:That's the point of it doesn't work. It's not good for the man to be alone. It's not just a simple description of male female relationships. It's a description of a soul in isolation. And, and so how do we honor the fact that in order to be human, I need other humans with whom to be in an appropriately intimate relationship.
Darren Gailndo:Yeah. We're we're part of that mosaic. We're a beautiful picture together. Yeah. Yeah.
Darren Gailndo:I wanna go into that more, but, I think we'll have plenty of conversations around this Sure. In the future. But, yes, moving on, to intellectual.
Bill Dogterom:So intellectual is, how how we think, how we process reality, how we, interpret. The body is absorbing all of these images and fragrances and sounds and tactile sensations, all of all in the brain, the mind begins to process, assign them meaning. We have an experience in us in a relationship, and the brain helps us to know what that means. It's not always accurate. How I remember a moment is more telling than the moment itself.
Bill Dogterom:Mhmm. How I reflect on it, that that memory piece assigns meaning. Right? So the brain needs training. The brain needs help.
Bill Dogterom:It's not this kind of ruler that gets it right all the time. It's shaped by emotion. It's shaped by previous experience. It's shaped itself by relationships. And the mind also includes the intellect also includes, some embodied ways of knowing, some muscle memory that we aren't consciously thinking about as we're doing them.
Bill Dogterom:Think about driving a car. You don't want to be driving a car with somebody who has to think about driving a car, because by the time a decision needs to be made, it's too late. Mhmm. So you need somebody who has encephalized the function, who has embodied to a certain degree, and and is working on the on the kind of subconscious level, on the muscle memory level. And you think about that with music or art or any of those other kinds of dynamics.
Bill Dogterom:And the, the trick is always is is the brain, is the mind, is the way that we remember, the way we process information, is it, is it accurate? Is it anchored to reality? Is it reflecting what actually is the case? And so the intellect is needing to be, regularly examined, and this is where, again, the work of the holy spirit comes in. It's by the renewing of our mind that we are brought to places of transformation.
Bill Dogterom:It's when it's all done, we will have, Paul says, the mind of Christ. This astonishing kinda statement that he slips in at the end of a of a of a challenging passage in just, oh, wait. This is yes. To have the mind of Christ is to actually be fully human. He got that that right, to think in complete concert with reality.
Bill Dogterom:That's astonishing. To think something that Christ would think or or think about something. Right? So Paul's way of managing, how we how we process our reality. He says, think about things that are
Darren Gailndo:Mhmm.
Bill Dogterom:True and honorable and lovely and pure, etcetera. Not think pure things. Think about things that are pure. We can't control our thoughts, per se, in that same way, but we can choose how our thoughts are are programmed. So, a healthy intellect is one that is curious, is one that is teachable, is one that is humble, is one that is, exploring, the edges of their knowing and doesn't get, stuck in what it already knows, but is able to move with a certain amount of fluidity and flexibility, in response to what's happening in the larger world.
Bill Dogterom:Mhmm.
Darren Gailndo:Yeah. And I feel like in, in some circles, the intellectual part can be more downplayed,
Bill Dogterom:because Or or made more too much of.
Darren Gailndo:Or made too yeah. Made too much of. I'm I'm just thinking of, you know, when we first started the conversation of the the intellect, it almost seemed like, oh, like, how is this gonna compete with emotions or or with the spiritual side
Darre Galindo:of things, which seem like huge, and here's the the intellectual that's just me functioning. That's just me doing things. Mhmm.
Darren Gailndo:Like, we're almost on autopilot, and I think, when you're not aware, it it is kind of telling that, you know, maybe you are living on autopilot in some ways. And we as Christians, let alone human beings, we don't wanna be on autopilot. And we we have a brain Right. To use, and we want to be able to apply that and leverage that for not only the kingdom, but for the the whole of our souls.
Bill Dogterom:Well, especially when we follow one who identified himself as the truth. Jesus said, I'm the way, the truth, and the life. So truth ought to matter to us. Mhmm. Facts ought to matter to us, and truth is defined by the holy spirit.
Bill Dogterom:He he is the spirit of truth. He's he's the one who makes true things true. So when it comes to facts on the ground, when it comes to, positions and places, we, who are disciples of Jesus, ought to contend for the truth over being right, over any other kind of motivation when it comes to intellect. And that means then that I need to be learning. I need to be a lifelong learner in that phrase.
Bill Dogterom:Right. I just need to be stretching so that my my reach exceeds my grasp. Mhmm.
Darren Gailndo:Yeah. I I I think that's one of the pet peeves of mine when I hear someone that has fully come to a conclusion about something and will not accept anything else. Like, I'm done learning, and Yeah. This is who I am.
Bill Dogterom:Yeah. You know? And especially when it's God about whom we speak Uh-huh. Like, you can ever get there.
Darren Gailndo:Yeah. We're funny like that. Yeah. So and and lastly, as we come to emotions, I feel like this is this is a big one, especially in our context. A lot of people are becoming more aware of emotions or how to navigate them or how to process them or there's a lot of psychology, reports coming out nowadays about, you know, parenting or relationships or or, you know, don't don't say yes to a job if you don't love it or, you know, whatever it is.
Darren Gailndo:Like, how do I how do I feel the best? And we we can be governed by our emotions and let let our emotions steer the ship in in a way. Mhmm. And so, talk to me about the emotional aspect of soul.
Bill Dogterom:So the way that I think about this is that there are 2 primary emotions, love and joy, and 3 protector emotions, fear, sadness and anger, and the primary emotions love being the environment within which we are built to live and move and have our being God is love and joy being the, capacity, the energy cell, if you will, of the soul joy, isn't happiness. Joy is, is capacity for life as it is. So those 2 are the primary ones and we need to regularly make sure those are topped up, so to speak. And so on the dashboard of our lives, as I look at the gauges of my emotional well-being, I wanna say, how am I doing at being loved for no good reason? How am I doing at being accepting that I am the beloved of the father, that in me, he is well pleased?
Bill Dogterom:What has mitigated against that? What voices are saying something other than that? Right? And then how how am I doing at at at joy? Is, is the joy Jesus said my joy in you so that your joy might be made full.
Bill Dogterom:How how how is that tank filled? In Paul's language of rejoicing says, basically, fill up that tank, get it, because you're gonna need it. It was joy that enabled Jesus to endure the cross. So joy and love are the the the kind of the emotional, fuel cell, the environment that we live in, right? The energy and the environment then, and this is just almost too simplistic, but for purposes of, of conversation, we think of how the soul, how the emotions protect us, how how anger signals a boundary violation.
Bill Dogterom:Mhmm. How fear signals a threat. How sadness signals a loss. Well, those are all three realities that occur to persons, and the emotions are intended to be kind of lagging indicators of something happening. They identify and help us begin initial processing.
Darren Gailndo:Mhmm.
Bill Dogterom:So a sadness, is the strongest of the emotions, because it gets the most use. We are eternal beings, so everything about us, we will lose
Darren Gailndo:Mhmm. So
Bill Dogterom:that it can be replaced with the next. So we need to get good at honoring what we have, then releasing it when we don't have it anymore, whether it's relationships or a job or a house or whatever it is, then, we have capacity for the receiving of of, you know, whatever life brings to us next. Then fear, there are real threats out there. There are things that wish us harm. We live in a in a universe that is designed for our good, but there are elements and aspects of it that are evil, and presence.
Bill Dogterom:Paul calls them principalities and powers, and sometimes it's even embodied in persons in some way, and we need to be alert and aware of that. So fear, is a, an alert, a dashboard indicator, a red flashing light that says something is a threat. Right? And and, then we know then, oh, okay. So that's what fear's about, to enable us to recognize that something is threatening us.
Bill Dogterom:Mhmm. And then anger is that boundary violation. Somebody's touched us or said something to us that has, or has, has, has done something that has, violated a boundary in any of those 5 areas. Right. And anger signals that red light flashing.
Bill Dogterom:He shouldn't have done that. Should she shouldn't have said that, that was a boundary violation right now. The trick is to make sure those are calibrated to reality. So is what I'm afraid of an actual threat, and is the degree to which I'm afraid of it appropriate to the actual threat is what I'm how I'm sad appropriate to the nature of the loss. I ought to feel sad or at significant catastrophic loss than I do at minor and insignificant loss.
Bill Dogterom:I need, however, to be trained into that. Mhmm. Is the degree of anger, I feel, appropriate to the boundary violation? None of these emotions are intended to be the primary way of responding to the loss or to the, threat or to the boundary violation. Love and joy come in and enable, for example, sadness to respond to loss, honoring, grieving, mourning, but with hope.
Bill Dogterom:Mhmm. Right? Because joy says God can raise the dead. We're not at the end of our losses. It's it's the beginning of a, right, a new, love and joy come in and have a conversation with fear and enable us while still afraid, to face that which we are afraid of with courage.
Bill Dogterom:And to say, yes, there is something to fear, but it's not we're not gonna let fear push us around, which is the point you were making earlier. Just it's a lagging indicator, not a leading indicator. It's a it's a a thermometer, not a thermostat. Mhmm. And then love and joy come to anger and say thank you for the indication of a boundary violation.
Bill Dogterom:Now, how are we going to respond to that? Do we need to reestablish the boundary? Do we need to absorb the the the, violation and and internalize it and neutralize it, thereby turning the other cheek, for example. Mhmm. So those 3 protector emotions, are intended, as I understand it, to be ways of, of identifying, but then letting love and joy come in and help us to process each of them.
Bill Dogterom:So that that requires careful calibration. Mhmm. Right? I need to learn how to be human in Jesus' name. I would need to learn how to be sad the way Jesus would if he were sad.
Bill Dogterom:I need to learn how to be afraid the way Jesus was when he was. I need to learn how to be angry the way Jesus was when he was. Mhmm. So because he got being human. Right.
Bill Dogterom:Yeah. So soul care trains me in those emotions in Jesus' name.
Darren Gailndo:Yeah. I love that. I am putting a visual to the, as you would call it, the dashboard indicators, in the in the movie The Hobbit, or even in the books when Bilbo has a sword sting and it glows blue, and it was I think it was made in gondolin and, you know, histories and whatever. But it the fact that it glows blue is a warning sign there's danger close.
Bill Dogterom:Mhmm.
Darren Gailndo:And in the moment, he's not gonna use the blue color to do anything with it. He's gonna draw the sword and and be ready for the action, and so it's almost like the indicator, you know, when when we see the check engine light or more immediately the the low gas or the low energy on our vehicles, it doesn't mean like, oh, I'm ready for a road trip. It means, where's a gas station? Because I don't wanna be on the side of the road Right. On an empty tank.
Darren Gailndo:Right. Right. Like, it it's an indicator that that leads to some sort of action Mhmm. To respond.
Bill Dogterom:Mhmm.
Darren Gailndo:And I love that the the response, the energy for response is anchored in love and joy.
Bill Dogterom:Right.
Darren Gailndo:That I I'm learning something right now, with that because, yeah, emotions are so, complex, and and we can be driven by them in so many ways. Very much. The imagery in the in the Pixar film Up is what I I think maybe a lot of people, especially parents, might have in the forefront of, you know, what it what it what does it look like when we actually let anger drive? It's not not good for anybody
Bill Dogterom:else. Know.
Darren Gailndo:But what happens when when our emotions are calibrated correctly and a part of a a larger ecosystem of health in our soul that we can be angry and operating as a human should, just like, you know, Jesus when he was angry. The same thing when Jesus was sad. The same thing when Jesus was was happy and joyful. And we want to we wanna be like Jesus and how he was emotional.
Bill Dogterom:Mhmm.
Darren Gailndo:Bill, do you have any any other closing thoughts about, SoulCare for us to to wrestle with or think about?
Bill Dogterom:Yeah. Probably the main thing is to say, you know, any language we use is gonna be hopelessly simplistic, and and limiting. So these are just, for me at least, ways of beginning a larger conversation. Soul care is not, what I like to say is self care is not selfish. It's good stewardship.
Bill Dogterom:So God has given you a self. God has given you a soul. How are you stewarding it? How are you caring for it? And these 5 kind of points of examination in partnership with the spirit, because we're not very good at looking in that 5 dimensional mirror and seeing what is actually there.
Bill Dogterom:But when the spirit enables us to see, then, we can start to move more and more towards reality and towards wholeness. Mhmm. So Soul Care is a lifelong practice and discipline in partnership, and, it's essentially what pastoring means. And so that is really the larger invitation to holistic living. Mhmm.
Darren Gailndo:I love it, and we're we're so grateful as a community to learn about this from you, and we want to make this a continuing conversation. We've had, you've had lots of talks about SoulCare over the years. And with this podcast, we wanna be able to, to just drill down into even more, depths with this, to help not only nourish our souls. We don't want to just make good content for you to say, oh, that was a good point, but we want to to integrate this with our lives and living, through house churches, through serving, through participation, through generosity here at Garden Church and beyond. And so thank you so much, Bill, for for sharing your wisdom.
Bill Dogterom:I look forward to next.
Darren Gailndo:I look forward to next time as well.
Darre Galindo:Wow. So good and such a good conversation with pastor Bill. Let's review those 5 different parts together, physical, spiritual, emotional, intellectual, and relational. I hope that you keep these in the forefront of your mind as we seek to just let this permeate in our lives and wash through us as the holy spirit does a work in our hearts. So we wanna have pastor Bill back next time to continue this conversation around soul care, and I'm really looking forward to it.
Darre Galindo:Until then, we bless you, and thank you for listening to the podcast.