Ep. 240 Richard Beck - The Shape of Joy - Shifting Culture

Episode Transcript
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Richard Beck (00:00):
What we're discovering when we look at

(00:01):
flourishing people, people whosay they live deeply meaningful
lives that that they are notstuck in their heads. They are
not chasing self esteem througha hero a hero game, but they are
rather turning outward. Youmusic.

Joshua Johnson (00:32):
Hello and welcome to the shifting culture
podcast in which we haveconversations about the culture
we create and the impact we canmake. We long to see the body of
Christ, look like Jesus. I'myour host. Joshua Johnson, the
conversation today really getsat the heart of our modern
mental health crisis. RichardBeck, author of the new book The
shape of joy, takes us into howour cultural obsession with

(00:55):
introspection and the pursuit ofself esteem has actually
undermined our well being. Hetraces this back to key
philosophical and psychologicalfigures like Descartes and Freud
who ushered in this inward turn.
Andy shows how this has led tothings like excessive
rumination, a fragile sense ofself worth tied to external

(01:15):
achievements and an inability tofind true meaning and joy. But
the real power of thisconversation is how Beck then
points us towards analternative, a path of
transcendence, of finding ouridentity and security in
something greater thanourselves. We take an outward
turn to receiving from thetranscendent one. He unpacks the

(01:37):
psychological benefits andpractices like gratitude, awe
and spiritual connection, and hechallenges us to move beyond
just insight and self analysistowards more embodied,
experiential ways of cultivatingwell being. It's a rich
discussion that really gets atthe heart of our modern malaise
and points toward a more joyfuland grounded way of being

(01:59):
definitely a conversation worthdiving into. And after listening
to this episode, I wouldencourage you to go back and
listen to the episode withAndrew root, titled The Age of
secular mysticisms, which divesinto a lot of what we talk about
here. Here is my conversationwith Richard. Beck, Richard,
welcome to shifting culture.

(02:21):
Really, really excited to haveyou on thank you so much for
joining me. That's

an honor to be here, looking forward to the
conversation. Yeah, I'm

excited to jump into the shape of joy this new
book. I think it's reallyspecial, and it's something that
is needed in our day and age. SoI'd just love to just jump in to
it and just start to diagnosewhere we are as a culture. So
maybe get into some Descartesand Freud where we have gotten

(02:49):
to. And what are we all aboutright now in our culture?

Yeah, sure. The the central thesis of the book
is right there in the title,that joy has a shape. I guess.
Another way to think about itis, mental health has a
geometry. And what I mean bythat is, is that scholars have
pointed to, not just scholars,but psychologists as well, have
noted how with the dawn of themodern era, that we have made a

(03:16):
very introspective turn inregards to our understanding of
ourself, that we have turnedinward. So a classic example
here would just be the Freudianturn, where Freud argued that
well being is not achievedthrough making contact with a
transcendent reality, but ratheris to go deep into the psyche

(03:38):
and the unconscious to sortthrough all of that and that
when that was done, well then,then one would, you know, come
back out of that inner journeywith reorientation. Another one
from a philosophicalperspective, is Renee Descartes.
That might be a very obscurereference right here, but
Descartes was known for theintrospective term when it came

(04:01):
to epistemology, understandingjust what truth is. And he did
it by his classic turning inwardand starting with his self
knowledge, I think, therefore Iam, and that that, again, is
kind of an inward, subjectiveturn that has culminated in our
current kind of post truthculture, where the self and the
ego gets to define what realityis. So my interest is more on

(04:24):
the Freudian turn because of themental health focus, but, but
philosophers would point toDescartes as the beginning of
this kind of radicalsubjectivism, radical
individualism, radical doubt.
And that has led to kind of ourcurrent crisis about about
truth, which is a whole bigrabbit hole right now in our
culture, yeah,

and that's a big rabbit hole. I mean, that's part
of where deconstruction happensand trying to find your own
truth turning inward. One of thethings I find kind of
fascinating is that Lutherdescribes sin as something that
is curved inward, like sin is acurve. Serve inward into
yourself, and it seems like nowin our in our modern culture, as

(05:06):
we're moving through Descartesand forage, and it's the water
that we swim in, it seems likewe are turning inward to find
ourselves, to find truth and tofind well being and happiness.
Right is to turn inward. How arepeople trying to grasp health
and well being and and truthinward? What's it look like, and

(05:30):
why is it so elusive when weturn inward?

Yeah, so I would argue, when we made this inward
turn, that mental health and theself became very self
referential that we are. We areseeking happiness through an
instrument that is maybe notequipped to give us that sort of
happiness. And so we are kind ofin very introspective and self

(05:55):
referential creatures. And sothere's a couple symptoms of
this that I walked through inthe first part of the book. One
is just data on mentalwandering. The psychologists
when they have asked people, andthey have surveyed using like a
like an app, to just kind oftext people and say, What are
you thinking about right now?
And they've discovered thatalmost half the time our minds

(06:17):
are wondering, so the defaultstate of the brain is just not
present. So we're lost insideourselves, like wandering the
root the the gloomy corridors ofthe of our inner, of our inner
haunted house, in one sense. Butwhat's interesting about that
mental wandering is it's alsoassociated with greater
dissatisfaction with life andunhappiness. So left inside

(06:38):
ourselves, we aren't happy andwe aren't restful. So that's one
thing. I think we've also seenincreasing evidence from the
psychotherapeutic sciences thathave suggested that excessively
introspective therapies actuallymake people worse. Again, that
Freudian assumption that I needto be thrust back myself and

(07:00):
revisit trauma hasn't reallyshown up in the mental health
benefits that we had hoped andthus you're seeing some of the
best therapies of the world,like cognitive behavioral
therapy, acceptance basedtherapy, which is more rooted in
mindfulness, suggests that maybestepping back from the self a

(07:21):
little bit more objectively,gives you a little bit more
resilience and control, insteadof being excessively ruminative
about one's life. The otherthing I would say that we're
also trying to this selfreferential attempt at mental
health is effortful. I am costlytrying to rehabilitate a
negative self talk in my head,and that effort is exhausting

(07:47):
us. And so I spent some time inthe book talking about how, for
a generation, we have predicatedmental health on the achievement
of self esteem, trying toachieve a positive view of
oneself and how how how fragilethat is, but also how much work
it takes to constantly berehabilitating our self regard,
and also how we have investedour meaning in what Ernest

(08:11):
Becker called like a heroproject, or hero game, where we
try to achieve Some sort ofprizes of significance. We all
have different Hero games thatwe play, but how those Hero
games make us vulnerable tofailure, or games of comparison
with others, who, who, whosesuccess threatens my own

(08:33):
achievements. And so that's acreates. It a excessive
preoccupation with how I'm howI'm doing in the world. So yeah,
those are just some quick surveyof some of the Mental Health
landscape and the symptoms wesee that is due to this, this
introspection that we see

on a dive into some of those. Then a little bit
deeper, we're in a space in ourculture now that we have more
knowledge of mental health thanwe have ever before, and we
could all talk the talk, right?
We talk this game, and we don'tall know, like on a deep level,
like you do, of like all what'sunderneath a lot of talk, but we

(09:16):
do use a lot of the phrases totry and work ourselves into a
place of health and well being.
Why is it if we just continuallyruminate on something on the
inside? Why do we get stuckthere and not move outside of
ourselves into more health? Whyis more just more knowledge not

(09:40):
enough, right now? Yeah,

I think one of the deep Freudian assumptions is
that, like insight would becurative, right? That's the
whole idea of psychoanalysis. Igo into myself and through the
analysis, right? And analysis isvery intellectual kind of.
Process that if I achieve adegree of insight, then that

(10:03):
insight would then automaticallylead to to mental well being.
And so achievement of insight isa psychotherapeutic goal.
Figuring myself out is a simpleway to say it. Why do I do what
I do? But I think most of us arehave been aware that insight
might be a necessary part of thetherapeutic journey, but it's

(10:26):
not sufficient. Like you said,we are pretty knowledgeable
about ourselves, especially ifyou are pretty introspective
person. You've gone throughtherapy, and if I sit you down
and go like, why do you do whatyou do? Why are you so
triggered? How you know we can,we can narrate that actually at

(10:47):
a pretty professional level,like I can tell you exactly what
my problems are. I can tell youso so I have all that insight,
but I still find myself unableto control or direct myself. And
so the lights are maybe on onthe inside, but I still lack
certain kind of capacities forbehavioral change. And there's
actually whole like this iswhere the cognitive behavioral

(11:08):
psychologists would step in andsay that that insight might not
even be sufficient. I mean,necessary, like getting to the
root of why we are the way weare might not even be the point.
The question is, if you want tochange, let's focus on that.
That'd be a very behavioraltake. And interestingly, those

(11:29):
behavioral problem solving takestend to be the most empirically
validated psychotherapies aswell. So So anyway, that I think
that's one of the issues there,is, what is the role of insight
in mental health? And I thinkwe've been given that
therapeutic, the Freudian story,that insight, if I just could

(11:50):
figure myself out, then Ichange. And I think we're
realizing finally, like, that'snot necessarily true. You can
have accurate insight and stillstruggle with yourself.

I mean, the lens in which I view the world a lot
is I try to view the lensthrough through Jesus. I really
like Jesus a lot. Jesus ispretty amazing. Yes, amen, and
but one of the things it feelslike, as he as a rabbi, as
somebody, he actually broughtpeople into some some behavioral

(12:20):
change through experientiallearning, through more like
places where you're going to goout and do it, we're going to
debrief the actual experience ofwhat you have had to figure out,
oh, what you were doing in thepast actually maybe wasn't
working well. And there's a newway that I'm actually appointing

(12:43):
you to that actually helps youand gives you some some health
and well being, and it expandswhat I'm doing here, too. It's
just an interesting thing, Ithink, for for us in the West,
as we've moved into a a more ofthis talk model of like we're
going to to talk ourselves into,into something without the

(13:06):
experiential if we move intothis, this space of of
counselors, psychologists, ofpeople trying to get therapy and
working through some of theirdepression, anxiety or whatever
mental health issues thatthey're working through. Has
there been any type ofapprenticeship or experience

(13:28):
that you that people arestarting to to walk through that
is not just a, you know, lay onthe couch session, which can be
helpful, but what I'm justcurious if there's anything else
that's happening right now thatmay look a little bit more

(13:49):
experiential than before.

Yeah, that's a that's a fascinating question. I
think my initial answer is, youknow, not, not that I've seen in
the mental health industry. Ithink that the mental health
industry is still pretty muchgoverned by what we'd call the
medical model, so that that theperson, the client, has a

(14:13):
diagnosis, the diagnosis ischaracterized by symptoms, they
go to therapy, and that thetherapy is meant to alleviate
those symptoms, and that modelof going to see a therapist in a
clinic to really alleviatesymptoms is still very medical
in its approach. But what you'repointing to is is this great

(14:36):
tradition, not just inChristianity, but across world
religions, about the art ofliving well, and psychology
hasn't really approached it muchthat way, those experiential
things about the art of living,the virtue traditions where we
point to exemplars and we followthem, or we apprentice beside

(14:58):
people and. So you're going tosee more those kinds of, what we
would call the Christiantradition, like a spiritual
formation practice, where I'mbeing formed more in the in the
faith traditions. Now to beclear spirit. So spiritual
direction might be a part ofthat. But even spiritual
direction still has a kind ofone on one I go in for my

(15:20):
spiritual direction, and has akind of quasi therapeutic
milieu, so I'm not literally,like living alongside my
spiritual director, and so Ihaven't seen a lot that has
that. And I do think that'smaybe the one thing that as
Christians and churches look atthe missing piece in following

(15:44):
Jesus is that whole followingpiece? Where is that occurring
in my in my church, or in mylife, or even in my spiritual
direction? So, so I would say Idon't see a lot of that being
being done, except for informalspaces where we walk alongside
each other in close community,in mentoring relationships and

(16:05):
coaching relationships andthings like that, but it's a
missing piece. Think we'll

pin that and we'll come back to that. But on
the other side of the the talkruminating within ourselves, you
put self esteem and thissuperhero complex that that we
have of trying to get our selfworth and our happiness through
what we achieve and ourachievements. And this is, I

(16:29):
don't know it's, it's very mucha Western construct of like, I
am, what I do, like, this is whywe say like, Hey, if I meet you
somewhere, Richard, what do youdo? That's our first question,
right? It's, it's like, hey,inflate your ego and say, you
know, talk about all the greatthings that you've done. What?

(16:52):
How is this superhero complexplay out in our lives?

So I've taken the idea the superhero complex is
really from a podcast aboutpeople in Seattle that were
dressing up like literalsuperheroes trying to stop crime
on the streets of Seattle. Andthat was the title of the
podcast. Like, why would peopledress up like Batman and Robin
and try to stop crime and and soI

just downloaded all the episodes I'm so excited
to

listen to. It's such a good podcast. But the
point is that seems ludicrous tous, obviously, that people would
do such a thing. But obviously,you know, people were doing this
because it gave their life, kindof a heroic narrative making a
difference. I am a superhero insome sense, and I kind of so I
take that idea and go back to apsychologist named Ernest
Becker, who argues that we allhave, in some degree, another

(17:43):
superhero complex. We all haveour own unique versions of
trying to achieve significance.
So if it's not dressing up likeBatman and stopping crime
downtown, for me, it's being aprofessor and an author. For
you, a podcaster, or a lot ofus, like you'd mentioned, it's
our it's our jobs. It's so it'sthe meritocracy staving off the
status anxieties of beingsuccessful. Our families of

(18:04):
origins have hero narratives,like your families tell you what
a successful life looks like.
And so we all have a selfselected kind of ecosystem of
meaning and significance thatwe're all trying to achieve a
durable sense of worth. Butagain, I The problem with that

(18:24):
is, like I said, is that that isa very effortful game. But
because it's a game, it meansthat your value is, is something
a you're competing for. It'syour value is something you're
straining for. So it'seffortful, so it's it's
competitive, it's rival risks ingames of comparison. Sometimes
we win those games of comparisonwhen we have shame, pride or

(18:48):
superiority, but sometimes weare losing those games. So it's
envy, jealousy, insecurity,inferiority. So it's rival
risks. It's effortful, but it'salso like precarious it's
something that you can lose, andso just the fact that you're
trying to achieve self esteemmeans that's a game you can

(19:08):
lose, which means your value isalways in play. And that's where
I think we see a lot of thefragility, the loss of kind of a
psychological resiliency.
Because my my worth is somethingI can lose, and thus I stay on a
kind of a hamster will ofstriving to kind of keep that

(19:31):
game afloat.

Yeah, and we try to keep up, and we keep up and
we gotta, and we could never doenough that will actually play
into this place of scarcity,right? That we aren't enough,
even though we may have a fewexternal things on the outside
to go, oh, in this moment, youfeel like you're enough, you've
been validated, right now, butnow, what's next? Right after

(19:57):
that? Right? How is scarce? Thetearing us up and the inside
that we're not enough.

Yeah, Brene Brown calls it like the never enough
problem. And the point being is,if you stand still, as you were
describing, if you stand still,somebody's advancing out in
front of me. And so to becontent to be stand still, it
feels like settling. And that'swhere that, that comparison
comes in. I see somebodyadvancing beyond me in some sort

(20:28):
of metric. So feeling not enoughin myself, an erotic scarcity in
myself, is the is the fuel thatdrives that, that here, hero,
game. And so one of the turns Imake in the book is kind of this
new interest in psychologicalcircles on the psychological

(20:49):
value of humility, which seemsstrange because a lot of us that
were great, raised inconservative religious
backgrounds, would hear, you'dbe surprised to hear that
humility is the secret to movingto psychological resiliency,
because humility is perceived asthinking less of yourself or
denigrating yourself or knockingyourself down. But instead, what

(21:13):
psychologists are discoveringthat humility is two things,
right? What's many things, butmainly, it's rooted in a secure
identity. So to your point,you've overcome in a neurotic
scarcity, right? So it's rootedin a stable identity. Once you
then have that stable identity,then you can become self
forgetful that, because at thatpoint, my achievements cannot be

(21:37):
diminished by other people. Ifeel secure in them. So that's
the paradox of humility. It'srooted in a deep ego strength
and an ego security. And thatego security gives you the
capacity to be other orientedtowards, you know, in a non
competitive kind of way, becausenothing's at stake for me in
this interaction. And so youkind of see that, you know,

(21:58):
biblically, you see that whenJesus, like washes the disciples
feet, right at the beginning ofthat nerve, it says Jesus, you
know, knew where he came fromand knew where he was going, so
he's doing that act of service,not out of shame, not out of
he's not being diminished orhumiliated. Anyway, no to the

(22:18):
disciples, it looks like he'shumiliating himself, like they
want him to step out of thatspace of service, because they
they are still dealing with kindof the shame issues. But Jesus
is shame resilient, because backto the point of scarcity,
because he's not operating outof scarcity. He's operating out
a sense of being enough, right?
He knows where his identity isgoing, and thus gives him this

(22:40):
kind of radical capacity to beindifferent to social stigma and
shaming. Yeah,

that's pretty amazing, that humility can do
that. That is so right view isrooted in our identity. And
oftentimes, I think these twoparallels that you're you're
talking about is where we oftentry to find our identity by
turning inward, of seeking outthe the truth of of who we are,
and that truth is then elusive.
It's just my truth, right that,and it's just an elusive truth

(23:09):
that today, I may, you know, bemy identity as this thing, and
tomorrow it may be somethingelse, or it's found in my
achievements and our worth andmy external circumstances, and
that's a quick little question Ihave that a lot of times. I
think that people think thatachievement and success and

(23:30):
actually doing the work is alittle bit of turning away from
yourself, of moving towardssomething else. But how is that
achievement place and that herocomplex, how is that still a
place of turning inward, eventhough you are trying to achieve
self worth and esteem fromoutside of yourself in the

(23:54):
external circumstances that youhave

again, because the game of significance you're
playing is a self selected one.
These are metrics that youselected for yourself. Now
obviously you probably imbibethem or absorb them from the
culture, again, family oforigin, the larger culture
you're a part of. And we're justdeeply social creatures, and so
that's what shame is. Shame isfundamentally a social emotion.

(24:22):
I know shame has beenstigmatized a great deal in a
lot of mental health literature,but it's just a shame is just,
you know, a social concern aboutmy reputation and how people
look at me. And we need that,right, like we need a kind of an
internal monitor of that, butbecause we're such socially
conditioned creatures, thosethose metrics of success tend to

(24:44):
be adopted by myself. I performthose for other people. But the
but the trouble with that? CarlRogers, famous pioneering
psychologist, talked about whathe described as like conditions
of worth. Self, where we seekthe positive regard of other
people, and so we often performfor those conditions of worth to

(25:05):
get that positive like regard.
But that then twists the self,because then we begin trying to
satisfy a spouse or satisfy ourfamily or satisfy our workplaces
or some other person gazing atus. So, so to your point, in one

(25:25):
sense, it's it's, yeah, maybeless an example of an inward
turn there, but still gettinglost in the gaze of other
people. And given that all ofthose other people are caught up
in their own hero games, wesuddenly find ourselves, not
only do I find a lack ofsecurity in myself, I can't find

(25:46):
it in the gaze of other peopleas well, because as we know, as
we trust our worth to otherpeople, that is a very
precarious and dangerous kind ofthing. And I think this is one
of the reasons why you see amongadolescents that gaze of other
people is now a screen. It's thesocial medias, it's the likes,
it's the attention. And howwe've seen with Jonathan heights

(26:10):
work, you know the anxiousgeneration, how living in the
gaze of other people has alsoradically destabilized the
mental health of a generation.
So it's not so the so the thescarcity of myself, it
multiplied in the scarcity ofothers. And so we're just kind
of lost. We can't find any firmground.

So it feels to me like it's a house of mirrors,
right? Yes,

exactly. I think that's the perfect metaphor,
yeah.

But Jesus was rooted in his identity. He knew
who's he was and where he camefrom, right? And I think a lot
of times we try to findourselves through like, who am
I? Who am I? Who am I? He'sactually getting his identity
from, you know, who's he was,and he found it right, right
there at His baptism, right?
That heavens opened up. Thefather says, This is My beloved

(26:59):
Son, in whom I'm I am wellpleased it's right there. That's
his identity. He knows it isrooted. How do we then secure
our identity so that we can thenbe humble, to quiet our ego and
to live a place of rootednessand groundedness?

Yeah, so that's the last half of the book. Back
to the geometry metaphor. So ifwe've just described a little
bit of how the inward turnedintrospective, self referential
self destabilizes our mentalhealth. And if and if things
like mindfulness and humility,cognitive behavioral therapy.

(27:45):
Stepping back from yourself isjust getting a little distance.
Then the final thing is, whatyou're describing is what I
would call like that outwardturn, the self transcendence.
And that's the interestingstory. Here is how, over the
last 20 years, the rise ofwhat's called Positive
Psychology. This is thescientific study of like
happiness and well being andhuman flourishing. So that's

(28:07):
huge right now in psychology,that what we're discovering when
we look at flourishing people,people who say they live deeply
meaningful lives, that that theyare not stuck in their heads.
They are not chasing self esteemthrough a hero hero game, but
they are rather turning outwardand they and so one of those

(28:33):
places like you're describing iswhat psychologists have
described as mattering.
Mattering, some people wouldcall it existential
significance, even cosmicsignificance. Some psychologists
have described it as likeunconditional positive regard,
rather than conditional positiveregard. But the idea there is

(28:53):
that Brene Brown would call itthat, that what gives us shame
resiliency is feeling worthy oflove and belonging. So that's
mattering, right? Just that youmatter no matter what. And this
is just a constituent fact ofyour existence. So your question
about like, how do you do that?
Well, I think religious people,people, spiritual people, have a

(29:16):
move. They can make that whentheir hero game crashes and
burns and the facts of life arestaring them in the face that
they they can spiritually, go toa place where their value is
held, safe and and transcendscurrent circumstances, and they

(29:40):
can find rest in that space. Ifyou don't have a religious move,
you can make there a spiritualmove, then the only move you can
make is the the one we've beendescribing. Like you got to
resuscitate the game. You got toconjure up a new life story, or
you sank. Yeah, and so, so theSo, how do you rest in that

(30:04):
identity? Well, I don't know ifit's a therapeutic move. I think
it's a religious move. I thinkit's a spiritual move, and the
disciplines of the faithtradition are going to help us
do that. So I would point tothings like not just
mindfulness, but contemplativeprayer to to practices of
receiving grace anew, thoughthose practices, or spiritual

(30:28):
practices, pull me out of myselfand locate my my identity, in
that, in that baptismal locationthat you described, where it's
something I receive, it's notsomething I earn, is something I
receive, and therefore itbecomes a place of rest and not
effort.

Yeah, so it comes from outside of ourselves.
So, you know, things likeAlcoholics Anonymous. Have you
know talked about the higherpower that's been really helpful
for millions of people that havesaid, it's really not just about
me, it's about somebody else, orsomething else, or this, this

(31:08):
higher power. And there are, aredifferent ways to to design.
What is the divine? What is thistranscendent being, thing?
Creator, whatever you want tocall that's outside of
ourselves. What does it looklike to then receive that from

(31:29):
the outside, from outside ofourselves, instead of conjuring
it up from the inside ofourselves?

But yeah, that is tricky, right? Because in many
ways we might, you know, bereplacing one one set of work
for another set of work there. Ido think that we do need to be
intentional about practicing,you know, practicing self
transcendence and and I do thinkthere's ways of doing that,

(31:56):
simple practices and in andyou're right, like, I want to be
generous with whateverspirituality a person is coming
into this conversation with,but, but for example, like one
of the things we know that isthat practices of gratitude,
this is a simple technique ofbeing thankful or saying thanks,

(32:17):
is highly predictive of like,Mental health. So and gratitude
is something I can practice.
Yeah, I have to be intentionalabout it. But it's not really
work to sit there and just saythank you in a gratitude journal
at the end of the day. Likestudies have shown that people
who just do simple gratitudejournals are mentally healthier
and physically healthier andsocially healthier. But what's
interesting about gratitude isthat you're just saying thank

(32:42):
you to what like for life, forthe day, and then, even if you
just have a vague sense of whatyou're saying, thank you to if
that is God or it's a higherPower, the Dutch have a word
called something ism. Ittranslates to something ism,

(33:03):
which I like, which is like, Idon't know what that is out
there. I'm saying thank you tobut it's, it's, it's something,
it's the ground of being and andI think most people get that. I
understand there might be somehardcore materialists and
atheists that just can't evenconceive of that, but I think
most people get what I'mdescribing here, Transcendence
in some way that when I sitthere and just say thank you,

(33:23):
I'm pulled out of my hero game,and I'm just being grateful, and
then I have these mental healthbenefits. So the mind tends to
operate with this flip geometryas I look outward and I say,
thank you. Here's anotherexample, the like the one of the
hottest topics right nowpsychology is awe. Wonder and
awe has been shown to have allthese great mental health

(33:43):
benefits. And and awe isfundamentally an encounter with
a reality bigger than my own.
It's other than my own right.
It's I'm not in my own head.
Back to your uh metaphor, theHall of Mirrors. I'm not in
itself, referential Hall ofMirrors, I am rather out of my
head, making contact withreality other than my own. So

(34:05):
it's not subjective anymore.
It's more objective, and it'sbigger than my reality. And when
I encounter that, the awe isrelated with what psychologists
call the small self. And smallhere is probably not the best
word. A better word might beinterconnected self. When I
connect with the reality otherand bigger than my own, I feel

(34:25):
part of a whole. I feel at oneand in and that's a humble
posture, because I'm not thewhole world, and the whole
world's not riding on me, butI'm also connected in like,
ethical kinds of ways with theworld, like because we're
connected. What I do affectsyou, and it affects the trees,
affects everything, and so Soagain, think that through

(34:48):
connection with the realitybigger than other than my own.
And again, religious people willknow what they you know, know
what they're aiming at there isassociated with better mental
health. And. More pro socialethical behavior. It makes you
healthier and morecompassionate. So again, that's
for so gratitude and all arejust two examples of practices,

(35:10):
because all can be a practicetoo. I can take a walk in
nature. I can expose myself toart. Moral beauty is one of the
biggest predictors of awe. I canexpose myself to heroes, moral
heroes that inspire me, and Ican be alert to just attending

(35:31):
to those acts of kindness in theworld that trigger that feeling
in me so so that's notnecessarily work, gratitude and
all, but I was arguing morepractices of attention that we
can pay to the world that flipthe ego inside out,

you know, just uh, humor me for for a moment, I
I'm really fascinated with ActsTwo in the early church, when
the church first started. And sothese practices that you're
actually talking about arepresent there in the early
church. And one of the things, Ithink we skip over a lot the
signs and wonders being done,it's It's awe and wonder that

(36:16):
the this early church isexperiencing this awe. But then
it's also then, then connectingall of them into a greater
story, a story that's biggerthan themselves, yeah, and
especially for, I mean, for apopulation that was subjugated
under Roman rule, was subjugatedunder the Maccabean rule before

(36:36):
that, and just kept on beingsubjugated that it was a
rumination of, how are we goingto get out of this ourselves?
Are we going to raise up, riseup and be revolutionaries, like,
what? What's going to happen toget us out of this? And then the
actual flow of sharing oneeverything that I have, with one

(36:57):
another, and then connecting toa bigger story, and then things
start to multiply and grow outof that, and it spreads into a
place where there is more healthand well being and happiness,
because they are in a differentstory than they were just, you
know, a week before, of what itlooks like. I just find that

(37:19):
that fascinating. Now, I couldsee all these things in the
early Yeah,

it all connects.
Yeah. So interesting howpsychology is just kind of
catching up with some of thosethings that the faith traditions
have always pointed to, and wesee exemplified in those early
Christian communities, becausethat, you know, that's what was
like. Why were those communitiesso attractive to the poor and
the marginalized, and it wasbecause they found in those

(37:43):
spaces, again, a story biggerthan their own, a mattering, a
cosmic significance, a wonderand awe that made them feel
connected with each other in theKoinonia, the sharing of that
kingdom and so those and thosearen't that's not Just woo, woo
that had like materialmanifestations in the radical
sharing and interdependency andmutuality of those groups. And

(38:05):
so it's the the inside is joyfuland the outside is is loving and
compassionate. And sometimes Ithink that's why a purely
materialistic view of socialchange and activism is, is, is
can be just trapped in anotherkind of hero game, where you
will see in like radicallyactivistic communities, they

(38:28):
just have a very materialistic,Marxist view of social change
that they miss the the awe andthe wonder and the joy and the
compassion they're trying toforce change, like from the
exterior onto the brute, raw,you know, mechanism of the world
and those communities tend toburn out. They're not very

(38:49):
joyful. They struggle a lot.
Deal with burnout themselves. Sothere is something about that
inner, spiritual engine thatlike, almost like a nuclear
reaction that creates, then fromthe inside out, the changed
world that you see demonstratedin Acts two.

Yeah, I just in my day job, I lead a missions
organization, and we have, thisis for all of our missionaries.
We have strategic coaches thatwould help on the ministry side.
Then we have pastoral carepeople that help, you know, with
that, with that side, a lot ofthe times our pastoral care

(39:31):
people say we got to pull themoff. They got to deal with the,
you know, their trauma and theirwounds and stay there. And you
know, the strategic people said,hey, they're doing good work.
Keep keep them on what's whatis, then a balance for all of
us, any of us when we arewounded, when we are hurt, when
we actually do need some somework and some therapy, but we do

(39:53):
know that a lot of our worth andjoy is found from the outside,
from beyond us. So what is. Thethat work and balance to
continue to move beyond us andbe connected to a bigger story,
and to do the work that we needto do to be healthy and whole as
well. Yeah,

because that's the insidiousness of the superhero
complex, isn't it? That even myeven my good work, becomes
another performative metric. Iremember my pastor friends in
the first months of COVID, howtheir mental health kind of
struggled because they weredeprived over that season from

(40:34):
all of those metrics of feedbackand performance. They didn't
realize how connected their selfimage had been to getting up in
front of a group of people andgetting complimented and moving
a crowd and feeling that selfreinforce. And we need all of
that to be clear, like we needfeedback loops, like we want to
have a dopamine hit that givesus pleasure, that that those

(40:56):
reward systems draw deeper inthe work and provide that
motivation, but, but then itthat putrefies, what it becomes
performative, and I'm getting myidentity through this, this
nonprofit or this ministry. Soeven though it was begun with
very altruistic reasons, it canstill be very performative and

(41:18):
like, I'm not at some

sense, yeah, I know that very well,

well. I mean, all I would say is one of the things
i i Like, just tell, tellpeople, is like, you know, go,
go, go, as far as your joy takesyou. Like, let, let joy be like
the check engine light, youknow, in your spiritual car. And
then, if you, if you're, ifyou're starting to do this for,

(41:47):
you know, a buzz of success, oryou start feeling like you're
just grinding away, and that,then that check engine light
kicks back on. And then maybe Ineed to stop and do some work
and recalibrate. And that mightbe therapy, but that might be
just a more intentional practicethat you do daily, to kind of

(42:09):
revisit your source of joy. Youknow, I just, like, for example,
like, I'm dealing with thatright now, just to be
confession, like, I have a newbook out, and I am conscious
every day I get up, I am tryingto fight the battle within

(42:29):
myself to be concerned about howit's doing right now, because,
you know, reviews are appearingon Amazon, so I am overly
invested In, you know, howthat's doing. I'm look, you
know, I want to look at salespeople, and then people make it
worse by they ask me, like,how's the book doing? Like,
well, don't ask me that, becausenow I'm back in my superhero

(42:51):
comic. Like, I was doing fineuntil you brought it up, but now
that you mention it, um, now I'mthinking about it so. So I think
all of us have to just realizehow insidious Those games are.
And and my game is a new authoris different from somebody
else's game. And so I do thinkthere just needs to be practice,

(43:14):
daily practices where I'm beingliturgies, almost where I am
trying to step away from thatinternal anxiety, that internal
scarcity. I you know, if my bookdoesn't sell, sell well, then
I'm not enough. And to say, hey,regardless of how that performs,

(43:34):
take join the work. Enjoyconversations like this one that
the book sparks. Be grateful,you know, be grateful for that,
and realize that ultimately, youknow, I got to stand in the
Jordan River with Jesus todayand and hear who I am not
perform for it. That's

so good. So what does that look like for you, to
get outside of yourself, toreceive that are, what are your
practices that help you

well? I mean, I'm a church person, so, so I see
just worship itself as apractice of renunciation and
reception. When I, when I when Igo to, when I stand in worship,
I renounce my superhero complexand receive a new so I like to
tell my students that worship isliterally re experiencing

(44:28):
Jesus's baptism, that that'swhat's supposed to happen in
worship, you stand there andreceive again who you are. So so
I'm pretty committed to worshipas a weekly practice of church
going. And I have daily prayerpractices where I am engaging in

(44:50):
this kind of work that I wasdescribing like. So this morning
I was praying, praying, prayingthat through. And then in me my
other practices just, just, is.
Fullness. I really think faithis a is often a perceptual
issue, and so, so, so I was soit's a kind of a mindfulness
practice, but it's not justbeing aware of my surroundings,

(45:12):
but it's, it's the nationpractice of looking for those
constellations where God showsup and in my day. So those
little moments of gratitude andawe that I noticed. So I do try
to be very wakeful, like I'mlike on my bike ride to work
today, be very wakeful justabout the beauty of the sunset.

(45:34):
All of that just pulls me out ofmyself, back into that small
self experience. So, so thoseare some commitment to worship,
daily prayer and practices ofwakefulness for gratitude and
awe throughout the day. So

Richard, this is this book, the shape of joy is,
is absolutely fantastic. I thinkit dovetails very, very well.
Last year, my favorite book thatI read was Andrew roots the
church in the age of secularmysticisms, which actually it's
very similar in a lot of ways,where we're looking for

(46:11):
something beyond ourselves,yeah, or transcendence. That's,
you know, memoirists are, areour new mystics that, and we're
talking about the hero complex,and so I love just walking
through this and going real deepwith that in your book,
especially in the psychology ofit. But what would your hope for
your readers be if they wouldpick up your book and read the

(46:33):
shape of joy? What would youhope that they would get from
it, and how would they move inthe world because of it?

In many way, I think my book's like a little
bit of a like a sneaky Trojanhorse. I'm using the science of
psychology to follow thatthread, to have a conversation
about God, and so I hook peopleon the front end with our mental
health crisis. And I'm prettyI'm pretty psyched forward in

(47:00):
the book. But by the end of it,I get pretty clear about if it's
true that mental well being isrooted in transcendence, then we
gotta have a conversation aboutthat transcendence. Is that a
trick of your mind, right? Istranscendence like? Like? Is
gratitude just another lifehack. Is it just another tip,

(47:24):
you know, for selfactualization, or are you really
in a relationship with somethinggreater than yourself? And so to
me, that's my hope for the bookis to kind of walk through the
let this science bring you to aconversation about spirituality.
And so that's my hope. Well, it

doesn't and it does it well. So I want a lot of
people go out and get it andpass it out. Just buy boxes of
it and pass it out to yourfriends. I'm sure that does.
Does a lot for your herocomplex. Right

now, you made the only ad again, you know? Yeah,
that's my metric. My metric asan author is, this is just when
somebody says, Hey, your bookhit me at the right time of my
life, and it made a bigdifference, like to me, that's
it. Those stories of that, thatthe alchemy of that
intersection, right book, righttime. We all have stories like

(48:16):
that. So that's all I want forthe book.

And I'm sure it's gonna hit a lot of people
that way. I have a couple quickquestions I like to ask at the
end. One, if you go back to your21 year old self, what advice
would you give? I

would say, get out of your head. I was a really
rationalistic person, and thatrationalistic analysis kind of
led me into into a lot of doubtand skepticism for a season. And
so I wish I would have toldmyself to stop thinking and just
take a walk.

That's such good advice, though. Good advice, go
take a walk. That's good.
Anything you've been reading orwatching lately, you could
recommend.

I have been reading David Bentley hearts. I
think it's all things are godsand man, that is a crazy deep
dive, like you got to beinterested in philosophy of the
mind, but I finished it. Hewrites it as, like a, like a
Socratic dialog. And I found it.
I found it really fascinating. Ifind his work really
interesting. What I enjoyed init was, is because he's pushing

(49:18):
against, against the scientificmaterialism of the age, and so I
thought it was a really helpfulread. I don't know if I'd
recommend it widely. You got tobe pretty nerdy to read that
book, but I took a great, greatenjoyment from that. And I guess
what I'm watching right now, mywife and I are watching the
Penguin or following the penguinseries on HBO. So enjoying,

(49:40):
enjoying being in that universea little bit. Yeah, yeah.

Nice. One of the, one of the podcasts that I
follow that said the latestpenguin episode was one of the
best episodes of TV all year.
That was phenomenal, so Ihaven't checked it out yet. But

yeah, I'm a Steeler fan and so. Just, he was
wrong last night, so I didn'twant to penguin last night, so I
we're gonna, we're gonna pickthat up tonight.

There you go.
There you go. Russell WilsonJustin fields. I don't know what
they're doing, but it'scomplicated.

We'll see how we do, yeah, it's complicated.

That's good.
Well, I'm, uh, I'm from theSeattle area, so it was a big
Russell Wilson fan. He was withthe Seahawks for a long time, so
I'm glad he got a shotyesterday, and he did well. He
played out.

They won. So we're along for the ride. So, yeah,
we'll see. So

how can people go out get the shape of joy? And
where would else would you liketo point people to?

Yeah, so the shape of joy is on wherever you buy
books, it came out last week,and so it's online, wherever you
get, wherever you get yourbooks, so you can look at that.
And I, I still have my originalblog, but most people now follow
me on sub stack. So Mondaythrough Friday, I write about
just what I'm thinking aboutlife of faith. And so Richard
Beck experimental theology onsub stack, you can find me,

(50:58):
subscribe for free. Contents allfree so you can keep up with me
there.

Excellent. And that's probably one of your
practices. Get all your thoughtsout. Yeah, yeah,

Unknown (51:09):
take a walk. And that's

good. And I think, yeah, everybody, check
out Richard sub sack and go getthe shape of joy. It's a
fantastic book. I really enjoyedour conversation. Thank you so
much for sitting down andwalking us through like
ruminating inside of ourselves,and what does this therapeutic
age look like for us, in thishero complex, and trying to get
self esteem and significance outof what we do and accomplish in

(51:33):
our external circumstances, andthen figuring out how to be
rooted in our identity behumble, And what humility
actually looks like, to havesome wonder and some awe and
transcendence, so that we couldactually move towards something
outside of ourselves, and thatwe could figure out what is the
shape of joy, and that we couldbe people of joy. So thank you.

(51:54):
That was a fantasticconversation. I

appreciate thank you so much. You

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Ep. 240 Richard Beck - The Shape of Joy

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Ep. 240 Richard Beck - The Shape of Joy