Dr. Sarita Lyons on The Fundamentals of Faith

Welcome, Dr. Sarita, to the podcast. Thank you so much for joining me.

Thank you for having me.

I'm so excited to do this with you.

I need to come back to Philly. We actually have brought my second son to Shriners in Philly for years, and so he's got a doctor there. So when I come, I will have to look you up and we'll have to see each other in person. I'm grateful for the opportunity. I would love that. Grateful for the opportunity to see you in person. We're recording this podcast, but we're looking at each other on video while we do.

I had the opportunity to see you in person, um, at the Sister Circle Retreat.

You came down for that, and I was so glad to get to meet you. You are a riot, riot. And I told you— yes, girl, I told Yvette Mason, your pastor's wife, I said, um, I said, when I'm talking to her, I just feel like I'm talking to Eric, Pastor Mason, her husband. And she said, oh yeah, they're the same person. Dr. Sarita is a female version of my husband.

Mm, that's so funny.

She said that's why they get along. Yeah, they get along so well.

So you are actually on staff at Epiphany. You are the director of community life and women's ministry. You are a smart cookie, and you can correct me if I get this wrong, but you have your PhD in clinical psychology. And you also— see, I didn't know this— you also have your Juris Doctor.

Is that correct?

You have your JD. I'm looking at you right now. You have all these books behind you. You've already thrown out in our pre-conversation a couple of things I didn't know. And I'm really looking forward to not only having our listeners get to know you, get to know more about what you're about, what matters to you, what's important to you, Um, but I also want to learn some things today, if that's okay. And I know that, uh, you will do that because that's what you do. But before we get started, why do you have a JD and a PhD? Why, why did both of those things happen in your life?

Yeah, so it's, so it's a story. I didn't pursue it.

Who would do that to themselves, right?

So when I was— I always knew I wanted to get my PhD in clinical psychology, and when I was in the process of applying, now For some of your viewers, they don't know this, but in our generation, you'll remember, you had to request a packet from the school. A whole packet came with a book. There was no online application. You had a big thick book with that catalog and all the pictures and all that kind of stuff. And so I applied to the program, but they sent me a packet for the JD/PhD program. So I called the school and I'm like, hey, you guys sent me the wrong thing. She was like, oh yeah, I'm sorry, that's the JD/PhD program.

We'll get out the PhD packet to you.

It never came. And I was like just flipping through the pages and I'm like, psychology and law? I'm like, I never thought about that. And I'm like, well, I knew I wanted to do psychology. My boyfriend said I like to argue, I should be a lawyer. So I said, you know what, I should just go ahead and do it. And so I was young, I was living at home with my parents then., and I applied, and by God's grace, it's so much— I mean, there's a whole podcast wrapped up into this testimony. We don't have time for all the details, but the bottom line is, on accident, which was really the providence of God, come on, I applied to this JD/PhD program without really a clue, but God was setting in motion his call upon my life. And interestingly enough, it was a joint program So you— and I didn't realize it was only 4 programs like this in the country. The Lord probably sheltered me from all of that because I may have been too intimidated to even think that I could do that. Um, but, but they only took a few students per year, and God just worked things out, moved things, gave me grace and favor, um, to be a part of this. And I went to school on— in the PhD program Monday, Wednesday, Friday And I did law school Tuesday, Thursday, Friday. And I started unmarried, no children, and then got married in the program and started having children after a while. I was supposed to finish the program in 7 years, 6 to 7 years if I was hustling, but they give you 10 years and they say if you don't finish the program in 10 years, they kick you out. Well, I kept having children and with my 4th child, I remember I got a notification in the mail saying, I had, you know, used up all of my ability to do maternity leaves, and if I had to take another maternity leave, I would be, you know, discharged from the program. And I had taken a pregnancy test that day and was pregnant. And the Lord just continued to make a way. And the rule was you had to finish in 10, but God was like, I'm going to just show you— this was me., and I finished in 11, and they did not kick me out, and the rest is history.

Oh my God, I just did not even know.

Well, that's why you have all those books behind you, because you spent 11 years—

basically, you could have gone to medical school, you could have done a lot of things in 11 years, but you did this. This is crazy. Well, I— it— and now, of course, you're in ministry. And what I always tell people is the the road that the Lord takes you on to get where you want to go can include a lot of things that on the outside people would say they're not connected.

But of course, you can see how all roads, number one, lead to Jesus, and all truth is God's truth.

And the more you sharpen the axe that God has to work with, the greater you see the interconnectivity of some of the things that you've learned, and you're able to apply them in a very, very unique way.

I just think that your backgrounds in education just set you up to do a lot of things well in a unique way. So let's talk a little bit about what you're passionate about.

Now, you know, you have written a chapter in a book on urban apologetics that Pastor Mason, Eric Mason, authored as well.

But you throw around a bunch of words and I just wanna walk through for a second some of these things that you can explain probably in terminology that most of us can understand.

And then I'd like to culminate that with a discussion of why all of this matters. So let's start with apologetics.

What is apologetics and why do you care about apologetics?

Like why did you get interested in that?

Which will probably dovetail into the next thing, but what is it first of all?

Sure. So a simple way of understanding apologetics is kind of the art or practice of defending the faith. And being— it comes from the Greek word apologia, which basically means to give a reason or a defense. And so it is the Christian's— and call to give a reasonable hope, uh, answer for the hope that lies within. So when we talk about that in Peter If someone has a question, be able to give an answer for the hope that lies within. In the book of Jude, it talks about defend the faith. And so it is the Christian's response, reasonable answers for questions. And I think a lot of time— and it's very connected to evangelism. So when we think about— so a lot of people may not have ever heard of apologetics, and people who don't know what it means often ask, why are you apologizing for being a Christian? So it's not an apology. It's not an apology, it's an apology, it's an answer, it's a reason. And ultimately the end goal is Christ. And so that's the end goal of evangelism. So the end goal of apologetics is to, is, is to make the person and work of Jesus Christ known to the world. And it's important that the church does it because a lot of times we are giving, um, faith-based answers for fact-based questions.

Oh, that's so great.

Just really simple, but it's so great.

Yeah.

And that's why people look at us and say, y'all are just blind and you'll believe what anybody will tell you. Because while we believe it, we don't know why we would believe it. We can't explain why it even makes sense.

And there, there is— there are reasonable basis for belief in the Bible, but many of us We went to church, but we weren't trained in the facts that undergird our faith. That's really important.

Absolutely. Yeah, so that's in a nutshell how I would describe it.

Okay, so now why do you care?

After a clinical psychology, J.D., double long-term program, how did you come, or why did you begin to care about apologetics?

So, you know, part of what I did before coming to the church was I was in private practice for almost 9 years before, you know, answering the call from God through Pastor Mason to be on staff at Epiphany Fellowship. And I grew up in a traditional Black Baptist church. I had never even heard of the word apologetics. That wasn't a part of my vocabulary. Um, I kind of discovered it as I was reading and becoming more engrossed in urban ministry and things like that. But at the end of the day, the way I think a lot of this thing connects and dovetails for my life is that I knew very early that I was called to be a healer, to be kind of the hands and feet of Jesus and function as a healer. As a kid, I thought that meant God was going to call me to like lay hands on people and people recover, you know, um, but in many ways in which he can still use people to do that, But counseling was a way in which God called me to be a healer. And what, what do people need healing for ultimately is the sin condition, right? So we have brokenness in life, and the— but it's always a derivative of the sin condition. So for me, apologetics is about bringing true healing, bringing true health, bringing true restoration to brokenness, and that is through the gospel. And so I care about apologetics not really as a new thing, but as an extension of all the things that we're called to do as Christians. And I don't think you have to have a call to be an apologist, like, "Oh no, I'm called to usher, not be an apologist." You know, we're all called to be evangelists. We're all called to be ministers of the gospel. This is a reasonable thing that all Christians should equip themselves to do. Because sometimes we're the only Jesus people are going to meet. We're the only connection to the church, to the truth that people are going to meet. And we have to not rest on our laurels and have the, the faith of our mamas and our grandmothers and our daddies and our uncles. We have to know God for ourselves. He calls us to love him with our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and our neighbor as ourself. And so for me, part of bringing wholeness is equipping myself, taking on the personal challenge to have a robust faith, to be able to answer the questions of my own heart, right? But then also to address some of the social ills that we have in the world, because we have an enemy who is trying to sift us from the truth. And so one of the things which the book addressed, especially in Urban Apologetics, is what are the enemies of the faith? What are the lies that are being told?

Because apologetics is about teaching truth, right?

What are the lies that are being told in our community? So for instance, when we think about the Black Hebrew Israelites, when we think about Islam, when we think about worldly philosophies like feminism, when we think about the, the conscious community, when we think about atheism, you know, and so much more, when we think about Seventh-day Adventists, whatever— what are all of the things that are being told to our children, to our communities that is not either the gospel, the real true gospel, or is, um, a lie that wholeheartedly is rejecting Christ. Because we have to be able to deal with the boots on the ground. There are people— we— there are pulpits all over our communities preaching into the lives of people, and the church has to have a response for it. We can't wait for people to be invited to church for Easter to get the truth. How do we go out and at work and among our friendship groups?

How do we equip our children?

In fact, if I had been equipped better, I would have not gone through a lot of the experiences that I went through even when I was in college. So I think the book and the need for apologetics is not for like, you know, old crusty people or just biblical scholars or people who go to seminary. That is something for all of us to wrap our hands around. Um, we all should be passionate about knowing God and being able to defend truth against a secular pluralistic society whose mantra is autonomy, you know, have it your way, be your own god, and deal with not only the problems of our lives, individual lives, but also the problem of our soul ultimately.

So good.

Now you've dropped some nuggets, and I want to talk about those and defining those as well. But apart from Urban Apologetics, if someone was like, you know what, 101, I need entry-level basic because I do need to do the work in undergirding my faith with facts that are true, but just to broaden my ability to defend the faith, what is one resource besides Urban Apologetics that you would say, you know what, if you can get your hands on this, that'll help, this will help you, this is a good place to start?

Yep, so I think that I always want I want to emphasize any book that is going to teach you fundamentals of the faith, like doctrine. So we need to have— I just think all Christians need to understand systematic theology. We need to know the basics, the boot camp of our faith. We need to know, you know, theology proper, who is God. We need to know Christology, you know, who is the person and work of Jesus Christ. We need to know pneumatology, who is the Holy Spirit. We need to know soteriology, what is salvation. We need to know missiology and ecclesiology, what is the— who is the church and what is the church called to do. We need to understand eschatology and the end times and the fulfillment of and the consummation of God's plan with his church. We need to understand like the theology of prayer and the theology of worship. These are just basics, fundamentals of the faith that you used to get a little bit of in like Sunday school. And a lot of times what we're What we're doing now is we are impressed with preachers and teachers, but we're not actually equipping ourselves. We are not, you know, moving beyond devotionals. And I would say one of the things that I did for myself, but I want to encourage all of your listeners to do, is think of the questions you would never want a non-believer to ask you and study that.

That's good, that's good.

I know my dad has a systematic theology book.

And then what's the other one that everybody— it's Walter Grudem. Is Grudem's—

do you know what I'm talking about?

Wayne Grudem. Wayne Grudem is one. And a very easy one, um, by what's his name, and I might have it on my shelf, but it's called Essential Essentials of the Doctrine by, uh, what's his name? Oh, I know it's in my head. It's a red, red and white book. Um, but it's called Essential, uh, yeah, Essentials of the Doctrine.

Oh, by Sproul. By Sproul.

Okay, awesome.

So, and that's very accessible and easy breezy. Yeah, so anything that will just kind of walk you through some basic fundamentals of the faith doctrine, I think that's where we need to start. And a lot of times people don't know where to start. We're kind of jumping around, um, And a big thing that— one book that I'm reading right now that I love is Epic of Eden. I think we really need to understand covenants. Yes, like understanding covenants, understanding God's redemptive plan from Genesis to Revelation is so key in having a solid picture of our faith and what God is doing.

I love it.

I love it.

Okay, so let's talk about conscious community. I hadn't actually never heard of that until I was preparing for your interview. What is that and what's the problem with it?

Yeah, so I would say, and, and really what we would call it is like the Black conscious community, because I guess even without that name there are other iterations and groups that might do their own thing.

But it really—

first, let's say what, what it's often created for, meaning the Black conscious community is a nebulous entity. It's not one group, one name, and they would maybe distinguish themselves from each other, um, instead of just kind of being lumped under one umbrella of the conscious community. But in— for our purposes, the conscious community at the heart is a response to racism and white supremacy and the idea that, in their opinion, African Americans— and it's true too— are very much disconnected from their culture, their heritage. And how it bumps up against, or is antithetical to, Christianity is this belief that to be a Christian is inherently not African, and that it is a product of brainwashing due to slavery, um, and that African people would never have been Christians because that was the result of being enslaved. And it's really an effort to in their minds to restore the dignity, the culture, and the connection to African people due to the, the effects of white supremacy, racism, and slavery on our people. And so there's a lot of validity in some regard to what they're saying in terms of, yes, our culture, who we are, have been stolen from us. We don't know where we're from on the continent. Our language, a lot of our practices, But it is inaccurate that people are only Christian as a result of being enslaved, because there's lots of evidence that Africa was— that Christianity was present in Africa way before the transatlantic slave trade. We have many of our kind of founding fathers of the faith that often get whitewashed as being white men who were actually African men, like Athanasius and Tertullian. I mean, and so on. So, so really, that the issue is Christians ought to beware because there is a need to know your culture. There is a need to kind of like— the word would be Sankofa— to go back and reclaim it, to have a sense of cultural identity. Um, and that, that is possible being an American citizen. I believe it is possible to be in this country and contribute to the country, to to love the country, to fight for the country, but also still retain who you are as a Black woman and as a Black man. And that doesn't have to be antithetical to Christianity. But we do have to deal with the issues of racism and white supremacy and the impact slavery has had on the Black community.

So good.

Okay, let's talk about feminism. Let's define it and what's the problem with it.

So feminism, I think, at the core is, uh, an argument or a philosophy that is aiming at equality among the sexes. Men and women should be treated with equality. It comes against discrimination, it comes against misogyny, it comes against sexism. And so on the face, it's like, what's the problem with feminism? Because we all, the church, should be fighting for equality and fighting against forms of discrimination against women. The issue though is that iterations of the feminist movement, you know, if it started with suffrage, right, women's right to vote, over time, as in many movements and many philosophies, have changed. And so what it really started to look like is not just equality but sameness. That men and women are the same. And as, as a Christian, when I read my Bible, when I see God's plan for man and woman from Genesis to Revelation, I see both man and woman, um, being created in the image of God, having equal value and worth to God, and contribution, right, and stewardship over the garden and over the world, to rule and reign together. But I do see differences and how he has called men and women to function in the home, in the church, in other areas. And I think the feminist movement or feminist ideology would, among other things, want us to do away with those ideas as being something antiquated or inherently patriarchal, which is negative in their opinion to women. And like racism and sexism— like racism and white supremacy, we have to deal with the reality that sexism does exist, not only in the world but also in the church, right? That misogyny also exists not just at work but also in the church. And so sin is abundant, um, and one of the things that the church has to do is not just say, you know, feminism is wrong, get away from it, um, don't listen to them, that's a worldly philosophy, but really address What are the core issues and concerns that they raise where the church may have been silent and the church needs to provide an answer? And the church has to do some self-critique on its own participation in toxic masculinity and unhealthy engagement with women so that we can love the body well, we can love women well. One of the dangerous things you'll see in iterations of feminism is trying to make God very androgynous. So it's like the Holy Spirit is a woman, God is a she, um, and so we just can clearly see as Christians those things are extremely problematic. But at the core, you know, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater, is one of the reasons why it's dangerous is because it's attractive for women who are seeing, um, abuse in the church, for women who are seeing unfair treatment of women in the church, women who are seeing complementarianism being a scapegoat to hide behind your misogyny, you know. So, so all of those things are things that have to be addressed, and I believe there's a biblical solution for them. And we don't have to rewrite scripture, and we don't have to do away with God's call for men and women to also raise our hand and say, no, you know, we got some significant problems up in the house and we have to deal with it, or we're going to always be a joke to the world. We're going to always be untrustworthy. To the world. And unfortunately, I think the feminist movement, similar to the conscious community, have come in— and I say in the book— begin to lick the wounds that the church created.

The church has to deal with the wounds.

Goodness gracious. Okay, so you said— you refer to feminism and the Black conscious community in Urban Apologetics as a lifeless lifeboat. You state that this illusion of a lifeboat, though black and beautiful and smart and sincere, is taking on water because there are holes in the boat we cannot see. These holes are distortions of God's word, rejection of God's will, and fantasies of counterfeit freedom. If women do not abandon ship and cling tightly to God's word, they will drown in the very lies they believed would save them. Not only is this true of feminism and Black consciousness, but how would this lifeboat relate to women who may be listening who are not women of color?

So that's the question that I have, but I also want to just— well, let me start with that. And then I got a follow-up question about this hole, because I mean, I thought that that was very—

I mean, and this, I'm going to read this one sentence again. These holes, the holes in the boat, are distortions of God's word, rejection rejections of God's will, and fantasies of counterfeit freedom.

So this is something that, you know, we need to pay attention to. All of the concepts that you've been sharing, we need to become aware of. And these are not the conversations you were hearing. I mean, I'm enjoying this conversation, and I'm a very practical person, and I like to have people get knowledge that they can use in a practical way. And often these conversations we're not having because it doesn't feel like practical, but it is.

If you want to be a believer who actually is able to live out your faith, defend your faith, you have to understand these things.

When you're talking about how this though affects where you live and work, which is primarily the Black community, how does this Black consciousness part specifically, what does someone who is a non-Black person do with that information?

Sure. So one, I think a non-Black person has to continuously, one, you know, educate themselves on what are the things that have caused the Black conscious community to have a foothold in the church. And so what I mean by that is we have to honestly appraise our country, our families, our churches around issues of systemic racism, the discrimination, and impact of slavery and Jim Crow on the Black community, because that is in fact why they have such a huge presence and following. So one, and I think we also have to— that a non-Black person has to think about how do I engage with education, but also sensitivity around me representing a group of people that haven't had a lot of trust among these individuals. And so leading with, you know, we just need to talk about the Bible, we just need to preach the gospel, this is wrong, it's sinful, is usually not going to be effective. So thinking through how to minister to the heart and the soul is as important as being able to just give biblical facts. And so I do, I think that it comes for education, it comes from self-appraisal, church appraisal, and also ownership. I think that, you know, a lot of times we're, we're afraid to just say, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Meaning if women have been mistreated, we, you know, we just want men to say, you know what, you're right. That doesn't mean you're the one that did it, you know, you personally, but you belong to a people group, you belong to a gender who has for years oppressed women globally, you know, locally, and even in a family. And so that impacts how oftentimes women see men and trust men. It's the same thing with racism. Um, just being able to acknowledge that, that you even can be a stumbling block to the gospel if you miss— if you mishandle relationships, if you're uninformed or if you're operating in a level of white fragility where you're always on the defense so you can never with empathy enter into another person's experience, you will be a stumbling block. And so if we're really about using the gospel, um, evangelizing the loss to point people to Jesus Christ, how can we get out of the way? Paul said that I became all things to all people, that that some might get saved. And so I do think we have to— I would encourage my white brothers and sisters, non-African American brothers and sisters, to educate themselves on the issues, kind of appraise their own heart, appraise the church, and enter into relationships and these kinds of conversations with an informed mind, with a humble spirit, and with compassion.

Hey there, I hope you're enjoying this content, and I hope that you are learning and growing as you sit and watch, or walk and watch, or whatever it is that you're doing when this content comes out. I wanna make sure that you know about 3 things. Count 'em, 1, 2, 3, 3 things. Number 1, mark your calendar for January the 5th and 6th. I'm hosting The Sister Circle Live. It's gonna be a combo of worship and also live podcast recordings and also networking. It's gonna be amazing. You can go right now to thesistercircle.com/live for more information or to register. Number 2, if you are trying to get your whole life together, did you know I created a planner? It is the Full Circle Planner, and it is a quarterly planner because I believe in 90-day sprints. You can buy one quarter, or you can buy all, all 4 quarters with— they're all different. We even have a set of yellow bound book special edition, limited edition, that's available for a bundle of 4, but they're going fast, and I want to make sure you get yours. So if you are interested in actually moving moving the needle forward and having some built-in accountability, get my planner. Not only is it a planner, but it's a coaching journal as well. You have a lot of quotes and questions for me to get you to think. Here's the third thing I need you to know about. The Inner Circle is amazing and it is open, but it's not going to stay open. On January 8th, the doors are going to close for our community coffee and connection level guests. So if you are interested in the Inner Circle or you want to know more about it, go to thesisterscircle.com. Www.christalhurst.com/innercircle. I would love to have you in there because this year we're going to have a growth plan and a development plan where every month, you know what we're teaching. It's emotional health and getting rid of anxiety. It's relational health. It's financial freedom. It's spiritual growth. It is looking at the areas of your life and saying, how can I build a life that will last and that will be steady in the midst of chaos, because sometimes life is chaos. So I don't want you to forget about these 3 things: the event in January, the Sister Circle Live, January 5th and 6th, the planner— get yours while they last— and then the 3rd thing is the Inner Circle. If you want to be committed to growth this year, then I want to be committed to you. You can go to thesistercircle.com/innercircle for more info. Well, anyway, I didn't want to take up too much of your time, but I wanted to make sure you knew what was happening. So now that you know what is happening, as Fred Sanford would say, let's get back to our regularly scheduled programming.

You refer to, um, conscious community, Black conscious community. Is that Black Lives Matter? Is that what we're talking about? I mean, I know it's bigger than that, but I know that as you're talking, people are going to try to say, okay, I've never heard that before. What does this sound like? And not the organization itself, but just the way of thinking. Is that embodied in that at all, or is that something different?

No, I wouldn't say that necessarily the Black Lives Matter movement is a part of the conscious community, um, because the Black Lives— um, I would say Black Lives Matter is bigger than just kind of talking about consciousness in the way that these other groups do or cults do, because a lot of times these other groups or cults are also advocating African spiritualism, so it has more of a religious undertone, or they are advocating another religion where this is dealing with social injustice and not necessarily a religious disposition, although we know that all things are spiritual, right?

Right.

And so we know that we can look at both groups and see light and dark, good and evil, things that are problematic with them. But I do think one of the things the church is often very uncomfortable with is this idea of like the Black Lives Matter, and we kind of dismiss Black Lives Matter and just focus on the movement and some of the things that are problematic with some of their tenets.

But we had no problem, for instance, saying, you know, all men are created equal. I think Ralph West talks about this in one of his articles, um, all men are created equal, and Thomas Jefferson wasn't a Christian. And so we don't—

so we, we, we have to be of the mindset that we can disentangle things that are truthful, right, from things that are connected to things that we are disassociating ourselves from. I believe that men and women should be treated right. I believe in cracking glass ceilings. I believe in equal pay, and I don't call myself a feminist, right? And so I cannot be a part of the feminist movement and fight for some of the things that they need to fight for. In fact, the church would be more effective in drawing people to Christ if we did not kind of hold ourselves hostage in the safety and bubble of the four walls of the church and actually found common ground with people who didn't believe Christ. But then we could also give them truth about God and that, hey, all of these justice issues are talked about in the Bible, meaning the conscious community, the feminist community, they did not come up with this idea of justice. This belongs to God. No more than when I talk to people about counseling and we talk about, oh, the, the CBT, you know, cognitive behavioral therapy and all of these things talk about if you change your mind, you change your life. No, that's hijacked from the scripture, transformed by the renewing of your mind. And so a lot of these groups are talking about good biblical principles. They just aren't citing the source.

Well, I think that, you know, the reality is that we have to, as Timothy says in the Word, we have to study ourselves, study to show ourselves approved workmen who do not need to be ashamed. And it's very clear that you have done that, not just in your academic work, but also you— what I think is What is so, um, worthy of appreciation and honor with you is that you have made the investment to sharpen your axe. You have— even if this is the kind of person you are, what you bring to your knowledge of the faith and how we approach the faith and enemies of the faith, ways of thinking, is that you bring the muscle that you developed in academia. I mean, there is a way of diving into, dissecting, and then discussing what you've learned, and you have the ability to also deliver that. So you have a very unique positioning to say, I've developed the muscle, I know how to dissect information, I know how to explain it, I know how to regurgitate it, and then I can put it in language that you can receive and understand. So I just want to applaud you because I've just been sitting here, you know, I'm like just listening. I'm like, okay, I got— I didn't have to ask many questions because you're just like blessing us all with your knowledge. So here's, here's the question I have for you. Um, have you always been—

I mean, has your commitment—

because some people aren't, some people are not— is your commitment to the word of God and your commitment to things of God and understanding, has this always been a part of your personal chase? Did you have, um, uh, is any of what we're talking about concepts that you have personally struggled with, or is it what you become aware of as you've been on your journey to dive deeper? Because we come to know— I always tell my kids, I'm telling you the truth. You will learn that what I'm telling you is true the easy way or the hard way. You will either walk in what I'm telling you even though the light has yet to dawn on you, and you will realize gradually this is the truth, and you become more ingrained in it and able to walk in it, explain it, and understand why. Or you're gonna not believe me and do all the things, or be all the places, think all the ways that are the opposite of what I've been teaching you, and learn because life is a school of hard knocks that I was telling you the truth. But either way, all roads lead to God's truth. Which one was the case for you?

Oh, definitely.

I would say it's been up, down, and all around. It hasn't been a linear journey. I've made lots of mistakes and, um, you know, have walked away from the Lord. I mean, that's exactly— and I, and I think having those challenges is what makes me so passionate now, because when I share my testimony and I get inboxes from like parents and I'm their child, is exactly who I was and is in that position, I'm able to really offer hope. Meaning I was that girl who started questioning the faith. I was that girl who walked away from the Lord. And I mean, you know, I don't know how much your listeners or viewers know about me, but just quickly, part of where this passion and fire about this and apologetics comes from, and I would even say the credibility to write the chapter that I wrote in Dr. Mason's book, is because when I went to college, you know, I grew up in a Christian home. My dad is a minister. I mean, I was the— I was one of those little kids that was weirdly on fire for God at a very early age. I went to public school. I almost got kicked out of school because I was passing out Bible tracts. When I was in elementary school, parents were calling my mom's house like, my daughter refuses to go to bed. It's 10 o'clock. She says she has to stay up and do Sarita's Bible study homework. So I was that girl. Like making people have Bible study. I was like, I was selling nail polish for a dollar and I was having Bible study during recess. That was my, my gig in, in elementary school. And so, you know, how, how does this— and I want to say this to the church, I want to say this to parents— how does that good Christian girl, you know, how does that girl that like, you know, does all her Easter parts and her Christmas parts, and you know, she's like, oh, you know, the one that other parents say be like her, how does she go to college and walk away from the faith? Well, one of the reasons is because I was— I went to college very ill-equipped. I, I was a church girl, but I was biblically illiterate, and I was not prepared, one, for spiritual warfare. I was not prepared to encounter people who believed as passionately against Jesus as I believed for him, and I was unprepared to deal with my own sin nature. When you grow up in a Christian family and everybody likes you and thinks the world of you and has great high expectations of you and tells you how pretty you are and awesome you are and smart you are, you don't know how ugly your heart is. Oh, and so college, completely unaware that in me no good thing dwells. And so I was prideful unconsciously about my need and desperation to draw close to God and cling to God and live for the Lord. And so I easily got swept away by these lifeless lifeboats I talk about in my chapter. And so for me, what it was, I went to an HBCU, a historically Black college and university. You know, I'm on campus, and you know, all things start with a relationship. Had a bad breakup, I'm sad, I'm depressed. And of course, the lifeless lifeboat comes by and is rescuing me out of my emotional distress, is telling me I'm a queen and a sister. You know, there's nothing more precious precious than being called by another brother who's not your actual brother, sister, to have non-sexual intimacy, to have, to have a brother want to protect you without sleeping with you. That is extremely attractive, and that drew me in, especially as an only child. And so I began to really question a lot of things about the faith and the white Jesus and Is Christianity the white man's religion? Not really knowing much about Africa or my culture. I think I knew about Black history as much as it connected to the civil rights movement and on. And so I just was in a tailspin. And I literally was looking at my parents like, you poor people. Y'all mean well, but y'all don't know the truth. And I would talk naughty. I would talk for a break. And I mean, let me tell you, I would say I was I had my hair wrapped and bangles on, and I changed the way I dressed. And, and I, you know, I was loving what I was learning, but I was slowly walking away from the faith. Not because I was— I initially abandoned Jesus. Let me tell you, the devil slow walks you to Sheol. He doesn't just— he doesn't just give you a ticket and say, come to hell with me. He slow walks you on a bed of roses to death. And so I was really just— goodness Among all of these people with all of these great friends and community and doing African dance and learning how to eat better and take care of my skin, and I just began to notice that they didn't talk about Jesus. And I knew enough to know that, that these people, they loved a lot of things that I love, but they didn't love Jesus. And if I wanted them in my life, then I had to begin to put Jesus on a back burner. You know, the scripture talks about don't hide your light under a bushel. I didn't outright reject Jesus, but I was doing what what you call syncretism. I was trying to have a little African spiritualism mixed in with Christianity. I built an altar in my room to the gods and goddesses, and I got involved in what they would call like Yoruba practices, um, in terms of the orishas, which is very similar to where Catholicism comes from and Santa Maria and all that kind of stuff. But, but I was all the way gone. I was all the way gone, and my parents prayed for me. My parents, um, you know, I had a friend of mine call my parents and tell on me and say, "Sareeta's acting weird out here." Um, but I was fully committed to thinking that Christianity was somehow, um, had harmed Black people, you know. And when you read real things like slave masters taking portions of the Bible out of the Bible that spoke to freedom, you know, in highlighting portions of the Bible that talked about slaves obey your masters, but removing portions of the Bible around God's deliverance of his people out of Egypt, um, in the book of Exodus, then you— that, that's real. Those things actually happened, right? And so I'm, I'm trying to navigate confronting racism and the misuse of scripture with the legitimacy of scripture. And the people who have done the most disservice to God are people who profess Christ. And that is why we have all of this tension, and that is why we have all of these sex and lifeless lifeboats coming up. Like, the imagery for the book was this idea that we as Black people, and then as women, are tossed into this raging sea, uh, of confusion, right? And overwhelmed by pressure and overwhelmed by societal ills. And this lifeboat is coming, appearing to rescue us, to be our savior, to point us to the truth, to point us to our history in the, in the mind of feminism, to point us to a sense of freedom and autonomy and greatness and strength. But there are holes in the boat we cannot see, and the holes in the boat are the things that come against biblical truth, that come against God, that want to rename God, that want to rename our themselves, that want to put, um, a charge against God, that wants Christianity to be something that is man-made and man-created except for the truth. And, and, and we don't often see that we are being slow-walked out of a relationship with the one true living God, and we are engaging in idolatry. Um, and so yes, when God rescued me from that, I was completely set on fire for him. Um, you know, when, when God truly came in and showed me who he was. See, I didn't necessarily ever notice the hole in the lifeboat. What God did was constantly send me the real lifeboat. He constantly sent people to give me truth, and the more I was able to compare truth from the lie, I was able to discern because what, what my parents had put in me was still there. The truth that I had heard and received as a child was still there. When I was able to confess my sin and humble myself and repent to God, and as— and literally, I remember I looked in the mirror and I told God, whatever you want me to do, whatever you want me to say, wherever you want me to go, my life belongs to you. And at the time, I didn't have a lot of biblical language and talk for it, but I knew that my life would never be the same. And I wanted to be as sold out for God as I had been for these other things. And that's the thing about our personality— whether we're in sin or whether we are living for God in righteousness and truth, our personality is still at work. And there was— you couldn't tell— I was dogmatic, I was serious, I was unrelenting, I was studying all of the things that were not true. And I just asked God to help me to be a prophet, a prophetess among the nations, so that I could evangelize the lost, so that I could be a healer. Um, and at first, at the time, I looked at it like so I could make up for all of the missed time. But God, in his grace and wisdom, over time taught me I wasn't making up for that, that his grace abounds evermore, and that, uh, that he will restore the years that the locusts and cankerworms— and that my, my job was to live fully unashamed for him now. And, and that's what I am trying desperately to do for his glory.

So if you had to say to the girl who's listening to you, whether she is 21 and where you were, or if she's 35, 45, and while she didn't necessarily stay there, she didn't necessarily run fast once she noticed that she was in the wrong boat. She's just been kind of hanging out, or maybe she's at a crossroads with her faith, uh, having doubts, asking questions, exploring other religions, but not heading in the opposite direction, just not going anywhere. What would you encourage her in right now? What would you say to her if there was one thing she could hear you say and she's listening right now?

What would that be?

Um, well, the first thing I would say is we are never, um, in a paralyzed position. We are always— because our faith, our lives are not static, right? We are always in motion. And so you are either toward the Lord or you are moving away from him. Even when we don't seem like we have a lot of activity going on, even when it doesn't seem like we're doing a whole lot, we're either moving toward the Lord or we are walking away from God. So that's number one. Um, and you know, I would just say the story of the prodigal son teaches us many things, but one thing is the idea that it's never too late to come back. It's, it's, it's never too late to come to God. Um, I would—

I—

and the counselor in me probably would ask more questions than have a lot to say. I mean, because one of the questions that I would pose is, um, what keeps you where you are? What keeps you where you are now? In fact, can you even locate yourself? God does a phenomenal job of asking really great questions. He said, Adam, where are you? And sometimes we have to locate ourselves. I would wonder if people could even locate themselves. Where are they? Not just physically, but spiritually. Where are you emotionally? If I had had someone help me locate where I was, that led me into the conscious community at the time. I know now I was located in loneliness. I was located in fear. I was located in rejection, um, and it was a perfect storm for me to be swept away. So I would encourage the person, the woman, the young lady to locate where they are, um, and I would also encourage people to just talk to God in a very, very honest, regular way. One of the things I, I love We're making— we're having some hard decisions to make with my children in school now. And my youngest daughter Gabby recently said to me— I said, how is— how are you doing praying about this hard decision? And she said, honestly, Mom, the thing I've been doing recently is just talking really honestly with God and telling him how I feel, because I know he can handle it. Um, because if I try to hurry up and come up with a solution— this is my daughter's 13. She said, if I— she said, if I try to come up with a solution, I'll try to talk right before I talk honestly. Hmm. I said, go ahead, Gabby. And so that was so good for me to hear, that sometimes we try to talk right before we talk honestly. And God's— his ego is not so fragile. He's God. Whether you believe he's God or not, he's good. Whether you believe he's good or not, he can handle your honest lament. He can handle your tears. He can handle your questions. He can handle your anger. So, you know, I think sometimes we have to just begin to be honest and emote. I would also say that it's important to be in community. Um, we do ourselves such a disservice by being isolated. By not letting people know what's going on with us. Um, I think we love to think that the only thing that comes out of the church is judgment, and that's not true. Yes, has judgment— have people been harshly and unfairly judged and unkindly treated? Yes. But I know more godly women who have open doors and warm meals on the stove and a nice couch to sit on and a listening ear who have been where you've been and would love for you to have a safe place to work through this with, would love to come alongside you and walk with you. So it is the enemy's job to convince you no one loves you, no one's going to be there for you, people are hypocritical, people are judgmental. If you have those thoughts, that is the enemy. It is a design plan to keep you isolated because a man left to himself, you know will, will, will be destroyed. And the enemy is trying to destroy you in isolation. Um, and then I would say begin to find, you know, in terms of community, find a quality, good church home. You want to be at a Bible-believing, Bible-teaching, Bible-preaching church, because faith come by hearing, and hearing comes by the word of God. And God never intended for you to just figure all of this out on your own. Um, you need to be around people who have studied longer than you, who have lived longer than you, who have walked longer, who have made mistakes that you couldn't even conceive of making. I mean, this— and, and we'll be willing to tell, tell it and talk about it, not because we glory in, um, being voyeurs into people's sinful past, but because we overcome by each other's testimonies, right?

That's correct.

And we are strengthened through people not trying to be perfect, not trying to appear to have it all together, because that disqualifies what real faith and grace is. So I would say, come on back, come, um, and, and for those people that feel stagnant, I mean, that are actually having a very slow momentum back but are stagnant, again, locate yourself. I think the pandemic has done a doozy on a lot of people. Um, in terms of our emotional health, our feeling very disconnected from the church, disconnected from our life purpose in the world. But, um, we, we've got to begin to just get back with each other, get back in the word. I always encourage people to read something every day. Just begin to talk to the Lord, begin to read your word. In the word of God, that's where there is life. You know, I'm not just saying a bunch of religious platitudes, but that's where there is power. To break yokes of bondage. That is where there is truth, and we need to begin to feed upon the word of God. We— our hunger for God, our hunger for God's word grows the more we taste it. That's why, like, oh, taste and see that the Lord is good. Job said, I found his words and they were very necessary food. Like, the same way we don't like to skip meals, don't skip spending time with God. So, you know, I think that one of the things that we can do, you know, a better job of even in the church is just helping people understand how to have a devotional life, how to live out some of the spiritual disciplines. Um, you know, I see two things in the church. One, I see kind of a legalistic, like everybody's setting up their Bible and coffee mug and like, I'm getting in my time with God today, and I spent 3 hours with God today. And the average person is like sitting around like, I can't do that, or like, that's not my life, you know what I mean? So I see that, that thing, that, that Christian thing that seems unattainable, right? So that becomes a stumbling block. But the other thing I see in the Christian community that is also a stumbling block is it don't take all that attitude. And no, it take it, you know. This attitude that says God knows my heart, um, I just talked to God— we're developing a new way of doing God that requires little work from us, and we are supposed to work. We are supposed to run hard after God. We are supposed to be like Jeremiah and have the word of God like fire up in our bones. We are supposed to be on mission. We are supposed to meet pressing needs. We are supposed to gather with the saints. We're supposed to evangelize. We're supposed to study to show ourselves approved. We're supposed to pray. Not supposed to— supposed to. We are supposed to do that. And so this very like lethargic faith that's going on. I think legalism and lethargicness is— are, are two issues that we got to deal with in the church. So no, I'm not going to help coach you to sit down on God. I'm like, come on, you're surrounded by a great crowd of— cloud of witnesses. Let's run this race with endurance, right? You know, it was set before us. Jesus, it was set before him. He endured the cross. We serve a God who was not weak, who was not pitiful. I mean, you talking about the strength, right, to wrestle in the Garden of Gethsemane, to decide to agree with God, to die, and we can't read the Bible? No, we have to stop talking people out of having a robust faith that we go after, and we also have to stop making it seem like the only way to have faith in God is to have this implausible study time. The truth of what we need to be doing is somewhere in the middle.

Girl, I'm just looking at the comments over here and everybody's like, okay, I need to re-listen, I need to take notes. There was so much, so much good stuff in here. And everybody wants to know how they can connect with you. So we've mentioned that you put a chapter in the book Urban Apologetics. What else can they find from you? Where else can they follow you? How can they get to know you better.

Yeah, so, well, thank you. I would love for you to get to know me better. Um, I'm on Instagram, uh, Dr. Sarita Lyons. I kept it simple. Um, where else? I do have a YouTube channel under Dr. Sarita Lyons. I don't post there very frequently, but I'm going to try to get better with that. Um, obviously at Epiphany Fellowship Church. Um, one of the things I do, I do a lot of speaking and teaching and women's conferences and things like that. I'm passionate about women's issues. I'm passionate about, um, women in leadership. I'm passionate about women as mothers and wives, and I'm passionate about single women. I'm passionate about women just really running hard after God. And so aside from the beautiful and exciting work I do at Epiphany Fellowship, I love it when I get to travel and meet new people and come speak and do all those kind of things. And I also love to do a lot of work around intersecting psychology and mental health with the word of God and our faith, and also women's issues and issues around justice. But in terms of just contacting me, Epiphany Fellowship, but also on Instagram and/or also YouTube.

Well, I look forward to the time here soon where I can get to see you in person again. Hopefully I'll run into you at an event. Or maybe I'll have an event and run into you there. But it has been my pleasure, my honor to get a chance to talk to you finally, and for us to be able to record this audio, but also to have it on video so I can see you face to face. Thanks so much for joining me, Dr. Sarita. I'm so grateful that you did.

Love you, Crystal.