Episode 479: Confessions of a Crappy Christian with Blake Guichet

Welcome to Voices in My Head, the official podcast of me, Rick Lee James. I'm a recording artist, a singer, a songwriter, an author, a worship leader, and an ordained minister in the Church of the Nazarene. The Voices in My Head podcast is where I discuss music, movies, books, pop culture, theology, and more with friends, colleagues, and sometimes just by myself. Now make sure to let me know what you think of today's episode by leaving me a review on iTunes or by tweeting at me @RickLeeJames on Twitter. And please join my mailing list at RickLeeJames.com where you can receive an email every time a new episode is released. By the way, in case you're interested in a daily dose of kindness and encouragement beyond this podcast, I also run the Twitter account @MrRogersSay where I post daily quotes from Fred Rogers, one of the voices in my head. Well, I guess that's it for the intro, so sit back, relax, and listen to the latest episode of Voices in My Head.

Welcome back to Voices in My Head. As always, I'm your host, Rick Lee James, and I am so glad that you are all here for another great conversation. Conversation today. My guest today on Voices in My Head is a wonderful author. Her name is Blake Guichet, and she has a great new book called Confessions of a Crappy Christian, which is also the title of her podcast. Today we're going to have a great time talking together about some of the things in her book, but let me tell you a little bit about it anyway, just before we start. Why does it so often feel like Christians can't talk about the real hard stuff in life. We know our lives should reflect Jesus, what he did and said, and how he interacted with others. But if we're being honest, there are days when we face tough, confusing things that can make us feel very not like Jesus. Well, that's what this book is about, and I don't want to give too much away, and I want to have as much conversation as I can today. So we're going to go right to my guest today and let her tell us more about this wonderful new book. So Blake Guichet, welcome to Voices in My Head.

Hey Alex, thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here.

You're welcome. Well, I'm Rick, but my son's name is Alex, so that's fine.

Ah, let me do that again because my next interview is Alex.

No, it's okay.

I'm sorry, it's, it's so cool. On my computer is Alex.

Ah, it's all right, it's totally cool. Nope, that's fine, it's not a big deal at all. So I understand we get busy, and you know what, This is real life and that's what we're talking about, so it's okay.

Totally.

Hi, Rick Lee James. No, very excited to be here.

No need to apologize at all. So, um, well, hey, first of all, congratulations on the new book.

Thank you.

I've been enjoying reading it, and I haven't had a chance to read it all because my life has been kind of crazy lately with assignments and things because I am a, uh, I'm actually a chaplain at a hospital and I'm in the middle of my clinical pastoral education. So, um, seems like all I do anymore is read books for classes, right? But it's so good to be able to dive into something that wasn't an assignment and to be able to read some of your book. And then I've listened to a few of your podcasts too, which have been great, and I've been enjoying the guests on there. So thank you. As one podcaster to another, it's so good to be able to have this interaction today.

Absolutely.

Thank you.

Well, do us a favor today, all of us who are listening, because this is a great new book and I don't want to misdescribe it. I want you to be able to have a chance to kind of give us the elevator pitch today and help everybody who's listening understand. I think they're already intrigued just from the intro of talking about real life hard things that sometimes Christians don't know how or don't want to talk about. So tell us a bit about your new book and the inspiration for it.

Yeah, so as you said, I started my podcast, uh, about 3 and a half years ago now, and it was birthed out of a very similar desire to just kind of dive deeper into the things that I knew I wasn't the only person grappling with. Things like mental health or relationships or the hard parts of relationships or even the hard parts of, of faith and a relationship with Christ and having questions about those things. And, uh, since I was a kid, I've kind of been a, if you can't find it, make it. Type. And so in 2018, I started my podcast simply because at the time I really was struggling to find conversations that went past surface level about these things. Uh, and then so a few years later, I was actually approached by Tyndale. Uh, they asked if I, if I felt like there was a book in there and I was like, I'm sure there is. And so, uh, it's It's essentially my kind of life tagline is that freedom is on the other side of the things that make us uncomfortable. And I think so often Christians especially are unwilling to walk through the discomfort, even though we don't have to walk through it alone. We walk through it with Jesus by our side with his arm around us. And he knows that going through it instead of around it means we get to learn and understand him more and grow. And so on the other side, we get to really walk in the fullness of freedom with him. And so sometimes that looks like, you know, boasting in our weakness, talking about things we're not great about, things that we struggle with. And so that's really what the book is and the podcast and all of that kind of stuff is kind of all summed up with.

Well, that's terrific. And, and, you know, it's, it's almost a, uh, a midwife approach. And, and I say that because I had heard someone say one time, and my, my memory has slipped, I'm sure it's not an original thought, but heard the idea that some of us are like midwives in our conversation, yelling, push, it's supposed to hurt, you know.

Yeah, I love that. Yeah.

And so it's sort of like that when we're, we're having these difficult conversations. So thank you for, first of all, having the courage to be able to talk about things that we sometimes find difficult to talk about. I find that to be incredibly helpful, and it's not always something that we pursue as Christians because we feel like maybe we need to be just keeping the peace and not causing any conflict. But let's talk about some of those things that you write about and why they matter to God. Why do you think Christians are afraid to talk about things that you address in the book? And this is just a list of a few of them that you address: weakness, friendship breakups, which I don't hear that very much talked about, sex, mental health, feelings versus truth, etc., things like that. Why is it that you think we're afraid to talk about these things?

I think there are a lot of reasons. I think it can be different for each individual, but I often— what I find is it's because we don't actually have all of the answers, and we don't— aren't necessarily comfortable talking about things that we can't package up really nicely with a bow and say, this is how it goes, this is how it works. Um, I think we forget that God is in the midst of the messy, that like he's okay with our grappling. He joins us in it. And, um, you know, I think that there are a lot of different reasons. It could be fear, it could be discomfort, it could be just, again, just generally not knowing how to talk about these things, um, and knowing that you're gonna make other people uncomfortable as well, and not everyone enjoys that. So I, I— my hope is that people always hear that my heart is not judgment for not talking about these things, because I get it. It's more an encouragement, like, let's just try it. Let's, let's try it. Let me help, like, kind of hold your hand and walk you through some of it, and maybe you'll find out this isn't like as bad as I thought it was gonna be.

Yeah, well, and I think it's helpful too if maybe we can enter into these conversations from a non-judgmental place, right? Understanding that we might come with different perspectives, but the worst that can happen is we'll disagree, you know. And, and it's so much more important to have these conversations. Um, one thing that I— we talked about before we started recording today that I thought might be helpful to some of our listeners, instead of kind of taking a look at the whole book today, yeah, I wanted to— as I was reading through it and I found a chapter that really hit me at a place where I just yesterday, at the time of recording this, it was yesterday anyway, found myself at church in a group of adults in a Sunday school classroom. And one of the topics you address came up, and that's forgiveness. So maybe today what we could do in our short time that we have together, let's kind of interact in a way that, that you might in your book, you know, in addressing one of these conversations, because forgiveness is one of those things that I think can be very misunderstood. We can have unrealistic expectations about what it means to forgive or even to receive forgiveness. We may not even all have the same definition when we come to forgiveness of what it means. So if it's all right with you, let's go right into that and talk about forgiveness today, kind of how you approach about it in your book. First of all, what would you like to tell us about that chapter, first of all? Because there is quite a lot that you share from your experiences. So maybe you start the conversation and help lead us in there today so people can get a taste of the way that you address it in your book. And we'll just go from there with conversation.

Absolutely. Yeah, that, that chapter was hard to write, and even harder to read for the audiobook. Because it is, it's very, like, vulnerable. And I share, I kind of have this leading up to, like, kind of this wound after wound after wound, and then me having to come to the realization that I had not truly extended real forgiveness to any of these people, in part because I didn't actually— I don't think understood what forgiveness really looked like, and also was a little bitter about the concept of forgiveness because it felt like a free pass. It felt like, um,— it felt like pretending nothing had happened and that what they had done was okay. And I have a very strong sense of justice. And so the idea of being like, "Yeah, no, like, it's fine. Everything's fine," just grated against me. And I think that— I talk in the book about this concept of kind of like faux forgiveness and faking forgiveness. How it looks from the outside, like what I just said, everything's fine, you're good, I'm good, we're okay. But on the inside, you're like rotting and you're bitter and you're angry because you haven't actually let go of the pain or the trauma or the thing that happened. And how the only person that that in the end actually impacts is you. Yeah, the other person has kind of likely usually moved on because they think they've been forgiven or they don't care, like, what, you know, they're like, whatever. And so I had to kind of wrestle with that with God and come to a place of— it sounds very Sunday school, but realizing that he, like, legitimately forgave me when I couldn't even actually apologize. For what I had done. And if that's been extended to me, well, then, like, it's my responsibility to extend that to other people. And that doesn't mean a free pass. It doesn't mean that what they did is okay. It doesn't even mean that you don't still have boundaries with that person. It just means you release them. I think the quote at the beginning— that each chapter has a quote at the beginning, and it's something like, forgiveness is setting, like, setting someone free and realizing that you were actually the prisoner.

Yeah, when— and if you don't mind, I've got it right here. It says, when we forgive, we set a prisoner free and then discover that the prisoner was us. Right. Lewis Smedes. Yeah, that's such a, such a good way to start the chapter, for sure. Yeah, well, I appreciate so much that you're addressing this, and as I said, I had no idea Yesterday in the conversation that I was a part of, because there was probably, I want to say, 20 adults that were in it.

Yeah.

And the conversation just kind of went from the teacher addressing it to everybody really kind of breaking open their wounds together and going, well, isn't forgiveness this and isn't it that? And this person hurt me this way. Am I supposed to do that? And there's some really complex feelings that I think we have around forgiveness. So I wonder if you can help us today. Maybe we can get there together. What do you think is a good definition just for us to start with? Like, what is forgiveness? You know, because I think we might have a preconceived notion. You've already done a great job of addressing what you call fake forgiveness in the book, which it looks like extending an olive branch. And you actually write, you said it looks like extending an unwarranted olive branch, refusing to engage in negative talk. But let's talk a bit about about like what really is forgiveness because it's not that.

No, yeah, I think one of the things I had to realize again is what forgiveness is not, and it is not immediate reconciliation. And I think that's a very common misconception about forgiveness is that I forgive you and now we're okay. I just don't— that we don't really see that modeled in Scripture. But it's somehow kind of permeated its way into how we teach kids about forgiveness and how we teach adults about it. And the reality is, is that reconciliation requires changed behavior. It requires deep apology. You know, it requires so much more than actual forgiveness does, because forgiveness— I will never forget a pastor explaining it to me as giving someone an A when they've earned an F.

Mm-hmm.

That— and this is more specifically for forgiveness amongst fellow believers. You know, the idea that if God can see me in all of my sin and mistakes, not only see me as clean and righteous, but actually made me that, then like, he's also given me the ability to extend that to others. And so I, I, I'm— I wrote the book so long ago, and it was such an arduous process that I'm— is— I'm pretty sure this is a chapter where I talk about like, you have to accept what actually happened and, and heal from it and shed it. And, and I go through these steps that were radical for me in my forgiveness of like I first had to actually encounter and experience what had been done in its fullness without trying to explain it away or be like, no, it's fine, oh, like whatever. Being like, no, this was big and it hurt and it sucked and it wasn't okay.

Yeah.

In order to like accept it and then heal from it and then be able to leave it behind. And so forgiveness is not switching a flip, flipping a switch. It's— I always get that mixed up. It's not, you know, it's not pretending like everything's okay when it's not. It's often messy and ugly and painful and takes longer than we wish it would. But real forgiveness, in my opinion— I actually like just experienced this the other day where one of actually the stories that I tell in the book that really hard and really painful that I didn't think I'd ever heal from. That person came to mind recently in like a business opportunity and it actually was legitimately crossing my mind like, oh, like let me see if I could send this over to them. It'd be a good fit for them. And I remember it like I'm sitting right where I'm sitting right now being like, this is healing. This is forgiveness where like I don't need to be in relationship with this person. But I can want good things for them. That was huge.

Yeah, now that's really good. And if you don't mind, I'd love to read just a little bit of what you wrote on forgiveness too, because I think it says it very well. Um, you say, we were not created to live our lives either consumed by our pain or pretending it doesn't exist. When Jesus talks about his yoke being easy and his burden being light, He means he's beside you in the yoke. It's not because everything is going to be hunky-dory. It's because even when the hard stuff comes, you will be shoulder to shoulder with the creator of the universe. But if you refuse to acknowledge when things have gotten tough, you're also likely doing your best to stay out of the yoke. And I really thought that was good, how you had phrased that. And you even touched on this a few minutes ago. When things happen to us that require forgiveness, they are significant things. And I think one mistake we often make is going, well, forgiveness means I have to say to this person, it didn't matter, it's okay.

Right.

And I think in actuality, what you're trying to help us express is maybe going to the person and saying, you know what, it did matter and it really did hurt. And there was a lot of harm. There was— there's usually grief associated with this. And so when grief happens, as we know, if it's a death, it takes a long time and a lot of different stages for us to go through to get there. So we also want to encourage each other to like go at our own pace with this, but acknowledging also that we're allowing this person who harmed us in a significant way to enter back into their humanity. And as you just said so beautifully, I can still wish them well, right, and hope for the best, but it doesn't have to go on her hurting you, you know, in the same way. And you've differentiated yourself from that in a new way. So I think that's beautiful.

Well, and we have biblical example and structure of what approaching this looks like. Like, Matthew 18 doesn't say, like, if someone has sinned, you just pretend like it didn't happen. It says you approach them and you talk to them, and then if they aren't willing to repent, you bring another person, you know. So there's there is no example in scripture where somebody— God's like, somebody hurt you and you pretend like it's all fine. No healing. Healing is not possible if you're trying to brush it all under the rug.

Yeah, yeah, so true. Um, and now what I found in, in these conversations that I just had recently, I think a lot of people thought, well, I just have to get over it and move on. And that's, as you say, it's not dealing with it. It that way. It's not dealing with it. And there's a lot of layers to this. And again, you write about so many things in the book, but for me, this is just where it was.

It's like, yeah, no, I love that.

One of these hard conversations that we need to have. And sometimes we can be so— I don't know, we want everything to be happy clappy, however you say it in the Christian life, and we forget that it was a very costly forgiveness that Christ gave us. And yeah, when I think about that, like, the idea that, that Jesus would come back from the grave with arms extended saying, come to me, you know, to the same people that crucified him. Um, I also try to help people understand, like, but at the same time, we're not Jesus. Um, we have Jesus in us, right? And Jesus can hopefully bring us to a place where we can wish well, but that doesn't mean we have to stay with abusers. You talk about in the book a relationship that you were in that became very unhealthy because you felt like that was kind of what you needed to do as a Christian. Well, I need to stick it out, stay with this person, even though it just kept causing you harm. And I think that is maybe one of the most important things that you write about is you're giving a freeing way for people people. It doesn't mean— I think as you said a few minutes ago, it doesn't mean you have to continue being a doormat, right, person. And sometimes, you know, if we think even in a big global scale, like, we're not saying to Jewish people, you have to cozy up to your Nazi abusers, you know, right? We're in a prison camp or something, right? Um, but we are hopefully finding ways through God's grace that again we're welcoming them back into their humanity.

Yeah, I love that.

The hurt was so deep, and yet God has forgiven so deeply that, you know, I, I'm not going to keep drinking the poison against you. Yes, myself.

So exactly.

Well, this is just one of the, the many things that you write about in the book, but I appreciate you engaging with it because I knew in the short time that we had today we weren't going to be able to hit every topic that's in there.

I like getting to just focus on like one of the topics and go a little bit deeper about it because I think it's better than like a flyover.

Sure. Now let me ask you, because I do want to give, um, a chance maybe for our listeners today before our conversation is over to hear some of the ways that maybe people have been interacting with you about this. And it might be through reading the book, it might be through conversations you've had the podcast. But have you had any feedback from people that have either read the book or heard some of these conversations? Because really, that's what your podcast is, right? You're having these difficult conversations that you ended up writing a book about. What's some of the, the feedback that you're getting that just stands out in your mind that you go, okay, I feel like this is where we're connecting?

Yeah, I mean, I think the, the— my favorite response or message that I get is that my watching me or listening to me, quote unquote, like, be brave has helped other people be brave and have hard conversations or stand up for things that they believe in. I lived my life as a doormat for a minute because I thought that that was what the Christian life was supposed to look like. When I came to faith in my early 20s, I thought I was I was supposed to just shut up and sit down, and that humility looked like not doing anything and not saying anything. And, um, it took years of being miserable because I'm not quiet by nature, even remotely. So I was like not— I was also, you know, not walking in the fullness of how I was created. And so I think anytime somebody, especially women, just for me as a woman, hear that response, you know, watching you be brave about friendship breakups helped me realize that I was being abused in this relationship and to set some boundaries and regain, you know, my sense of self. You know, the— the— we just sent out the audiobook to everybody that pre-ordered. And so people are kind of getting their hands on the book earlier than the release date. And the response over and over has just been that it's helping heal wounds they didn't think would ever heal, which is so life-giving because when I wrote it, that's how I felt. Like, I felt like I was watching God heal wounds as I was putting these words on paper that I was like, I'm just stuck with for life. Like, these are just— I'm just going to, like, carry this forever. And like, that's okay. Like, and there are some things that we are going to carry forever. But just watching them kind of heal over and then knowing I could extend that healing to others is just really a cool experience.

Yeah.

Well, I'm glad to know too that you, you do the reading on your own audiobook because— yeah, I actually find that I enjoy it when—

oh, me too—

do their own words because I just think nobody can quite express in the same way than the person who wrote it. Yeah. And so that again helps us to hear your voice. And I wonder if for you in doing that again and like taking time to read it again, you probably heard some things that probably hit your heart again.

Oh yeah, there were multiple times throughout reading it, especially like there's a story of, uh, when my oldest daughter, uh, we all— she almost died when she was about 13 months old. And I got like— had to kind of take a break and reset, you know, reading that again and, and Also, there are some parts that I wrote that are like just very ripped open, raw, that was like pain that I was in at the time that God has since healed me from. And so it was really crazy reading that pain and remembering so clearly feeling that and now getting to kind of look at it through a different lens and seeing what God can do is But reading the audiobook was exhausting and exhilarating all at once, for sure.

Yeah.

Well, and I wonder if sometimes too, and I'm a musician and sometimes I'll listen back to songs that maybe turned out better than I would have imagined at times, and I thought, was that me? Where did that come from?

Oh yeah.

Did you ever feel like that too when you're writing and you go, wow, that must have been from like a divine place because Did I do that? You know, did I write that?

Like, that was a mic drop moment. That was pretty good. Okay, Jesus. 100%.

Yeah, it's good stuff. Well, I'd love to know from you, what is it that you're hoping readers of your new book— what is it that you're hoping as they finish the book up, what do you hope they carry from it? Are you hoping that they'll be changed by it in some way? Are you hoping they'll empowered. Um, what's, what's kind of your hope whenever somebody finishes this book that you've read, or that you've written? Sorry.

Oh, I read it too.

You read it too.

I think my biggest hope for people is freedom. I walked in bondage thinking it was freedom for a really long time, and now having experienced the true freedom that's available to us through grace and the finished work of Christ, I just want that for as many people as possible. And I fully believe that it's only— that it's available to everyone, but it's gonna take some work to get there. It's gonna take some healing and some dropping of chains. And my hope is that this book serves as kind of a simultaneous field guide and friend in that journey to kind of be like, no, me too. Like, no, like, look, I get it. I've been there. But God, like, look what God can do, what he will do, what he has done, um, is just to kind of hopefully set people free in the end. That's kind of how the book ends, is like, okay, like, go, go set other people free too, you know?

Yeah. Well, I just want to say how much I appreciate you addressing these things. You've probably got a sequel that could come out of it from things that you didn't yet address.

Oh yeah.

Always things. And I know that in, in the church, and because I've worked in a church for many years now, sometimes the easiest thing even for pastors to do is avoid it and not want to dive in. And yet that takes us to spiritually unhealthy and emotionally unhealthy places, so that we end up having sometimes entire congregations have emotionally unhealthy spiritual expectations. Yep. So thank you for, for helping us to do some of the hard work in having these conversations. I really appreciate it. I want to let everybody know one more time, just so they can find it out, we're going to have the links actually in this podcast, both on our page and hopefully wherever they listen, they should be able to just click the notes and find a click-through link. But it is a new book and it is from Tyndale Publishers, and it's called Confessions of a Crappy Christian, which is a great title anyway, and it makes you want to know more. But I encourage everybody to check it out. And if you want to get more of kind of what you've heard today, check out Blake's podcast as well. And I want to spell your last name for everybody. It's G-U-I-C-H-E-T, just so that whenever they are looking it up, if they should happen to not be clicking on the link and they want to look it up up later, they can find your name in that way. So Blake, it's been really wonderful to get to have a few minutes with you today. Thank you for writing the book. Thank you for having hard conversations, and thank you for the visit. I really appreciate it.

Thank you so much. This was so good.

Well, and as I say to my guests every week, because we're on the Voices in My Head podcast, I get to say it to you now. Blake Guichet, thank you for being one of the voices in my head this week.

Thank you for joining me here this week on Voices in My Head. I hope you'll visit me on my website at rickleejames.com where you can find out more about me, get my music on vinyl and CD, follow my blog, and even schedule me for a concert or a speaking engagement. Better yet, even a book signing in your neighborhood. You can find all that and more at rickleejames.com. Also, it would mean a great deal to me if you could write a review of this podcast on iTunes. The more positive reviews that we receive, the more visible this podcast will be online. And now for the benediction. May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope. God bless you. And thank you for listening to Voices in My Head.