Episode 245 - Mental Health Counselor Talks Healing from Sexual Brokenness With Jay Stringer
We’ve all read the stories of prominent Christian leaders succumbing to some sort of sexual brokenness. No one ever suspects the story will be about them.
But do we take active steps to ensure it won’t be?
With all the stress, anxiety, and external pressures entrepreneurs face, we’re often especially tempted to turn to outlets like pornography or infidelity.
Most people don’t like to talk about this, but the reality is that so many leaders struggle with this issue. We just keep it secret because of shame or embarrassment. At best, we try to fight against our temptations and end up at the same place we started.
Jay Stringer offers us a different path forward on today’s podcast. The psychotherapist and author helps guide people to healing by helping them deal directly with their unwanted desires.
Jay has joined the show way back in episode 77, and this will be a standalone extension and continuation of that earlier conversation. Still, we’d highly encourage you to go back and check out that discussion to get the whole picture.
If you like this content, don’t forget to follow the show so you never miss an episode.
All opinions expressed on this podcast, including the team and guests, are solely their opinions. Host and guests may maintain positions in the companies and securities discussed. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as specific advice for any individual or organization.
Episode Transcript
Transcription is done by an AI software. While technology is an incredible tool to automate this process, there will be misspellings and typos that might accompany it. Please keep that in mind as you work through it.
Rusty Rueff: Welcome back to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast. Today we're diving into a touchy topic that gets overlooked far too often. We're talking about sexual brokenness. Entrepreneurs might be especially susceptible to things like pornography or infidelity. Stress, anxiety and external pressures function as notable triggers for unwanted sexual desires. The reality is that so many people struggle with this issue, but keep it secret because of shame or embarrassment. At best, we try to fight against our own temptations, yet many times end up at the same place we started. Today's guest, Jay stringer, has a different path forward. The psychotherapist and author helps guide people to healing by looking directly at their unwanted desires instead of pretending that they're not there. Jay has joined the show before, way back in episode 77, and this will be a stand alone extension and continuation of that earlier conversation. Still, we highly encourage you to go back and check out that discussion to get the whole picture. We've linked the episode in the show notes. All right. Without further ado, let's get into it.
Henry Kaestner: Welcome back to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast. I'm here, as always, with William and Rusty. I should say most of the time, on occasion, we're on vacation. We missed key ones, but for the most part, and it's a part of the magic to what we do. I get a chance to do this and reflect with William and with Rusty. And today we are going to talk about a topic that is super important and one that we should have spent a lot more time on over the course of the last 250 episodes. Then we have our ultimate goal here at Faith Driven Entrepreneur actually is not to make you and it helps you to be better at customer acquisition cost and lifetime value, though you'll learn some lessons about that on the way or intellectual property or channels to market. Our hope is the same for you as it is for us. And this why we do this is that we may know God more fully and enjoy Him more fully and accept the invitation to participate in the work that he is doing in the world as we understand how much he loves us. And it's hard for us to do that well, if we don't look at the topic of sin. And when I think about the different topics of sin, I think about this recently because, you know, there's a whole William and Rusty you know, there's been this whole thing going on about revival and just, you know, it was happened in Asbury and this is kind of the sense of we need to gaze on the holiness of God and then also confess our sins to one another. And I was thinking about the fact that I'm a murderer. You know, I don't know if I would have changed the way that you thought about agreeing to co-host with me. But I'm a murderer, I'm an adulterer, I steal, I lie, I mean, a whole bunch of different things. And, you know, when you look at the concept of sin as laid out in the testament by Jesus and this broader idea about what adultery looks like, we all know that we are sinful and fallen short of his glory, and we don't like the patterns of continuing to sin. And there is evil all around us. But my sense is that there is a way, in addition to understanding how much God loves us and He's cleansed us of our sin, there are some things that we might do to help us with some of the unwanted thought patterns and activity patterns that might lead us deeper into sin, and sexual sin is absolutely one of them. William, you and I were at a conference recently that Faith Driven Investor did in Palo Alto, and we had 164 general partners of private equity venture capital funds, all Christian getting together at the Rosewood Hotel on Sandhill Road in Palo Alto. And the first panel, well, you tell us, what was the first panel on?
William Norvell: Yeah, I mean, the first panel was fascinating to me. One about this topic, too. I'll share. I was tested me personally, but as about this gentleman, I we'll call him Danny. We don't need to use his name, but it was a fairly public situation where he was caught with prostitution and things outside of marriage.
Henry Kaestner: A three and a half billion dollar hedge fund manager, super Christian guy, taking planeloads of people that generous giving every year. Absolutely.
William Norvell: Yeah. I mean, everything you would expect except he had this dark side to him and the beautiful side of the tragedy. So I used to wrestle with King David, Right? I used to wrestle with why he's a man after God's heart. I didn't get it. I still wrestle with it sometimes. My wife would tell you, but I found pieces of it in pieces that are. He's probably the biggest figure that we have the fullest view of his life. And we see his murderous ness, we see his adultery, and then we see his repentance through the Psalms and through other places. And I almost never get to hear the other side of the story. And so at this conference, we got to hear how this gentleman was forgiven by his wife, how he fell at the feet when his sin was exposed, how he confessed it to his friends. I felt in this moment that God forgave him. And they're still married to this day.
Henry Kaestner: And even before that. What's amazing and a reason why as he's telling this story in the first panel person talked about pride. And we have Jay with us, by way. Jay, welcome to the program. Jay may be thinking like, am I in the program or not in the program?
Rusty Rueff: We should welcome him in.
Henry Kaestner: Right? We have Jay Stringer in the house. Jay is the foremost authoritarian on this is written about this sexual sin. We've had him on the program before, but we need more. And it's because a lot of that is because of this guy's story where he talks about the fact that he was living this lie in making these kind of minor decisions, thinking he could stop at any time and then in them get deeper and deeper, the lies became bigger and bigger. And then he ends up getting busted in a national prostitution ring with his mug shot on national TV. And his now is sexual sin in brokenness is there for everybody to see. Yes, there's incredibly powerful story of redemption. But when I look down in the audience, because this is not what you talk about in the typical investment conference, right? People come in like, oh, thanks, You know, thanks be to God I'm on the Midas list again. Right. Or, you know, the things like that. No, the tone was set here completely differently. I'm looking out in the audience and the looks on people's faces like, Oh, my goodness. Like, I could see myself in that. Now, to be clear, I don't think I'd be a minority if anything are involved in a national prostitution ring? Possible. I doubt it. And yet, as Jim talked about the different things that had happened in his life that led to the sin getting deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper. I think almost everybody in the audience could identify with some stage in that. And it was like, Oh my goodness, this is how this whole thing I've been wrestling with might end. And this story could not. Even with a beautiful story of redemption, I do not want my story to end like this. Jay Stringer. Help us to understand sexual brokenness. The thing we should be talking about a lot more. It plagues everyone. Maybe. Does it plague high profile people a little bit more? Entrepreneurs that, you know, suffer from loneliness and maybe things, maybe investors more, I don't know, maybe will get in that too. But Jay, without further ado. Welcome to the program.
Jay Stringer: Gentlemen. Thank you for having me on and for your courage to address this topic.
Henry Kaestner: Well, thank you for saying that. That's an encouragement, really, in this instance, Jay, it's a matter of us endeavoring to be faithful and obedient to what we think that God has put on our heart to be able to address. And I'll just speak for myself. There are elements of the things leading up to what this guy, his name is Jim. I think it's probably okay to say his first name that what Jim ended up talking about that I can see I've had lustful issues in my life, no doubt about it. And you could go ahead and psychologically say that because of relationships I had in my past with my mother, etc., etc.. But I have seen that type of sin in my life. And I just said in front of the national audience, I have committed adultery as Jesus would define it, which means I have a sin issue, no doubt about it. And yet there's something deeper here. And what I've experienced, lots of people are help us to understand why is it that we experience this type of sexual sin.
Jay Stringer: So a couple of things come to mind. The first would be if we just look like a 30,000 foot view, there's something known as like the three A's of compulsive behavior, and that would be affordability, availability, anonymity. And so whenever you have those three A's, your chances of becoming bonded and bound to and unwanted behavior go up exponentially. So that would be, you know, 30,000 foot if we were to come down a little bit. And I think we looked at something like church history, probably the person who has shaped our Western understanding more than any other person is a theologian by the name of Augustine, wrote the book called Confessions City of God, brilliant theologian, Philosopher. But what we don't normally talk about is he was also arguably a sex addict. So in the fourth century, Internet porn obviously wasn't around. And he would write about how the frenzy of lust gripped him and he surrendered himself entirely to it. So it wasn't porn for him. That was far more orgies and desire for affairs. And part of why I point that out is Augustine very much hated his sin in a way that I would say was not generative, but it was a far more pathological stance.
Henry Kaestner: So not all entrepreneurs have a very good SAT vocabulary list so generative, William raised in his hand. Okay, so two big words that were generated. Yeah. Okay. Help us understand generative.
Jay Stringer: So, you know, whenever you hate something about yourself, you're not going to develop a very healthy theology out of that. And so I think part of what Augustine has passed on and, you know, things like purity culture is a high suspicion around sexual desire, just a lot of self-hatred, self-loathing. And any time you have self contempt, self-loathing, it's not going to get healthier. It's actually going to get worse. And so you have self-loathing really pitted against, you know, Roman 2:4 that says, do you not know? That is the kindness of God that leads to change, not self contempt, not willpower, not lust management. It's really this process of kindness. And so, you know, a lot of suspicion in the church history. You know, the person of David is often critiqued as a murderer and an adulterer, which he was. But in the affair with Bathsheba, it wasn't necessarily an affair. It was actually the abuse of power. Bathsheba had no rights. Therefore, it's not a consensual affair. It's David's complete abuse of the power of his position. And so you have seminaries. You have, you know, a lot throughout culture that we don't prepare people to understand power dynamics, transference, just things that come into the role. So we have this very addictive stuff that's on the Internet. We have no discipleship at all around sex in the church. I kind of liken it to a little bit like food poisoning where you don't teach people how to cook by warning them about salmonella. Like, that's not going to. Encourage healthy cooking or desire. But that's what the church has largely done. As you know, don't get salmonella, don't be sexually broken. But we have no language, no discipleship, very little education. So that's a major component. And then as you hinted at Henry with this gentleman, I don't know his name, but just there are things within his life and his story that lead to these choices. And so that's really where my book, my research comes in is we did a really substantial research project looking at the key drivers of unwanted sexual behavior, and we can get into it later. But the gist is that these behaviors, these fantasies that we have, are not random. They're a direct reflection of the parts of our story that remain unaddressed. And so I think that's really what the work of the gospel is, is to invite us to understand our story, to invite us to understand why did we come to make these decisions that we know that are not good, productive or wholly for us, and yet we feel drawn to them. And I think throughout the Old Testament, God is always showing up, asking questions to people who find themselves in difficult places.
Rusty Rueff: So I love the three A's. Can you give us those three A's again? To us.
Jay Stringer: Yeah. Affordability, availability and anonymity. So you take something like Internet porn for free, you can be completely anonymous within it and very, very affordable. You don't have to spend anything. But also, you know what we know about things like process addictions and intermittent reward is you never quite know what you're going to get within a particular site. Maybe you have a certain video that you keep going back to, but it's also a bit like the gambling process of when am I actually going to get this hit, When am I going to see the scene, the person that I really desire. So just the neuroscience and then neurobiology is hard wired us for compulsive behavior.
Rusty Rueff: Yeah, I totally get that because, you know, especially entrepreneurs like we're wired that way, right? We are constantly looking for the affirmation or, you know, the next flash report that says that this week was better than last week, you know, And so we're susceptible to those triggers. I mean, in your experience, like, is that true that entrepreneurs might be more susceptible than others?
Jay Stringer: Yes. So a couple of key steps about that. So this is true of entrepreneurs, executives, but just, you know, 50 to 60% fell within the first 18 months of their position. Most people would say that they you know, I think it's somewhere in the range of 35 to 40% would say that they did not anticipate the loneliness associated with these positions and this level of risk. And then a lot of times people would say that they just felt very unprepared for the challenges of their role. So if you let's just kind of imagine that as a petri dish and you're putting high risk of failure, you're putting a lot of stress and futility, and then you're also putting a sense of powerlessness. But maybe you get some initial money and you have power money for the first time in your life. You put all those things together, and that's a petri dish for unwanted behaviors. So the other side to it would also be one's own story. And as you put it, well, Rusty, there's a sense of many entrepreneurs that I work with would be not all of them, but a lot of them are kind of like the Enneagram type three, like the achiever mentality. And so one of the things that I don't think we really understand enough around mental health and narcissism, especially with men, is that when I was in high school, I always thought about narcissism was like this guy in my school that always had that he had to wear Tommy Hilfiger. He had a Ford Mustang Cobra, like, you know, it was kind of like a purple green. And we were always like, he's a narcissist. He's so full of himself. And yet clinically, narcissism is not being full of yourself. It's actually not knowing who you are. And so you look to your bank account, you look for your position, you look at your success, how many books you've written, your own image, your own, you know, how beautiful your partner is. And all of that becomes what we refer to in psychology as a reflected sense of self. And so for a lot of entrepreneurs that have kind of gotten their have over reflected sense of self from their accomplishments, from what they're able to do, when that rises and falls, their ego, their heart and soul rises and falls. And many times in that place of stress and that place of judgment, that's when they are very susceptible to pursuing an unwanted behavior like porn or an affair. And it's always two things. Half of it is always a sense of relief from the difficulties of what they're feeling. But then the other half is you actually pursue something that brings greater judgment against yourself. And so, you know, on one hand it provides relief from stress, but on the other hand, it provides irrefutable evidence that you are just broken and screwed up.
Henry Kaestner: Help me understand that last part, because as confusing a little bit to me, you're saying that there's some part of humans and maybe entrepreneurs maybe overindex for this that desires for some level of condemnation to come down on us? Or is it a self-loathing and just some sort of like validation that our self-loathing is valid? That's a new concept to me. Drill down a little bit.
Jay Stringer: For sure. So, I mean, I think we have to look at it on two fronts that there's always the sense of like self-medication is at work, like a sense of escape. And so we see this with like substance abuse users where they might have a higher likelihood to come from childhood trauma, adverse childhood experiences like bullying or abuse. And so when they first experience heroin, alcohol, part of what a lot of people will talk about is like that felt like a warm hug. For the first time in my life, I actually felt attachment. I felt calm, I felt pleasure. And so that sense of like, yes, there's a self-medicating, there's a sense of pleasure and relief and escape, but you only have to, you know, go to an unwanted sexual behavior like three or four times to know that like the end effect of all of this is not like, wow, I'm so glad I had temporary relief, if we're honest. It always moves into a place of judgment and condemnation against ourselves. And that's really our work to be able to go back to some of those stories that actually convinced us that we were unwanted or broken to begin with. So one example would be my nickname in middle school was Donut. I walked to school with a jelly donut white striped shirt, and it kind of was in the era of the Pillsbury Doughboy commercials. And so people used to kind of put their finger into my belly and just do that, too. And so, you know, a lot of my middle school trauma had to do with feeling a lot of shame, a lot of judgment against myself. And that's what happens in trauma is when there is a lot of. Just like fragmentation and numbing and pain, it actually sets the neural pathways up for us to continue to pursue behaviors that actually give us what we're accustomed to experiencing. And so, you know, whether I'm struggling with porn, I'm struggling with food, I'm struggling, you know. Henry, I love how you started the show. Just like we all struggle with adultery, which is in the Greek epithymo, which means covet. And so just that sense of I have coveted to be single, I have coveted, to be married, I've coveted. To get kids, I've coveted to get rid of my kids. So like, that is a baseline function of my heart. And that's really what the trauma is bringing us back to is the sense of a lot of just our wounded ness and core issues and life. And so hopefully that makes sense. But yes, it's a relief. But also let's be honest that the end effect is judgment and where in our story actually sets us up to need the confirmation of judgment and shame.
Rusty Rueff: You know, you're going through all those things. You know, the Ten Commandments always felt like it should say, thou shalt not, but I know you will, you know, and that, you know, God is the other side of that. Thou shalt not. But I know you will. And therefore, I will redeem you. I want to get to one thing in this narcissism conversation. So imagine we've got our life that's in front of us. And if we're flying an airplane and we've got all of our instruments in front of us and are there some. Early warning signs that the instrument would go off and flash red. Okay. You're now on a path that could open you up to these things that you don't know you're really susceptible to. You do know, but you don't know. But because you know, it's affordable, it's available. It's anonymous. So early warning signs of narcissism that's going to lead us then to that, you know, next step. Next step. Next step.
Jay Stringer: Yeah. So in my life, like I talked about this donut story, right. Which, you know, we might laugh because we all know that middle school can be something of a prototype of hell. We all have those experiences in our life. But what that story really needs is a good mother, a good father, a good friend to actually listen to the pain of that story, to bear witness to it. But when we don't have people that are attuned to our pain, that, you know, as the psalmist says, that God holds our tears in a bottle when we don't have experiences like that, we end up finding shortcuts to be able to not deal with the pain and the sorrow within. And that's an early warning sign of narcissism, is I don't know how to deal with the pain and the heartache and the stress of what I'm experiencing. But I know if I chisel my body in a particular way, I'm not going to get picked on. I know I've run a couple of marathons in my life, and I realized at some point around eight, nine miles into training that my body felt very different after getting just the endorphins from running and seeing how that burns calories. And so some you know, there's one psychologist that talks about narcissism as narcissism is the shortcut. And so I think that's what happens a lot with entrepreneurs and just a lot of us who don't know how to deal with heartache is that we take shortcuts to be able to feel competent, to feel desirable, to have a level of power in the midst of our powerlessness. And so those are the warning signs, as if you don't want to deal with your story, you don't want to go back to address some of the heartache. Those would be really good signs that you're on a path towards narcissism. So I was recently listening to Bob Iger's. He went to call it a memoir, but it was essentially a memoir of the CEO of Disney. And one of the things he talked about in the first chapter was his dad had manic depression and you could tell when his father would come home each day, like, you know, just from how he would open the door if his dad was going to be happy or sad. And then therefore, the role that he needed to play. And so when he said whenever anything would break in the home, his dad was not reliable. And so his mom began to rely on him to bring order from chaos. And so just that sense of, you know, Iger story is telling us how he became a CEO. That sense of a lot of problems, the ability to be very vigilant and know what to do. And I think that's what happens to a lot of people and companies as we end up making our living off of childhood trauma in the way that we learn how to make our life work as kids. And so that's what I'm advocating for, is can you bless the wisdom, the competence, the defiance, the beauty of who you are? But also can you step into some of the heartache and some of the difficulties that actually force you to become competent and successful in the way that you currently are?
Henry Kaestner: That's fascinating. So, yeah, so I have reflected for a while, I guess is off topic. Some amount of whatever entrepreneurial success I've had has come out of the fact that I was not a successful lacrosse player. My father, my grandfather, both in the Hall of Fame, but I wasn't. And I desperately needed some sense of meaning and purpose to drive me and ambition that if I was if God, it made me a good lacrosse player. I probably would just like, I'm done. But I needed something. So what I would have said was something was a great, you know, something really wrong with me, that I was an average lacrosse player on a good day. That ultimately is part of my formation story. And so you're saying lean in to this adversity, celebrate what it's helped you to become, but acknowledge it. Acknowledge part of your story and who you are.
Rusty Rueff: Yeah, I think we all have that story. We all have that story. It's like, how do you feel courageous enough or accepted enough to bring that story out?
Jay Stringer: Yes. Yeah. And I mean, that's what I'm doing as a psychotherapist is very similar to what I did in my family growing up. My dad was a Presbyterian minister, and this was back in the day where a lot of people did not go and see a therapist when they had issues that they would consistently reach out to my dad. And so my dad was always attending to different ministry difficulties crises within the church. And so that was a lot of just the formative years of my life was my dad attending to crises, but then also having to play a role with my mom where I would help her around the house, I would do more dishes. I would ask her how she's doing with my dad being gone, with some of the difficulties that she was having with my siblings. And so my childhood and the role that I learned how to play is totally what set me up to be a therapist. And so that's really what we have to grapple with is how did we become who we are today? And there's a lot of dignity in it, and there's also a lot of heartache if we actually become honest about our stories.
William Norvell: Thanks, Jay. It's always good to have you. It's always fun to dig into difficult topics. I also typically need a three day weekend in a cabin after you come on the show to figure out what happened to me and why. But I'm curious to go. So we're all broken, right? I think that's part of what you just said. I think we all have this. This is like part of the human condition at this point on this side of heaven. Right. We're raised by broken people. We have broken friends. That's the way the world is right now on this side of the fall. But yeah, we learn a lot about ourselves and we look at these things and what are the big barriers? You know, I'm thinking of especially, you know, our audience of entrepreneurs, right? I mean, you have to present as having it all together. So often we're like, that's the whole thing is you have to be totally confident. I mean, showing weakness, especially in investor meetings or even with your family sometimes, like I go home and my wife needs to know we're doing well. You know, that's such a nuanced thing. And I think that can lead to not being honest with yourself is where I'm going, right? It's like I have to repress the shame I feel about not being good enough or not making enough sales or in an investor meeting, not really having my technology work like I think it does. I almost feel like that's my job. Yeah, I know it's unhealthy, right? How do we push against that to get to that honesty place?
Jay Stringer: Yeah. One of my favorite Harvard Business Review articles was written by I think his name is Robert McKee. He's a screenwriting coach, has worked with a lot of executives as well. And one of the things he talks about is like whenever he begins to get the story of a company like how it was formed, how did they start? What were some of the adversities that they had to come through? What McKee says is that almost everyone tells a very boring story. They sweep the dirty laundry under the rug. And what he goes on to say in this article is that, you know, as a storyteller, you want to begin to position the problems in the foreground and then show how the company, how the C-suite team has kind of worked to overcome those difficulties. And I think that's part of it, is that, you know, we don't need to sweep the dirty laundry under the rug, but we need to model a way of life. There is difficulty that we always have to work through in business, and difficulties are how we grow in our business, difficulties are how we grow relationally. And so I think it just a lot of just that sense of being intellectually honest about there are difficulties, there are things that I do not understand, and I want to put those out into the foreground and bring community, bring a spirit into some of these places that I don't understand. And it's really when we are humble enough to admit that we don't know exactly what to do, that we seek out guidance, that we seek out help in places that we need it. And so I think you're right, William. There's a huge struggle, to be honest, but I think that's the cost that you all open the show with is, you know, on one hand, this gentleman learns how to step between life of presenting this very successful public image to the world. And yet what did he do with his heartache with some of these dark places where he begins to step between, here's who I am and a level of narcissism, but also the pain, the entitlement, all the things that I don't feel comfortable bringing to the present have to show up somewhere. I can't hide it forever. And so I think that's the cost that we have. If we're not willing to be honest about what is most true of our lives.
William Norvell: Amen. And I'm going to come at this next question from kind of an anecdote, because I feel like it's been an interesting time, right, with the COVID season over the past couple of years. I'm going to go strictly to a business environment right now. I felt like for a long time it you know, most environments where you leave your personal life at home, you know, we don't really talk about that here. This is a business. And then there's a rash of new articles now where we've swung so far in the other direction that people are saying, Look, I don't want to start every meeting. I'm here to work and get a paycheck. I want to start every meeting with, how's everybody doing? And I don't really want to share my spousal struggles or my marriage struggles with my coworkers, like I'm here to work and feel like we've almost swung the pendulum too far now. And I'm curious, in a corporate environment, right? Do you have any thoughts or have you worked with people like, is there a I'm guessing you don't have a program, but if you do share it, but if you don't like their advice or wisdom on here's kind of where this fits in the place of an organization and here's kind of where it might not fit in an organization.
Jay Stringer: Yeah, I mean, I completely agree that you don't want to overshare that that's part of what brings people into work, is there's a certain job description. And I think I'm so glad that the pendulum is turning a bit to be able to say like. There are mental health realities that we need to attend to. So I think that's part of, you know, policy issues, like really encouraging people to take personal time. But I think you're completely right. It's not the place to begin to share. You know, I don't know what I'm doing in my marriage right now or with my kids. I mean, I think we want to have opportunities and resources for people who find themselves in hard places and, you know, talk about that. That's an essential part of being human. But, I would not advocate for like let's start our Monday morning talking about the highs and lows of our weekend, that would just be very unproductive. And that's not necessarily the function of why you're gathering for work that day.
Henry Kaestner: Practically, so William runs this company called Paraclete with his partner, Vineet Rajan and Paraclete. It is an arrow in the quiver of resources that might be available to help support mental illness and or just challenges with marriages or with sexual brokenness, etc., or even chaplaincy, knowing that it's probably inappropriate for a CEO to come in and say, Just to let you guys know, that I'm just. I got massive lust issues and I just want everybody to know that I can't I feel like I can't go on with our staff meeting unless I can divulge that. That would be not a good approach. Right. But it may be a different approach, would be something along the lines of, look, we want to make sure that you can bring your whole selves to work in in order to do that. Understanding that we have a life outside of the office. We want you to understand that there's real challenges in just in being a father or a mother or a spouse. And we know that that is something that might be burdening some of you. And we don't want to ignore that here. It's not like a divide, and we want to be able to provide a resource that allows you to be able to get that type of help, because we know that you're at the office a whole bunch. And you know, for us to be able to point you in a direction that might get you the help you need on an anonymous basis is important to us. Can you speak into that if indeed that illustration of having a quiver of arrows that a CEO or a head of HR etc., that might offer up their employees, what are some of those arrows that you'd see in a quiver to make this actionable? So a CEO and entrepreneur is like, Oh my goodness. So I've experienced some level of this in my own life. But, you know, I bet you if I forget 80 employees or eight employees, that some of them are suffering from it, too. How do I love on them?
Jay Stringer: Yeah, I love that example, Henry. And I think what you just spoke to, I mean, you could pretty much record that and play that again in a meeting. I mean, so. Well said.
Henry Kaestner: Thank you, Jay. I said, thank you very much. I'll take that.
Jay Stringer: As well set. So I'll start abstract and then get down to your question. But Dan Siegel, really famous neuro scientist psychologists would talk about how the strongest systems in the world are those that are highly differentiated and highly linked. And so what he means by differentiation, if you just think about something like your face, where same genetic material has to differentiate and form into a nose, into eyes and ears, etc., or you think about an airplane and you have the control panel, the fuselage, the wing, the engine. So all of those things need to be very differentiated from one another. But the magic of an organization is really finding how do these things all linked together. And so you've got to have differentiation, but you also have to have a way to link. And that's part of what I heard you describe, Henry, is that we want people to become differentiated. We want people to become whole selves, that as they work through inevitable marital conflict and difficulties and perhaps trauma and mental health issues like all of that is part of the differentiation side so that when they come in to link into the company, they're bringing their full true, authentic self into the company. So I think that, you know, executives especially really need to recognize like mental health. We need to encourage people to pursue their mental health and to pursue wholeness. And whether that is a substance use issue, whether that's an unwanted behavior, whether that's an eating disorder, whether that's marital conflict, all of those things are impacting the way that we show up. And so all for raising those issues, as you put so well.
Rusty Rueff: So we're getting ready to go to the Lightning Round, which I asked you some quick questions and have some fun and then William will close us out. But before we get there. So we likely have listeners right now who are right in the smack middle of a broken situation. And they're trying to figure out how do I get from here to healing. And there's a lot of steps between here to healing. Right. There's a bridge called shame. There's a lot of things that you have to go through. But what's your advice to get from here to healing? And if there's any framework that you can leave our listeners with, I think that would be fantastic.
Jay Stringer: Sure. Yeah. I would say like, can you begin to be curious about why you are doing the things that you're doing? And so, especially if you're coming from an evangelical Christian framework with regard to unwanted sexual behaviors, which I would just put, use of porn, infidelity, pursuit of buying sex. Most evangelicalism looked at those issues and then thinks about something that they can manage. And so that's what I referred to as just the lust management approach. And this is the, you know, bounce your eyes when you're having an inappropriate thought. Slap a rubber band around your wrist. One of the leading books in the space talks about like if your husband is trying to quit or in cold turkey, you need to present your body as a merciful vial of methadone to him. So just a lot of really bad advice that's out there within Christian frameworks of engaging this. But I think the approach that we see throughout the scriptures is when Hagar has just been traumatized by the first family of our faith, the Angel of Lord shows up and says, Hagar, where do you come from? What's your story and where are you going when Adam has just eaten of the tree that he was commanded not to eat from, God shows up and says, Where are you, Adam? And so I think if we are hearing the voice of God with regard to our struggles, that voice is kind. It's curious, and it's inviting us to deeper reflection about how our sorrow and our sin tend to be. And so that's the approach that I take and kind of my organization is, is to really invite people to listen to their lust, to pay attention, to be curious about the things that they're drawn to. So just like that example of thinking about your life as a sexual house. And so a lot of times when people feel a thought of lust come in, they might try and get Internet monitoring around their household to try and keep those inappropriate websites or thoughts at bay. They'll call a friend for backup, or they just let the intruder come in to ransack various rooms of their house. But part of what I invite people into is what if you went out onto the front porch of your sexual life and you just began to ask it questions like, Why am I drawn to this type of pornography? Why is it that every Sunday evening I feel most drawn to have an affair or to just kind of like give up on life in general? And so I think that's the approach that I would love to see people take, is, you know, let's be honest and let's be curious about some of these things that we are drawn to. And that's what I think Romans 12 two is all about, of don't be conformed to the patterns of this world, which are pornographic, which are narcissistic, which are all about entitlement, and my needs and my desires that far more be transformed by the renewing of your mind. And for the most part, Christians do not renew their sexual mind because they've never been disciples to think about what's inside of it. And that's what I would love for us to really move the needle on is can we be open to this notion that God knows all of us, knows our fantasies, knows our Internet history, and wants to bring goodness and kindness and growth to those places that we feel bound by shame with it.
Rusty Rueff: And that's a great hopeful message. Right. So anybody who's battling right in the middle of it, trying to get from here to there, there's hope. There's absolutely hope. So thank you for sharing it in the way that you share that Jay. So we're going to jump to Lightning Round. I'm just going to jump in the first one. These are just quick answers for. Well, you try to make them quick answers and we'll try to. Sometimes they're a little bit.
Jay Stringer: I will work on my brevity.
Rusty Rueff: All right. Sounds good. So one thing that you suggest parents should do to help protect their kids from battling with sexual brokenness.
Jay Stringer: I forget who says it, but become your child's Google become their search engine. So instead of just having one 100 minute conversation with your kids about sex, have a 101 minute conversation. So that's the choice that so many people are up against as they might not want to talk to their kids too soon about sex. But the reality is, if you're not going to talk to your kids about sex, they're either going to learn from their middle school or elementary peers and porn where they can learn from you. So become your child's Google in this front.
Henry Kaestner: So I want to know where we can find more about Jay Stringer. I want to know where we can. You know, there's a website, there's a book, point us in the right direction.
Jay Stringer: So my website is jay-stringer.com. And there you can find information about intensives book online courses, resources that we have for churches, faith communities. So website, Instagram are where I'm most active.
Rusty Rueff: And so how do you unplug and unwind? I mean, you deal with heavy stuff all day long. How do you let it go?
Jay Stringer: I would say play one of the things. So we live in New York City now. We moved from Seattle to New York City in the middle of COVID, which got us a couple of points from New Yorkers for moving in when everyone was moving out and we got rid of our cars when we moved to New York because we were told, you know, you just don't need it. And I felt my soul becoming just depressed with time because I love the mountains. I love getting out into the Cascades and the Olympics around the Seattle area. And so we got a car at the beginning of last summer, and that was such a game changer, just because I didn't realize like how much I love the city, but I love to leave the city and so usually try to get out of town, out of cell phone range, try and find adventure, get lost, find a snake, find a bear of some kind just because I want some level of play. And so I think that's what I'm always trying to grapple with, is, you know, I think to be a Christian is to sit with death and resurrection simultaneously. And a lot of my work is sitting and people's death and just stories of heartache, which I think serves something of what it means to be formed in the likeness of Jesus, is to sit with people in death, but also a sense of resurrection And a sense of play is something that I've had to work much harder to find. So any time I'm in the mountains around good food, I feel a lot of play and and goodness being restored to my body.
William Norvell: Amen. And as come to a close, closer, do you still have your your assessment? Entrepreneurs love assessments.
Jay Stringer: I have assestment yes.
William Norvell: That's okay. I took that years ago after seeing your talk. Quick plug for it. And it's a really great starting place for asking a bunch of questions. And then Jay's report gives you a report back. But, you know, here's three or four of the potential reasons why you may be struggling with this specific type of sexual brokenness. And I found that really informative and a great place to start, you know, on this journey, having something to hold. That's the way my mind works, right? That was great.
Jay Stringer: So can I ask 140 questions and get into things that happened in your childhood? And we just referred to that as like key drivers. And we want to give you compass headings about what might be driving and influencing it.
William Norvell: Yeah. Okay. So our last one, where we love to finish every one of our shows, is the word of God. And so we would love to invite you to share a story or a piece of scripture that may be coming alive to you today. Could be something you've meditated on forever. Can be something you picked up on your in your Bible in a year this morning. But just where are you in God's word and what's it telling you?
Jay Stringer: So one of the things I've been grappling with is so John 18 and John 21. John 18 is essentially Peter denying Jesus over a charcoal fire. And then a couple of chapters later, after the resurrection, Jesus presents himself to his disciples and he starts making breakfast over a charcoal fire. And, you know, I heard my pastor preach on this, and it just messed with me. I think about it all the time. So we have Peter, who denies Jesus over charcoal fire. So we know from, you know, just smell is often one of those things, but the strongest sense link to memory. And so when Jesus is making a charcoal fire, a couple of chapters later, you know that Peter is beginning to like, smell his shame, the smell, his denial. And part of what Jesus does there, I think is masterful and brilliant and kind. And what he does is he doesn't create the fire to kind of rub Peter's nose in his betrayal, but neither does he look away from it and just act as if it never happened. And I'm just going to go. Jesus actually creates a context for his shame to rise, but for that shame to be met with love to be met with breakfast, to be met with a sense of kindness. And I think that's what messing with me these days is when I think about, you know, who I am as a husband, who I am as a dad, I will often remember really well. But I remember and I bring evidence to shame and to condemn, not to bring a sense of breakfast. So I think I just don't in good faith that with Jesus, that, you know, Jesus brings our memories to us, not to shame us, not to condemn us, but to really grapple with. You know, I know your story and I'm committed to community and to breakfast with you. And but he.
Henry Kaestner: Also gives Peter a mission, right? Three times. Feed my lambs.
Jay Stringer: Feed my sheep.
Henry Kaestner: Feed my sheep.
Henry Kaestner: and so as I faith driven entrepreneurs understanding, God still wants to be in communion with us and lovingly feeds us despite our. Because, you know, of course, what precedes that is Peter's just adamant and I'll never, ever deny you and Jesus, you know, calmly coming back. Actually, as it turns out, probably it all happened three times before, the cock roost twice. And then, boom, I mean, happens and then Jesus coming back, loving on him and then giving him a mission. And I just find that really encouraging. I mean, faith driven entrepreneur. I want a mission God gives Peter want. And man, isn't it great to see how Peter leans into that mission?
Jay Stringer: Indeed, yeah.
Henry Kaestner: This has been great. Jay. I'm grateful for you. I'm grateful for your ministry. jay-stringer.com. The book is Unwanted, Jay you bless us and just grateful for you and your work, your ministry.
Jay Stringer: Yeah. And again, thank you for your courage and desire to have this conversation. I think we just especially as Christians, we come at this with just a lot of pathology, a lot of sin and shame and not a lot of education, not a lot of understanding. And so just so grateful that you all are offering a more hospitable, kind approach to something that has not been engaged, well, generatively, supportively, so, so grateful to be part of the podcast.
Henry Kaestner: I want to use generatively, I'll give you generatively five or six times today, and I may or may not give you credit for it.
Jay Stringer: It's good to be with you all.
You too brother