Episode 15
Episode 15: The Power of Being Seen: Choosing Vulnerability Over Accountability
This podcast delves into the crucial distinction between vulnerability and accountability in our lives, particularly within Christian communities. The discussion emphasizes that while accountability often involves external pressures and questions, true growth stems from personal vulnerability—an act of willingly exposing oneself to potential emotional wounds. Dr. Mitschargues that vulnerability fosters trust and intimacy, which are essential for genuine connection and healing, especially in the context of sorrow and loss. Through personal anecdotes and reflections, the episode explores how societal tendencies toward control can hinder our ability to be vulnerable, ultimately limiting our emotional and spiritual growth. Listeners are encouraged to consider whom they trust with their vulnerabilities and to recognize the profound impact of being seen and known by others.
Takeaways:
- The importance of vulnerability over accountability in building genuine community connections.
- Vulnerability requires trust and a willingness to be seen and known by others.
- Accountability often deflects personal responsibility, while vulnerability fosters personal growth and honesty.
- Sorrow is an inevitable part of life, and vulnerability helps us navigate those challenges.
- Choosing safe and trustworthy individuals to be vulnerable with is crucial for personal growth.
- Understanding the difference between shame and guilt is key to personal accountability in faith.
Links referenced in this episode:
Transcript
Gosh, the last time I did it, I said welcome to September.
Speaker A:So here we are at the end of October, staring down at four days.
Speaker A:Days from now we are at Halloween and moving into November.
Speaker A:If you've been in any of the stores around here, you will have already noticed Thanksgiving and of course, Christmas trappings of all of that.
Speaker A:And here we go.
Speaker A:You know, here comes the commercialism of our time around Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Speaker A:So I don't really know why I did that.
Speaker A:It was just something to say, I suppose.
Speaker A:But welcome.
Speaker A:I'm glad that you're joining me for this particular podcast.
Speaker A:Just to give you some perspective about it all.
Speaker A:Why do this?
Speaker A:I decided to jump on and have a podcast that isn't quite as programmatic as the Outpost was.
Speaker A:Outpost is very much devoted to being the voice of Stained Glass International or sgi, and trying to add information and thought into how do we build Outposts for the soul or Outposts for the heart and communities for the soul.
Speaker A:And that really is what the Outpost is meant to be.
Speaker A:If you're listening to this and then also listening to Outpost as well, I will give you a sneak preview of what's coming because I'm going to be interviewing somebody who actually wrote an article a couple of years ago about the six things that Christians Should Know about Gen Z.
Speaker A:And I am looking forward to that interview with Sarah Zylstra and her article, I think, is very telling and very important to consider.
Speaker A:And I would be curious to invite the people that are listening that are from that generation, to affirm or disc confirm the information that we talk about there.
Speaker A:I think it will be very.
Speaker B:Thought.
Speaker A:Provoking more than anything else.
Speaker A:So back to unscripted.
Speaker A:This is not really directed at an attempt to do anything productive other than to talk about sorrow and how much it is very much a part of our lives.
Speaker A:And what I said the last time is the subtext of our lives in so many ways.
Speaker A:And I'm not talking about people that are dying in our lives as much.
Speaker B:As the losses we experience and how we go about doing that.
Speaker B:And that's a little bit of what.
Speaker A:I want to talk about tonight.
Speaker A:And the effort in this particular podcast is not to really have a series of topics to look at, but things that I have caught sight of and.
Speaker B:Caught wind of, if you will, when we're talking about handling sorrow, handling life at all, really.
Speaker B:And that's what this one is in particular about.
Speaker A:Because what I want to talk about.
Speaker B:Is vulnerability and accountability.
Speaker B:And in Christian circles it seems like it is a ultimate Value to have some measure of accountability.
Speaker B:And while that sounds really good in my mind, it is nothing more than a buzzword.
Speaker B:Now let me explain why.
Speaker B:Partly because of.
Speaker B:And well, let me give you some context first, why is this such an issue and why you know, it.
Speaker B:Why is it that?
Speaker B:Why is it such an issue?
Speaker B:And the issue to me is how do we own ourselves?
Speaker B:How do we.
Speaker B:What do we do with ourselves and our own hearts?
Speaker A:What do we do with that?
Speaker B:And is it something that someone else is responsible for or is it something I'm actually responsible for?
Speaker B:And so let me explain and unpack this a little bit.
Speaker B:And on my effort here is to talk about what I think is a key issue when it comes to living consistent with the contours of our own hearts and making the changes that I hear people say all the time about the changes they want to make.
Speaker B:And oftentimes I will hear, well, I just.
Speaker B:I just need somebody to be accountable.
Speaker B:And I hear this a lot, actually, from a lot of guys.
Speaker B:And they have an accountability group or they have a.
Speaker B:They.
Speaker B:They have somebody holding them accountable.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker B:And I don't know that it serves any purpose other than to put off the person they're talking to that they have the accountability and therefore they will change.
Speaker B:And so let me dive into this a little further because in my mind, and I have grown up, I am old enough that it was the ultimate value in most men's groups to have accountability.
Speaker B:And accountability, by its very nature is.
Speaker B:Requires some level of personal honesty and honesty with someone else.
Speaker B:And those two are very different.
Speaker B:In my mind.
Speaker B:Personal honesty is how honest am I with myself and then how honest am I with someone else?
Speaker B:And accountability always requires, at some level, someone else, someone else asking the questions, someone else quote, unquote, holding us responsible or holding us accountable.
Speaker B:And the problem is that the motivation is always directed towards someone else, which I think is the tool that is used to actually believe that that's where change comes from.
Speaker B:From.
Speaker B:And so I won't change unless I have some measure of accountability.
Speaker B:And I don't buy it.
Speaker B:I really don't buy it.
Speaker B:And part of it is because I've lived that and accountability works only if I am willing to be honest.
Speaker B:Now I will have probably people thinking, well, yeah, but I think we underestimate how dishonest we actually are with ourselves.
Speaker B:And at some level, if we are honest, usually what accompanies it is shame, not guilt, because guilt actually motivates me to change.
Speaker B:But shame says, I have blown it again.
Speaker B:I have done whatever it is I shouldn't be doing or whatever my.
Speaker B:My standards say I shouldn't be doing.
Speaker B:And therefore, I am a bad person or a bad Christian or a bad fill in the blank.
Speaker B:And so accountability ends up turning to other people to accomplish what I have to do myself.
Speaker B:And as long as they're willing to ask the questions, then I can answer them.
Speaker B:And if the questions are the right ones, then I will answer those.
Speaker B:If they're not the right ones, I'm not going to make the change.
Speaker B:I'm not going to correct them and say, well, you really should be asking this instead.
Speaker B:And so accountability is an interesting thing to me.
Speaker B:It's interesting in the sense that in a lot of Christian circles, they get really defensive about needing accountability because we believe that we need someone else.
Speaker B:Now, on the surface, that sounds right in terms of community, I do.
Speaker B:I need someone else to walk alongside of me and understand that.
Speaker B:But accountability tends to carry with it.
Speaker B:Maybe this is just me, and I'm just.
Speaker B:I'm just too much of a renegade on this stuff, but accountability carries with it a hammer.
Speaker B:And if somebody asked me the right questions, and let me give you context for that, because in the days gone by, in the heyday of what was the ministry that actually brought me here to Colorado and that was Promise Keepers, is that in a lot of men's ministries, they would hand out cards with accountability questions on them.
Speaker B:And usually the list of questions would be about your eyes and how you're handling your eyes, and lust and relationships with other people and relationships with people that you probably shouldn't be having relationships with, those kinds of things.
Speaker B:And usually the very last question was, are you being dishonest with any of the answers you just gave me?
Speaker B:And it's wild.
Speaker B:It just is downright wild for me to think in those terms, because if somebody is going to cover for their inappropriate behavior toward the opposite sex or in other relationships or being controlling or whatever that might be, are they really going to say, yeah, I've been dishonest that whole time.
Speaker B:I've been lying the whole time?
Speaker B:They're not going to say that.
Speaker B:I mean, let's be real, really.
Speaker B:And so accountability ends up placing the responsibility for my own responsibility for myself on someone else.
Speaker B:And I've been in too many interactions with adolescents and adults that if I don't ask the right question, they will not offer the information that is needed for the level of transparency or authenticity that is needed for the kind of changes that they're seeking to make.
Speaker B:And in a Lot of cases I end up often asking, so what exactly do you want?
Speaker B:If I ask these right questions, you'll answer it.
Speaker B:If I don't ask them, you won't answer it.
Speaker B:So therefore you are justified in continuing on.
Speaker B:Because I didn't ask the right questions.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:And so accountability works because I have someone else to ask the questions rather than me.
Speaker B:And if I'm not going to be honest with myself, and in a lot of cases we're not, so how can I be honest with you?
Speaker B:I mean, if I'm not going to walk the contours of my own heart, then how in the world are you going to walk with me in it?
Speaker B:I can't give away what I don't own, what I don't understand, what I don't explore.
Speaker B:There's no way I can give it away.
Speaker B:And what I do give away, if that is based on a shallow assessment of what is going on in my heart, then you may believe that I'm being honest, when in fact I am being honest to the degree that I am willing to look in any kind of way at what's going on there, but not with the Holy Spirit guiding me to be brutally honest, which is usually the way that we describe this, to be brutally honest about what's there.
Speaker B:So what does that mean?
Speaker B:What that means is I'm not shading the truth.
Speaker B:I'm not creating soft edges to make it sound better than it is.
Speaker B:Or one person I read once said, I'm not gilding the lily here, making it look prettier than it is.
Speaker B:I'm just calling it for what it is.
Speaker B:But that requires the other issue that I wanted to talk about in this, and that is vulnerability.
Speaker B:And that is the thing that if we are going to build the kind of community we say we want, it doesn't require accountability.
Speaker B:It requires vulnerability.
Speaker B:And both of them, interestingly enough, have ability in the root of the word accountability or vulnerability.
Speaker B:Vulnerability.
Speaker B:So what does that mean?
Speaker B:Because accountability is oftentimes it's used as an accounting term.
Speaker B:I open my books, of my life to someone else, and now I'm being accountable.
Speaker B:They can look through the records of my life.
Speaker B:But do we do that?
Speaker B:And like I said before, it ultimately requires someone else to do that because I'm not willing to do it.
Speaker B:By implication, I'm not willing to do it.
Speaker B:And so what about vulnerability?
Speaker B:And why is that such an issue?
Speaker B:And I would say that the issue of vulnerability and the issue of accountability all revolve around control.
Speaker B:It is the scourge of our time.
Speaker B:And it is the defining characteristic in my mind of our culture today.
Speaker B:It is about control.
Speaker B:It is not about trust or of vulnerability, which is what is required, because you can't have vulnerability without trust, and you can't have trust without vulnerability, which is a very famous quote from Brene Brown.
Speaker B:So what is it?
Speaker B:I mean, let's define our terms here, right?
Speaker B:Because vulnerability means that I'm capable of being physically or emotionally wounded, and I actually voluntarily place myself in a position for that to actually happen.
Speaker B:And that's really what it means.
Speaker B:It comes from the Latin word vulneros, which is wounded in being wounded, if you will.
Speaker B:And so vulnerability requires my willingness to be wounded, not to be seen, but to be wounded, because I am willing to be seen in that way.
Speaker B:And that's why control is such a huge issue with vulnerability.
Speaker B:I have had.
Speaker B:I have just gotten started in a couple of my classes, the groups that are part of my classes, interestingly, I could say that I have all the and classes at CCU because I have shame and grace.
Speaker B:I have grief and loss.
Speaker B:I have crisis and trauma.
Speaker B:And those three classes are a triumvirate that is always talking about vulnerability.
Speaker B:Now, part of the subtitle of this podcast is about life living and sorrow.
Speaker B:And sorrow has a way of making it so I can't avoid being vulnerable because I have had something happen that I can't finish the blank.
Speaker B:I can't control.
Speaker B:And so it happens and I have to adapt to it.
Speaker B:I have to do something with it.
Speaker B:And so ultimately the question is, why would I want to do something like that?
Speaker B:And secondly, is it even helpful for me to do that?
Speaker B:And the bigger issue is accountability requires someone else.
Speaker B:Vulnerability requires my choice.
Speaker B:And it starts with my vulnerability or my willingness to be emotionally or even spiritually wounded by God himself.
Speaker B:If I don't trust, I am not going to be vulnerable.
Speaker B:And that's exactly why we rarely do it.
Speaker B:The coin of the realm, if you will, is all about control.
Speaker B:Accountability gives me some measure of control in terms of what I share and what I don't.
Speaker B:Vulnerability does not.
Speaker B:Most people will equate vulnerability with weakness or an incapacity to protect oneself.
Speaker B:And while there is some truth to that, it is true that if I am capable of being wounded, then I am allowing myself to be open to the possibility that that will happen.
Speaker B:Doesn't guarantee it.
Speaker B:It really doesn't guarantee it.
Speaker B:And with vulnerability, if I am going to choose it, ultimately that is the basis on which community, closeness and intimacy is built and so sorrow enters our lives.
Speaker B:It is something we can't do anything about.
Speaker B:And we have a choice to make whether or not we are going to allow people to see us as we are rather than create an image of who we are so that we can look better than we are.
Speaker B:But vulnerability is the basis of intimacy, and intimacy is the basis of growth.
Speaker B:And so the question that I asked is, is it actually helpful to me?
Speaker B:I would say yes, it is.
Speaker B:Actually.
Speaker B:Vulnerability is more important than accountability because I have to choose to be seen.
Speaker B:And when I choose to be seen, I have to be very, very, very careful.
Speaker B:You get the picture.
Speaker B:Very, very careful of the people I choose to be seen by.
Speaker B:Because not everyone is trustworthy enough to handle seeing what I will be showing them.
Speaker B:And so I need to develop an ability to discern the nature of the people I become vulnerable with.
Speaker B:I don't do that with anyone because not everyone has.
Speaker B:Is trustworthy enough for me to do it.
Speaker B:Which takes us into a longer conversation, which I'm not going to try to tackle tonight, but it takes us into a longer conversation about do I try, do I be vulnerable with somebody that I want to try to make trustworthy, or do I evaluate and discern whether somebody is trustworthy and then be vulnerable?
Speaker B:Which the latter is the truer one to follow.
Speaker B:But see, we never have really developed the capacity to evaluate other people because we have been drilled with this almost religious level of belief that I can never evaluate anyone because if I do, then I'm judging them.
Speaker B:And that on the surface, that is not true.
Speaker B:But because it's people we don't want to be evaluated.
Speaker B:So therefore, we won't evaluate anyone else.
Speaker B:And by doing so, we set ourselves up to be wounded.
Speaker B:Not intentionally.
Speaker B:Not intentionally, but we set ourselves to be wounded because we never evaluate the people that we take the risk of being vulnerable with.
Speaker B:And that has to be part of the conversation when we're talking about vulnerability, because if we're going to take the risk and we have evaluated and seen the nature of the people that we are choosing to be vulnerable with, then we are choosing to go into growth, we are choosing to go into trust, and ultimately we are choosing to go into the land of being known, which we long for and we flee from.
Speaker B:We long for and we flee from.
Speaker B:So one of the things that we have to understand is that vulnerability requires me to have a commitment to me.
Speaker B:And most people will say, when you hear that, that statement that I just made, there's too many mes in it for most Christians.
Speaker B:And the first thing that comes to their mind is, is I'm being selfish.
Speaker B:Now answer me this.
Speaker B:When you get up in the morning, tomorrow morning, and you get up and take a shower and brush your teeth and get ready to go off to wherever you're going off to, are you overwhelmed with a sense of guilt because you took a shower and brushed your teeth and had breakfast?
Speaker B:No, we don't.
Speaker B:And because we see the physical world as being perfectly appropriate to engage in caring for myself, my body, myself, everything else.
Speaker B:When it comes to the world of the heart, we suddenly say, well, now I'm being selfish.
Speaker B:When in fact there is this thing that we can talk about in terms of self care, which takes us into another issue.
Speaker B:Because if I am going to engage in caring for my own heart and the contours of it and the people that I invite to be part of it, then my question then becomes, am I of enough value to protect that heart and to be careful about who I invite into it?
Speaker B:Because if I don't do that, then I am going to be extremely haphazard and reckless in who I invite to be a part of my life and who in a lot of cases, because of our lack of evaluation of it, ends up hurting me.
Speaker B:Because I haven't taken the time to watch and understand and even be a little educated about who's safe and who isn't.
Speaker B:And so my view of my own value is key for choosing vulnerability.
Speaker B:And when I do that, then I've got to have somebody who understands the gravity of taking the risk of being vulnerable with them.
Speaker B:And generally when you do, those people that are worth the risk and understand the gravity will say, wow, I am humbled by your trust of me to share that information rather than trying to gain more and more information because that gives them some kind of meets some kind of need in them.
Speaker B:People that need our vulnerability are people that are patently unsafe.
Speaker B:People who understand the gravity of our vulnerability and go into it with humility and a sense of entering in on sacred ground are people that are profoundly important and safe enough to do that.
Speaker B:So when I engage in vulnerability, I need a safe and ready listener who is in this for me, not for them.
Speaker B:And ultimately it requires me to engage in the kind of personal honesty to choose not because people are asking me the right question, but because I want to grow, I want to be seen, I want to be known.
Speaker B:It scares the spit right out of me.
Speaker B:I nobody is going to debate that point.
Speaker B:It is scary to be vulnerable.
Speaker B:It is.
Speaker B:But there's a Cost for growth.
Speaker B:And that is one of them.
Speaker B:And that is why it is so important to engage in vulnerability rather than accountability.
Speaker B:In.
Speaker B:In some respects, vulnerability is accountability.
Speaker B:And it is important in terms of even the healing process of our sorrow, of the things that we have lost.
Speaker B:We have to choose who we are going to be vulnerable with.
Speaker B:And oftentimes the people that understand the gravity of it are also people who have experienced the kind of loss that we have gone through.
Speaker B:And that's key.
Speaker B:Let me give you an example, and I've used this example before, particularly in the world of grief and loss and sorrow, is Job the biblical character, the biblical person whose story is told.
Speaker B:Most writers and most theologians believe that Job is probably one of the oldest books of the Bible, and Job is his assets.
Speaker B:And everything are wiped out, including his family.
Speaker B:And his friends come to visit him.
Speaker B:And on the surface, his friends look like the kind of people that are worth trusting and being vulnerable with.
Speaker B:And how do I say.
Speaker B:Why do I say that?
Speaker B:Because when they first saw him, they are stunned into silence.
Speaker B:And they sit for seven days with him in silence, which is a remarkable act of self sacrifice.
Speaker B:It is at the end of that seven days that they blew it, because they opened their mouths to decide to communicate to him what they believe he needed to hear.
Speaker B:Which is really moving from vulnerability, sitting with somebody in their grief and sorrow, to trying to fix the problem of their grief and sorrow, which is kind of what accountability is really all about.
Speaker B:It's about fixing, not about growth.
Speaker B:Vulnerability is about growth and less about fixing and understanding that the journey of life with other people is built on vulnerability and trust.
Speaker B:And I think you probably got that by now.
Speaker B:So it's important because there are a lot of people out in the audience that might be listening that will say, well, okay, how do I engage in this?
Speaker B:And if that's what you're looking for, then certainty is what also you're looking for.
Speaker B:And accountability will give you the certainty you want.
Speaker B:But certainty doesn't require trust.
Speaker B:Vulnerability does.
Speaker B:And that's the thing that we move toward.
Speaker B:And the bigger issue that we have to contend with is trust.
Speaker B:Because trust creates a gap between what I know and what I hope for.
Speaker B:And I have to live in that gap there with someone else perhaps, and allowing them to fill that or walk that gap with me.
Speaker B:We as humans hate a lack of closure.
Speaker B:And at least in the world of grief, there is a lot of debate about do we really need closure?
Speaker B:Is that something we really do need?
Speaker B:Or is it just a matter of how Do I embrace the losses that leave a gap in our lives and we don't have to fill it.
Speaker B:As a matter of fact, it's already filled.
Speaker B:Because when somebody dies or we have a loss, what is left behind, the hole that's left behind is where love exists and where trust exists.
Speaker B:And so accountability or vulnerability is the question of the day and of the podcast.
Speaker B:And what do you want to do with it?
Speaker B:Because accountability requires somebody else.
Speaker B:Vulnerability requires trust and a willingness to be seen and known.
Speaker B:And that's horrifying, even frightening, because we lose some measure of control, but by doing so, we gain some measure of connection, which we all desperately desire.
Speaker B:And that's what this really is all about.
Speaker B:And how do we go about doing that, really?
Speaker B:And it's not about how, it's about what do I share with whom is the question.
Speaker B:And that's what we have to go toward and how we have to move toward people that way.
Speaker B:Because I can tell you from the groups that I've done, even this semester, and that's true for the 40 years of counseling I have done and all the groups and thousands of hours I have spent with people in groups, that is always the same thing, that there is a moment of sacred connection that happens when people are willing to trust enough to allow themselves to be seen, because it's on us to be seen.
Speaker B:It's not on somebody to tear down the stained glass and find out who's behind it.
Speaker B:It's on us to dismantle that thing so that we can be seen.
Speaker B:And when we do, we gain not only a connection with somebody to walk the journey with us, but we also gain a little bit of ourselves back.
Speaker B:And we learn to grow in owning our own hearts.
Speaker B:And that's really where all of this leads, is owning our own hearts enough not only to give it to God, but to give it to other people as well.
Speaker B:And it's not through condemnation that we're going to gain it in shame, certainly not through shame, but through acceptance and trusting that God loves us enough to that he loves us as we are, not as we should be.
Speaker B:Because we are never, ever going to be what we should be.
Speaker B:Because it's an illusion.
Speaker B:And we keep striving for an illusion that cannot be achieved.
Speaker B:We all know that illusions are not.
Speaker B:But yet we keep striving because it's a nice distraction from the longing we have to be seen and known.
Speaker B:Well, that's it for tonight.
Speaker B:Thank you enough.
Speaker B:That's all my rant about vulnerability and accountability and how that fits into it all.
Speaker B:This is more of a life and living part of the podcast than the sorrow specifically.
Speaker B:We'll get back to it.
Speaker B:I can tell you just in my own journey through sorrow, the last episode was on Surprises, and I have had so many people say that and affirm how often there is an ambush of emotions that we just can't see coming.
Speaker B:And that's also the case even in my own journey through sorrow and the loss of the friend that I had back in March is that we seem to get distracted by life.
Speaker B:And it's a welcome distraction until some quiet time arises and there's some time to reflect, reflect on where life is and how it goes.
Speaker B:And then it's like, ouch, that hurts again.
Speaker B:And the worst question to say is, am I not any further than this?
Speaker B:When in fact it's an indication of how much further I am.
Speaker B:And that is very much the journey through the seasons of our grief that we experience.
Speaker B:So that's it for tonight.
Speaker B:Thanks so much for joining me.
Speaker B:Be sure to check out the website@sgi-net.org there's lots of resources there.
Speaker B:There's a particular one in the works to be unveiled probably around Christmas time, realistically that you might be interested in.
Speaker B:It fits in with all the things that I tend to take on in this podcast, but as well also in the Outpost for the Heart podcasts.
Speaker B:And there is, like I said, coming up next week is a podcast on the Outpost where I get to interview somebody that I think you all might find interesting.
Speaker B:What we're going to do right now, because my schedule is so toward not only with teaching but other things, we are going to go every other week.
Speaker B:So next week will be the Outpost.
Speaker B:The following week will be unscripted and we will alternate those and they'll complement one another because I may have some commentary to provide on whatever it is I talked about in the Outpost.
Speaker B:So they will intermingle in a lot of ways and that will be part of this podcast as well.
Speaker B:So if you want to support and incur and be a part of the Ministry of sgi, you certainly can do that on the donate button on the website.
Speaker B:If there's something I've said or you have some curiosity about, be sure to use the contact form on the website or just to email me or DM me on Instagram @sgisginternational on Instagram and Stained Glass International on Facebook.
Speaker B:You can find us find me there as well if you have any reactions to some of the stuff I'm talking about tonight.
Speaker B:Thanks so much for joining me.
Speaker B:I hope to check back in in a couple of weeks.
Speaker B:And until then, love you later.
Speaker B:Bye.
