I heard the term "Dark Night of the Soul" for many years before I really began to understand what it was and the critical role it plays in our spiritual journey. During a challenging season, I felt led to read The Dark Night of the Soul by Saint John of the Cross. But it wasn’t until years later, after going through a very long dark night of the soul, that I learned why this often misunderstood season is so critical. 

Fraser Scott is the Executive Director of Bright Hope World, a New Zealand based ministry that works in 30 countries around the world. They focus on serving and ministering to the poorest of the poor. I recently had the privilege of hearing Fraser present and was very impressed with the wisdom he shared and how Bright Hope World approaches global missions and poverty alleviation. I asked Fraser to sit down with me to record a discussion. In this interview, we discuss the identity/dependency spiral, the cause of poverty, the problem with scale, persecution, major moves of God around the world, and why you can’t address poverty without the Gospel. I hope this conversation impacts you as much as it did me. 

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God’s order for creation. 

“Good is that which all things seek after.” - Thomas Aquinas

There is a growing trend in our information-saturated world to act like right and wrong are whatever we feel like they are. Truth has increasingly become a personal choice, like which sports team to cheer for. We have so much information and scientific understanding of the world that we think we are more enlightened than history's past civilizations. In reality, we are just walking a well-worn path that creates social disorder and leads to societal collapse. A culture that embraces Individualized truth contradicts everything we have come to know about what causes nations, communities, and individuals to thrive

We weren’t made for the world we live in.
We weren’t made for a Box-and-Line (Note 8) world. Yet we have to look around us and accept that the entire world is increasingly box-and-line. We weren’t made for job titles, careers in corporations, certifications, accreditation, employee handbooks, roles in organizations or political parties, to name a few. Somehow, we have bought into the lie we have been sold, that our lives should fit into a massive network of systems we call the modern world. It is built around a way of thinking that is antithetical to the way of life we were created for. We can still live in this modern world, but we need to learn to live from a different way of thinking. We were made to live daily from the reality of who God is and who He created us to be. From that place, we can be in any system without being fully a part of it, without adopting its way of thinking. 

Man’s greatest battle has always been the battle to overcome himself. This simple truth has been all but forgotten in modern society. Before we dive into man’s greatest battle, let’s look at how we forgot one of the most important themes of human life and societal health. Scientific thinking has led to incredible advancements in tools, technology, and medicine that have completely transformed the quality of human life. It is best defined as a systematic, evidence-based way of figuring out how the world works. It has been the key to overcoming cognitive bias and its effects on our understanding of ourselves and the natural world. The unfortunate side effect of scientific thinking, however, is that we have disregarded and forgotten about wisdom that cannot be measured and empirically proven. Most truly important questions are beyond the reach of quantitative research. If we took the qualitative approach, then it would be overwhelmingly clear that God exists and the experiential spiritual life is real. Unfortunately, the scientific community has a hard time accepting qualitative testimony-based research. We have reduced truth to the numbers and data of hard science. 
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Often, what's most important in life is not something new, but the things we have forgotten and must remember. We are all surrounded every day by endless new information in the form of podcasts, articles, videos, books, news, and AI. It is astounding how much information there is out there, and now it is more accessible than ever. Influencers are constantly selling us their opinions on how we should eat, dress, exercise, work, and live. The abundance of knowledge we are surrounded by every day has made us all information addicts. We read a book or listen to a podcast and hear something interesting or wise, and think it will change our lives. Fast forward a month or two, and most of us can’t remember what we heard that was so profound. 

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Peace is completely misunderstood and undervalued in the modern world. Everywhere you look, people are stuck in stress, fear, and anxiety. Few people actually seem to live in real peace. The world is frantically chasing peace by other names all the time, and they don’t even know it. If you distill down the promises of most spiritual teachers, business gurus, social media influencers, and politicians, you find that what they are offering is really just a false version of peace. They are promising relief to our fears and insecurities. The spiritual leaders promise meaning and fulfillment. The business gurus promise wealth and success. Influencers promise a way to realize your dreams. Politicians promise national security, economic stability, and personal safety. All of these are just false attempts to gain what we really want, peace. 

Scott Dohner has been a mentor of mine for years and has had a profound impact on my life. We sat down and recorded a conversation recently that I would like to share with you. In this episode, Scott shares some of his story and what shaped him and his business journey. Click below to listen to this conversation on Apple Podcast or Spotify. 

Have you ever found yourself wrestling with things that you feel like you should do or ways you think you should act or look? We all have battled the “shoulds” of life in some way, shape or form. Often, this struggle is daily or perhaps constant. We are all unconsciously given sets of expectations for work, sports, community, faith, school, and every other area of our lives. We are told how to fit into the groups we are a part of and how to be successful. Families have their own "shoulds," and they differ widely from family to family. For some, it’s a way you are expected to dress and behave, the sports you should play, or where you’re expected to live. For other families, it’s academic and career achievement, social status, and lifestyle. Most of us don’t even recognize the "shoulds" anymore because they are baked into us by every group we are part of. There is a big problem with the "shoulds" that needs to be talked about; most of them are not real.

Encountering God is a challenging topic to write on. The last few months, it has become clear to me that it’s something we don’t talk enough about. In Note 12, I wrote on the separation of the sacred and the secular. We tend to see sacred things as different from the rest of life, and so they get relegated to church, retreats, and quiet times. We often struggle to see the spiritual overlaying every part of our lives, even the most mundane things. We are spirit and flesh. Without acknowledging and living from that awareness, we trap ourselves in dualistic thinking. When we embrace that we are spiritual and that God is with us in all things, then we must ask what does that mean and how might it look?