Dawn Taylor| 29/01/2024

Transcript

Dawn Taylor

I am your host, Dawn, and today I get the privilege to talk to the amazing Paul Young. You guys would know him as the guy that wrote The Shack. If you haven't seen the movie or read the book, you desperately need to, but today we're talking about a different section of his life. Today we're going to talk about being an MK and how to keep your faith. So, MK for laymen’s folks that were not raised in a church is a missionary kid, 

Paul Young

Or it can be called a third culture kid because it’s a different culture. Yeah. And third culture means that you belong to a group that is different from your passport culture and the culture that you grew up in. And so you don't fit in either anymore. And so, you know, when I'm, when I meet a missionary kid, the third culture kid, we instantly have a bond. Instantly, I was, uh, I was with, uh, Bill and Gloria Gaither in the Midwest, where they live at one point. And there was a gathering of about, I don't know, 150 people. And somebody asked me this, during the Q&A, um, as because it was in the US, Canada would be a Q and R, and because we Canadians don't have all the answers.

Dawn Taylor

I love that you say that you're a Canadian. We literally went to the same high school. 

Paul Young 

So they said. You know. What was it like growing up as a missionary kid and why do you have this, this attachment to other missionary kids? And I said, oh, let me explain. I said, we've got probably 40 missionary kids in this room, and I'm going to ask one question and count to three. And wherever they're seated, they're going to answer it. And I said, okay, ready? So here's the question. What's the hardest question anybody ever asks you? And all over the room, you know, without exception, they called out. “Where are you from?” Because we don't know how to answer that question. Are you asking me where I currently live? Are you asking me where I grew up? Are you asking me what's on my passport? Are you asking me? You know all of that. Where are you from?

Dawn Taylor 

So very different. So let's backtrack a little bit. So you were born in Canada? 

Paul Young

Yep, a year old. 

Dawn Taylor 

Raised among a Stone Age tribe by your missionary parents in the highlands of former New Guinea.

Paul Young

Now West Papua. 

Dawn Taylor

Okay, so then had this crazy great loss as a child, young adult. And now, I do want to ask you about the statement you now enjoy the wastefulness of grace with your family in the Pacific Northwest. I think it's just a sort of Portland, if I'm guessing. Right. 

Paul Young

Just north of Portland. Yeah. 

Dawn Taylor

Okay. And he's the author of Lies We Believe About God, the New York Times bestsellers The Shack, Crossroads, and Eve. You've got kids and grandkids and a marriage, and I've heard you speak on the sexual abuse that you dealt with as a child and a lot of different things, but today we wanted to go at it from a bit of a different standpoint of when you're hurt within your beliefs., right? So when the hurt comes from within your faith and your culture. How do you maintain that? How do you come back to it and what does that look like? So, the first time you and I met was at a Little Warriors Luncheon. And then I was like, hey, I want to have a zoom call with you. Can we have coffee? And you actually said yes. Like he actually said yes. And I'm like, yeah, why not? But then when we connected, we realized that we actually went to the same high school and knew this same kind of neck of the woods area and some people, which was a really fun connection that we both grew up in Terrace. But let's talk, tell me about your story. From 

the little boy and what that looked like.

Paul Young 

So. A year old. We go to the Highlands of New Guinea. New Guinea is a very unusual place. It has over 800 unrelated language groups. Wow. So, like, they're still looking for the Tower of Babel there somewhere, and, uh, but 800 unrelated, like the tribe north of us. Danal was a was an, um, ours was a non tonal dialect, like English, but theirs was a tonal dialect, like Chinese. And, uh, right next to each other with no common languages, no trade languages, nothing separation by swamps or mountains or rivers or whatever. And so, you know, everything our, our tribe was in the valley, uh, the Barling Valley called the Cannibal Valley. That was the nickname because they practiced ritualistic cannibalism. And so it was a big tribe, 40 to 60,000 members over about 100mi². And, um. One of the biggest, New Guinea as a whole, is the second largest island in the world. And, uh, and so. People don't know it. It goes from right off the equator up to glaciers. And people don't know that there's all this diversity, um, in the middle of that country. Yeah, middle of that island. So Dani it was my first language. My first real language. It was the first language that I, I could speak fluently. It was my dreaming language. So I felt like a Dani because my parents were very much doing the work of God. And, uh, so I was basically raised Dani and, uh, which I, I thought was great in so many respects. And, um, even when I was in their, in their villages and I heard conversations about whether they were going to kill my parents or not, I never felt any fear. And, um, I, I wasn't, I wasn't white anyway. I mean, really, because you get color blind about yourself in that sense. And it wasn't until boarding school when I was sent to boarding school at six, did the actual realization that I was white happen, and that was a shock. But, you know, when I think about the sexual abuse, it began in the tribal culture, and I don't know, I don't know whether it was just endemic to the culture or whether I was targeted or not. I'm just not sure about that. But when I was sent at six to boarding school, I was targeted, there's no question about it. And, uh, and boarding school was not a safe place, but I was, I had already disassociated from my parents. I didn't have any sense of their parental relationship with me. And, uh, I'm the oldest of four. 

Dawn Taylor

So let's talk about that for a second, because a lot of people don't understand that as a missionary kid, the majority of missionary kids are not raised in the village, in the culture, in the town, with their parents. The majority of them are sent away to boarding school. What does that mean? 

Paul Young

Well, in our world, as a missionary, you raised your own support, but it was a requirement that you had to send your kids to a boarding school. That means at six, they put you in an airplane and they send you to the coast. In our case and it was a school from first to eighth grade. And, you're by yourself, you're just a school full of kids. And your dorm parents or your those who ran the school, things like that. And it's kind of crazy, but. Usually the dorm parents and all those. The ones who are over the school weren't those who weren't very good missionaries. And but there was no sense. And even when my parents the year before we left became dorm parents, there was no connection. I mean, at that point, they were the parents of, what, 30, 40 kids? And so there's no sense that you're connected to them in any other way than everybody else. Um, but going to, you know, being pulled from your world, your tribe, your color into a place and dropped into a world that you don't even know how to make sense of. And think about it. Six years old. It's a baby. And now they've got to figure out how to survive. They've got to figure out how to deal with the abuse that takes place. Because you got to find a way to survive. You know, and when the big boys would come and molest the little boys. At six. That was the only sense of belonging you knew. So boarding school was dangerous. There was, you know, f a girl wet her bed, she was forced to wear a diaper and sit in a highchair. You know, for meals. And she could be in seventh grade or eighth grade and, uh, you know, there was one of the kids that was quite rebellious and in their estimation, and he spent probably most of his elementary school in lockup. But there was a day where he was forced to lay on the concrete slab we had, and all the kids were forced to kick him as hard as we could. To communicate what a piece of garbage he was. 

Dawn Taylor

You know.like you're sent there for, like, your parents are there to do such a beautiful thing. Like they're genuinely there to do something beautiful. Yeah, but that had to hand you over to that. 

Paul Young

And so my parents went with the best of intentions. My mother's a nurse, and she knocked a disease right out of the Central Valley. You know, they had a disease called yaws, which is like leprosy on steroids. But it had no resistance to penicillin, and it was a horrible disease, a horrible disease. If you ever saw pictures of it, you just go like, that's like the worst thing you've ever seen. And, she knocked it out the, um, and then she became the one they'd come to if they had, you know, arrows stuck in them, you know, because their warfare was bows and arrows. It was a Stone Age culture. So they had no metal in it at all. And so that's one of the reasons they didn't kill my parents because my dad had brought him a whole bunch of steel axes, which were much better than the stone ads that they used. Andvso they decided just to rip off as many steel axes as they could rather than kill us. But again, I didn't ever feel in danger except from the witches. They were a little scary, but they were all old women and couldn't run very fast. Yeah. And, uh, but, um, you know, so there's, there's all these layers of trauma that was going on and the sense of abandonment. You know, I have a memory. And it was probably just before I went to boarding school. Where my dad, my mom guilted my dad into letting me go on a trek with him into the jungle. And he was mad about that. And as soon as we got out of sight of the compound, he just took off. He just took off and I couldn't catch up. And all I remember is running and running as hard as I could. And I don't know if I ever caught him. I don't know, I don't have a memory of ever catching up, but, you know, there's just things like that and the trauma of having to leave the culture itself to go to a place you didn't know or understand. That's six. Yeah. I mean, who would send their kids away at six? You know, I've got my kids, but I got grandchildren now, a whole bunch of them. And one of my daughters, one of our daughters, is pregnant with grandchild number 16. And. When you look at a six year olds. Like they've got no capacity. They don't understand anything. And, to basically be abandoned to that world. You know, it's a crushing thing. And I've talked to, you know, MKs all from different parts of the world, and they experience the same sorts of things. And a lot of them are really struggling to integrate into any part of the world, part of it, but part of the beauty of MKs. And let me say this. As they carry a gift of being able to cross cultural divides. They see things from outside the box of a particular culture that they find themselves in, because they're not in it. And so they have a capacity to see the things which don't make any sense for, um, where people just accept them without challenging the assumptions. And so as, as MKs or third culture kids. Become healthy. They become gifts to the world. And you'd be absolutely amazed at who in the world is helping solve problems that have a background as third culture kids. But you gotta get through the crap, you know, you have to find a way to come to wholeness. And that's a long and arduous journey for many of us. 

Dawn Taylor

It is, and for so many reasons. Like, it's one thing to deal with sexual abuse 

when you're in a healthy home environment. 

Paul Young 

Yeah. Which I wasn't.

Dawn Taylor

Which you weren't. So you dealt with abuse in the village, then you get sent away at six. You're now dealing with this rejection and abandonment. 

Paul Young

I already had a very furious dad who wasn't a healthy man. 

Dawn Taylor

So now you add that on to it. Right now, you go to this environment that's not only abusing you, but they're teaching you like I can't even imagine.  And what that psychologically would do to you? 

Paul Young

I have this when people ask me, is there anything you don't like to eat? I always say sauerkraut out of spite, you know? And people go like sauerkraut out of spite. And if they want to hear the story, I tell them about the day that some nice-loving Dutch person sent 50 gallons of sauerkraut to the boarding school and when they arrived, the people who ran the school, the dorm, parents and stuff, they they knew that this was brand new to all of us. And so we had a meal and uh, they put a bunch of sauerkraut on our tables and on our plates. And the thing was, if you ate all the sauerkraut before, you know, if everybody ate the sauerkraut on their plates, then they would cancel school in the afternoon, and we all go to the bomb hole. It was a, World War II was fought in New Guinea a lot. And so there are these bomb holes, and the water from the mountains would come and fill them up, and they became swimming holes. And so, yeah, it was great. And I got caught throwing mine down the toilet. And so everybody in the school got to go swimming. And a woman sat there with a wooden spoon and all the leftover sauerkraut and hit me every time I would take a bite and swallow. I spent the afternoon that way. And I must have been seven by then. Probably seven. So I don't like sauerkraut out of spite. 

Dawn Taylor

No, I wouldn't either. So you lived there for how long? How many years did this abuse in all forms take? 



Paul Young

Yeah, we came back when I was, um, right around ten years old, and we came back to Canada and, uh, Saskatoon in the middle of winter. Um, and, yeah, it was a culture shock. Went to a mall for the first time. And it was just like there's little doors. People went in and came out different, you know, the elevator, and we couldn't figure that one out. And there was an African American man that came through the mall, and we jumped him, four kids talking to him in Dani and wondering why he's not talking back because he's the closest thing to home we'd ever seen. And, um, so there was all this culture shock, and I moved around. We moved around a lot. My dad became an itinerant pastor at 13 schools before I graduated high school. And, uh, a lot of things were broken, porn addict by 12. And, uh, and because, you know, I had no capacity to trust a relationship. So porn is, you know, the imagination of a relationship without the risk of a real one. And, um, and so my cover skill, my survival skill was to tell a story like, which is another phrase for lying. I became a really good liar. I had already done that. My dad had beat that into me. And um, and you know, with so here's, here's what my history had done. Um, my relationship with my dad had communicated that I was a piece of shit. My sexual abuse communicated that I was a piece of shit. My abandonment communicated the same thing my experiences at boarding school communicating the same thing. We came back to Canada with no explanation and so we had to make stuff up. Moving around communicated the same thing. The self-hatred that came out of things like the porn addiction was just evidence of my theology that I grew up with that communicated the same thing. So I had a theology that says, you have, you're totally depraved. You know, it's like Luther said, we are snow covered dung, you know, piece of shit theology. And, um, so God looked at me the same way. And that was a huge hurdle. But you know, I look back at my childhood and for all the crap that was going on, there was such beauty. It would reach out. Not just in the land. But in the moments. And in the stories I was reading and in, you know, the tribe, the Dani tribe. The reason that I even became a follower of Jesus is because the tribe did. I was part of the tribe. And they did it at great cost and not because of the missionaries. Actually, the missionaries told them it wasn't a good idea because their immediate response was to build a burning pyre, a fire that was 100 yards long, three feet wide and three foot tall of all their weapons and all their spirit worshiping stuff. Not at any of the encouragement of any of the missionaries that were just there. Response of heart. And even at boarding school, you know, there were those moments we had this we have this, um, seed that had wings, you know, and you could fly them. It would just float, like, you know, it would just do this thing and float like this. And there were these huge butterflies, and there were these birds, you know, the bird of Paradise and other birds that were just absolutely magnificent and, you know, in the midst of the trauma, in the midst of the Indonesian soldiers getting drunk down in the valley and shooting up the little church that was on the property from below, and, uh, lots of snakes. They scared the crap out of me. But lots of them. And big ones and very poisonous ones. So in the midst of all this, there is, I didn't grow up blaming God for all the damage, I grew up loving Jesus. Even in spite of all this, and a little terrified of God the Father, because he looked just like my dad. But there was something beautiful about Jesus. And so that was the through thread. Jesus was the through thread. Even though He was pretty disappointed in me most of the time. There was still a real affection there and and a desperation because I couldn't, you know, turns out I'm pretty smart. And so, you know, in my teens, I was already reading, you know. Hermann Hesse and, uh, Pascal and Jacques and really heavy thinking sociologists and philosophers and stuff like that. And I couldn't find an alternative that really held water. But man, was I mad at the church. Really had a chip on my shoulder for a lot of good reasons. And somehow, and this has not been a common thing for missionary kids. Somehow I managed. Now I put Jesus on the fence a couple different times where it's like, you know, and I always ended up having to do things, you know, that being a part of something that was beautiful, a healing of somebody's heart that was that Jesus was absolutely essential part of that. And, and that would be a problem with my intellectual, you know, distance from God. It was just like, oh, crap. And, um, and, you know, I didn't know what else to do. So I left home as soon as I could. I was 16 and started working really hard, many jobs, and then went to Bible school because I didn't know what else to do. 

Dawn Taylor

Where were you looking at that point? 

Paul Young

So Terraces, where I graduated. Right. And, uh, I worked at the radio. I started doing that when I was 16. 

Dawn Taylor

Little small town, northern British Columbia. 

Paul Young

Well, what's funny is I go in there and, uh, and they and I said, can I get a job? And they go, like, do you have any radio experience? And I go, no, but I've, I've been in the play at Caledonia. 

Yeah. And, and uh, I actually played and oh my gosh, they did Our Town, I was the town drunk and the evolutionary professor, I played both those roles and, uh, as. And I'm the preacher's kid in town, so. But well, we had a situation last night. Our rock n roll disc jockey who is really good left his mike open and he was dealing dope over the mic. So they said, we're going to train you. So I got 24 hours of training and I was on with nobody to oversee it or anything. I got to be the worst. Couple days, you know, radio broadcasts. I think it would be so hilarious to listen to those and but, you know, I worked hard, worked at many different things. Was a Hot Springs lifeguard at the same time, was doing construction work and, you know, really, really hard stuff, and then went to Bible School to see if I couldn't find something that made any sense. And I am so grateful. Inside of all my fury. Um, there were people that just showed up at the right moments. Most of them are women, frankly. Like Ruth Rambo, who is the president of the school's wife. And she'd slipped and I found out later, much later, that she did this to a lot of kids. She and her husband had been missionaries in the Philippines, but she would slip me a note or a book or a tape and, uh, and it would help. It would keep the movement going. But man, did I have a lot of deconstruction to do. And it took me a long time and part of the problem was you could intellectually come to a position. And you can see things, but it doesn't impact the integrity of your life. You can't, you know, coming to an intellectual position will not heal you and your world on the inside. It will not heal the broken places. And, uh, and I know, I know a lot of folks who are trying to make a change in terms of an intellectual, rational position, hoping that it will change. The things that are broken in them. 

Dawn Taylor

The trauma didn't happen to our brains. It happened to our bodies and the clients all the time. Right? Is when you're scared, you don't go, I am scared, your brain has this like I'm scared moment, okay? No. Your body physically feels the scared. Yeah, right. When something happens to us that happens there. So I was, I spent some time googling you, my friend,  and 

I was reading an article that you wrote for something. We'll take it in the show notes so you guys can read it. I also found it on your website called The Shattered Soul and it was really interesting. I love your words that you put to this. And. The Shack, which we'll get to later, is the book that you wrote that a lot of people, I think, took the wrong way. I know there was a lot of–

Paul Young

Those are my people, right? No. Not quite. My people would be those who didn't actually read it and are still mad about it. Right? 

Dawn Taylor

Oh, it cracks me up. And I remember I remember hearing about that right. And hearing this whole thing. And you write about it and I'm just going to read this for the listener. You can read The Shack as a story, but my intent was always more than that, a parable laden with metaphor. It is a true story, but not real. The shack itself represents the house on the inside. The people help you build. It is the human heart, the uniquely crafted soul that can so easily be torn from its moorings and left to flounder in the waves of a storm tossed world. Some of us had good help building the house of the soul, but many of us did not. For us, this inside place became a shattered hovel, a barely habitable dwelling of which we were intensely ashamed and into which no one would ever be invited. Here we stored our addictions and hid our secrets. It was the house of shame and pain, held together by a webbing of lies, and protected by an ever growing array of survival skills and defensive mechanisms. And we believed that God hated this place even more than we did. 

Paul Young

Yeah. Pretty much. 

Dawn Taylor

And those words. I read those and I went, oh, isn't that so? The things that happen to us, the things that have been done to us. Our shame, our guilt, our hurt, our pain. All of these things. And yet we choose to either curl up and die or choose to fight. 

Paul Young

Yeah. Yep. For a bunch of us. You know, suicide is a is a common companion because it's the last way to run away. And we've spent our whole life running away. Yeah. And, uh, but it's the last way to run away before you hit the bottom. For a lot of us, and for some folks, it's the way to stop the pain. Um, and, uh, but for me, it was the last way to run away. So there were more than a few times that I'd just about call it in. And, uh, and I'm grateful that I didn't. So, you know, part of the implicit question here is. What was the trigger that made me start to look honestly at the damage, you know, and it's different for different people. For me, it was Kim catching me in a three month affair with one of her best friends. And that just crashed my world. And it was, oh, the shame was so profound. But the question was even deeper. And that is you can either kill yourself or do you think there might be a way to change? That was the question. And, you know, I'm thankfully married to a very, very strong willed, emotionally healthy, furious woman. 

Dawn Taylor

I love that you have furious in there. 

Paul Young

Oh my gosh. You know, I look back, if it hadn't been for the intensity of Kim's fury, I probably wouldn't be here. In fact, I know I wouldn't be here. And, uh, it was the intensity of her fury constantly like it took her and I 11 years to heal. 11 years. Yeah. And in a world where it's so easy to give up. I don't know why I didn't because the first two years especially were absolute hell. Um, absolute hell. I remember driving with the family through from Banff down into the Valley of BC, and I had a half an hour of peace. That's the only peace I remember in the first two years. And, uh, and I was working hard. I pulled the yellow pages off the shelf and, and looked under counselors. Not because Kim required it, because I needed to find some help, and I knew I couldn't. I couldn't come to healing alone. Everything about my life was about isolation, everything. And I didn't realize that isolation is always disempowering. So, you know, I started with the A's and worked my way down. And I found Agape Youth and Family Services in their box over here. They said, we specialize in sexual abuse histories. And Kim didn't even know about the sexual abuse. I mean, she didn't know anything. In fact, when I had my first conversation after she caught me. And said, I'm at your office and I'm waiting. Oh, and I know I'm at your office and I know and I had to make the decision whether to kill myself or go and face her, which I couldn't actually face her. You know, literally, I, I couldn't get my eyes off the floor because you can't take the risk of that disgust in the person's eyes. Who you are in front of. Just won't shatter everything. So, she talked for four hours just laid into me and at the end of it that's when I said. If we're going to do this, I need to tell you every secret I have. Because secrets have been killing me my whole life. And naively she said, bring it on. 

Dawn Taylor

And having no idea what she was walking into. How long have you guys been married?

Paul Young

Um, 13, 14 years. Right in there. Because Matthew had just been born. He was like six months old. 

Dawn Taylor

So how many kids did you have at this point? 

Paul Young

Matthew was our sixth child.

Dawn Taylor 

So you had six little kids at home? 

Paul Young

Yeah, our oldest was. 13. Almost 14.

Dawn Taylor 

So life's already hard just based on the fact that many kids and there's not much parenting going on. 

Paul Young

Yeah, yeah. And, Kim's I mean, she comes from a huge family in which there is a high degree of health. You know, all the boys in their family knew how to raise children. They, you know, from the time they were little, they knew how to change diapers. They knew how to. Yeah. You know, all of that. She has five sisters and two brothers. And her and her five sisters are called the And may the force be with you. She was born in Minot, North Dakota. You know, there's no 50 shades and nothing. And I am very clear about this. And she would say there's lots of things that she did wrong during this period of time. And I would say I don't care. And I would say to anybody that Kim saved my life. She literally saved my life. I actually hit the bottom. When you're around somebody who hasn't hit the bottom, they will always point a finger elsewhere. They won't deal with their stuff completely. They will always find a way to make it somebody else's problem, in part, which may be true. But when you're going to face it when you get to the bottom, you don't care. You don't care who did what, it's about, is there a way to heal? Is there a way to change? And that when I went and met Scott, who was the therapist. The first question I asked him is, well, I told him all my situation and I said, can you help me? He's the first person I ever said those words to. Wow. And, you know, here I am, 38 years old and had never said to anybody, I'd worked off a persona. You know, I had such a shamed, drenched view of myself. You know, the affair wasn't about love because I didn't have that capacity. The affair was porn in the flesh is what it was. You know, it was my vacancy of soul that projected itself onto another image and somebody we knew very well and somebody whose kids who loved us. And so the damage was monumental. I still am in such deep gratitude and incredible regret. Not shame based regret, but grief based regret. And of the damage that I did and some of it's still not reconciled all these years later. And it's a timing thing and I'm not I'm not in charge of that. But one day, I said to Scott, can you help me? And he said, yep, I can, but it'll take a year and a half. I said, I'm in. He goes, he laughed at me. He goes, Paul, everybody says they're in when they're sitting in your chair after a couple of months, they'll feel smarter and more in control and they'll bail out right before the really hard stuff. And turned out I pulled this guy out of the Yellow Pages. He had graduated from Prairie Bible Institute. He had worked with a lot of churches in which sexual abuse was, you know, amongst the elders of the leadership and stuff like that, including I didn't find this out until later, including one that involved one of my uncles. And, so here I am, pulling a guy out of the Yellow Pages in Portland, Oregon. And it's a setup. It's totally a setup in the best possible way. And it took, I worked really, really hard. I almost killed myself about four months into it because it was getting too hard. And it got intercepted by a couple of people who did not know what was going on at that time in terms of my struggle and saved me and then went back to Scott. Nine months into this, he says, Paul, you're done. And I'm like. What? Like, you said, it was going to take a year and a half, and he goes. We have never seen anybody work this hard and stick to it. And it was life or death. Desperation for me. And Scott and I became friends, which is a great gift, too. So, you know, you look at all this, the intellectual stuff. I had to dismantle and rebuild a lot of that. But that's not what changed me. It's not what caused this massive shift in terms of my inside world. It was suffering and crushing and choices,  and hurt that I inflicted and pain that I needed to deal with. It was that side. And a lot of people hide their deconstruction for all their internal messes, right? So they think they can think their way into health. Not going to happen. Not going to happen. I got a great poem. Friend of mine is an Aussie and uh, David Tennyson. He says, if you must deconstruct. Take every part. Weigh, measure, keep and discard necessary things. Take all the time you need, but do not camp in the ruins. Discuss discoveries, but do not raise monuments to your brilliance. Brave as you may be instead. In time, build something new. Take the remains. Sorrows and pains. New friends you've gained. And build something new. Allowing the wise few to remind you. There is a time to break down. And a time to build up. It's called “If you must.” 

Dawn Taylor

It's beautiful. 

Paul Young

So Kim and I are now married 44 years. We're the best we've ever been. And it just keeps getting better. But we lost some things because of my choices. And, uh, and it is smashed into my kids. And in terrible ways, and it took time for that to heal. But now I have grandkids, and one of the great unexpected beauties of having grandchildren is as you grow, your capacity to love increases. And I've been able to love them in a way that I didn't have the capacity to love my own kids. And they know it. But they watch me love their children in ways that I couldn't love them. And it's healing things that are still left to be healed in my own kids and in my relationship with them. 

Dawn Taylor

You know, what I love about that is we are so quick to walk away, so quick to, we will hold people at the point in our story where our story kind of stopped with them, right? Or where there was a really hard pivot point and we will hold them there. Yeah. And we forget that people keep growing and they keep changing and things adjust and shift. And we have to give people a chance.

Paul Young 

Absolutely. And ourselves, you know. 

Dawn Taylor

Oh, and give ourselves so much grace. I often have described my life as beautiful, horrifically beautiful, and beautifully horrific.

Paul Young

I think that's right. And yes, um, you know, part of this journey is destroying my really ugly view of God. And taking the risks that God was as at least as good as I wanted God to be, at least as good. And it turns out that that's just scratching the surface. You know, I have people, my people who write to me and they, they write and they say I'm terrified to take the risk that God is as good as you say and you're wrong. Right? So they've already built in a God who's untrustworthy and, you know. I think the human, deepest longings are little windows into the nature of God. And if those are our deepest longings to be truth tellers, to be kind, to be good, which I think we are all already are being made in the image and likeness of God. But if we can find those deepest longings. They are sometimes grime-covered, but they are windows into the nature of God that is at least as good as our longings. 

Dawn Taylor

Did you ever struggle with. and I hear this often with people that were raised, raised in any religion that they were raised like God the Father, that he's like our dad. And that for me, that's something that I always bump up against is like, I can't think of God in that way because then I think of my dad, right? Right. And that's not that's not okay. Yeah. And so, you know, with drawing some of the wording of that and shifting some of the beliefs on that because I hear that constantly from clients. 

Paul Young

Yeah. You know, it's interesting. I was having a conversation with a friend and she was talking about she had an incredible father, an incredible father. And so she challenged the bad theology right off the bat because God would, was at least as good as her dad. Right? And the theology didn't even didn't even allow for God to be as good as at least her dad. But for a lot of us. God is anything but. The father is anything but good. And so there's a split inside what we would call the Trinity, you know, three persons, one essence. And so you've got multiple gods and and you've got a god of the Old Testament who is the father. Then you've got Jesus, and you know, who knew where the Holy Spirit was. We weren't Pentecostal or charismatic. We got the Holy Bible, who needs the Holy Spirit? And so so we had we had God the Father. Who is this? I got a letter from an MK and she says. When I grew up, I really couldn't define what the difference between God and Satan was, except that Satan was more consistent. And so here she is trapped in this. You know, you didn't know whether God got up on the right side of the bed today and was all based on your performance. So, it was all moralism and behavioral control and all that kind of stuff. And so, God the Father is the one that was going around killing babies and things like that, because you have to accept that the Bible was absolutely inerrant and infallible and that everything that they would say about God commanding the destruction of whole, you know, committing genocide was true that that's what God actually wanted. And then you got Jesus as the sort of commercial break. For Dove or, you know, something nice. And then you got, you know, we're back to our regularly scheduled programming when you hit the book of Revelation. I mean, there were parts of that that took me a long time to take a hard look at and go like, this cannot be true. Yeah, this cannot be true. And so I don't believe any of that. I don't believe that. I believe that Jesus and God the Father, Jesus says, you've seen me, you've seen the father. I and the father are one. I mean, there's no distinction in terms of character. Um, and there's just this absolutely union of the father, son, and Holy Spirit. So, that means that God submitted to those who wrote about Him, wrote about God. And that is part of the goodness of God, is that God submits by nature. You know. So, there's so much there is so much to disentangle and even all the crap that's going on, really horrendous stuff in the Middle East. We're still entangled as Christians in really bad theology that is wrapped up in the Middle East and, uh. And it's like, come on. But I see changes. I see changes. And it's very, very encouraging that people are beginning to hear for themselves and people are beginning to say, nope, God is at least as good as my best longings. At least. And of course, it's like I said, it's only scratching the surface, that's what I tell people. I wrote God is as good as I know how, and I know I just barely scratched the surface. It takes a lot of work to disentangle yourself. Especially when you've been taught that this is how God looks at you. So God tells you you're a piece of garbage, and then you find out that you're made in the image and likeness of God, so that patience is who you are by nature, kindness, who you are by nature. Pure of heart is who you are by nature, and so is self-control. Both things, all of these come from the inside out. Those two things are what destroyed my porn addiction. That I am pure of heart and that I am self-control, not self-discipline, that's an outside in kind of thing, and it only lasts as good as you can have the energy to maintain it. And so it always breaks down. But. I haven't had an issue with.looking at a woman as an object or anything as an object. For 30 years. 

Dawn Taylor

It's amazing. 

Paul Young

It is. And? And it shouldn't be. It shouldn't be amazing. It should be normal. It should be normal. And it's because we bought into all this. You know, when people behave in destructive ways when people think it's okay to kill people. Because they think God kills people. They're not talking about the reality of the nature of God they're talking about how they think about themselves. You know? If they act in ways that are destructive, they're telling you what they believe about themselves. Because as a person thinks so, they are as they think in their heart about who they are. The ways of who they are are an expression of what they think. And so we have to find the truth that I am kind by nature, that I am loving by nature, that I'm patient by nature. All the things that are true of God are true, true of me in terms of character.

Dawn Taylor

It's so easy to just buy into what we've been taught.

Paul Young

Especially when it's all fear based. 

Dawn Taylor

Oh, 100%. Right. And from Christianity to like every culture, every race, every religion.

Right? It's so easy. We are so brainwashed. 

Paul Young

Yeah. You know, I was having this conversation. Really good conversation. And it's like above every culture sits the kingdom of God, that which is right and true and beautiful and good and caring and confronting against that which is in us that is not of love’s kind. It is a furious fire, but the fire is not aimed at us. It's aimed at everything in us that is not of love's kind, that prevents us from being fully human and fully alive. But there is a culture of Christianity. And there's a culture of Islam, and there's a culture of Judaism, and on and on and on. And in those cultures, conversation with a Muslim friend. And it's like, you do realize that there are people in Islam that are, that live in the same ways as anybody that's involved with the kingdom of God. And we don't have, there are things about culture that are beautiful, but there are things about culture that are horrendous. Genocide is horrendous in any culture. But as missionary kids, this is what our parents were sent to do, to move a Muslim from their culture to our culture. Not to encourage their growing into becoming those who express the kingdom of God. Right? So it's a shift from culture to culture, and as a result, we destroy culture. We pull people out of that which is beautiful to them and try to, it's like bringing a Muslim into the Christian culture from the Muslim culture. And it's like, you know, we committed genocide against the Muslim culture. And they brought art and science and music and all these beautiful things into the world, and we're going to annihilate the culture. I was having this conversation with a 16 year old girl who is Buddhist, and she was a foreign exchange student in the United States, and read the shock and got upended by it. Very Buddhist family. Loved going to the temple with her grandmother, who's very Buddhist and she's nominal Buddhist. Like a lot of young people in the West are nominal Christians or whatever. And her family, the family father with whom she was staying is a friend of mine, and she didn't know it. And so she had said a couple of weeks before she left, she said, you know. I would, if I was in bucket list. I would love to meet the author of The Shack that was on her bucket list. So he calls me and says, would you like to meet with her? I go, are you kidding? Absolutely. So we met at, um, Saint Arbucks down by the airport, the patron saint of staying awake in church. And so it blew her away, right. And we started a two hour conversation. And at the end, she's like, oh, man, can I ask you a question? Um, I love my youth group at the church, and they've started to say something that's bothering me. I like what she goes. They said that now that I'm a Christian, that they're praying for me, that when I go back home that I would take a stand, you know, for my Christianity. And that's bothering me in my heart. And I don't know what to do. And I said, oh, this is an easy one. She's like, this is an easy one. I go, yeah. She goes, what do I do? I said, don't be a Christian. Be a Buddhist follower of Jesus. Because Buddhism is a culture. Right? Don't vacate your culture. Just be a follower of Jesus inside your culture. And she goes, you're allowed to do that. I said, yeah, I know Christians who are followers of Jesus. And, uh, she's like, oh, the weight of the world went off her shoulder. And she said, so what do I do when my grandmother says, let's go to the temple. I said, ask Jesus, because you're not going to be going somewhere where God is not already and you're not going to be going with people or meeting anybody in whom God knows did not already dwell. So I would think that the Holy Spirit will whisper to you and say, yeah, let's go to the temple with your grandmother because that's that's loving your grandmother. And so, you know, you can trust love. You can trust love. No, we like religion because you don't have to trust God. You just have to know what you're supposed to do. There is, there is a new way to think about the world, but trust and control are opposed, and love and fear are opposed. And the Scripture says there's no fear in love. There's just no fear. So if there's something that is fearful. It's not love. Roger Zack, who lives in southern BC, is a theologian. He's written some things about how do you relate all this to children? And he teaches children of the three things. The first thing is there is a thief. There is an enemy of the human heart that will always steal and and and kill and destroy. And that's a Scripture. And so anywhere in Scripture you find killing, destroying and stealing, that is not love, that is not God. And the second thing is that God has submitted to His own people to write about him, to write God's story. And so they're going to write all kinds of things that are not good. They're even going to say that it's God who comes to steal and kill and destroy. And, uh. so any time you find there, and the third thing he says, look for Jesus. Look for Jesus. And we both know this little girl named Anna. And Anna likes to find the hard, raunchy parts of the Bible, right? She just has a radar for things. And so she was reading about the destruction of Jerusalem in the Old Testament, and it was bad. I mean, they were killing and eating each other. And I mean, it got really bad and all of that stuff. And so. She's like, okay. Obviously that's the thief, that's the enemy. Because all of this killing and destruction and all of this theft of life and so that and yet the writer's kind of intimate that God was the one who commanded all this. And she's going like, okay, nope. Not true, not true. They wrote it like that, but that's because they didn't see things clearly. Third, where was Jesus? Her answer was phenomenal, she says. Jesus. I mean, Jesus was in the tears of Jeremiah the prophet, right? Who was weeping over the destruction? Jesus was in the tears of Jeremiah the prophet. And Bradley goes, so how did you come up with that? And she said, in the New Testament, when Jesus stands and he knows that Jerusalem is going to be destroyed, he weeps. Right? I mean, it's like, we need to learn that. That's the way of looking at things in which love is distinct from fear or destruction or harm. And we need to look for where Jesus is even in our deconstruction journey. God is not a thief. God does not cause harm. That God does not take away life. God is life. And yet lots of our brothers and sisters write out of their cultural Christianity as if God is a destroyer. And we need to say where it's Jesus and all this. And the answer is with us, in us. Even in this hard deconstruction. And we need to remember the story is not over. 

Dawn Taylor

That right there. The story is not over. I think for anyone in the scene today, if you got nothing else out of this, I know some people are going to be like, wow, Dawn, that was a heavy G this episode. I'm okay with that. No issue with that at all. This lousy listener. I've no problem. The biggest thing was, it's not the end of the story and listening. It doesn't matter how traumatic your childhood has been, how hard it's been, how horrible your parents were, how broken, how broken you are. You were how much people broke you. However you want to word it, the story is not over 

Paul Young

And do the next right thing. Don't future trip your process. Don't future trip your fears. Stay present. Do the next right thing and you don't have to have the God language involved in this. You know, in the deepest of your heart. I would think that you would agree that there's something bigger than you, even if it's just love. And so do the next right thing. Stay present. Do the next right thing. Love the person who's in front of you. Respond to the next right thing that is actually in front of you. That's the only real world there is. 

Dawn Taylor

It really is. It's we, before we even started recording today, we were talking about how right now, like, there's a lot of really heavy, hard stuff going on in this world, but also statistically, what were you saying statistically right now? Can I get you to repeat what you said? 

Paul Young

Yeah. And you can look it up on the web and just look up something like the world now compared to a hundred years ago, or is the world now better than the world 100 years ago? And you'll come up with a whole bunch of stuff and it consistently is. Yes, the world is better now. Less human trafficking, less disease, less war. And so, you know, we get invited to be worried about things that we actually have absolutely nothing we can do to control any of it. And because we have instant news and communication, what used to take folks two months to find out about, we have it in a microsecond. And you're getting all this news that supports the commercial industry because because blood cells and fear cells and you don't realize that a gal that I met two weeks ago who spent five years in prison because of her addiction, has come out and is now she started with 20 returning citizens, that is, those who are coming, exiting out of the prison system, returning citizens, which I love. And she started with 20, in a placement company because nobody would look at them because they were felons, because her requirement was you had to have spent at least five years in prison before she would help you. And yeah, so she was taking the felons and the worst, you know, the worst offenders according. to the system. And she now has a placement company that is placing 26,000 and in five years and with companies and I think around 70% of those she places temporarily are now working as permanent employees for the companies that she has placed them with. 

Dawn Taylor

There's so much beauty. There's such beauty in this world and things that people are doing and changes people are making and. for anyone listening. You can make a little shift. You can make a ripple. 

Paul Young

Yeah. She's five years clean and sober. Her brother is six months clean and sober. I mean, these are real people fighting real dragons and doing the next right thing. 

Dawn Taylor

Thank you. Thank you for hanging out with us today. Thank you for talking about this. Thank you for being open and vulnerable and emotional and all of the things talking about life. But thank you for doing the next right thing. 

Paul Young

You're so welcome. It's been an absolute honor to be with you. Love to everybody out there. 

Dawn Taylor

For everyone listening, please, please, please, if you haven't read The Shack, if you haven't watched the movie, do it. Be offended. Doesn't matter. But pay attention to what the actual story was behind it before you just dive right in and get mad. Please tell your friends. Spread this podcast around. People need to hear it. Especially for MK kids that really need to hear a story of hope, a story of resilience, and of someone who dug in and did the work. Who did the work to heal. Loved hearing about the marriage. All of it. All of it. I have no words for you, Paul. Check out the show notes located at the taluka. We are going to link Paul how to get ahold of him, websites. The article thing I read, we'll link it all. We're going to link it all in there so that you guys can have access to all of that. And please subscribe now on Apple, Spotify or wherever you listen to your podcast. See you guys soon.