TGR S2 E27
Ernie: [00:00:00] So how are you doing,
Robby: [00:00:13] Some, some kind of dark emotion. I don't know if depressed is the word.
I just feel sick about, the more, the more I think about the situation and the injustice. And, so the, the way the trust was set up, there were, there was constant threat of bankruptcy. And so we've done everything we could to avoid bankruptcy and through the judge's decision. I think it's going to end up bankrupting the trust and disinheriting everybody, except for the few, my few siblings who have gotten, you know, the winter seats in the situation.
Wow. So, you know, yeah. I've got kind of a long shot possibility I could pursue, but, Jackie's feeling like the Lord is telling us to walk away, let go of it and leave it in his hands. And he's certainly able, and you know, I can't write all of the injustices in the world. And we have much more productive things to do with our time.
Seems inclined to take a superficial fraudulent representation. Yeah.
Ernie: [00:01:46] The word that comes to mind is grievous,
which is, I think a star wars character, but general grievance. But the, the, you know, the, the, the grief is. Yeah. So I think understanding that emotion is actually worthwhile because like, I think there's a lot of that because the thing that is interesting is right, this is a, what is the thing I had feared has come upon me?
Right? Job used is that you've seen the situation that was in an unstable. Unhealthy situation and you were trying to help it survive. And so the one hand to like having gone through all this agony and all this frustration, and then to have it, you know, still fail. It kind of almost feels like it invalidates all the effort you put into trying to save it.
Yeah. Perhaps. Yeah. You know, and, and I can't help, but wonder where some of the actions you took to try to save it and keep it alive. Some of the accusations made against you.
Robby: [00:03:06] Yeah. Yep.
Ernie: [00:03:11] Yep. That seems like doubly unfair. Right? And in fact, it may even feel like the thing that they accuse you of doing, which is, you know, destabilizing the trust for your own personal benefit is actually a more accurate description of what they seem to be doing.
Robby: [00:03:34] Yeah. That's certainly my perception of it.
Ernie: [00:03:38] Yeah. Yeah. That is a deep, sick feeling to have sacrifice layered on with failure, layered on with injustice.
Robby: [00:03:54] Yeah. And I, you know, by email we've been discussing the, concept that, evil flourishes when, people don't oppose it.
Ernie: [00:04:08] Good people do nothing. Yeah.
Robby: [00:04:10] Yeah. So the question of, you know, should we just walk away or should we try to correct the record and, haunts man, I don't, I don't feel peace about, just leaving things as they are, but I also don't feel peace about it.
Disagreeing with my wife and trying to do something that she's not supportive of. And I don't feel peace about
Ernie: [00:04:36] anything at the moment. Oh, wow. So you've got so layered on top of that is, is, a moral dilemma.
Robby: [00:04:45] Yeah. Yeah.
Ernie: [00:04:47] Wow. So that is a. Wow. That is perversely exciting for me, Robbie.
Yeah. Yeah, because it's kind of where I'm at with DBJ is I feel like, you know, there's all these things we've done to get us here. And yet it feels like, I don't know where we go next. And one of the things that I w I've been feeling, for the last week or so is that I feel like we've kind of reached a local minimum or local Maxima.
However you want to look at it, like during the seven weeks of DBJ you and I came up with a version of DBJ that we both kind of felt comfortable with it. Wasn't exactly what we thought we would do at first. But it seemed like this works for us. This works for each other. This works for the people here and we're kind of getting the sort of result and responses we were hoping for.
Right. So maybe that's good enough. And then we can scale. But as we've been iterating on this the last few times, I guess, twice, directly, you know, for us then, you know, I feel like, and this may be the Lord saying it to me. Maybe not is that, you know, The reason we're not scaling yet is not just because you and I have some of our own family issues to work through what also, because of the thing we are doing is not yet ready to scale, get up to a place where we can give it to other people and have them replicate it and achieve the results that God wants it to have.
So I'm kind of in this reset moment of saying, okay, there's something, that I have built, that is, and this has only been a, you know, a year and a bit for me. So it's not like this. But th th the DBT was the thing was the culmination of this year of the great reset. And it's like, okay, we're done.
It's like, oh, crap. Now we're not. And that's hard. And the more you've invested in something, the more you suffered for it, the harder it is. But it's interesting. When I, my first job after apple, we had a very dysfunctional product marketing organization, and I was trying to explain to them why I thought apple had worked and what ideas we could bring over that would be relevant and what Steve jobs like Steve was not a great designer, but he had a story.
Mary Taylor. And the way that taste was manifested, is it a team member just would work for a month or a year or sometimes a couple of years on something and bringing the pitcher to see you and see if it looks and say, Nope, not good enough. And the thing that was extraordinary. That I didn't realize the time is that Steve never gave people any specific feedback about what's to change.
And initially I thought that was really cruel until I found a manager who would say, oh, well, this is what's wrong. And then the team goes back and tries to figure out what is in the manager's head so they can get it past him. Whereas at apple. But you would have to go back and
dig deep within themselves and say, how can we do better? How do we have to level up? And that was actually the last word. Steve left us at his funeral service. When Johnny I gave the eulogy, she said, never ask yourself what what's the do Steve do ask yourself, what is the right thing to do? And that is a profound difference.
And in some ways, you know, it's even, you know, I often feel like even asking what would Jesus do might be a cop out because Jesus was in a very specific context. Right? Well, you would like anger. The ferry season got crystal. It's like, okay, so that's not what I'm trying to do here. So what is, what is the thing to do that would most glorify God, if you will, right.
Another thread that we've been discussing. And I kind of feel like we're at this place where I'm asking like, okay, I've done everything I know to do in DBJ in my marriage, in he's going to context and it's like, I don't know what to do next. And, and I, and your life, I can look and say, oh, he's reached the end of himself.
I can be excited about that. It's much harder to be excited about that in my own life. But, but, but, you know, I think we both, at least intellectually can think that, yeah, it is a good thing to reach the end of ourselves, where we find ourselves with no good options, because that's where God has to show up.
Yup. And what's the things that happens in extremists is that there is this grieving process where there's things that you thought you could assume you could trust and rely upon, that you just took as Gibbons, that suddenly you have to lay on the alter and say, well, maybe I don't get to take this with me.
Maybe it's not in itself worth all this sacrifice than what it is. Yeah. And you know, historically from what I have seen is that where good ideas go wrong is where, when people get to that point and they either run away or they double down on what got them here. And in both cases, it ends back.
Robby: [00:10:42] Yep.
Ernie: [00:10:43] And the hard question and my dad, came up with this phrase himself, is that like, it seems like there has to be a third way and we have to find that third way. And, that's where I'm at this week and it's, it is perversely encouraging to feel like you're there too.
Robby: [00:11:08] Well, once, once this is once I'm through the grief here, I expect to have whatever further past we have related. I expect to have a lot more energy for other things like DBJ. But, right now it's just, that opportunity to be in the large presence and to invite him to speak or to do whatever you'd like to do.
Ernie: [00:11:37] Well, yeah, I mean, in many ways I feel like this is in fact the thing that you and I do not yet have a shared experience of that is in fact, a aspect of being discipled or disciplined by Jesus.
And,
Once we understand or comprehend or at least experienced. Then you will, I can then point to and say, okay, that, that is the thing that you and I did not know how to do.
And did not know how to talk about that in order to navigate this crisis, we will have to see Jesus.
And then that will become at least the next iteration of whatever it is we do next, whether it's DBJ or something else. Right.
Good, this, this is, this is the work. This is the real work, right? When we are at the end of ourselves and are left with nothing. But Jesus cause all the principles, right. That we've huge too. And which I think I prefer the term sharistics now. Right? Is it those like being in unity with your wife? That's a useful.
You know, telling the truth, that's a heuristic, fulfilling the responsibilities upon you. Those are heuristics and those are all good and valuable heuristics, but it is dangerous to make them first principles.
Yep.

This is what, my favorite author Ben Horowitz says is the hard thing about HeartSpace. Is that the real test of character, the real crises, the real places where you need a human being to make a decision, rather than just relying on an algorithm. It's precisely things like this, where everything goes sideways and there's no like obvious piece of advice.
Well, well, just do that. And, because, it's all. It all, at least it seems like a murky mix of slightly lesser evils,
Touchstone I keep coming back to is the cross of Christ
and the sense that there is something about the cross of Christ. That is the only way forward through these, entangled mix of impossibilities, but that's just kind of an arbitrary label. If you will, it doesn't necessarily have enough content to be useful or operational.
Robby: [00:14:40] Yeah.
Ernie: [00:14:45] I mean, I guess one. One touristic that is useful in contexts. Like this is that when the world, when the external world appears to be contradictory and irrational and unreliable, well, you don't know who you can trust or what you can trust. It is often a useful practice to spend time. Well, one of the common failure modes is that we get caught up in, subconscious, compulsion's and aversions part of you feels like I have to do this, or I can't do this, or I can't let this happen or whatever.
Like I was telling my kids, we came back for church. I need you to help me pick up. Take stuff from the car home. And my son goes, you know, meat is a strong word, you know? And I say like, you know, that's actually fair is that, you know, we use the word need to kind of create this sort of compulsion. Or on ourselves.
It's like, well, there is no other option. You must do this. But I always tell my kids. It's like, when they say I need this, well, I need, there's always an instrumental word. There is no absolute need. I need this to what, you know, I need you to take stuff from the car so I can do this. So I don't have to take multiple trips or I don't like overload myself and risk dropping things.
And it's like, okay, well then it becomes, it goes from being a sort of fixed constant to a variable constraint, you know, and it, you know, and that there some flex there, and then another. Heuristic I found useful in these times of irreconcilable opposites, is this, I think it's the Keegan ladder. I mean, I've talked to you about this before.
Keegan's a maturity model. The question is how do we identify, the, the, the question he asks? Well, you play with PJ's model of childhood development. Helped me form concepts and before. Okay. So there's, there's various theories of development, like, you know, for pseudo a child. And so in the Keegan model, like first we just have perceptions.
You know, we are what we feel, or we are what we express, we experience. And then we have definitely our up is we have perceptions another way up. We have Watts, we have. And as children grow, you know, it's like, you know, for a child, you know, if they want a toy now and they don't get that, that is an existential crisis.
Right, right. But then when you go, you can say, okay, tell them that you want us to write it down and we'll mail it to Santa and you'll get it later. Right. They can distance themselves from the wanting. They can see that a want is a thing they have, rather than a thing. They are. Right. And then the idea is that as you go up, the ladder of Kagan is you start thinking in terms of less than once.
And then you start thinking in terms of relationships, right? Is that you define yourself really as well. You know, I know you want that toy, but if you take it away from Billy, Billy will be upset and won't play with you anymore. So let's define your identity in terms of your relationship and you subordinate, your wants to the relationship, right?
And then you, you, something you are to something you have. And then similarly with feeling. Right. I am angry versus I have a feeling of anger. One of the reasons we do the Gary, apples of gold thing, right, is to talk about our feelings and take them from a thing that sort of subconsciously controls us or possesses us to a thing that we possess and have.
And then he says from the ladder he goes from. So after about relationships is values, as we started thinking, well, now we're not defined, defined by our values. And then things get murky after that. Because we're like 99% of population never gets past even values. And maybe only a third of the population gets there.
And we can be different in different areas of our lives. But I think somewhere after that is this concept of identity or authorize. It's like, well, this is my identity. And give it this identity. These are my values. Like as a father, for example, it's not so much my, the, the relationships or even the role, it is the values I have that make me make certain choices.
And that's it. You know, my values are not serving this identity I have or this role I have. And therefore I will shift my values because values are a thing I have not the thing that defines me. Right. And then there's higher levels above that, but there's, there's a state somewhere, which I think is just sort of pure sort of world.
Is that the idea that the ultimate state is just pure being, which is sort of a state of nothing or certain Nirvana or whatever, but I've become convinced that the Christian worldview is that God is in a state of pure becoming. He encompasses all of reality with all of its change and mutation and pain and suffering.
And that we are partnering with him to become the city of God. And that there is something that transcends mere values or even mirror identity that is, to, to, to be in the presence of God, in totality with the corruption and redemption of this world. And so. It's a, I guess it's sort of a different version of mindfulness, right?
That's kind of the general bucket of this, is that okay. When you feel like you are trapped by circumstances, is the idea that well, all those things that make you feel trapped are in some sense, illusion. And that they're not absolute reality. Only God himself is absolute reality. And that absolute reality is only, access through the cross of Christ or apprehended through the cross of Christ.
And so there's something there that I have found in these crises that is useful heuristics to give me some sense of like, okay, there's things I can do to. Jane perspective and shift my perspective, but I don't really have a recommended, recommended practice yet. And, but, you know, I've run into this problem before and it's like, yeah, that's kind of the thing that I feel like the current version of DBJ is missing is that it's been good at teeing up these problems.
I had a great conversation with my father-in-law on Tuesday. That was teed up by what we went through in DBJ. But my existing mental frameworks and practices were not terribly useful and helping push through that to the next level. And so that's, that's where I'm at. It sounds like it might be where you're at, in which case, yay.
God, we are being set up for a new layer of life. Yeah.
Robby: [00:22:17] Yeah. Well, God is good. And a
good things will somehow come out of this
resolved. I still feel grief.
Ernie: [00:22:34] Prince prince.
Robby: [00:22:37] Hi, I think I'm looking for, I just drove home from service and I'm looking forward to going in, connecting with Jackie and seeing where she is in processing, processing it together. So that's a,
Ernie: [00:22:52] yeah. Let me just pray for you and let you get on with your day and your you're processing. God, I just thank you for Robbie. I thank you. That he has devoted his life. And his ministry and his family to you. And that is the one thing Lord that I know, is good is that you are worthy of all sacrifice and all devotion.
And, I also know that it's really hard, to do that and that even when we think we've done it, there's always pieces and shards that, That we hold onto subconsciously or consciously. And I thank you, Lord, that you love Robbie so much, that you want all of him to experience all of you and that you are working these circumstances and trials and injustices.
As you promised in Romans eight, that, that all things work together for those who are called according to his purpose. And his purpose is to manifest the image of Christ in all of us. And that you will use this crisis to, form Christ in Robbie in a way that equips him to form Christ and others, and that you are working not just in Robbie's life, but in his wife and his extended family, a great work of redemption.
And I declare that purely on faith. I have no idea how to get there from here. Or what it will cost what Robbie will have to learn or unlearn, give or receive. But Lord, I just declare that his heart is to receive all of you that you want to give him and to share all of you that you assign him to share with others.
And so I just, declare that, and agree with him, for you to make the adjustments and assignments. Necessary. And I pray that he would have grace to sit with the grief exactly as long as it was necessary and not rush ahead of you or lag behind you, but to just know, when to wait and when to act and to be at peace with the discomfort and lack of peace.
I ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.
Robby: [00:25:23] Amen. Thank you, Ray.
Ernie: [00:25:26] Welcome, sorry.
Robby: [00:25:31] Oh, I just said, well, if I was going to see him, what else?
Ernie: [00:25:35] I'm sorry, I didn't hear that
Robby: [00:25:36] sentence. Oh, I just said we'll talk again soon.
Ernie: [00:25:39] Yeah. Is this okay to put on a podcast feed or do you want to wait a bit and see that's all right. Keep our.
Desperate audience fed. They would actually listen to this, but I think I'll go with grievance as the title and we will see what comes next. All right. All right. Bless you, man. God bless you. Bye-bye.