Mentor Mama:
Today we are going to be talking about how we long for control. I think it's safe to say that a lot of people strongly desire control and control issues can cover a multitude of topics, relationships, jobs, and control over your kids. And the list could just go on and on. We really just crave control and self-sufficiency, but wanting to constantly be in control can leave us hurting, drained, and anxious. Our guest today, Sharon Hodde Miller author of the new book, "The Cost of Control: Why We Crave It, The Anxiety It Gives Us and The Real Power God Promises,” will be talking about our relationship with control and why our culture is chronically anxious. And most importantly, she will talk about the real power God has given us in Jesus to exercise influence over ourselves and our lives.
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Mentor Mama:
Sharon Hodde Miller Ph.D. is a teaching pastor at Bright City Church in Durham, North Carolina, which she co-founded with her husband, Ike. The author of Free of Me and Nice, Miller has blogged at SheWorships.com for over 10 years and has been a regular contributor to Propel, Her.meneutics, and She Reads Truth. She's also written for Relevant, Christianity Today, (in)courage, and many other publications and blogs. She lives with Ike and their three children in Durham, North Carolina. Please welcome Sharon!
Sharon Hodde Miller:
Hi.
Mentor Mama:
Hi Sharon, it’s so nice to meet you.
Sharon Hodde Miller:
It's nice to meet you too. I could just listen to you forever. You have such a soothing voice.
Mentor Mama:
Oh Wow. Thank you so much.
Sharon Hodde Miller:
I want to call you at bedtime and have you talk to me!
Mentor Mama:
Oh, hey, anytime! I had a fun little brief chat here with Sharon before we dove into the podcast and it was just so exciting to meet her, knowing that she studied at Trinity, which is in one of the suburbs where I live here in the Chicago-land area, which is a phenomenal institution, and I'm just so excited that you’re here. Thank you so much for joining us.
Sharon Hodde Miller:
I'm excited.
Mentor Mama:
So, the pandemic just brought on a new level of anxiety for everyone. Tell us more specifically how it impacted you and your church and sort of how the whole idea for this book came about.
Sharon Hodde Miller:
What we saw in the pandemic was a lot of people responding with anxiety. It made us feel like the world was out of control. You know, suddenly everything felt unpredictable and uncertain, and whenever something difficult comes into our lives and we respond with anxiety or fear, we tend to blame the thing and say, this is why I'm feeling this way. And to some true extent, trials and challenges, actually also have a way of revealing just what was already there inside of us. And that happened to me. So, when the pandemic first hit, like a lot of people, I responded by getting on the Internet all the time, constantly researching and reading news stories locally about what was going on locally with the numbers. What do we know about this new virus and how does it affect us? You know, constantly taking my temperature, anything that I could do to assert some sort of sense of predictability over this suddenly uncertain world. But I was also feeling really out of control in my own home life, because I have, as you mentioned, three young children, my oldest is about to turn 10 and my youngest right now is four, but at the time she had just turned two. And so they're little as well. And I am someone who genuinely believes the ability to teach children is a spiritual gift and it is one that I do not possess, and so, suddenly we're trying to homeschool and also our church at the time was only a year and a half old. We had just planted a church a year and a half prior. So, we're trying to lead our church and we're trying to lead our children and lead our family and it was chaos in our house. And our children are very loud. We don't have any quiet children in our house for some reason and so our house was loud all the time and the way that I'm trying to exert control over my kids was basically if you're going to be loud, I can be louder. And so, I'm yelling at my kids all the time, trying to get them to listen to me, which means I'm also, apologizing to them all the time as well. And so I'm seeing all of this junk come up. I'm seeing the people in our church, and the people on social media who are also grappling with the loss of control, as well, in different ways and bad ways. We're trying to get a grasp on it in different ways. And as I'm watching this and watching how badly I'm responding to this, my loss of control reflex, I think, you know, okay, I shouldn't do this. Like I shouldn't try to control something that I couldn't control. This is a control response, but for most of my Christian life, I've known, okay, well, you should just surrender. When you're trying to control something you can't control, you should just let go and give it back to God because that inclination to control is pride or sin, and that is true, all that is true. That when you're trying to control something, you should surrender. You should let it go to God, but I'll also tell you in the thick of it, that was not helpful. To just know, I'm trying to control this thing that I can't control and I need to stop. I need to hand it over to God. It just wasn't helpful to me. I'm someone who, when I realize this isn't working, it's not helpful and the way I'm thinking about this isn't motivating me to do the thing that I should do. I tried to come at it differently and look at it differently. And through that process, just coming to grips with the truth, that it's not just that we shouldn't control things and it's not just that we can't control things, but that it actually costs us when we try. And this is something that we see in Genesis chapter 3, when Adam and Eve, reached for more knowledge than God has granted them and when they reach for, you know, this god-like status. And then the immediate aftermath of that is anxiety, shame, and division. Those are all the costs of control. And when sin entered the world, it kind of wrote that formula into the universe. That any time we try to control something that we cannot control, that God has not given us to control, we reenact that moment in Genesis 3, but we also reenact its consequences. And that for me, was very clarifying to realize, okay, at this moment where maybe I'm trying to control my husband by pressuring him, coercing him, manipulating him, whatever. I know how to get my husband to do what I want him to do. I think a lot of wives do. And so, I can keep doing that and I can get him to make the quote-unquote right decision that I think he should make, but it is going to cost my marriage. It is going to cost our relationship, our intimacy, and our trust. And I might not even see that today. I might not see it tomorrow. I might not see it for five to 10 years, but to understand those are the stakes was motivating for me. But it also was motivating, just realizing one of the number one costs of control is anxiety in yourself. We all experience this in so many different ways. You experience it in really low-stakes ways. Like when you're trying to, for example, go online because that package that was supposed to arrive today hasn't arrived yet. And so, you open up the shipping info and you click refresh and you see that it hasn't moved and then you click refresh again, and we go to that well thinking that it's going to give us a sense of certainty or predictability that will make us feel more in control. But when we click refresh and that package has not stinking moved, we're just left right where we started, except we've kind of fed that anxiety monster. And so, anytime we try to control something that we cannot control, it creates anxiety in us and we experience that in higher stakes ways with people that we love that are making destructive decisions, especially if it's your kids. And I know your kids are more grown, and so, when you see them making decisions that you don't want them to make, and unfortunately when your kids are adults, you can't control them. You can't make them make the decisions you want them to make and if you try, the anxiety that you feel, I think we mistakenly think, well, it's because of the situation and it is, sort of, but it's also because you're trying to control something that God has not given you control over and it's going to cost your mental health and it's going to cost your relationship with them in the process. And so that was so helpful for me to understand that this is a devil's deal. Every time we go to this, it is a devil's deal and that helped me to finally let go. I didn't want to pay that cost.
Mentor Mama:
Yes, and there are so many ramifications, even if we feel like we are getting our way with control.
Sharon Hodde Miller:
Right.
Mentor Mama:
You might not always have the best outcomes or it might not have been God's will.
Sharon Hodde Miller:
Yes, and that's the tricky thing. I have a whole chapter called, The Illusion of Control, and I had used that phrase before. But once I started researching for this book, realizing that that phrase, the illusion of control, is a psychological term that was coined in the seventies by a researcher who discovered this really common human tendency to believe that we have control over situations that we have no control over whatsoever. And so, some funny examples, they've done studies of casino players that will roll their dice hard when they want a high number or soft when they want a low number and that doesn't do anything, but we do this in so many different ways. You know, the basketball players that will wear the same socks during the playoffs, are all illusions of control, but the fascinating thing about it is that it actually does work for a while. These further studies have shown that when you feel like you are in control of a situation, whether or not you are, that you do feel better, it does lower your anxiety and it lowers your depression. The problem is that it is only temporary. So, you can experience success and control, and you can make your kids do things for a time, and you can make your spouse do things for a time, but not forever. And when that illusion is shattered, that's when you finally meet the fallout, the cost of control.
Mentor Mama:
Yeah. Your mention of that just reminds me of the scene in, “My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” where she said, my husband may be the head, but the wife turns the neck, I don't know if you're familiar with that.
Sharon Hodde Miller:
Yeah, I am.
Mentor Mama:
That is such a worldly way of thinking about things. You discussed the act of naming and refer to it throughout the book. Tell us why naming is so important.
Sharon Hodde Miller:
Two reasons. The first is that naming is just a really important Christian practice actually, that we name things correctly and we see this in Genesis chapters 1 and 2, where one of the first things that God does is name and order and then he commissions Adam into that work. And one of the first things that God gives a name to is, light, and because of that very early connection between naming and light, we experience that whenever we name something correctly, we bring it into the light and that's so important. Medically, we experience this where if you have the wrong diagnosis and you've named the sickness incorrectly, then you're going to treat the sickness incorrectly. We experience it in mental health. You know, when you finally have someone who says, well, actually what you're experiencing is postpartum depression. Naming what you've been feeling is just so clarifying. So, I structured the book, basically, almost the entire book is devoted to understanding control in all its dynamics and naming that accurately because we tend to rush past so much of what we're feeling and just say, oh, it's because of sin or it was the pandemic or whatever it was, and we name it incorrectly. And so, we're not healing it correctly because of that. So, I wanted to take my time, sort of, doing a biopsy of control thoroughly, which is why I don't get to the solution until the very end of the book. That's the first reason, the second reason is that, and this is where the whole book goes towards, is that God doesn't give us control, but he does give us agency. He gives us this influence with limitations, this power with limitations and we see that in Genesis 1 and 2, and this plays out in a lot of different ways where Adam and Eve, have power, but they don't have control over the Garden, but God empowers them to do a lot of things and one of the things that God empowers them to do is to name and to order, so instead of trying to control the chaos around us, instead of trying to control the brokenness around us, one of the ways that we exercise agency over our lives is by taking the time to name and to order what is going on around us. And so, the book is structured that way to model that in a lot of ways, but then at the end, get to that final section where I say all this naming that we've been doing all this time, we've spent understanding this correctly is also a really powerful form of agency in our lives.
Mentor Mama:
That's fascinating. I don't think it’s something that a lot of people have given a lot of thought to, but it is fascinating. Tell us what is the definition of control and how does uncertainty impact it?
Sharon Hodde Miller:
There are two components of control. On one level, there is the power that we want to exert or impose our will on our circumstances and the people around us. And so, that is very often what we think of when we're talking control. A controlling person is someone who's able to, you know, force people around them to do certain things, or tries at the very least. But there's another component of control that I think is much more often what we're talking about and that is simply the feeling of being in control. And again, that can be completely disconnected from reality. You don't necessarily have to be in control to feel in control. Those are two very different things and very often what we're after is that feeling, that's what we're after. And unfortunately, our technology caters to that feeling. You asked about uncertainty, as a human race, just don't tolerate uncertainty very well and you could see that in our response to the pandemic, and technology just caters to that in so many different ways because we have so many apps, you know, our smartphones cater to telling us, you know, here's what the weather is going to be, here is when your package is going to arrive, here's what is happening in the news right now, here's what is likely to happen in this election. You know, there are so many ways that technology is just catering to that intolerance to uncertainty and saying, here's how you can predict. Here's how you can be certain. And it, like any illusion of control, makes us feel wonderful in the interim, knowing what is going to happen. Thinking we're knowing what's going to happen is a great feeling, but then what happens occasionally, is there's this market correction where the world restores to what it really is and that is what we experienced in the pandemic. It's not as if we lived in a world where pandemics never happened, we read about them throughout the Bible, and so, what happened with the pandemic is, it's not that the world suddenly became unpredictable, it's that the illusion of predictability was shattered. And because so many Christians had been retreating into this illusion for so long, our spiritual muscles of faith and trust, and our spiritual capacity to live in a broken world had atrophied because we've been so reliant on technology to shield us from those things.
Mentor Mama:
Yes, I remember feeling that way so specifically, like, wow, this is something that is out of control for the whole world, you know, when it first got started and it just wasn't figured out yet and it did feel very overwhelming. Well, aside from the pandemic, why do you think our culture is, in general, chronically anxious?
Sharon Hodde Miller:
Well, there are a lot of different reasons for that. That's a complicated answer. There's been a lot of studies showing that our culture’s spike in anxiety, coincided with the introduction of the smartphone. And so, there's a lot to unpack there in terms of all that the smartphone is doing to our mental health. You know, I think constantly being connected, but disconnected, in ways that are real, you know, but constantly being connected to the toxic influence of social media, being overwhelmed by the news, all of that. There are a lot of different ways that the smartphone is overwhelming us and creating anxiety. But another really simple answer is just what I was saying. Anytime you try to control something that you cannot control, it creates anxiety in you, and so, every time we pick up our phones, expecting it to give us certainty, expecting it to give us predictability, it is no coincidence that for many of us, the logo on our phones is a bitten apple. It's a bitten piece of fruit. We're going to that tree, again and again, asking this knowledge to empower us and to give us peace and to give us security and to give us stability. We don't think of it that way, but it comes out in really funny ways. It's not even always really serious. Just to give you an example of how I could see how my relationship with my phone was unhealthy, I think it was last year at my son's birthday party, we were having a pool party and I'd been checking the weather all day, and it had been saying, sunny, sunny, sunny, no clouds, nothing. And so, I was excited and happy thinking the party was going to go great. Well then right around the time the party is starting, I notice on the horizon, these dark clouds and this storm is coming. And then suddenly I check my app and it says 70% chance of a thunderstorm, and at that moment, I get so angry at my weather app meteorologist generally, you know, I'm like cursing my phone, like meteorologist is this even a real science? You know, I'm just like yelling at my phone because I'm expecting my phone to give me this godlike infallible prediction about the weather and it had failed! And then, because it had failed, because it did not give me the predictability and the certainty that I assumed it could, then I'm just bitter towards my smartphone, you know? And so again, that's a very silly example; it's a very low stake, but this is happening in so many different ways where we are bringing our control issues to the Internet instead of to God, and a big symptom of that is that we constantly feel anxious. We're trying to control something that we cannot control.
Mentor Mama:
Yes, and I'm thinking from my perspective now, as my daughter's planning on getting married in two months, and I start to feel anxious because I want all these things to go right and it's exactly that control and fear of the future.
Sharon Hodde Miller:
Yeah, and at that moment, it's like your brain says, I'm anxious because of all this that's happening, but really, you're anxious because you're trying to control something that you can't control.
Mentor Mama:
Absolutely!
Sharon Hodde Miller:
And that's such an important distinction. It's such an important distinction.
Mentor Mama:
Yes, I love that. I think that's a key point of this whole blog for a takeaway.
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Mentor Mama:
You say in the book that God didn't give us control, but he did give us the power to influence ourselves, as you mentioned earlier, our circumstances, and others. So tell us a little bit more about that.
Sharon Hodde Miller:
One of the questions that I get a lot is, well, when I'm feeling out of control and I want to be controlling, what should I do instead? And I realize that even that question is a little bit of a control question, and so I want to say as kind of spoil alert, this isn't the cure-all for at that moment telling you, here's what to do instead to fix it. Because that's what we want, is how do I, if I can't control it, but I still want to fix it. How do I fix it? And I think it's important to identify that, still as that question is about control. But one of the things that I wanted to do in the book is, I spend the majority of the book looking at Genesis 3 and what happened at that moment when Adam and Eve reached for control and how that became a blueprint for all of humanity and history. But, in the final section of the book, I go back to Genesis 1 and 2, where, as I mentioned before, Adam and Eve are not in control of the Garden, but they're not puppets, they're not robots, they're not slaves. They are empowered and they have influence and they also have freedom. They don't have absolute freedom, but they do have freedom, and they have peace. What I call that power is, agency. It’s this ability to influence yourself and to influence circumstances around you. But, it's not an absolute influence. It's not a, if I do this, then this will happen. We just don't have that power in this world, but looking at the different forms of agency, the different forms of influence that God gives, and I already mentioned naming and ordering and what powerful forms of agency those are just to go back to the situation I described being at home where I'm trying to overpower my kids with the volume of my voice, and one of the things that I realized is that we needed to instill order. I couldn't control my kids, but to instill order in our home was a schedule. And so, I couldn't calm them down with the volume of my voice, but I could order our home better. You know, I could have a schedule so that they could know what to anticipate and we could have a rhythm, so that was helpful. Another practice that we see in Scripture that I've mentioned many, many times, is the power to restore our limitations. Adam and Eve don't have unlimited freedom. They can't do whatever they want. God says, there's this tree, do not eat of this tree. And so, he gives them boundaries because that is essential to our freedom. We think of freedom as unlimited, you know, no boundaries at all, but that is not what we see in Genesis 1. Freedom comes from the right boundaries. So, we need to consider, that maybe I feel out of control. Maybe I feel anxious and overwhelmed because I am on my phone too much or I am constantly watching the news or I have my TV turned on to whatever news channel all the time and that is actually why I feel out of control. That is why you feel anxious all the time. Another way you can exercise your agency is through restoring your limits, by making the choice, I'm going to decrease how much time I'm spending on my phone or on the news or ingesting news information. So, there's a bunch of forms of agency that we see in Genesis 1 and 2, and when we put down control and pick up agency, it empowers us.
Mentor Mama:
It sure does. That reminds me of a time when my daughter Taylor, was just a handful when she was younger, and I had a friend at our church who was giving me some advice and was telling me how children do thrive on boundaries. And once I was able to establish those with her, things just improved dramatically. And so, it feels kind of like the opposite, like you were saying, that putting a boundary would make them even madder or more frustrated, but in actuality, it truly is what they need.
Mentor Mama):
Well, what are some of the ways that we can identify if our habits are out of control?
Sharon Hodde Miller:
So, another form of agency that we see in Genesis 1, 2, and 3, and this is something that we don't think of as a big action verb, this isn't something that we think of as a form of power even, but it’s important in this conversation, is the practice of self-examination. And where we see this play out is actually in Genesis 3, after Adam and Eve have eaten the fruit and they hide and God goes to them and he says, where are you? That is a rhetorical question because God knows where they are. He's not confused. They are not lost to him. That is a question that he wants them to answer for themselves, and they are unable to answer that question. You know, they immediately go into blame mode and that is such an essential part of understanding why you are wrestling with control in the first place. Just to be honest with you, I had to walk myself through that today. We had a church staff meeting, and there was a community outreach initiative with a local school that I’d been lobbying for all summer, and there was kind of a perfect storm of my husband being on sabbatical and the person who would be in charge of that being on vacation, and it seemed like we had so much time to do it, and then today realizing we don't—we've run out of time. And I was so frustrated and I immediately went into blame mode, like all these people dropped the ball, and I left the staff meeting and I went home and I just sat in my kitchen and I ate my lunch and I just stewed, and I was so frustrated about why, and I was thinking, well if I had done it, if I'd been in charge, this wouldn't have happened. And so, I was having this control response to something that was outside of my control, and I finally stopped, and I still really do this, so I don't want to act like I'm this guru on this, or that I've mastered this in some way. I still really do this. I had this moment where I stopped and thought, my emotional response is disproportionate to what has happened. Why am I feeling this way? Why am I looking for someone to blame? Like, I needed to blame somebody instead of just saying, it didn't work out. And so, I think that emotional work, that spiritual work of pausing just to ask, why do I feel this way instead of going well, it's because my kids are so loud or it's because of the pandemic or it's because of this situation, you know, that if I can control it would make it better, instead of pausing and asking. But you don't have to feel this way. You don't have to respond this way. Why are you? And so, that act of self-examination is a really powerful and important form of agency that God has given us.
Mentor Mama:
Yes, and applaud you for taking that pause and thinking that through. It reminds me too, that we just need to be cautious about laying out the blame right away, and we all do it. We all do it, but I think the time out is a good idea.
Sharon Hodde Miller):
It's so convicting because you know, even with the pandemic, I think we all had this panic of, the world is out of control, the world is unpredictable, the world is coming to an end, and to just pause and remember God's Word was handed to us by believers who lived in a much more unpredictable world. They were writing about contentment in all circumstances, a peace that transcends all understanding. I mean, Paul wrote that phrase from prison! So, we are heirs to these spiritual tools that can equip us to live in an unpredictable world. It's not as if this is something new, it's actually very, very old and that was also really convicting to me.
Mentor Mama:
Definitely! Sharon, you dig deep into how we control in the book and give examples of knowledge, power, money, etc. What is the most common reason why we struggle with control?
Sharon Hodde Miller:
There are two reasons why we struggle with control. The first is sin. You know, we believe our lives would be better if we were in the driver's seat, it's idolatry basically, believing in our own power, trusting in our own power over God's. But there's a second reason that has a lot more grace to it, and that is that we live in a Genesis 3 world, but we were created for Genesis 1 and 2. We were created to live in a stable, secure world. We were created for that, and whenever we long for security, whenever we long for stability, that is not a sin, that is our soul crying out for what it was created for and God shares that grief with us. Anytime we recognize, especially when it's with someone that we love, that we wish we could heal their brokenness, God shares that grief and that is exactly why he sent his son. And so, I want to say to anyone who wrestles with control, there are a hundred percent going to be times where this is about pride. This is about you believing you know better at times. But sometimes it's just because of love. You know, you love the person that you're wanting to help. Your desire to make them make the right decision is not bad—it's out of love. And so, I think it's important to name both of those things so that you're not shamed for wanting to care for someone, and to name that this is very difficult and very painful at times for good reasons.
Mentor Mama:
Yes. Thank you for elaborating on that. Tell us, what does theology have to do with control? It seems like the connection there isn't always easily understood by people.
Sharon Hodde Miller:
So, in one of the sections in one of the chapters, I look at the different ways that we try to control and I look at knowledge and information as kind of the original sin—basically the tree of knowledge. That's the first thing that we very often go to for control is we get on the Internet, we research. That's the most subtle, but the most common. Power, and money, are very obvious forms of control. But another chapter in that section is about theology as a form of control and this plays out in different ways. Theology itself can be used to control. This is common in cults. That's what is happening there. Theology is being used to control people, but we also turn to theology to feel in control, to go back to that distinction. There's that exerting control and feeling in control, and one of the common ways that we use theology to feel in control is the prosperity gospel. So, if anyone is not familiar with the prosperity gospel, it's this idea that you can earn favor with God and that you can win prosperity in life and that you can have the life that you want, if you are just a good enough Christian and make the right choices and live the right way, and it's a very transactional relationship with God, but we see this in Scripture. We see the prosperity gospel in really, really subtle ways. Because when we think of the prosperity gospel, we tend to think of these hucksters, these swindlers on TV who are saying, if you just send me money, God's going to bless you, and that is prosperity theology, but it plays out in more common ways as well. When you see where Job has lost everything and his friends go to him and say, what did you do wrong? How did you sin against God? Or, in the New Testament with the man born blind and the Disciples say to Jesus, you know, what did he do? Or what did his parents do that caused this blindness? And both of them are equating this tragedy with sin, that you must have done something to provoke the punishment of God, but really that is prosperity theology. And what both groups of men were trying to do was reckon with their own vulnerability in an unpredictable world. They're looking at something hard and thinking, okay, what did they do to cause this so that I can avoid doing that so that it doesn't happen to me. And so, it's just reckoning with your own vulnerability and not wanting that to happen to you. And so, that is one way that we use theology to feel in control is when, and you don't even think of it as theology, but when you are scrolling through social media and you come across a story of a family that had this terrible tragedy befall them, and you suddenly, in the back of your mind think, well, maybe it's because they did this. Maybe it's because they parented this way or they made this decision that they shouldn't have made, and I would never do that. And, it makes you feel safer, but that is all really about control because when we look at Scripture, even though Proverbs is full of wisdom about how to flourish and how to make wise choices for the good of yourself and your family, Ecclesiastes is all about, why did the wicked prosper? Why are the righteous punished? And so, we don't see this really neat and tidy, if-you-live-this-way-you-will-get-this-life formula in Scripture. And so, in whatever capacity we find ourselves falling into that thinking, like a really popular secular form of this is the really popular language around manifesting. That I can manifest my dreams and my destiny into the world, it's the same thing. It is giving us this illusion of control that we don't actually have and ends up feeling cruel when things fall apart because then you're wondering, what did I do wrong? What should I have done differently? And sometimes you didn't do anything. You just live in a broken world.
Mentor Mama:
Right, and that's so important to reflect on because, once again, it's falling into this sort of blame, or wondering what's the reason. That can be so, so dangerous. Well, you say that whenever we reach for control to save us, it always comes with a cost. What are some of the costs of control?
Sharon Hodde Miller:
I've already talked about anxiety as a big one, and I experienced this a lot when we were leading our church through the pandemic because everything and every pastor, every church leader experienced this. It was such a polarized time that every decision you made was kind of a lose/lose decision. Like you're going to disappoint people, and I found myself thinking, well if I could just explain to the people who are upset with me, this is the Scripture that we are relying on. This is the theology that is guiding us. And these are the experts in our church that we talk to. And this is the wise council that we sought. And if I can share all of that with them and kind of download into their brain the facts or the Scripture or the theology or whatever, that will cause them to change their minds and to agree with me, and that is going to knowledge and information for control. It is also an illusion. It does not work. But because I was relying on it and going to it again and again, it didn't change anything, but it did cost me hours of sleep lying awake at night, rehashing this thinking. What if I said it this way? What if I said it that way? So it costs my mental health. It also costs my relationship with a lot of them. Whenever you're trying to force someone to do something, even if it's trying to change their mind, it strains that relationship. So, anxiety, relational division, any time we insert control into a relationship, it's going to break the relationship. That's a huge, huge cost. Another big one is burnout just because when we think that we can control our future when we think that we can control our circumstances, that is just a recipe for striving. And then, another really big one, especially for women, is body shame. We haven't even touched on this at all, but one of the chapters I get into is how we try to control our bodies. And that's another area of our lives where we can experience some success in this for a time. I, for a large portion of my life, I'm a petite person, and I've had no major health complications, and so, in all the ways my body has submitted to me. And so, I would've told you, I have a great relationship with my body. That's just because my body was cooperating. As I have gotten older and my body has stopped cooperating. You know, my back is like this fragile baby. I have to baby my back. You know, I can't sit on the floor anymore. I can't sleep a certain way or else I'm a goner with major back pain. And so, you know, as you get older, it's kind of a losing battle and if you think that your job is to make your body submit to you, to defy aging, that is just a recipe for turning your body into an enemy because it's not going to submit to you. It won't. So those are some of the costs of control in our lives.
Mentor Mama:
Yes, absolutely, and that is one chapter I just really loved in your book, was the one on body and shame. So, you've talked about anxiety, the cost of relational division, burnout, and body shame. Those are all heavy consequences, and they come with a price. Tell us how realizing and changing our views on control helps with the burned-out part that you are referring to.
Sharon Hodde Miller:
Well, just realizing this is not going to give you the outcome that you think it will. That whenever we try to engineer outcomes, whenever we turn to control to rescue us or to fix a situation, it's not going to turn out the way that you think it will. Even if it turns out the way you want it to, temporarily even, but long term, the damage that it is doing is not worth the cost. And so, that's just a big part of it, is being able to be honest about the fact that this is not going to turn out the way that you think that it will.
Mentor Mama:
Yeah. And talking to someone perhaps, and being willing to confide. I can empathize with that. That is not always an easy thing to do, but it’s important.
Sharon Hodde Miller:
Yes.
Mentor Mama:
Well, tell us about the difference between guarding our reputation and controlling our reputation, because this is yet another area of control.
Sharon Hodde Miller:
Yes, that's another area of our lives that we try to control is what people think about us. And that is such a painful, painful area. Again, it's one that I, as a pastor, have had to wrestle with in the last couple of years, because you make decisions that are disappointing to people or unpopular, and people think all sorts of things about you and say all sorts of things about you. And, for me, one of the things that especially would get my goat was if people said I wasn't following Scripture or that I was distracting from the Gospel. And because I'm just being really honest with your listeners right now, this is like my sin. I'm going to share my sin right now. So, I have an MDiv and then I have a Ph.D. from a seminary. And so, whenever people are accusing me of not following Scripture, I'm like, oh, you want to go? Let's go, let's go on Scripture. Like you brought a knife to a gunfight. I will talk to you about Scripture. I will show you all the Scripture. So that's my sin response. That's my control response is wanting to defend my reputation and to control what people think of me and one of the things that is tricky about it is that we are taught to be people of honor and to have, you know, a good name because of your character. But I think we can get confused in understanding that what ultimately sets people free is not our names. It's the name of Jesus. And so, at the end of the day, your name will pass away. And that was a huge clarifying reminder for me as someone in Ministry is that my name is not getting anyone to Heaven. My name is not breaking the chains of sin in somebody's life. And so, if someone does not think well of me, but they're still good with Jesus, that is a win. And, we see that in Philippians with Paul, where, people are delighting in his imprisonment and speaking badly of him and he's saying, are they preaching the gospel? Okay, I'm good. So, there is an extent to which we have to release our reputations instead of trying to control them because we simply cannot. But this also is hard when, you know, we're not talking about ministry, but maybe we're talking about someone who's going through a divorce, which I write about. When you're going through a divorce and there are different narratives and maybe you feel blameless, but there's a different narrative that your friends are hearing where you're blamed for all these things, and you're not able to defend yourself, that is painful as well. And we have to trust and entrust our names to God, because again, we just can't make people think a certain way, and we have to trust our character to prove itself over time. And if we try to control, we will undermine that in the process. But it's so painful. It's so hard to be in the middle of it and to want to defend yourself.
Mentor Mama:
It absolutely is. I think that's a really important distinction that you called out there because I know I've struggled with similar types of feelings and it can become very overwhelming when you're trying to control what people are thinking about you because you just can't, you just can't.
Mentor Mama:
Well, in the last section of, “The Cost of Control,” you cover the real power of God's promises. What is the most exciting promise that you cover?
Sharon Hodde Miller:
I already mentioned that God doesn't give us control, but he does give us agency. I would describe that; I'm going to use a theological term here that some people may know. Would you say your audience, do they like theology? Are they into it? So, common grace is kind of the phrase that I would describe agency. Where that's something that like everybody has, but the fact of the matter is, even our agency, our influence in the world that God has given us has been broken by sin. And so, that is why we can know the right thing that we should do instead of control, but we don't do it. And that is because of sin. And so, the beautiful promise is that we do have the Holy Spirit who intercedes on our behalf and helps us to do what we cannot do on our own, and it's by the power of the Holy Spirit that we can bear the fruit of self-control to help us do that. But the even better news than the Holy Spirit is the good news of Jesus Christ. And one of the things that I realized really towards the very end of writing this whole book, initially when I'd finished the book, I wrote the ending, and then I wrote a new ending after I turned it in the first time, and this is kind of a funny story. This is still in the book, but I had ended with this story, this tells you too, that when you finish a book, you are running on fumes! And so, you're like, nobody reads the end, I’m just going to like, get it in, and turn it into my editor. And so, I initially ended the book using this illustration from, “Jurassic World,” that movie, my kids were really into it, and there's this great scene where this character says to the other character, like, you need to just let go of control. It was a great illustration, and I kind of ended with this story, and my editor came back to me and she was like, is this how you want to end your book? With “Jurassic World?” And I was like, you're right. This is not how I want to end my book, and so, that story is still in there, but as I was just praying over it and trying to search, where do I want to land? I had this wonderful realization and I love the symmetry of Scripture. There are so many places in the Old Testament that correspond with the New Testament, where Jesus is an answer to something that happened in the Old Testament. And I realized, I spent this whole book meditating on this moment in Genesis 3, where Adam and Eve had the option to either listen to the enemy or to trust God, and they chose to listen to the enemy, and we have been reenacting that again and again and again. We are doomed to, essentially, ever since. But you have this scene in the life of Jesus where he is reenacting that same scene. He's in the wilderness and he's being tempted by the enemy. Once again, with all these promises of power and instead of reenacting it to its completion, he rewrites the ending of that story. He does what we cannot do, and that is so beautiful of being reminded that at the end of the day, I can't fix this, none of us can. We will struggle with this to some degree forever, but thank goodness for Jesus Christ who rewrote the story that we could not, and that is the best news of all.
Mentor Mama:
Absolutely. You got to love editors that keep us on track.
Sharon Hodde Miller:
Yes, you do not want to end with, “Jurassic World.”
Mentor Mama:
Oh, no, and truly just pointing people back to Jesus is what we need to do. Well, Sharon, what a delight to have talked to you. How can people find out more information about you and your book?
Sharon Hodde Miller:
I'm most active on Instagram, @sharonhmiller, and then I also just released a series of interviews, digging deeper into these topics. They're all on my YouTube channel. So there's one with Jess Connolly on the cost of controlling your body. There's one with Derwin Gray on the cost of controlling your church, and then one with Beth Moore on the cost of controlling your image. So, if you want to dig deeper, those are great resources as well.
Mentor Mama:
Ooh, those sound excellent. All right.
Sharon Hodde Miller:
They were great.
Mentor Mama:
Before we go, I want to ask you some of our favorite Bible study questions. What Bible is your go-to that you use and which translation is it?
Sharon Hodde Miller:
So lately I have been using the CSB translation, but I'm also a really big fan of BlueLetterBible.org, just so that you can compare translations, and just comparing translations, generally is helpful because all translations are an interpretation, but CSB is my go-to.
Mentor Mama:
Excellent. Do you have any favorite journaling supplies that you like to use to enhance your Bible study experience?
Sharon Hodde Miller:
I just got the CSB, I don't know if it's Lifeway who created this CSB, but they just sent us this hefty Bible. It was leather bound and it had a ton of margin space, and I think they sent it to my husband, but I just stole it from him. I'm excited to use that because my current Bible is falling apart and there's no room to write in the margins. I like to write in my Bible and then be able to read it later.
Mentor Mama:
Absolutely. I do, too.
Sharon Hodde Miller:
Where I can write and it’s not microscopic.
Mentor Mama:
Right, right. And just the accumulation of different thoughts and studies and all those things over time is amazing when you take notes like that. You mentioned that your favorite app would be, did you say Bible Hub?
Sharon Hodde Mille:
No. My favorite app is called, Pray as You Go, do you know that app?
Mentor Mama:
No, I don't.
Sharon Hodde Miller:
I love this app and I kind of want to write them a letter and ask them to rebrand it with a different name because it's a little bit deceptive. If you're familiar with Lectio Divina, it’s closer to that. For anyone who doesn't know, Lectio Divina is a prayer practice where you're reading Scripture and then you're meditating on it, and so, this app always starts with music and they just pick the most perfect songs. I'll listen and just cry my eyes out. Then they'll read a passage of Scripture and then they'll just ask a few contemplative questions about it. And it's always stuff that's so simple, but profound. And so, you'll reflect on that and you'll pray and then they read through the passage one more time, and then that's the end and it lasts only about 12 minutes, but it's great. You can listen to it in the car. You can listen to it when you're on a walk or when you're brushing your teeth. It’s so short, but it has been such a wonderful oasis for me. It's quiet and it's just a different way of really soaking in Scripture. Instead of just reading like a giant swath of it, but going deeper into a shorter passage. So, I highly recommend the Pray as you Go app.
Mentor Mama:
Excellent. Wow. I'm going to have to check that out too. Sharon, thank you so much for being here today to share about your book and how we can truly combat the negative effects of control by discovering the real power that God has given us through Jesus Christ. And for our readers, pick up a copy of Sharon's book, “The Cost of Control.” You'll be able to find the link here in the blog. While you're here, share your comments with us on this podcast. And lastly, head over to the Coffee and Bible Time website for our prayer journals that will help guide and document your prayer life at coffeeandbibletime.com. We also have two courses available on how to pray using our prayer journal and prayer binder. Thank you so much for joining us on our blog today. We love you all. Have a blessed day.
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