Vince Vitale [00:00:00] Hey, everyone. Welcome to Ask Away where we receive every question as a gift and where we invite you to ask your hardest and deepest questions about God and life. I'm Vince Vitale. 

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Jo Vitale [00:00:11] Hi, I'm Jo Vitale. 

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Vince Vitale [00:00:13] And it's been quite a while since you've heard from us. So we wanted to spend the first episode just updating you on where we've been, what we've been doing. The last time many of you heard from us was when we posted a public repentance video confessing ways that we had come to realize we had hurt people. That was almost three years ago. A lot of you have asked where we've been and how we are. Thank you so much. That has really meant a lot to us just to know that you cared and to hear that you were praying for us. 

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Jo Vitale [00:00:43] Yeah. I can't really even convey how significant your kindnesses were towards us. Just probably more than you know, there was so many times over the last couple of years when right when I was just having a tough day or just needed a word of encouragement that we'd suddenly get a message over social media from one of you in that very moment. And it just felt like a sweet encouragement from God, just right to our hearts. So thank you so much. Especially because we know that many of you were working through your own shock and anger and confusion and lament in this season as well. I dropped our eldest son Rafael, off to his first day of preschool last week, and within five minutes of chatting to one of the other moms for the very first time, just three casual questions in, and she'd already got right to the heart of what had happened in the last season just in our very first meeting. And I'd mentioned that we'd been processing some personal heartbreak, and her immediate response was it was a global heartbreak. And this is a stranger that I just met on the playground, but it had impacted her so much too. 

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[00:01:46] And so just right at the beginning, we just really want to acknowledge your own heartbreak in this last season too, and to recognize that we know we'll have played a part in that as well. For those of you who felt let down or misled by us and for any of you who were really looking to us to help us process it with you and work through it and wanting to hear from us as you were dealing with your own emotions and it all, I'm sorry if that was hard that you weren't hearing from us at that time. Our friend Lisa Fields, who works with the Jude 3 Project, she said about a year ago, when you're healed, you'll tell the story differently. And that really resonated with me at the time because I think when you're right in the middle of a crisis, you're just not ready to talk about it. You're still piecing things together. You're trying to understand even what's happened in your part in it. And it takes really intentional work I think to even grasp the story. 

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[00:02:38] You have to listen to so many different perspectives to work out what happened in part of that journey to healing. We felt we had a lot of healing to do, but a lot of that was about understanding what happened, how we had contributed, how we'd hurt others, what relationships we needed to work on healing, where others were hurting and that we could help with. And so it was quite a journey. And in many ways we're still on that healing journey, but we felt like there was a lot to be done before we were ready to speak about any of it; otherwise, what good would our words have ever been? But at this point, while we're still on a journey, I would say we feel in a much healthier place now. So I just want to thank you for being patient with us, for bearing with us and for your kindnesses along the way. 

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Vince Vitale [00:03:19] Yeah. When we did ask people, whom we had hurt, what we could do to try to respond well, unanimously, what they said to us was learn. They asked us to learn about abuse, learn about power, learn about repentance, to pursue reconciliation. And that's primarily what we've been doing. It's been the most important part of our focus over the last few years. That might sound like we haven't been doing that much, but learning is hard when you're not just talking about learning something abstract and theoretical, but learning about the depths of your own heart. And it does take time. Sure, it's possible to just read a bunch of books quickly and cram a load of statistics and information into your head. And we get that temptation because when it comes to learning painful truths, there was definitely part of us that just wanted to get through it as fast as possible. But that's not how you really learn anything. Then you just wind up forgetting what you've learned. It never takes root deeply enough to change your heart or your instincts. So we've been trying in a very imperfect way, with many mistakes along the way, to learn and to live into what we've been learning in a way that we hope will bring real change. 

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Jo Vitale [00:04:30] I can remember a couple of months in at an early point, I felt like there was a choice in front of me as to how much will I let this learning impact me. I could sort of learn in a clinical, detached way or really face it and really feel it. And it made me think about the way that if somebody gets a cut and they're bleeding, I get really queasy at the sight of blood. So I tend to handle it better if I just run into action, I run off, get someone a tissue, get them a plaster or Band-Aid to put on the cut, but I don't want to see the blood flowing. I don't want to look at it because then it hits me that much harder. Certainly it's real, it's vulnerable, it's raw, it's painful. The wound is in your face. But at the same time, if you don't actually look at a wound, then how can you be the one to clean it? How can you be the one to minister to somebody if you're not willing to face the hurt that's been done? That there's kind of a choice there and how you respond. And I felt similarly in this that actually when learning about other peoples like deep pain and suffering, we get that choice. Am I going to shut my eyes or am I going to really open them and really look at what's in front of me and lament and engaged with it in a deep way? 

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[00:05:37] And one of our former colleagues, and a friendly [inaudible], I remember her saying early on one of the ways that was helping her understand grief and lament was when her daughter had come home after working on an elementary school project where they were making a diagram of the different ocean zones from the surface to the depths of the ocean. And it had this diagram right at the bottom, at the very bottom of the sea, you have the trenches and where it's completely dark and you can't see anything, and there's a lot of pressure, it's hard to breathe. And as she was looking at this diagram her daughter had created, it just hit her, oh, this is a picture of suffering and that's actually where the victims are. They're in the trenches. And so she brought this challenge of saying if we truly want to learn, we have to go down to the depths. We could just stay on the surface in the shallow water, but the people who are suffering, the real victims, they're down in the trenches. And so are we willing as Christians to go down to those places to really just sink, to sink into the darkness with people? But you know who else is there? Jesus is there. Jesus chooses to go down to the trenches. That's where we would find him. He's down there with the victims. 

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[00:06:45] And so we felt like we were constantly having to make that choice to keep choosing, no, I'm going to submerge to the depths because that's where the hurt is. That's where the pain is. And that's difficult because if you go to those places and you're learning about people's pain and you're looking at it and you're listening to them, then if you stay there long enough and you've really opened your eyes and really listening, then at some point you really start to see, oh, this isn't detached from me, but there are ways that I've contributed to their suffering as well. There are ways that I've let others sink without offering a hand to pull them out. Or maybe I gave them a push. Maybe part of the reason they're down here is because I pushed them down. And that's hardest of all, actually, to learn that about yourself, to look at the deep, deep pain that some people are in and realize I'm complicit in this. I played a part. I hurt people. That's so hard, but it's also the kind of learning that really changes you. 

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Vince Vitale [00:07:38] And we have been encouraged. A few months ago, we sat down to write down some learning points from this past season and we thought it would be good to capture some of this. Maybe we'll have 10 or so main learning points. And we just very quickly wound up with over 50 things that we wanted to write down, and we just thought we can't ever forget any of these learning points. And that encouraged us. We look forward to sharing much more about that, much more of what we've been learning over time. Today, we just want to give more of a very high level overview of some of the main things God has been teaching us. These are just preliminary thoughts. They're not in any way exhaustive. I mean, even the things that were mentioned today, we realize we are still very much in the process of learning. In many ways, we're still in the early stages of this learning journey. We're really aware of that and there will be deficiencies in our thoughts. But this is also not the only time we'll talk about these things. This is part of our story now. God's approach is never to hide or ignore the hard things in our past. He brings light out of darkness. He brings life out of death. We really believe that. We've always believed that in a general sense, and now we're trusting God for it, I think in a new way in our own lives. 

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[00:08:55] So what have we been learning about? If we had to summarize it in a single word, that word would be repentance. That might seem like a major downer to some, the idea of spending three years learning about repentance, but actually it's been amazingly encouraging. Painful, yes, but so life-giving, such a blessing, perhaps the deepest of our lives. Before this last season, we had not appreciated just how central repentance is to the Christian life. I mean, it was the first instruction out of the mouth of John the Baptist. It was the first instruction out of the mouth of Jesus. Also, the first instruction that Peter gave after the Spirit fell at Pentecost. We realized that repentance is not just a component of the Christian life. I think I had thought about it in that way, maybe subconsciously for a long time. It's not just something you do once at the beginning of your faith or once in a blue moon. In really extreme situations, biblically repentance is the Christian life. It is how we walk out faith in Jesus day by day. And biblically, repentance is such a gift. We realized early on in this process that we had subconsciously thought of repentance as a bad thing, as a punishment, or as a form of self-harm, beating yourself up or flogging yourself or groveling, or even is trying to atone for your own sins. And if that were true, if that were the true meaning of repentance, I'd be the first person to tell you stop repenting because only one person can atone for our sins and it's not us. And that person, Jesus, already did. 

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[00:10:37] But the Bible talks about repentance so differently, and we were so thankful to dig into this that it talks about repentance as a gift. Acts 11 verse 18, it says, after the Gentiles first believed in Christ, Peter's telling the story to the Jewish Christians of how the Holy Spirit fell on the Gentiles in the same way that he had done with them. And then it says, when they heard this, they had no further objections and praised God, saying in verse 18, so then even to the Gentiles, God has granted repentance that leads to life. He's granted it. So it's a gift and it doesn't lead to punishment or harm or shame or failure or condemnation. None of those things that we fear. Biblically repentance is a gift that leads to life. And we dug into what the Bible has to say about repentance, and it's quite amazing. According to the Bible, repentance is a gift that leads to all of the following things: life, knowledge of the truth, salvation, no regrets. That's a nice way to live with no regrets. Earnestness, readiness to see justice done, Christ's power resting on us, healing, love, God hearing us, forgiveness, purification from sin and righteousness, fellowship with God, fellowship with one another, and rejoicing in heaven in the presence of the angels of God. 

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[00:12:09] And here's what we realized. If you substitute just about anything else for repentance in that sentence-- and I'm running toward it full speed ahead. I mean, nothing is getting in my way. I'm breaking through barriers, climbing over fences. I'm taking every opportunity to do whatever leads to all of those amazing blessings. If we really believe what the Bible says about repentance, it won't have to be forced out of us. It won't have to be pried from our hearts. As soon as we think to ourselves, do I have to repent so often? In the past I've asked that question, do I have to repent for this? But that already reveals that in our hearts we don't really believe it to be the gift that the Bible says it is. If repentance is a gift, we won't ask if we have to repent. We'll ask if we have an opportunity to repent. If we get to repent, we'll search far and wide for those opportunities, eagerly desire them. We'll see them as a privilege, not a burden. And 'will you forgive me' will become one of these questions that we just ask frequently that rolls off of our lips quite naturally. 

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Jo Vitale [00:13:17] Yeah. For all of our talk about repentance as Christians, I think you get a really clear sense of what we really think about it by the games we play around it. If you've ever been in a situation where part of what you do in a small group is confess, I think sometimes there's a thing that goes on where we're calculating in our minds, how much am I going to share, at what level am I going to share? I need to say something serious enough that I look like I'm partaking in this process, I look suitably holy, I'm not joking around. But not something so shocking that people might actually think less of me or actually, God forbid, think of me as a real sinner and that I've actually done something actually wrong. And so even in our minds, we calculate and we're kind of picturing it at the right level of sinful but not too sinful. Let me just read the room. And then when someone else actually does confess something real in a context like that, we're then so quick to jump in and rescue that person from what they've said. Oh, you did that? Oh, well, you don't worry. We've all been there. It's totally understandable. It's so human that you would respond and feel that way. And we kind of minimize it. We talk people out of repentance. And I sit back and I'm like, man, why do we do that? Conviction comes from the Holy Spirit. 

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[00:14:25] God is doing this amazing work of conviction in someone's heart. And yet we want to jump in and intervene and have them step back from it. And, man, now I'm just like, oh, let's not save people from repentance. I've done it. I know I've done that with people. And I think the misunderstanding, it skews so much of our reading of scripture. I was digging into Luke seven a while ago in the story of Jesus at the house of Simon the Pharisee, and the woman who is known about town as a sinner. That is her label. She comes and gate crashes the dinner party, and there's this very dramatic scene. And there are kind of two ways to look at what happens in that story. We can look at it like Simon the Pharisee who's judging what she's doing and just just making all sorts of assessments about her. And he's finding it embarrassing and shaming and he's looking at her behavior and thinking, this is so demeaning. And you can look at what she's doing and think, oh, this woman is groveling. Look at the way she's weeping over Jesus feet and washing them with her hair, his dirty feet. And she's just kind of hysterical. And you can look at that and think, wow, that's such a demeaning moment. Look at what she had to do. She had to lower herself. She basically had to get in the dirt and abase herself in order for God to accept her. Maybe if she just looks desperate enough and begs enough and grovels in the dirt, then she can convince him to accept her. But, actually, that's not what's going on in this story at all. 

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[00:15:45] This isn't a story about a woman who's trying to make Jesus love her despite everything that she's done. This is actually the response of a woman who is so fully confident that he already does, that he already loves her. And that's what gives her the courage to come running and gatecrash the dinner party before the judgmental eyes of everybody. Because in the sight of God, she thought she's so free from shame and judgment that what everyone else thinks of her literally doesn't even matter. And so, yes, she's crying, but not out of groveling but with the sheer relief of reprieve from a judgment that she knew she deserved. She washes his feet with her hair because there's no act of service and tenderness she wouldn't offer to this man whose love and grace have already washed every part of her clean. And she kisses him and she anoints him because she can't get over a man who's received her like this. And so she just can't actually contain her adoration for him. And then we have the words of Jesus summing up the scene. He says, she who has been forgiven much loves much. What you're seeing here is a woman loving much because she knows she's already been forgiven. And I just look at that and I think, wow, groveling and repentance they're actually worlds apart. And so we shouldn't be confusing them. To grovel is to cower in fear. It's kind of waiting for the blade to fall, but to repent is to run full throttle into the open arms of a God who loves you. Who welcomes you into his presence, just like Jesus does in this scene with this woman. And His grace washes you clean and ushers you into freedom before you've even got the words out of your mouth. 

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Vince Vitale [00:17:16] Well said, Jo. That's beautiful. One of the reasons we've become so passionate about seeing repentance as a gift and feel this is so important, is because if we see repentance as this terrible thing to be avoided at all costs, then instinctively we won't be willing to see or hear those who have been hurt by us. This is something we've learned about our own hearts. We won't look deeply or listen carefully to where there has been pain and hurt because doing so might risk implicating us in their hurt and thereby force us toward repentance. That terrible thing we're committed to avoiding at all costs. So instead we'll instinctively keep enough distance, keep a safe distance between ourselves and victims, those who have been hurt, to ensure we're not able to hear them and therefore are not able to understand their stories in a deep way. And in this way, we've learned that a commitment to justice relies on a valuing of repentance. Or maybe to put it another way, our commitment to justice will only be as strong as our valuing of repentance. And that's why we've become so passionate about this. I did my PhD on suffering. Jo did hers on the value of women. 

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[00:18:32] But we've come to realize that if we care about the hurting and if we care about justice, a proper biblical understanding of repentance is absolutely critical. And that's why if you keep listening to our content, you'll hear us continue to circle back to this. And just to keep this theme in view, we just think it's so important. Another reason repentance is such a gift is because it shines a flashlight on your heart. It's a way of inviting God to examine the depths of who we are. And for me personally, one of the things it did was reveal that there were several selfish asymmetries in my heart. For starters, I am so much better at seeing how others have hurt me than how I have hurt them. I've realized I blind myself to a lot of the hurt that I cause. Being in a crisis brought a lot of usually unseen emotion to the surface. But in that was an opportunity to realize that there is far more hurt around me and caused by me than I usually make the effort to identify. I mean, the hurt would have been there either way. I'm so thankful to be less blind to it now. And in the future I want to be much more sensitive and intentional about that. 

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Jo Vitale [00:19:53] I just think there's so much truth in that. It's so easy to recall how people have hurt us that just registers with us right away. We kind of hold onto it. We nurse it. And I think we even see it in how much we talk about how others have hurt us compared to how much time we spend talking about the hurt we've caused others. If you just did a straightforward word analysis, how much more is that on the former than the latter? There's something in us as human beings that we always assume the best motives of ourselves and the worst of everybody else. Why do you think it is that we tend to be so blind to so much of the hurt that we cause? 

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Vince Vitale [00:20:26] I think there's self-defense mechanisms at work. I mean, I don't want to believe that I've hurt people. 

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Jo Vitale [00:20:33] Right. 

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Vince Vitale [00:20:34] I want to believe that I am better than I am. I want to believe I can justify myself. In my most honest places, I want to believe that Jesus at times didn't really need to save me. He was just kind enough to give me a helping hand. Believing I've hurt people deeply and am desperately in need of saving, that's humbling. And my pride fights against that. And also, speaking personally, I didn't want to admit my sin because this was probably the most significant thing for me personally. Doing so meant admitting that I had hurt my family. Seeing the pain around us, seeing the impact at times on your mental health, Jo, fearing the long term consequences for you as my wife and for our family, I think that was by far the hardest part for me, coming to terms with the fact that I hurt my family. Not other people, not those people over there, but me. I hurt the people I love most and who depend on me most. And now, of course, that is the truth of what I believe as a Christian. I sin and my sin affects everyone closest to me. In some ways, I shouldn't be surprised by that. Only God is ultimately dependable, not me. Of course, I believe that theoretically and theologically, but this has been a process of coming to accept in a much deeper way what I already knew to be true. I think sometimes we tend to think of belief as weaker than knowledge. But biblically, I think maybe it's the opposite. Trying to work out repentance confronted me with questions of whether I really believe what I know. Like God was challenging me. You have been preaching the gospel of sin and repentance and salvation for years. You know it, but do you really believe it? When push comes to shove, do you trust that gospel in your own life and in the life of your family? 

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Jo Vitale [00:22:40] Yeah, that is so real. The temptation to run from that when you see the damage that's been done, when we're speaking about going down to those trenches. When you're in the trenches and you're looking at people's heart and starting to see the extent of it and there's that feeling in you of like if I am complicit in any of this, it might just kill me. Which shouldn't be a surprise because sin is deadly. Sin is actually death to us. And it's necessary, isn't it? As part of the Christian life, you can't move forward without looking your sin in the face and recognizing there is a death that I deserve for the things that I have done. And it is that serious. And yet at the same time, that's like the hardest thing in the world. But it's also the most powerful thing in the world. Because just like if somebody has had a near-death experience, if you come so close to dying, but then you survive and you live, you're suddenly so much more appreciative of the fact that you're alive and breathing. Suddenly, every day is like a miracle again. You wake up and be, like, I can't believe I get to be here. Let me hug my family. Let me be there for my children. Let me live in the present. Let me make the most of this brief gift that life is. And I think it's the same with sin. It's the hardest thing to face and be like, oh no, I did that. I am complicit. I cause genuine hurt to people. I'm staring my sin in the face and I'm looking at my very own death. And yet when suddenly you experience but there is grace still for me from Christ, but this is exactly why Christ came and died for me, suddenly you go from looking death in the face to looking Christ in the face. It's like that moment of but I get to live. I actually get to live. 

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[00:24:21] There is grace for me that meets me even in the face of the worst wounds that I've caused. And it just reminds me many of you guys will have heard this paragraph from the sermon by Benjamin Grosvenor who preached a sermon called The Temper of Jesus Christ Towards His Enemies and His Grace to the Chief of Sinners. But this is what he says, and it's so powerful. He says, "If you meet that poor retch who thrust his spear into my side, tell him that there is another way, a better way of coming to my heart, even my heart's love. Tell him that if he will repent and look upon me whom he has pierced and will mourn, then I will cherish him in that very bosom which he has wounded. Tell him that he shall find the blood which he has shed to be an ample atonement for the sin of shedding it, and tell him for me that he will put me to more pain and displeasure by refusing this offer of my blood than when he first drew it forth." And that just gets me every time that I read it, that there is so much grace for us. That, yes, I am the person holding the spear. I'm the person who pierced Christ to the heart and have pierced others to the heart. And yet, from the very one that I injured most, God himself, He looks me in the eye and he says like, "Ah, it's going to grieve me more if you don't receive my gift of grace that I have for you, than if in your guilt and shame you'd turn away because you can't bear to look on me. Look on me. Look on the one you've injured and receive life." 

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Vince Vitale [00:25:43] Oh, I'm so thankful for that grace. And once I stopped fighting reality and embraced repentance, once I stopped trying to search everyone else's heart and invited God to search mine, it quickly became obvious that I had plenty to repent of. Sometimes when someone had felt hurt by me, I would sit down at a table with a blank sheet of paper thinking I had nothing to apologize for. But if I invited God in and asked him to search my heart, time and again within an hour, I would wind up with page after page that I wanted to apologize for. And not even just that I needed to, but that I wanted to. And personally, I actually found that when I had been accused of something and would get particularly defensive in my heart when I was fighting against repentance hardest, that was typically a sign that there was truth in what was being said about me. I don't usually get very defensive about things that are completely false. That's how I'm wired, at least psychologically. If I know I haven't done something that I've been accused of, it doesn't overly stress me. I'm able to remain peaceful about it. But when I've been accused of something and I fear there is an element of truth in it, that's when I get really defensive. And it's actually been really good for me and for all of my relationships to learn that about myself and to be able to step back when I feel defensive and take a deep breath and then ask God to show me any truth that my defensiveness is pointing toward. 

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Jo Vitale [00:27:17] And one of the reasons we get defensive is because we're expecting to be attacked. Part of the process of repentance is having to overcome the fear that if I open the door to repentance, then those that I've heard and the general public, they're going to seize on my vulnerability and they're going to revel in an eye for an eye. And I think it's important to acknowledge that this is a legitimate fear that has to be faced. If you've done something wrong, people may very well call it out. But at the same time, that cannot be the thing that keeps us from repenting, because our decision to repent can't be based on whether it will be well-received; otherwise, it's just self-preservation or trying to people please. We repent because it's the right thing to do. We repent because we're so overcome with conviction and grief about the harm we've caused somebody that we actually can't bear to move forward while leaving that wound unattended to. And just speaking personally, I don't want to let fear of facing consequences ever prevent me from doing what I believe in my heart to be right. When the Holy Spirit convicts us of sin, we'll never regret taking steps of repentance. And there is a freedom and a peacefulness that comes from doing what the Lord has asked of us, irrespective of any human outcome. 

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Vince Vitale [00:28:26] And yet, encouragingly, that's not at all what we found. I mean, people met us in our vulnerability and they expressed gratitude and they encouraged us to continue to walk the road that we had started down. Sometimes I attempted to rationalize myself out of repentance by opining that my repentance would not be well-received anyway, because I couldn't in good conscience perhaps admit to everything that I had been accused of. But again, one time after another, I found that if I set aside extended time, invited God to reveal my heart, then even when I couldn't repent of everything I had been accused of, I could almost always repent of more than I had been accused of. And I found that those I had hurt were not interested in me clicking select all and blindly repenting of an itemized list. No one ever sat down across from me with a clipboard ready to tick off every detailed complaint. They responded with gratitude and encouragement when I showed up with extensive notes and a desire to repent, especially when I confessed sinful heart attitudes or actions that they never would have known about had I not brought them into the light. And so one of the big things I learned through this whole process of reconciliation is that reconciliation rarely requires full agreement. I think previous to this I thought, well, you can't reconcile until you see everything the same way. If you've hurt someone, very practically my advice would be repent for what you can and do your best to repent for even more than you've been asked to. 

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[00:30:06] Ultimately, people weren't concerned with me checking all the boxes or saying all the right lines. What they wanted to see was that I had cared enough to invest serious time and emotion into the introspective work required to begin at least to have a deep understanding of how I had hurt them and others. My experience has been that as beings created in God's image, we are, all of us, wired to respond positively to repentance. Of course, this will not always be the case, but I would say that when people don't respond well to our repentance, let's it be quicker to question whether our repentance has been thorough and sincere rather than to jump at the first chance to conclude that we've been canceled. Biblical repentance, I believe, is stronger even than any cultural instinct to cancel. Far stronger, in fact. That's been our experience, and I'm inclined to think that sometimes people who don't believe that are ones who have not put it to test. So put that to test, go to the people that you have hurt. You may very well be very pleasantly surprised because God has wired us to respond well to repentance. Another asymmetry that I've found in my heart is that I respond so much more strongly to undue criticism than to undue praise. In fact, I have zero problem with undue praise. If you praise me more than I deserve, I'm meeting it up. I love it. I've got no qualms with the injustice of receiving more praise than I'm rightly due. I'm like, really, I can take all the credit, just most of it. Keep it coming. 

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[00:31:41] But then when I receive even the most minuscule undue criticism, I'm outraged. I'm up in arms about the grave injustice of the situation. And personally, at least speaking for myself, when I inspect my own heart, I am not in any danger of receiving more undue criticism than undue praise over the course of my life. Because so often I have found ways to let people know all the wonderful things that I have done, and I've made sure to keep hidden some of the thoughts and feelings and actions that would make me look bad. I've come to find it really convicting that this was opposite for the apostles. Like in in Acts 14, after Paul healed the man, the crowd starts shouting, "The gods have come down to us in human form." And they started calling Barnabas Zeus, and Paul Hermes. I would have been swelling up with pride, but Paul and Barnabas immediately tore their clothes and rushed into the crowd yelling, "Stop! We are only human like you. This was not us. It was God who did this." I always want people to think more of me. But Paul and Barnabas, we see the same with Peter and John in Acts three. They were far more concerned about people thinking too much of them than thinking too little of them. I decided at some point, probably a couple of years ago, that I never want to respond to a criticism or an accusation in a way that communicates that I am better than someone thinks I am. That's not honest. It's bad theology. It's not what I believe theologically. I'm worse than you think, not better. And that's why I need a savior who's better than any of us could ever possibly imagine. 

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Jo Vitale [00:33:23] I think this goes so deep in all of us. Like the ridiculous lengths we go to to present ourselves as better than we are. I mean, we've been married 14 years now, there's not a lot that Vince doesn't know about me. And yet, still, sometimes I will catch myself trying to pretend that I'm better than I am if I do something wrong. Instinctively I'm still scrambling for excuses or trying to put some clever interpretation on my motives that make them look better than they really were. It's like, man, I'm 36 years old, but I'm still acting like the toddler with the cookie crumbs around my mouth denying that I ate the cookie when it's like, Jo, the crumbs are there, let's just stop pretending. 

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Vince Vitale [00:33:58] And it's probably me that ate the cookie, right? To be fair. 

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Jo Vitale [00:34:00] Yeah, you eat the cookie, but I've probably done something much worse. But there's this thing in us, and at the end of the day it's just so fear based, isn't it? If this is true of me, if I actually admit I did that, then that means not that I just did a bad thing, but we always turn it into identity. I am a bad thing, that I'm not as good as you thought, then you're going to think less of me, then you won't love me and you'll take your love away. And I'm going to be abandoned all alone forever. It's just like we go down these spirals of just not believing. It's like you said, we know the gospel, but not believing the gospel. 

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Vince Vitale [00:34:33] Yeah, we're certainly works in progress, but I'm so glad to be on this journey with you, Jo. 

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Jo Vitale [00:34:38] Yeah, even though you eat all the cookies. 

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Vince Vitale [00:34:41] One more asymmetry. A third asymmetry that I found in my heart was that I loved corporate responsibility when things went well, but I hated it when things went badly. I love corporate responsibility when things go well. The Olympics. The Olympics come around, the medal rankings on TV. If America's up there on top-- sorry, Jo, but if America is up there on top, I'm excited. I'm like, we're winning. We are winning. I love owning things when things go well. My dad and I are New York Yankees fans. Sorry if I just lost half of our listeners. There's a long story to that. It's something that we love to do together, follow baseball. And when we have a great game, I get on the phone with my dad and it's all we won, and we this and we that. I like the off season moves we made. We really have a good shot this year. I mean, you could hear us. There's such a sense of ownership in my voice. You'd think I was batting third or that I own part of the team. But then as soon as the Yankees start losing, I'm like, "Look at this mess. They don't know what they're doing. Where do they find these guys? They need to get their act together." And these more trivial examples, they helped to reveal the truth about our hearts. Yeah, because it's not a laughing matter when we're not talking about just trivial things. We're talking about people in serious pain. I needed to be as willing to accept corporate responsibility for failures as I was for successes. That's part of being a leader. And as much as I wanted to run from any responsibility and just find a cave somewhere to get away from everything, there's a real problem when we embrace responsibility, when things go well, and then immediately wash our hands off it when things go badly. That lacks integrity. That's not who I want to be. 

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Jo Vitale [00:36:33] Yeah, I think one excellent sign that you bear some corporate responsibility or complicity is if you feel undue relief and not being the one who has to deal with the problem. I can remember feeling this way at one point. I'm so glad it's somebody else's responsibility to deal with this. So I can just get on with ministry and let other people take care of things. It's not in my job description to handle it. But now I can look back and see that far from that being a sign that I was in the clear, the sheer relief I felt of not being the one to have to shoulder the burden of responsibility, that was actually a red flag and an indicator that some of that burden was rightfully mine to carry. Somewhat ironically, my emotions about not being responsible were one of the very best signals of my responsibility. There were a sign that I had contributed to the hurt or been complicit in ways that actually I hadn't yet consciously acknowledged. 

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Vince Vitale [00:37:25] Yeah. The result of all of these that we've been talking about, of getting to know our hearts better in these ways, even these dark ways, is that it freed us to think more about someone else's hurt than about our wrongdoing. Someone can be dying from being trampled, everyone stands around and says, "I barely pushed him." And then no one takes responsibility because our eyes are fixed on ourselves. We care more about being right than about helping those who have been wronged and who have been hurt. But that's self-focused rather than other-focused. And it's so freeing when you can start to get your eyes off of yourself and onto what matters most- other people's hurt. And when your focus is there and you really get to know the depth of their hurt and the details of their hurt, you very often realize how serious of a role you personally played in it, that we often found that happened in our own life. And I think one of the things we've learned is that the best way to appreciate our sin for what it is is not to stare at it or think about it in our heads over and over, but to engage directly with the people who have been hurt and to learn from them. Counterintuitively, in order to learn about ourselves, we needed to get our eyes off of ourselves. We needed to stop listening to our own voices over and over and start listening to the voices of others. 

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Jo Vitale [00:38:44] Yeah, I think that has just been such a huge learning point for us. At the start of this process, when everything first happened, we really felt like the Lord was leading us to do two things in particular. The first was to focus on our own sin, and the second was to keep listening to as many people as we could and that we needed to do both of those things together. Now, and not mentioning those as normative for everyone. But that was what we strongly felt God was asking of us in particular, given our roles. And that became a framework that we clung to as we lived through the last couple of years. And I just can't overstate how grateful I am for that encouragement. At the time, I don't think we even had begun to comprehend how significant it would be for the journey that we needed to go on. And I hadn't understood how interconnected point one and two there is. That actually you can't do one of those without the other. If you start by pointing the finger and focusing on other people's sins, then you lose the ability to listen to them because you're blinded by all the problems you see in them. Or you can see it's their faults, their failings, and the next thing you know, you're believing in the worst of them and you're seeing them as the enemy rather than as a brother and sister. But if you start with focusing on your own sin, then suddenly other people's sin doesn't look so glaring by comparison. And maybe it wasn't even their sin at all that was the problem, it was actually yours. 

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[00:40:00] I think of those words of Jesus again, "The one who's been forgiven much loves much." It's repentance that enables you to listen. But also we learned that this posture of realizing that you can get things wrong when you're focusing on your own sin then, as Vince has said, other people's perspectives become so vitally important because you realize that if you're only listening to your own people, your own tribe, they're likely going to share your same biases and blind spots. And the people you need to listen to most are precisely those who do see things differently because they're in the unique position of being able to show you the areas where you really need to listen, where you've really got something wrong. And I think sometimes we can think that we've already done that work by asking God directly to reveal to us any sin in our hearts. Maybe we even sit there and spend a lot of time asking God, show me what's wrong. If there's any offensive way in me, God would you show me. And that's so important. That's a huge part of it. But I think we also have to be real about the fact that as much as we may pray that prayer and ask for that, sometimes it can be hard to hear clearly when our own hurt and pride are getting in the way. 

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[00:41:05] And it can be hard to hear what God is saying when what we hear on repeat in our heads is our own grievance narrative over and over. But perhaps one of the ways that the Lord wants to help us get free is by using the voice of others to cut through the noise in our heads and help us to see things about ourselves that our own pride and defensiveness are getting in the way of us seeing. That was certainly true for me. And, yes, sometimes another person's critical perspective, it may hurt to hear. People may not always express their disagreements in a way that feels comfortable. But if we can actively search for what's true in what they're saying about us, even criticism that's hard to hear can carry a seed of truth that can bring a conviction that leads to repentance, that leads to freedom from a sin that you didn't even know you were ensnared in when you started out on the journey. 

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Vince Vitale [00:41:54] That's so true. And we want to say thank you to those who have encouraged us and continue to encourage us on this ongoing journey. We've become very passionate about the fact that repentance is a gift. It is an incredible gift that has in many ways been lost and that the church, we believe, needs to recapture a biblical vision for. But it really helps for repentance to be experienced as a gift when courageous people take a vulnerable step to actually trust those they have been hurt by. That's really difficult too. To trust them enough, to encourage them to begin the process and then to experience God's kindness within it. And we have been so deeply blessed in the last three years by people who have shown that courage and that kindness toward us. Lauren and Brad, the way you so immediately and generously responded to our very first step of repentance with such grace, it was like we were taking this first step and we didn't even know if we could walk. And then you were like, run. You can run. We believe you can, keep going. And we just felt so spurred on. We will never forget that. We will always thank God for the way you expressed God's love to us at such a critical moment in our lives. Steve, when we first met in person, the big smile and hug you greeted us with, that was incredible. It was so freeing. It was this beautiful picture and reminder that it truly is God kindness that leads to repentance. And it just brought us joy and it cemented for us so much that God has been doing in our hearts. 

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[00:43:42] Carson, the tenderness of our meeting when we got together in person and the willingness with which you received my words of confession, you took what could have been a shaming experience and you helped to make it one that I'll always look back on with deep gratitude. And then receiving your family's Christmas card the next Christmas, that was actually a really significant marker for us. It might have not seemed like a particularly big thing, but we saved that card and I still look at it regularly and it has been a wonderful reminder that God is faithful and his heart is for reconciliation and if we are willing, he will provide. Ruth, we are so grateful to you. Even when we faltered in the early stages of walking out the process of repentance with you, you didn't give up on us. You remained willing to sacrifice a great deal of time, energy, emotion into a three year and ongoing process of restoring relationship. I mean, that has been such a gift. Thank you for choosing the courage to engage with us in this way, even when at times I'm sure it has been exhausting. We have learned an enormous amount about ourselves and about God's heart from our time together. I truly believe that time with you is some of the most important time we have spent over the last three years, and we're so thankful for it. 

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[00:45:21] Walking out repentance step by step is painful. It's time consuming. We do want to be honest about that. We would advise anyone not to start the process until you are ready to make that sort of full commitment. But in the same breath, Jo and I would hasten to add, it is so worth it when you sit down for dinner with people you never thought would want to be in your company again. And the instinct of smiles and encouragement reveal a new depth of relationship. You know it is absolutely worth it. All of the people who welcomed our repentance gave us one of the greatest gifts one can ever receive, the opportunity to taste in the reconciliation of a human relationship. The ultimate goodness of reconciliation with God. And this has had a profound impact on us. I have never been so eager to live out my relationship with God. I've never been so committed to reconciliation within my family. I've never been more invested in seeking reconciliation within myself concerning the fears, the selfishness, the selfish ambition, all the things that keep me from loving as I should. Far from being a punishment or an act of self-harm, I can honestly say that the repentance of the last few years has been one of the most valuable, and in that sense, the best experiences of my entire life. 

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Jo Vitale [00:46:52] Yeah. We have a two-year-old and a four-year-old in our house, and their favorite book in this season has been Going on a Bear Hunt. Like everywhere we go we have to chant the whole thing and strangers are always looking at us. It's kind of adorable watching them sing it as we march along. But for those of you who don't know it, these kids have to cross through all these different obstacles on this journey that they're on. And every time they come up against a new one, the refrain that they say over and over is, "You can't go over it. You can't go under it. Oh, no, you've got to go through it." And that is maybe silly, but that is the chant that I hear in my head over and over again when I think about repentance. And that's how originally when we first started coming up against obstacles and things that we had to engage with on this journey of repentance, part of my emotion initially was like, "Oh no, we've got to go through it. There's no other way." We've got to go through it. But over time, over the last couple of years, that emotion has changed so much for me from one of, "Oh, no, we've got to go through it." To "Oh, wow, we get to go through it." And it just really hit home for me that because it's Christ who has made a way for us, that actually is a way through. We don't have to come up against barriers and relationships and say, "Oh, that's the end. There's no future, there's no hope, there's no way forward here." We get to go through it, through repentance. And as we get to go through it because Christ has made that way, then we finally, as you come through, you get to step into freedom on the other side and you're walking with the people who you're in restored relationship with, they're traveling with you. And then as you get to the other side, you find Christ is already there and he's waiting for you. And that is just the most unbelievable gift that I think any of us could ever receive. 

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Vince Vitale [00:48:39] There's so much more we look forward to sharing with you over time. For now, we'll just leave you with a wonderful biblical promise from First John, Chapter one, verse seven says this. It says, "But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus His son purifies us from all sin." And that verse always surprises me because whenever I read it, I always think it is going to say, if we walk in the light, we have fellowship with God. But amazingly, it says that if we walk in the light, we have fellowship with one another. And we are so often tempted to think the exact opposite will be true. If we bring our sin into the light, we won't have fellowship at all. People will shame us and cancel us and cut us off from community altogether. But the Bible makes this radical promise. God completely turns things upside down and says I'm big enough and good enough to make it the case that precisely by bringing your sin into the light, if you humble yourself in that way, I will make that the very basis of the most real and authentic relationships in your life. 

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[00:49:55] Jo and I want to testify that we have experienced the truth of that incredible promise. And we want to encourage anyone listening, repentance is a gift. Reconciliation is a gift. It is a process. It can be hard and painful, but it is worth it. It is so worth it. And it brings pleasure to the heart of God. So don't give up. Don't give up on the relationships in your life, even when it seems like reconciliation is impossible. It's not. God loves doing the impossible. We're very much still on this road. In some ways, we are still very much at the beginning of it, but we are on it. We are on it for good. And we're so thankful for this chance to share just how good it is. 

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[00:50:40]One final thing we want to say is that our deep desire is to reconcile with everyone that we need to. We are so thankful for the reconciliation that we have already seen, but we know there are other people with whom reconciliation is still in process, or whom we have reached out to in the hope of starting that process, and we are also aware that there may be someone or even many people that we have not done right by and have not yet had the humility to see the hurt that we caused you. We have really wrestled with the release of this podcast while our journey of reconciliation is still ongoing, because we do not want to send the message to people we still need to make amends with that you aren’t important to us. We truly hope that will not be the case and even hope that this episode will help to surface more opportunities for reconciliation. Please, if that’s you, we would be so grateful if you would contact us. One way you can do that is by emailing askawayquestion@gmail.com. Or, if you would prefer to first connect through an intermediary, perhaps you could have someone you trust contact us who can help us discern the healthiest next steps. We would be so grateful if we could hear from you and then do what we can to repair any hurt you’ve been carrying because of us.

[00:51:56]To ALL of you who have listened to this episode, it really means a lot to us for you to join us again, especially after all this time. We are very excited to engage with you regularly again; we always learn so much from your questions. On the NEXT episode, we're going to share more about how the journey of the last few years has impacted our vision for ministry and for apologetics. But for now, just know that we're GRATEFUL for you, and thank you so much for listening.

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