Audio podcasts delivered at theeffect church in San Clemente, CA. theeffect is a community of imperfect people working together to find the emotional recovery and spiritual transformation that is theeffect of God’s love by unlearning limiting perceptions, beliefs, and compulsions, and engaging a first century Jesus in a non-religious and transforming way. See more at theeffect.org.
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Theeffect Podcasts
Dave Brisbin 9.28.25If you want to protect and consolidate any institution, church, or state, the most effective one-two punch is to stigmatize doubt and proclaim dogma—belief accepted just because authority says so…which stigmatizes common sense. Then with enough power, you outlaw doubt and common sense altogether. Just about every religion and ev…
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Dave Brisbin 9.21.25When an event has the immense impact Charlie Kirk’s assassination is having on us collectively if not personally, we need to stop and take a look around and inside. I was shocked at the news of his assassination, but even more at the worldwide response—hadn’t realized the depth of his following. The political response was predic…
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Nothing like a nice existential crisis to dig up questions of identity. Who am I? Of course. But beyond that, who’s asking? And beyond that, what does it mean that I can even ask such a question? To be aware that I don’t know who I am, that I can conceive of myself in such a state?The only word we have is consciousness. What is consciousness? What …
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Dave Brisbin 9.7.25How could we have known about the first week of September? My wife’s back pain had grown into numbness down her legs and feet, prompting an MRI, but still waiting for those results Tuesday morning, a feeling in my chest grew to what I could only imagine was a heart attack. Finally told Marian I needed to go to ER, and in the mids…
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I’ve always known I was adopted. From earliest memory, my adoptive parents so normalized it, it was just what it was. Why think more? Or maybe it was a guy thing. In her twenties, my also-adopted sister searched for her bio parents and found them. Was a brief, unfulfilling encounter, yet when my life imploded in my thirties, I put a waiver in my fi…
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Since I’ve been talking about the need to question everything, arrive at a personal theology that we’ve tested in the streets of our lives, become willing to be called heretic for our trouble, one of our members commented that I must have been called a heretic at some point and asked if I saw that as a badge of honor. Called heretic at some point? …
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Dave Brisbin 8.17.25Not long after we started our faith community based on understanding Jesus’ teaching from a first century, Eastern/Aramaic point of view, I received an email from a man on the east coast who told me about debates he was having with his 17-year-old son over Christian doctrine. The boy was increasingly challenging his beliefs, and…
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Dave Brisbin 8.10.25Central jail is a different world. Humorless guards, colorless surfaces, bolted down tables, stools. Time is wherever you are told to wait for as long as it turns out to be. I have plenty of time to take it all in. Unexpected energy, more family reunion than jail visit. Young women dressed up, made up, parents, grandparents, two…
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Dave Brisbin 8.3.25When we are presented with difficult ethical decisions, looking to the law, rules we are obligated to obey, can be comforting as we imagine that choice has been taken out of our hands. But as followers of Jesus, we also look to him as the ideal human who embodies good ethical choice. So knowing how Jesus looked to law is a primar…
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Dave Brisbin 7.27.25Had a conversation with two devout Christians about Gaza. One believed Israel was committing genocide and saw no justification for their military action, nor for killing a human being under any circumstances. The other, heartbroken over civilian deaths, saw more nuance in Israel fighting for survival against an enemy hiding behi…
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Dave Brisbin 7.20.25We’ve painfully learned that when something seems too good to be true…be very careful or run.Grace falls into this category. What’s too good to be true more than unmerited favor, unconditional acceptance? Not only too good, but not even fair or ethical. Our theology speaks of grace, but denies it in practice, lost in the glare o…
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Dave Brisbin 7.13.25How many times have you asked God for a sign? Desperately cried out for any toehold you could get on some certainty…imploring, making bargains. Great scene in the movie Bruce Almighty, begging for a sign but too focused on his pain to see all the signs along the road until he’s finally stopped in his tracks, forced to admit his …
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Dave Brisbin 7.6.25Leader of a retreat some thirty years ago, Catholic priest, asked the group—who attended same weekend every year—why Jesus came, why was he born. Hands went up to answer right out of the Baltimore Catechism—to die for our sins. Priest was so frustrated he said that after all their years of attending, if they weren’t willing to gr…
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Dave Brisbin 6.29.25A leper approaches Jesus, calls out: If you are willing, you can make me clean. A statement. Not asking anything. No question whether Jesus is able to heal. Only if he’s willing. We’re obsessed with whether we’re worthy or capable of connection, acceptance. It’s our fear talking. But moved with compassion, Jesus reaches out and …
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Dave Brisbin 6.22.25Chances are, if you were raised in a Christian tradition, you learned that doubt was the enemy of faith, the opposite of faith, if you had any doubt at all you had no faith. Such learning goes deep and doesn’t go away without a fight. Makes us so hard on ourselves, feeling the inevitable doubts of uncertain human life only to pi…
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Dave Brisbin 6.15.25Past week brought a series of headlines each pre-empting each other’s news cycle. Against a backdrop of wars in Ukraine and Gaza and the disruption of a new US administration intent on radical change, protests and riots broke out in LA, then aerial offensives between Israel and Iran, political assassinations in Minnesota, more p…
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Dave Brisbin 6.8.25A man asks me about Jesus’ saying that if we believe in him and his works, we’ll do the same and greater works than he. He’s troubled by the verse because he’s not doing the works that Jesus did, let alone greater ones, so does that mean he doesn’t really believe? I ask him what works of Jesus he’s looking to do. Well, it has to …
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Dave Brisbin 6.1.25What is the most important goal of your spiritual formation? You might instinctively say love. Learning to love, practicing love. Good answer, but until we carefully define it, love may not help direct us. Rather than a feeling or behavior, love is simply identification with the beloved. When we identify—see ourselves in the othe…
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Dave Brisbin 5.25.25If I asked you who you are, how would you answer?Almost everyone I’ve asked, including myself, has answered with a mix of the roles they fill, the accomplishments they’ve accumulated, and the attributes they exhibit. Roles, accomplishments, and attributes describe the human container we inhabit in this life, the whole with which…
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Dave Brisbin 5.18.25Two events converged in my mind last week. My wife and I picked up the ashes of a friend we’d been helping take care of for the past few years…and our faith community turned eighteen years old. Nothing like an anniversary to open the memory faucet, and maybe because of our friend’s death, the serious illnesses of many others, an…
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Dave Brisbin 5.11.25Our English words patriarchal and paternal descend from the Latin word pater, father. We know about patriarchy—society organized around male domination, often to the point of excluding women—but paternalism is restricting the freedom and autonomy of others under the guise of protecting their own welfare. The US started out patri…
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Dave Brisbin 5.4.25The most damaging attitude toward life and spirituality is…wait for it…passivity. Passive people feel their actions are insufficient or that they have no real choice at all, which makes them victims—defined by choicelessness. Victims are always waiting, never in the present, looking toward some other moment when circumstances may…
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Dave Brisbin 4.27.25We’re back in count again. We just finished counting forty days of Lent, and now we’re counting again. The count of Lent signifies a time of preparation for Easter, and the count now is also preparation for a second liberation on the fiftieth day after Easter—Pentecost.Our liturgical calendar is overlaid on that of the Jews, who…
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Dave Brisbin 4.20.25Cross and resurrection form the crux of Christian tradition, but whatever these events were historically, if we merely revere them from a distance of two millennia, we are missing the point of the gospels. These events realigned every detail of the lives of Jesus’ closest friends and followers, but as long as they remain histori…
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Dave Brisbin 4.13.25Very few of us live in the real world. Like avatars in a gamescape, we live in a world created by our own thought patterns, which are in turn created by our core beliefs—deeply held, fundamental assumptions about ourselves, others, and the world. Hiding in our unconscious, core beliefs are as unquestioned as the air we breathe, …
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Dave Brisbin 4.6.25Just when you think the world can’t get any crazier, each week we get a whole new view of crazy. And the more the world pounds on our door through news and social media, the more our grip on spiritual reality can loosen. The silence and solitude of contemplative practice, the wordless knowing of God’s presence can feel impotent, …
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Dave Brisbin 3.30.25Burning bush is our cultural meme, idiom for a peak experience, a vision of God or from God. But for all its power, one burning bush is not enough. Standing on holy ground in front of the original burning bush, Moses argued with God, doubted God’s word right there, and for the rest of his life, oscillated between boldness and do…
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Dave Brisbin 3.23.25Remember taking math tests in school? Remember how you had to show your work? Remember how you hated that? Wasn’t enough to get the answer, you had to show how you got to the answer. Yes, a right answer, or at least a functional one, is important. But showing your work signaled that you grasped underlying principles that would g…
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Dave Brisbin 3.16.25Mid-century dancer Martha Graham said that no artist is ever satisfied with their work at any time. That there is a strange, “divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest” that keeps them marching and more alive than others. This is a blueprint for excellence and recipe for disaster depending on whether a balance can be maintained. …
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Dave Brisbin 3.9.25Years ago, at the lowest point in my life, a friend invited me to her church, marking a return to Christianity after fifteen years away. First thing, I booked a lunch with the pastor, and halfway through, across my untouched plate, he said he saw “divine dissatisfaction” in me. Strange phrase. I didn’t see anything divine in my d…
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Dave Brisbin 3.2.25Jesus doesn’t save anyone passively, in spite of themselves, beyond their willingness to actively engage a way of experiencing transformed life he calls Kingdom. If we’re waiting for a savior, no one is coming. If we’re waiting for anything, we’re not in Kingdom. Waiting is passive, not yet; Kingdom is always in motion, herenow. …
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Dave Brisbin 2.23.25Do people really change? Seems maddingly rare, especially the older we get—the way is narrow and gate constricted—but it does happen. Why are some of us able to make fundamental, personal change, beat the odds that imprison the rest of us?Joseph Campbell introduced the monomyth, the hero’s journey, the one plotline we use over a…
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Dave Brisbin 2.16.25Life is big, loud, in your face. Like an over-the-top extravert, life can suck all the oxygen out of the room, leaving little energy or attention for anything else. And against life’s overwhelming physical realities—whether personal or political, socio-economic or relational—the spiritual can seem like a whisper we’re not even s…
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Dave Brisbin 2.9.25Quote from a movie priest: There comes a time in man’s search for meaning that you realize there are no answers. When you come to that horrible, unavoidable conclusion, you either accept it or you kill yourself. Or you simply stop searching...I remember how obsessively important it was to get answers to the big theological and ex…
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Dave Brisbin 2.2.25Would Jesus have been a Republican or Democrat?What seems like the setup to a joke is being asked in all seriousness. Two weeks into a controversial administration, I’m hearing people ask how a good Christian could possibly vote… How a Christian pastor could possibly support… An Episcopal bishop and a sitting president both state…
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Dave Brisbin 1.26.25One of the best-known stories from the gospels, one that has seeped into collective consciousness, is the story of Jesus walking on water. This and turning water to wine has become shorthand for divine power. It’s natural for us to focus on the literal, but all Jesus’ miracles have spiritual meaning as well, and since most of us…
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Dave Brisbin 1.19.25From someone going through a perfect storm of difficulties: I see no evidence of God, but plenty of evidence of the devil. Despite years as a devout Christian, she’s hit the point we all do, over and over in life, the point Karl Jaspers called a limit situation. The moment we realize we’re gonna need a bigger boat. Hitting the l…
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Dave Brisbin 1.12.25I’m often asked about the big words... The words of Christian doctrine that seem to contradict the nature of God that Jesus called Good News, love itself. Degreeless and indiscriminate love that can’t be altered or avoided, showering on everyone equally—just and unjust alike. Yet Christianity feels exclusive…acceptance withheld …
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Dave Brisbin 1.5.25An angel was walking down the street carrying a torch and a pail of water. When asked what he was going to do with torch and pail, the angel said that with the torch he was burning down the mansions of heaven, and with the pail, putting out the fires of hell. Because only then would we see who truly loves God. With no promise of …
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Dave Brisbin 12.29.24When a rich young man asks what he must do to experience eternal aliveness, and Jesus tells him to sell all he has, and the man walks away with head hung, Jesus tells his friends how hard it is for wealthy people. Easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than a rich person to enter aliveness. The Aramaic word for ca…
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Dave Brisbin 12.15.24What is it we’re supposed to see in Christmas? Talk about a mixed message... Only two gospels mention Jesus’ birth at all, and the few details given depict a birth so ordinary to parents so poor that those closest didn’t even make room for them in the inn. Enter shepherds and Magi...here the gospels spend a bit more time, becau…
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Dave Brisbin 12.8.24What does the story of Job have to do with Christmas?Any story is a story about risk. We’ve all been at risk from our first breath, but we don’t like to think of ourselves balanced on a razor’s edge of circumstances we can’t control. We work really hard to manage risk, grow as big as we can, accumulate money and materials so ris…
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Dave Brisbin 12.1.24Long ago, many people came to seek counsel and wisdom from a great Zen master. One day, a very important man, used to giving commands, came to him, “Teach me about Zen. Open my mind to enlightenment.” The master smiled and said they should discuss the matter over tea. When the tea was ready, he poured and the tea rose to the rim…
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Dave Brisbin 11.24.24To ancient Hebrews, the number twelve signified the completion or perfection of earthly systems, rule, government. More than a literal number, this is the meaning being transmitted by the twelve patriarchs, tribes, apostles, every detail of the New Jerusalem. It symbolizes a complete cycle—twelve lunar orbits creating the twelv…
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Dave Brisbin 11.17.24The end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. Eliot’s iconic line reminds that time is not a line, but a circle. Beginning and end one and the same. That any authentic journey is a journey of awareness, bringing us back to ourselves expanded. And knowing…what?Step 11 tell…
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Dave Brisbin 11.10.24What do you think of as a miracle? Seas parting, walking on water, healings? Dictionaries tell us miracles are events not explainable by natural or scientific laws. But what if an event is not explainable to or by you personally? Or leaves inexplicable space between data points? When you raise your hand, can you explain that? W…
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Dave Brisbin 11.3.24I’ve tried to make amends to people I’ve hurt in the past. Sometimes I felt reconnected. Sometimes my apology was flatly refused. Sometimes the words of forgiveness were spoken, but everyone knew nothing further was exchanged. In all of them, there was no reconciliation. We’ve not spoken since.The 9th Step of AA tells us to make…
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Dave Brisbin 10.27.24When we hear the Hebrew word shalom, we think of peace, as in the absence of conflict. And when we hear the word forgiveness, we think of pardoning or excusing, even condoning a person’s harmful action. But shalom—selama in Aramaic—means the greatest amount of unity, wholeness, health, and prosperity possible. And sebaq, forgiv…
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Dave Brisbin 10.20.24Ever try to give someone a compliment who couldn’t accept it? I like your shirt. Oh this? I got it on the clearance rack. Good job! I could have done better, just got lucky. Or next level: It wasn’t me; it was the Lord. All glory goes to God. Maybe we feel unworthy…or think we’re being humble or more spiritual by deflecting pra…
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Dave Brisbin 10.13.24When I went skydiving for the first and only time, I didn’t want a tandem jump—strapped to a jumpmaster—so that meant a full eight hours of training, and that the decision to jump was all mine. Fear grew all day through classes and videos; fitting for jumpsuit, helmet, goggles, pack; walking out to board the silver prop plane w…
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