theeffect Podcasts

Dave Brisbin | 1.15.17 Just completed the move of our family home of 17 years to a downsized house closer to work and faith community, and just about every nightmare scenario that I could imagine and project on to moving day and was working and praying to avoid came to pass. Escrow was delayed so that new flooring was only half completed when moving crew arrived with all our belongings in the hard...

Dave Brisbin | 1.8.17 The beginning of 2017 also marks the first anniversary of a dear friend’s death—his suicide to be truthful. Can’t help the re-flooding of mental images and emotion imprinted almost exactly a year ago on a rainy Wednesday night when I got that first phone call. And yet, a year later, an email from his sister says that after a year, having now been put into contact with me and...

Dave Brisbin | 1.1.17 The beginning of each new year, with its imaginary line in time, has also become, or has always been, a time for reassessment and for resolutions for the new year. We all have made them and break them almost as quickly. Stats show that 97% of new year’s resolution won’t be kept and 30% will be broken in the first week. Why is it so hard to keep new year’s resolutions? Because...

Dave Brisbin | 12.11.16 In the run up to Christmas, what does the infancy narratives in Luke and Matthew have to tell us that is relevant to our day to day lives and choices? Especially, what are the details in those narratives that, understood from a first century, Jewish point of view, can not only make the story real, but clue us in to the central principles the authors were trying to convey? W...

Dave Brisbin | 12.4.16 With all the big news happening constantly, especially leading up to and from the presidential election, it’s easy to get caught up in the all these pressing macro events and even obsess over them, become the stereotypical political junkie, environmental junkie, or whatever. But regardless of what is happening in the macro, our lives are always lived in the micro—one moment...

Dave Brisbin | 11.20.16 When a person gets up to accept and award or honor, whether a politician to a movie star, I’ve always wondered what exactly is meant when he or she inevitably says they are “humbled” to accept this award. That statement can be authentically heartfelt and can mean many things, but if we really break down what humility means, is it really humble? What is humility and why does...

Dave Brisbin | 11.13.16 Nearing the end of a year of almost constant change, worn out, ready for some sort of plateau or break in the action, the realization reaffirms that there is no plateau. There is no time in life that change isn’t constantly in process. Sit for a few minutes and watch the shadows move across your living room—subtle reminder of just how fast things are really moving in our li...

Dave Brisbin | 11.6.16 Walking my daughter down the aisle on her wedding day was just about everything I could have hoped for in such a moment. She was absolute beautiful in her dress, her mother and I love her groom, the setting and preparations couldn’t have been better. But even in a perfect moment such as this, I was of course aware of fractures between families and family members that had rem...

Dave Brisbin | 10.23.16 Why does Jesus speak in such paradoxical terms? Why is he always taking the world as we know it and turning it upside down, inside out, and backside front? There seems to be a way of seeing life from the Father’s perspective that turns it all around in a way that is essential to our spiritual growth and identity. Some people call this moving from a first half of life to a s...

Dave Brisbin | 10.16.16 One of the most fundamental truths of life is that it all happens, is all contained, in one moment: this moment, this day. Like a person with amnesia who wakes every morning with memory washed, each of us must learn and live everything necessary to fulfill our purpose as humans in the space of just one day, one life, one generation. But because we have the capacity to think...

Dave Brisbin | 2.22.15 The Fifth Way Series 12: “Nothing is more practical than finding God, than falling in Love in a quite absolute, final way. What you are in love with, what seizes your imagination, will affect everything. It will decide what will get you out of bed in the morning, what you do with your evenings, how you spend your weekends, what you read, whom you know, what breaks your heart...

Dave Brisbin | 2.15.15 The Fifth Way Series 11: Reacting to a statement made in a sermon the previous Sunday, a woman told me it was the first time she had not been “completely won over” by what I had to say, that she and her husband had had a very “lively” discussion about it on the way home. I told her that was great! That I would much rather have her disagree and think on it and discuss it rigo...

Dave Brisbin | 2.18.15 The Fifth Way Series 10: When most people hear the title of this book, The Fifth Way, most immediately want to know what the first four ways are. Pretty insightful, because we really can’t know the nature of Jesus’ Fifth Way without understanding the nature of the first four. The four ways, like the cardinal directions of the compass rose point out the sum of all the ways we...

Dave Brisbin | 2.1.15 The Fifth Way Series 9: Chuang Tzu, a 3rd century BCE Chinese philosopher said: The purpose of a fish trap is to catch fish. Once the fish is caught the trap is forgotten. The purpose of a rabbit snare is to catch a rabbit. Once the rabbit is caught, the snare is forgotten. The purpose of words is to convey ideas. Once the ideas are grasped, the words are forgotten. Where can...

Dave Brisbin | 1.18.15 The Fifth Way Series 7: One really ancient view of cosmology was of a flat earth resting on the back of an enormous turtle. What was the turtle standing on? Well, it’s basically turtles all the way down. As our minds struggle with the impossibility of an infinite stack of turtles, we are seeing the problem of theology. How can we possibly use finite language and physical rul...

Dave Brisbin | 1.11.15 The Fifth Way Series 6: The ancient Hebrews who wrote our scriptures envisioned us humans living our lives between heaven and earth—between the pure connection and unity of God and the individual form and separation of the material world. And our job as humans was to bring heaven to earth and earth to heaven: to merge the two, bring the unity and connection of heaven into ou...

Dave Brisbin | 1.4.15 Called to lead a study group at a treatment facility, I found myself in front of about 20 women I’d never met before to talk about the intersection of faith and life and scripture. Immediately I saw a few who were not interested at all, another few who were interested for while then mentally checked out, some who seemed animated throughout, and others who wanted to talk after...

Dave Brisbin | 12.28.14 Heading into a new year, there seems to be a lot of fear about the direction of the world in general and our country and our lives in particular. Jesus said he came to bring life and life abundantly, but where is that abundance in the fearful attitudes being displayed? Victor Frankel said that the last of human freedoms is the ability to choose our attitude in any given set...

Dave Brisbin | 12.21.14 The birth of any child is a big deal. So the birth of Jesus is a very big deal. But why? Any answer to such a question that is merely historical or theological, may be true, but leave us personally untouched at the same time. In a theological fight that consumed much of the 5th century, church fathers debated and excommunicated over whether Mary should be called theotokos—“...

Dave Brisbin | 12.14.14 Approaching Christmas, what do those ancient wise men who traveled so far to reach Jesus have to say to us today? Is there any significance to those three famous gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh? In the midst of the crush of modern Christmas gift-giving, is there a gift or an attitude of giving that speaks to us from a deeper place? In his famous short story, written...

Dave Brisbin | 12.7.14 The Fifth Way Series 5: Ancient Chinese philosopher said you cannot speak of ocean to a wellfrog, the creature of a narrow sphere. We may think it’s safe to ignore or minimize the enigmatic musings of a man dead over twenty three hundred years half way around the world, but this truth lies at the heart of our search for truth. Whatever we think we know about life, reality, f...

Dave Brisbin | 11.30.14 The Fifth Way Series 4: Do you want to know the meaning of life? I assume that’s why you’re here, at least in part. But if you’re looking for an answer to a question, a solution to a problem, any answer to the question of meaning will itself be meaningless. Life is not a question to answer or problem to solve…it’s more like a magic trick: as soon as you know how it’s done,...

Dave Brisbin | 11.23.14 The Fifth Way Series 3: A seventeen year old boy asks his father, an elder in his church, whether what he believes is really true or just what he believes. What a question! The central question. We have come to equate doubt with a lack of faith. But faith without doubt is no more possible than courage without fear—doubt defines our faith, makes it possible. Common sense tel...

Dave Brisbin | 11.16.14 The Fifth Way Series 2: Having looked at our relationship with God, God’s nature, and the nature of our attitude toward God, what should be the primary metaphor for our spiritual lives? Most critically, the metaphor we choose, chooses us, shapes us, but most often, we have not consciously chosen the metaphor. It was chosen for us by our parents, teachers, pastors, church, a...

Dave Brisbin | 11.09.14 The Fifth Way Series 1: First in a series presenting the main concepts and themes of Dave Brisbin’s book, The Fifth Way: A Western Journey to the Hebrew Heart of Jesus. The book traces the journey to the journey, the fundamental changes in worldview necessary for a modern Westerner to approach the ancient and Eastern message of Jesus. The New Testament has been amazingly pr...