Footnotes
Predestination, Soul Care, Church Hurt and Healing Childhood Wounds | AMA001
For the first Ask Me Anything, John takes the questions listeners sent in with their reviews — no guest, no script. Predestination, spiritual abuse, church hurt, and what AI is doing to his own attention span.
Since Formation launched, we've talked about giving one of our reviewers the chance to have their question answered by John. This is that episode. No guest this time, just John, working through the questions you sent in when you left a review, on everything from predestination to spiritual abuse to what AI is doing to his own attention span.
Leave us a review for a chance to ask John a question on an upcoming episode. To enter, follow the podcast, leave your review, take a screenshot of it, and email it over with your question to editors@formationpodcast.com. One question per person; screenshot required.
What this Conversation Explores:
- How John reconciles predestination in Romans and Ephesians with passages that affirm God's desire for all to be saved
- Why God's omniscience doesn't mean God always chooses to know everything, and what that has to do with honoring our agency
- What historic Christian writers understood about the unconscious mind long before Freud made it popular
- Why the language of "spiritual formation" replaced "Christian education," and what that shift says about how people actually change
- The anxiety John has noticed in himself as AI makes more and more instantly possible
- What spiritual abuse actually looks like, and the difference between confession as a healthy spiritual practice and confession used as a tool of coercion
- How to keep trusting God when you can't control what happens to the people you love most
- John's advice for Christians who feel politically alienated from their own church
- Why John believes the local church and parachurch ministries cannot survive without each other
- A first look at John's next book, on living beyond a culture of contempt
Resources Mentioned:
- Dynamics of Spiritual Formation, Richard Lovelace
- Dopamine Nation, Dr. Anna Lembke
- The Body Keeps the Score, Dr. Bessel van der Kolk
- Agnes Sanford
- Leanne Payne
- Tyler VanderWeele and the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard
- Joni and Friends
- Become New
About Formation:
Formation is a podcast that explores the science and soul of spiritual formation. Each episode brings together the ancient wisdom of the contemplative tradition and the best of modern research. John Ortberg sits down with some of the most rigorous and honest thinkers working at the intersection of faith and human flourishing for extended, unhurried conversations about how we are being shaped. New episodes every other week, wherever you listen to podcasts.
Connect with Formation:
Website: www.formationpodcast.com
Newsletter: www.formationpodcast.com/subscribe
Socials: @formationjohn
If this conversation gave you something to think about, we'd be grateful if you shared it with someone else who thinks intentionally about the things that matter most.
Formation is produced by Become New, a community dedicated to helping you grow spiritually, one day at a time. Subscribe for daily teaching from John Ortberg at becomenew.com/subscribe.