To Be Seen As You Are: Dr. David Dwight on Unconditional Acceptance, Pt. 2
In this uplifting interview, Tricia and Doro speak with Reverend David Dwight, co-founder and senior pastor at Hope Church in Richmond. Reverend Dwight shares his remarkable religious journey, from being raised in an Episcopal family to switching to atheism and then later forming his church. He highlights Hope Church’s unique commitment to emphasizing acceptance, kindness, and openness to questions and doubts while emphasizing the healing power of genuine connections and the importance of prayer.
Drawing from personal experiences and research on relational health, David illustrates the significance of community support and warns against the epidemic of loneliness in modern society. He advocates for meaningful relationships and shares insights into guiding individuals through profound moments of transition, emphasizing the sacred trust inherent in such experiences. This is part two of a two-part series.
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Website: http://hopechurchrva.com
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Quotes:
A lot of people have questions they are afraid to ask God because they think they’ll get a condemning response. But questioning is how your faith grows. - Dr. David Dwight
Grief can either break you down or break you open. If your heart is broken open, you have so much more capacity for love and compassion, and that's really beautiful. - Dr. David Dwight
When people are beginning to explore prayer, I always tell them to pray as awkwardly as you can. Just say whatever you want to say. - Dr. David Dwight
Show Notes:
DAVID DWIGHT: I mean, I say all the time, if you're here today and you're nervous about religion or Christianity, you've got questions. You're not sure you buy all of this. I'm so glad you're here because I am a person who's wired just that way. It does probably frame a bit of the culture of our church and also to be comfortable. It's not a better or worse. It's just different for some people who were, let's say, raised in a Christian environment and the church all their life, if somebody said, hey, I want to introduce you to John Doe and he's an atheist, they might sort of get like really nervous, like, oh my gosh, what are we supposed to talk about? If we're going to sort of have a conversation that gets in and around religion or philosophy? And I feel really happy to talk to somebody like that. I feel like I beat the bushes really hard on religious questions, you know, is there a God? If so, what's God like? And what about other religions? And if God is good, why is there so much pain in the world? And if the Bible is true, how can it be true? And is it any different than other religious texts and all that sort of stuff? That's a long journey for me that I had to wade through, and I feel like a lot of those questions are common to a lot of really seeking people. So when you can kind of enter those questions with somebody with a sympathetic ear, and I think that's the key, because I think a lot of people who have questions, you know, they're sort of afraid to ask them because they're afraid they're going to get a bit of a beat down or a condemning response. And I always say your questions are how your faith grows. So bring them on. It just creates one after another. Really fun engagements.
DAVID DWIGHT: When we talk about health and wellbeing, and we talk about belonging to something, we know that people live longer, healthier lives when we belong to a community. Can you talk about that, about how maybe religion can integrate with health and wellbeing and even Hope church, how it really is a community and I'm seeing for who I am. Like you just talked about how you walk in and I'm there with my story, with my whole everything. And it's not often that people can feel accepted for their whole being.
DAVID DWIGHT: You can probably make two statements that sound opposite, but I think they're both true. And the two statements would be, you know, if you've traveled around a bit and you've seen different cultures and everything, you can say, human beings are so different. You could say that. On the other hand, you could also say, you know what human beings, when you get down to the core of it, are the same. And I think both of those statements are true. I think at the core of it, a human being longs to be loved, longs to be known, longs for some level of affirmation and acceptance. I think that's true no matter what culture you're in, male or female, whatever your background or nationality. And so in that way, I think we're all very much the same. Cultures are very different. The way people see the world and interpret a lot of things is very different. But I think at root, we are deeply wired with a longing to be loved and to be known and to know. That's definitely part of the story. I think, as you're saying, Tricia, that there are a lot of studies that talk about the benefits from a health and well-being standpoint of relationships, of relational communities, relationships of mutual support, where we have ways that our lives are connected to a degree that we can encourage and sort of hold each other up.
DAVID DWIGHT: Religious communities have a meaningful way of being this for people. Of course, I'm more familiar with the church than I am any of the other, like Jewish synagogue. I mean, I'm familiar with all of that, but I don't know the inner workings the way I do a church or a mosque. Same idea. But these create religious communities where people can share their joy and their sadness and grief. Lots of studies talk about the benefits of that. A quick little story. Years ago, I was on a plane and I was flying from Denver back to Richmond, and I had been there for our denomination's national conference, and I was tired. And I got on the plane and I tried to put my magazine screen up, you know, like, and the woman next to me, I could tell she was chatty.
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