Dorsey Ross Show
Hello, my name is Dorsey Ross, and I am the host of the Dorsey Ross Show. I am a minister and itinerant speaker. I started the Dorsey Ross Show to interview people of faith who have stories of faith and overcoming trials and difficulties. In this podcast, you will hear stories of all kinds. Some will make you laugh, cry, and even say I can connect with that story or that person. I would love to encourage you to check out these stories of faith, encouragement, and inspiration my guests share on the show. I hope these stories give you hope, to get you through your week and your life. Please share them with your family, friends, co-workers, and anyone who needs a little touch of encouragement today.
Dorsey Ross Show
Exploring Faith and Doubt: Constance Hastings' Spiritual Journey
What happens when a moment of frustration turns into a powerful exploration of faith and doubt? Join us as we welcome Constance Hastings, an insightful author whose unexpected journey led her to write "The Trouble with Jesus." Constance opens up about her spiritual awakening at just seven years old and how this set her on a path of faith. Her book, designed to engage skeptical audiences, addresses the challenges and questions about Jesus's story, offering a thoughtful narrative that resonates with both believers and doubters alike.
This episode isn't just about a single journey; it's a heartfelt reflection on the complex dance between doubt and belief. I share a personal story about my parents, including a poignant moment during my father's final days that profoundly shaped my understanding of grace and divine presence. We navigate through challenging topics, exploring how Jesus is perceived in relation to money and divine intervention. Using the story of Lazarus, we question whether Jesus always acts as the divine fixer we expect, inviting listeners to reconsider God's role and intentions in our lives. Get ready for a conversation that will inspire you to ponder the interplay of faith and doubt in uncovering life's deeper purpose.
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Hello everyone, thank you again for joining me on another episode of the DorsalD Show. Today we have a special guest with us. Her name is Constance Hastings.
Dorsey :She did not intend to write a book about Jesus. She did not believe she was ever going any search. She never thought of being involved in any formal search ministry as an ordained clergy. Her life should have been her own, teaching the literature she loved and having a life to enjoy, her simple hobbies and family. But the trouble with Jesus is God does not let us walk away, but instead pursues us until we find ourselves found. She was very good, arguing with God, wanting her own directions and expecting it to be blessed, but that didn't happen. With gentle knuckles and a Holy Spirit grab around her throat, god has taken her through a life to places and people she would never have expected and known by God's plan Not the path I ever wanted, but the path she was given. Thank God, constance, thank you so much for coming on the show today. Thank you for having me, dorsey, absolutely. I'd like to open up with a very, very, you know, ice-flickety type question when did you grow up and did that affect who you became?
Constance :I grew up here in Wilmington, delaware. My parents, when I was born, lived in the inner city part of Wilmington near what we now call Little Italy. My grandparents were immigrants from Italy and the house that we lived in was just one block away from the house my father grew up in, so there was a lot of family around grew up in, so there was a lot of family around. However, in my life my parents were not particularly religious. My father didn't go to church at all. My mother would take us to church but when I was old enough to go by myself, just dropped me off and let me go. However, it was during the time when Wilmington was participating in the desegregation efforts and my parents did not want me to be caught up in that. So they decided to send me to a small private school which was about six blocks away from where we lived. It was a Christian school. Away from where we lived, it was a Christian school. Now again, they were not particularly religious, but they thought this would be a good, safe place for me to go to school and learn.
Constance :I went there for eight years. It was because of the teachers at that school that I learned about God. I learned about Jesus and my faith began. So at the age of seven, on my knees in my bed, I prayed that God would forgive me for this. I felt great responsibility for Jesus having to die for me and in that way I you know, I just said I'm sorry, you know that I did this and I later compare it to the story in John Bunyan's book Pilgrim's Progress, where Pilgrim, at the cross and his repentance, feels this great burden lifted off of him and I physically felt that burden right then and there. And I physically felt that burden right then and there and that was my moment of salvation and God took me from that point on.
Dorsey :Why do you think you felt that burden? Was it what you learned at school? Was it, you know, god speaking into you? Why do you think I mean like, especially at that young age?
Constance :Well, yes, it was at a young age and that was probably a good thing because I didn't have all of the adult arguments against God blocking that and being obstacles. But, as I said, it was a physical experience of something being lifted off of me, and I truly believe that that's when the Holy Spirit entered and relieved me of that guilt and gave me the grace and the love that I would need to continue a faith journey from there on and we know.
Dorsey :As I read your bio and looked up your information, I know that you wrote a book and we'll get into that. And one of the questions I want to ask you is the trouble, and start off with the trouble, jesus. Why do you think? What do you want your readers to know about Giga from the title of your book?
Constance :The title of the book came when I was asked by another church not the church in which I was involved to do a Saturday morning women's Bible study, sort of like a mini retreat, and they gave me several months to think about it as it was. Even with, at that point, all of my education and credentials and experience, I could not come up with anything. I knew these women were highly intelligent. I knew these women were highly intelligent, professional, smart women who had been in church and in leadership in the church for many, many years and I didn't want to bring to them the usual women's study. I wanted something that would have real impact and I was getting frustrated and searching. And one day I just looked up and I said to God, you know the troubles with Jesus. And it hit me. And from there I developed an outline for that study and eventually realized that what it was was the start of a book.
Constance :However, you need to understand the title of a book. However, you need to understand the full title. Is the Trouble with Jesus Considerations Before you Walk Away. It's written not expressly to a believer, but to someone who has doubts, to someone who is skeptical of the story of Jesus. I try to give voice to those doubts and the skeptics in there, the voice and the challenges in the book, the narration of Jesus and who Jesus is. The book is faithful, very faithful to the story of Jesus as a son of God coming in ministry to help the world know about God and his love, his death, his resurrection and ascension, but, as I said, it is very skeptical, and if you'll just give me a second, I'd like to read to you, so you'll have a sense of that, the very first paragraph of the book and hear this voice.
Constance :Now, let's be clear about this. You can tell your story any way you see it, and I can jump in with my two-bit commentary when I want, but none of this believe-it-or-you're-going-to-burn crap. I'm only willing to listen because I agree Jesus' story might have some things I like about it, but it's my choice what I do with it. I've been given other belief systems about the universe, how we got here and what it means to pass through this life. I guess, though, that I just think there's more, and I'm willing to give Jesus the benefit of the doubt, and doubt is what I bring to this table. You can hear in that that challenge and that voice.
Constance :Challenges, as I said, throughout the book Jesus' story, it's interruptive, sometimes it can be sarcastic, very edgy in that regard, but again, the book is meant to answer those challenges and to present that choice of Jesus as Son of God and to come to a place, ask for someone to come to a place, to accept it. After each chapter as well are a series of questions that extend what the chapter is discussed, and people can, as I said, have their considerations, maybe journal them, maybe meet together in a small group and discuss them and see how it speaks into their lives. In that regard, then, it's also a book for people who are believers, who do want to grow in their faith and be able to answer these questions when they come to them from the world.
Dorsey :How did you come up with some of the doubts that you discuss in the book, and what are some of those doubts?
Constance :Yes, I have had careers in education at both the high school and the community college level. I worked for 18 years as a mental health counselor in a faith-based practice and I'm a student of life and literature. You know, I listen, I observe what's being said and how it's being said, so that's what I try to express in the book, at least when I first started writing it Interestingly though, I submitted it to an editor she was a confirmed skeptic, and that's what I wanted. I wanted that kind of feedback on it and that's what I wanted. I wanted that kind of feedback on it, and as she read through it, she pointed out places in the narration where some questions and doubts were also coming up.
Constance :And she said where is this coming from? And I went oh my goodness, that's me. Those are my questions, my doubts. So, between the two, that's where it comes from, and it revealed to me that, even though we have times and places where we how do I say this? We believe, we believe, if you're going to be honest there are always going to be places where we want to hold back and just not go into certain areas in which those doubts, maybe even darkness, reside.
Dorsey :Do you answer those doubts or do you just ask the questions and let the reader you know? Maybe let the reader you know look into those questions and try to answer those questions themselves, or do you answer those questions for them in the book?
Constance :I try to answer some of those questions from a Christian perspective. However, I also have to be upfront about it. There are questions that we will have in this life that we will not have complete answers. As Paul writes, sometimes we see through the glass darkly and we will not know everything. That's where faith gets stretched. I can know that. I've lived it and I'm sure some of your listeners have been there as well the big why questions when things happen to us In my own life.
Constance :If I can give a personal example, my husband's father, my father-in-law, was a minister very successful. My father-in-law was a minister Very successful, doing very well in his churches. However, at the age of 40, he contracted Parkinson's disease. Now this was in the early 50s, before they had the medications and treatments with which we're familiar today. And the story goes that he kept trying to minister, but one day he stood in the pulpit and three times he had trouble just speaking and he couldn't even express what God had given to him to give to his congregation and eventually had to be carried from that pulpit back home and he never went back to church again. Why, god? Why allow someone who had the mission of Christ on his heart to be stricken in such a way. The family at that point had to leave, obviously, the ministry and the professional support of the church, and, with just a very small pension, they went to a small, very small home that they lived in at the time. You know they had a deep septic and well out back and they had dirt roads in the front, and they lived there.
Constance :My husband was 12 years old, his sister was only a year old, and my mother-in-law had to take on the care of her husband. She once told me that when she stopped feeding her daughter, her baby daughter was when she started feeding her husband, and I would watch her when I came to the family, where she would take food on a spoon and give it to him, and if he couldn't swallow it sometimes and this was food that, of course, was very fine she would take it in her fingers and put it on his tongue so he could then take his nourishment. Eventually he had to have a feeding tube and those kinds of treatments. He lived, though, for 38 years, and for 38 years she cared for him.
Constance :I will never in my life see such an expression of love, and you know again why God, why take these two people and have them live this kind of life. I can, you know, make up the answers if you need them, but I don't really know and I won't know until I'm there before my God some day. You know when I pass and I'm able to see them in glorified state, but also to hear from my Savior what his plan was and what happened to them.
Dorsey :Yeah, you know, you look in the glass darkly. I remember my mom, you know a long time ago, but I remember my mom, you know, quoting me that verse. I don't remember the context of why she quoted it, but I remember her quoting that verse to me at one point. Uh-huh heard quoting that verse to me at one point. The book has an every-sounding voice to the story of Jesus and his message. Who is that voice?
Constance :and where does it come from? Where does it come from? I think it comes from all of us. When we are born, a survival instinct kicks in and we have so many needs that must be met and we're helpless to do so. And even though in life we eventually can grow and manage that and have a measure of control, that need for control takes on a greater perspective in us and we want to control all of our lives and we want to control all of the people around us and what happens to us. And when that doesn't happen is when, as I said, these questions come up. So, as I said, at that point, the questions the way I express it in the book is the questions swell into doubt and that's the voice, that part where we have these doubts and we just don't know if we can accept it as it's given to us in the gospel and the choice that we're asked to make in that.
Dorsey :Has anyone that read your book ever wrote you back or ever contacted you back and said hey, thank you for writing this book? You know you've helped me answer these questions of doubt in my own life and I have a deeper now understanding of who Jesus is because of you writing this book.
Constance :Actually, yes, I have, as you said, people have said to me you have raised the questions and the doubts that I have in my own life. Interestingly, it can happen with people who are, as I said, confirmed believers and people who are sitting on the edge and don't know what choices to make. And this is from both family members, from people that I know personally to people that I'll never meet in this life except over social media and so forth know from your book that we believe the same things, but the way you get there is so different. And you have shown me how to approach these questions for people who are not believers. And that's really my prayer for the book that in having the book, people can give it to someone who is not a believer and say you know, could we have a conversation about this? If you'll just read it, let's have this conversation and open the door then for the Holy Spirit to move and to bring people to a deeper path of faith deeper path of faith.
Dorsey :You say in the book creating souls in wonder the position between doubt and belief. Can you explain what you mean by that?
Constance :Some people feel that faith, belief, trust is just an easy way out. I'm going to believe this and everything's going to be fine. But the real courage in the faith journey is to recognize that there are going to be places of doubt, that we come in expressions and situations where we don't know what's going to happen, where we're hanging on by, as they say, the skin of our teeth, just praying and praying that God do something, reveal something, but we don't know. We don't know if that is going to happen and in that regard then we're floating. We believe but we don't know and we don't know, and it kind of affects how sometimes we do believe. That takes a lot of courage to stay in that place, to be honest and to let God do what God does in our lives through that.
Dorsey :You mentioned earlier that your parents were not believers and did not know God or did not have a personal relationship with him.
Constance :Did they ever come to know Christ as their personal Lord and Savior. My mother was raised Southern Baptist and I believe that faith stayed with her, though she didn't express it or live it. But she did have that conversation with my cousin's husband, who is a minister, and expressed that she did believe and as it's written, believe on the Lord, jesus Christ, and you shall be saved. So I have that confidence. For my father, though I did not, and let me tell you the story here. It was 2010. The night before Thanksgiving he had a major stroke and he was paralyzed on his right side. He could not speak. We were told he would never walk and talk again. So my sister and I were put in that place that nobody wants to have to live with decisions to make. I was at the hospital one day and I went to bend over the bed and speak to him and as I did, I was wearing a cross and the cross dropped down within his vision, his line of sight, and I saw him look at it and this expression came over his face and you could tell that that was hard for him to see. About a week later, a neurologist told my sister that he was in a place where he no longer had words, he no longer had thought, and that confirmed for us that it was time to activate his living will, in which he requested that all nutrition and hydration be removed, and we let him go. We made that decision, but it didn't happen right away.
Constance :A lot was going on in my life at that time and I was in a lot of turmoil, but especially having to be there and watch my father slowly die. So it was that the night before he died I was alone in the hospital and I came to the point it was late at night where I knew that my love and my prayers were not going to change anything, and I said my goodbyes and got up to leave. As I went to the door, one of the hospice nurses came in and she had told me something that was very interesting a few days earlier. Something that was very interesting a few days earlier she had told me that this time was when persons had that last conversation with God. So we talked for a few minutes and she expressed to me that her children attended that same Christian school, that her children attended that same Christian school which I had attended decades earlier, and I told her then of what the school had done for me and of my salvation story. And soon afterwards I left.
Constance :I was always being down the hospital floors. As I was going down the hospital floors, it occurred to me that the last thing my father heard from me was my salvation story. Believe in grace, the kind of grace in which God is always calling, always loving, always wooing, always doing what God can do to bring us to him. And because of that last conversation, I believe that night my father and God had that conversation and I have such a conviction that in this deep part of his soul, which was still alive, he made that decision for Christ. So no, I wasn't raised that way, but God brought us that way.
Dorsey :What's something in the book do you think will bother or challenge people the most?
Constance :When I wrote the book originally I thought it would be the chapter. The Trouble with Jesus was he talked a lot about money, and people don't want to be told what to do with their money, and particularly when it comes to tithing and those sorts of issues, it's hard for people to come to that decision, but later I realized that probably the one that's going to be the toughest is I think it's chapter six and the title of that chapter is the Trouble with Jesus is he Refuses to Be the Divine Fixer. When we pray and it's natural, and it's not that we shouldn't do this, but we pray that God heals, we pray that God helps, we pray that God changes people, we pray that God reverses situations, sure. However, we have to remember, though, that God is God, and in that chapter I tell the story of when Mary and Martha's brother, lazarus, passes away, and if you're familiar with this story, we know that it's in the Gospel of John that when Jesus first got word that Lazarus was sick, he delayed going to see them. So by the time he did reach Bethany, lazarus had been dead for four days.
Constance :Martha meets Jesus, and the first words out of her mouth were Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. And it's such an accusing statement that, god, it's all your fault. But then she says but I know that God will do whatever you ask. It's almost like she's telling Jesus what to do. Later Jesus meets Mary and Mary says the exact same words Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. Jesus goes on to the grave where the tomb is. He asks that it be opened. He gets ready to call Lazarus forth and we know that Lazarus from the story is raised from the dead.
Constance :But before that happens, the shortest verse in the Bible, jesus wept. We like to look at that as if Jesus is crying because he identifies with our grief and our pain, and certainly in part that is so. But if you read into the story more deeply, you see that Jesus is crying because he wants to be their Messiah. But he's not going to be the Messiah they want him to be. Most of them are looking for a Messiah that would be in the line of King David and drive out the Romans and restore the nation of Israel.
Constance :Jesus came to be the king of who we are, of our character, our desires, of what we believe we should be and take rule over that.
Constance :In other words, jesus came to change our hearts and in that regard, he's not going to be a God that is going to do what we want him to do. Be a God that is going to do what we want him to do, he's not going to be all the time that divine fixer and make life go as we want it to go. Now, again, speaking of my father-in-law, our family had to deal with that. Whereas we would have seen dad healed and restored, and certainly in the grace of God we thought that should be God chose not to. And again, we have to learn that Jesus came to live with us to know the trouble in which we live. He certainly brought some trouble as well, but when those troubles converged and he met the worst thing that the world could devise to kill someone in his death, he overcame the worst of that, that we will die, and he rose again so that we, being like him, will also rise and have that eternal life. That's the divine plan of God.
Dorsey :As I get ready to end here, I like to always ask my guests to say a encouraging word to my listeners.
Constance :Jesus did say you know, in this world you will have trouble, but I've come to overcome that and hold on to that. Yes, in our lives we will have trouble and, as I said, certainly in education and more so in mental health counseling, I have seen a lot of that trouble. My own family has experienced a great deal of mental illness as well. It's tough, oh, it is so tough. And yet we have indeed a God who loved us so much that he wanted us to know him in the ways in which we understand, and so he was born in the ways in which we understand, and so he was born. He lived the lives that we do, and his promises are just so magnificent in giving us a choice of being with him and in accepting that choice. No matter what trouble comes, we still have that place of being with him and realizing that again, as Paul said, all things will work together for good. We might not always see it in this lifetime, but we can have the confidence in our faith that God will fulfill his promises, amen.
Dorsey :Where can people buy your?
Constance :book. I tell people you can get the book anywhere you love to buy books. You know online bookstores and so forth. However, I like to encourage people, if you can, to go to your local bookstore, and here's the reason. If you buy from an online retailer, the book is on a warehouse, it gets put into an envelope, an address put on it, it's sent out. But if you buy from a bookstore, someone in that bookstore has to open the box, take out the book, hold it maybe have a time of experience with it, and then it's put on a shelf for other people also to have that experience. So the impact of the book I believe in local bookstores is actually greater. If you're able to do that, that's wonderful.
Constance :I also encourage people to take a look at my website. My website is ConstanceHastingscom and there you will find a companion blog that goes with the book. It's also called the Trouble with Jesus and you can subscribe to it. It comes out weekly, it's free and just in about eight to 10 minutes you can read about the different passages in which you can hear this voice again and the response in the gospel to these doubts that we have. So if you want to take a look at that as well. That'd be great, thank you.
Dorsey :Thank you, Constance, for coming on the show today. We greatly appreciate having you.
Constance :Thank you for having me, dorsey. This has been great, absolutely Well, guys and girls, thank you again so you for having me, dorsey.
Dorsey :This has been great, absolutely Well. Guys and girls, thank you again so much for joining me on another episode of the Dorsey Roadshow. Please go and check out Constantine's website and her book, and also check out the website at wwwdorseyroadshowcom. Check out the previous episodes and until next time, god bless, bye-bye.
