Trust vs. Avoidance: How Christians Confuse Spiritual Bypassing with Faith

Wrapping up the Ruthless Elimination of Hurry book club, Tatum shifts into a candid, personal conversation about the difference between genuine trust in God and avoidance dressed up as spirituality. Drawing from psychology, Scripture, and her own experience praying through her grandmother's stage-four cancer diagnosis, she unpacks how Christians — especially high-achieving entrepreneurs — often mistake "rushing to joy" for faith when it's really a defense mechanism keeping them from real intimacy with God.

What's Covered

• A book club update: The group has finished The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry and is moving toward a business-focused pick next, with Great CEOs Are Lazy under consideration as a way to explore building a business from sustainability rather than hustle culture.
• The spiritualizing of avoidance: Why avoidance is one of the most socially acceptable defense mechanisms in Christian culture, often hiding behind phrases like "God's got me" or "I'm not sad, the joy of the Lord is my strength."
• A personal story: How Tatum navigated her grandmother's 90-day cancer prognosis, the shift in her prayers from demanding a specific outcome to surrendering the outcome entirely, and what that taught her about the difference between avoidance and trust.
• The psychology of avoidance: A look at "experiential avoidance" — the attempt to escape or numb uncomfortable emotions — and the research linking it to anxiety, depression, and other forms of psychological distress.
• Avoidance in entrepreneurship: How uncertainty, a core ingredient of faith, gets treated as a threat — leading business owners to quietly override God's specific instructions with their own "safer," more marketable plans.
• Root causes of avoidance: Fear, shame, the desire for control, and unprocessed pain, and how each shows up in decision-making, dating, finances, and launching a business.
• Signs you're avoiding rather than trusting: Refusing to face the worst-case scenario, and praying only for a fix rather than for comfort and wisdom.
• A practical reframe: The question Tatum returns to again and again — both for herself and for others — "Do you have to do anything?"

Key Takeaways

• Avoidance offers temporary relief but blocks growth, resilience, and closeness with God; trust requires sitting with the discomfort instead of rushing past it.
• Faith is not the absence of uncertainty — uncertainty is built into the definition of faith itself.
• Facing a worst-case scenario isn't inviting it to happen; it's being honest about what's driving your emotions so you can bring it to God fully.
• Disappointment and trust can coexist. Being able to feel disappointed while still saying "not my will, but yours" is a marker of spiritual maturity, not a lack of faith.
• Avoidance often looks like wisdom, planning, and having it all together — which is exactly why it goes unchecked in high achievers.

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