When the Silence Speaks: Egoic Striving, Spiritual Stillness, and the Dark Night of the Soul

Welcome to The Distracted Christian Podcast, hosted by Nate Labadorf.

In this deeply contemplative episode, we enter the quiet terrain of Chapter 10 of The Dark Night of the Soul by St. John of the Cross—a chapter with no clear steps, no triumphant answers, just a profound invitation: to surrender.

This episode is for those who:

Feel numb in prayer
Are overwhelmed by spiritual burnout
Find silence unsettling instead of sacred
Have lost the sweetness of past devotions
Struggle with ego-driven striving in faith

Nate weaves together theology, psychology, and poetic reflection to explore:

Egoic striving and why our efforts to be “good enough” are often born from fear, not faith
The spiritual disorientation that accompanies dry seasons in prayer
How the story of Job reflects the collapse of transactional trust and the emergence of relational surrender
The quiet wisdom of infused contemplation, where God begins to pray within us
Clinical insights from psychodynamic theory on the cost of adaptive survival strategies that keep us from rest

Whether you’re in a season of silence, on the verge of spiritual fatigue, or aching for a deeper intimacy with God, this episode offers language for the hush—and hope for what’s being born in it.

Key Themes

Dark night of the senses
Ego and spiritual exhaustion
Letting go of performance-based faith
Saint John of the Cross on contemplation
Psychological roots of religious striving
Job’s suffering and the transformation of identity
Stillness as spiritual formation

Resources & Mentions

The Dark Night of the Soul by St. John of the Cross
Anna Freud – The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense
Zoe Brennan-Krohn – The Nearness of Our Striving
Studies on motivational collapse under strain (Standage, Duda, and others)
Psychodynamic formulation practices by Deborah Cabaniss and team

Three Gentle Invitations

Let your hands fall open — release control and spiritual effort
Stay with the silence — let it work on you, not threaten you
Let yourself be seen — not for what you do, but for who you are

Subscribe & Connect

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We also want to offer deep gratitude to the scholars and thinkers whose work helped guide today’s conversation:

To Zoe Brennan-Krohn, for her hauntingly beautiful thesis, In the Nearness of Our Striving, which gave voice to a kind of love that doesn’t ask us to prove ourselves.
To Deborah Cabaniss and colleagues, for their clinical wisdom in Psychodynamic Formulation, and the DESCRIBE–REVIEW–LINK model that brings story and soul into gentle conversation.
To Anna Freud, whose work The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence remains a deep well for understanding how we try—and often fail—to protect our softest places.
To Mark Standage, Joan Duda, and Anne-Marie Pensgaard, for their study on motivational structures and the cost of ego-involving climates on our mental and emotional well-being.

And to Goekoop and de Kleijn, for offering a scientific lens into how our highest goals collapse under strain—and how, sometimes, the soul must learn to live without scaffolding.

Support the Show

If this episode met you in your silence or gave you language for the ache, share it with a friend—or leave us a review wherever you listen.

Until next time,
May your striving find rest,
Your silence be honored,
And your soul reminded:
Even in the dark, God is with you.