The Wounds We Carry: Faith After Religious Trauma

Hello and welcome to another episode. One of the William Brandham Historical Research Podcasts, I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Brandham Historical Research at William-Brandom.org, and with me I have my co-host and friend, Jed Hartley, son of a prophet, and former member of the International House of Prayer.

Jed, son of a prophet, it's good to have you back, and I'm dreading this episode a little bit because this is a topic that I have largely avoided from January 1st, 2012 until now.

There was a period of time when I thought I could answer it well, but as I'll get in and explain the reasons why, I somewhat avoid where my mind has went after the cold.

And everybody wants to know, it's the number one email I get, you'll find it in the comment feeds, everybody's thinking, how did it affect you being in this thing and then after you left, what happened, and so you brought it up, I'm going to try to address it and I'll do my best not to proselycise people in my belief systems.

Well, and to avoid having to answer the question myself, I'll just keep asking you questions and prodding you deeper on your perspective. Right. Is that sound good? I don't know about that, man. All right, I'll jump into it with you, I guess.

Awesome. So yeah, it's, like I said, it's been one of the things that commonly people want to know and I guess I'll take back something that I previously said. There was a period of time when I was fairly open and that whole YouTube site got brought down by the cult, so you really can't see it.

So people only see what exists now, but the reason why it changed is after I had the first website and YouTube site, all of that, the information started getting out there. People started to be aware, hey, well, your brand name is a fraud, look at all of this.

So people were starting to invite me to share my, they called it my testimony, but really they wanted to pry in my head and figure out what I knew. But what I found is after you got so deep into it, people wanted to use me like a guinea pig and for a variety of reasons, people wanted to, like, you find these people that, and I'm sure you're aware that they exist, but out on YouTube, you find people who are...

being religious sort of podcast, maybe similar to mine, maybe not, but they really, really have an agenda. And once you get on their podcast and they start talking to you, say, I have no agenda.

I'm just sharing here the facts, you know? But once I get on there, they want to try to reinforce that agenda on my head. And it's just, it's so wrong. It is, it goes against every moral fiber for me to try to be that way with somebody who has just came through what we did.

But after so many times of people playing guinea pig with John, I just say, okay, I'm just going to avoid the question altogether. That makes a lot of sense. And I kind of have been in the same, or I've felt the same tension because the only thing that I have ever wanted to convince people of is that there were these huge issues that were going on and are still going on within IHOP and the corollary ministries.

Like the only thing that I'm like, okay, if you just hear me out on these things is that like this was the abuse of tendencies that Mike Bickle was doing. These were the abuse of tendencies that Bob Hartley was doing.

And this is the prophetic history. This is how it was manipulated. Like those are the things that I feel a need to,

I don't know, to share the information that I have very like persuasively and clearly as possible with the hope that people would believe me. And, but then from there on, I don't, it is not my prerogative to like contend with what people ought to believe after that.

And like I would love that if people identify with some of my struggles and experiences, but if people go into, even if they go back to IHOP, even if they go back to Bethel and are still a part of these organizations, like everybody's got their own journey and their own experiences.

My job is not to like convince that everyone has to see the world the same way that I do. But it's very difficult because you have these questions and you don't know when people are asking you these questions of like, okay, tell me about the fallout.

Tell me about how you have separated your faith from your father's faith or from your experiences with your father or with Mike Bickel. You don't know if they're wanting to do it because they genuinely are curious about your journey or if they have agendas of like, because this person is raising red flags about this, if I can discredit them here or if I can, you know, argue against their belief system or whatever.

It's just, it's really difficult. It's a really difficult space to navigate and I, So appreciate you and I so appreciate this podcast and the I don't I don't think that I've ever broken the fourth wall and spoken to the listeners but thank you listeners who are listening and I've had a lot of people who have reached out to me very weirdly where I'm like I didn't I didn't even know that people were paying attention people were watching and I knew that I don't mean that about me I know that you are quite famous John and that everybody loves your podcast but you know just

that people have been seeing this series and will reach out and express that they appreciate what I'm saying and that's that's super meaningful so like if there ever is a time in a place to talk about some of these difficult questions I appreciate that this is the space to do it.

And it's a welcoming space I think part of the reason why I get so many questions and why people try to profilize high I'm saying that wrong that word incorrectly I think profilitize it's yeah my tongue doesn't want to do that but part of the reason I avoided is that I remember just how uncomfortable it felt when somebody was doing it to me yeah it if you've ever gone through something like we've gone through and you have watched that person do that to you you'll never do that to somebody else because it is the most offensive thing that you can do to a

person and it's if you I I would love to have become a psychologist in my if I had my life to do over but if you study psychology they talk about the negative effects of doing this to a person you really limit their growth and even if you maybe your intentions are good and you want to lead them down the path that you think is the right way well if you force them down that path you may prevent them from actually making it down that path so there's a lot to be said about letting people find their own journey and that's why I welcome everybody you know what you believe what you

don't believe even if you don't believe at all you're welcome to share your story and I've learned quite a bit from having a platform that was that welcoming so I think it's yeah I think it's a good safe place for people to come and talk yeah I've said it I've said it before I think I've said it on this podcast but it's it's worth reiterating like there's this huge amount I'm not if you've been just said it last week but there's this this huge amount of expectation that is placed upon people who are in pain or people who have gone through painful experiences within the

church and there's this sort of like right and wrong way to process that pain it is how it is treated like you know just as well as I like it if they're so often people will be like oh Jedi is a bitter man because of the things that he experienced or he's, you know, because I'm processing or because I'm having this pain with the world that I grew up in, people will label me as bitter or angry or, you know, have all of these sort of manners in which I am measured.

And like, of course, people are bitter, of course, people are angry, of course, people are hurt. Like, I'm trying my best not to talk from a place of bitterness and anger and contempt towards everyone. Like, I'm trying to measure my emotions with wisdom. But again, it's this, it's just people have, people experience pain in different ways. And if like, people spend five years being purely angry because the spiritual father that they were raised with was like secretly grooming teenagers, that's a really fair and appropriate response. And we shouldn't get into this business of telling people how they ought to handle their own pain.

And I think that this one of the biggest things in the church community that I was raised in that was pervasive throughout the whole community was that there was this really very toxic expectation that this is how you ought to handle pain. And this is how you ought to do it. Like, you can have pain, you can have anger, but you can't upset the apple cart. And if you ask questions about God or if you ask questions about the institution or if you ask questions about the leadership, then, you know, it's okay to have those questions, but just don't do it in a way

that that ruffles feathers. And I think that's really wrong. I think people should be given space to ask questions. And if people were given space to ask questions and if people were given space to express their pain and be bitter for a little while, maybe not as many people would be leaving the church altogether. Because like, if you have a lot of pain and bitterness and you're not able to express it and under, you know, have any sense of working through it with the community that you love, then you're going to have to find another community, you know, you're either going to

have to suppress it and pretend to be someone you're not or you're going to have to find another community. Absolutely. And that's, you know, part of the reason why I do it in the way that I do is because of the community, people need to get involved in a community. And I almost threw out some denomination names and I've caught myself, but if I were to have joined denomination A, and then proudly told everybody who is asking, what do you believe now that I joined Christian denomination A? The sad truth is there are people listening who have been so bruised and burned

by the cults. The They're all flocked to that because John said it, and I don't want that, because this is a journey you have to make. I largely avoid it, and honestly, it's a journey that I'm still on, and I openly admit that I don't expect to land where most people usually come to some sort of position what it is that they consider their firm foundation probably about my age or maybe 10 years before.

I never got that. I never had that experience. So I'm on a journey of learning, and I expect that what I'm going to learn may change what I believe in how, and that's the reason why all of these denominations exist in the first place, because people come up with different inroads for their journey, and I don't want to steer somebody down one path or another, but what I can say is that when people ask me about what happened, what do I believe after I left?

I usually point them back to what was erased whenever the call brought everything down. Whenever we first left the call, I told my family that I wasn't leaving Christianity at all, but I no longer believe this false prophet guy, and I said it in not those words in a really nice way.

I said, you know, we just no longer believe that way. And we told my family which church we started to attend, and it was a local church. It's about, I don't know, five minutes, that direction from my house.

It wasn't long after that that we started getting cult people drive up and stare at us and glare at us as we're walking into the building, trying to bully and pressure us, right? So that was a big mistake.

I should have never mentioned it in the first place. And then we started, I did openly talk about where we went, and people started making the same decisions, and I realized this is just not the way to do it.

And so now I just, I literally talk about, you know, after I left, we tried several different denominations, which is true. We tried everything from the smoke and fog machine, miniature mega churches, which I'm not a big fan of.

I will say that. I will openly say that. Everything from there to some really small, you know, one step above a home church, but it was just a small group of people. Right. So we tried, I wanted a variety of experiences.

We even tried some of the ones that, the denominations that we were supposed to feel like they had grown apostate. We wanted to see what that was like, and we found out there's some really good people in there.

They believe quite differently than I did, but as we started to understand why they did, they all, like any denomination, they can point you to what is their face. repassages from the Bible that supports what is their faith.

Yeah, and did you, when you found these different communities, these smaller church communities that had what you considered previously to be apostate beliefs? Did that, were you pressured, or maybe not even externally pressured, but just internally, did you feel this sense of like, I need to rethink what is, you know, genuine beliefs and what is not, or were you a part of that community and being like, they believe this, maybe I'll think about it, but they're going to believe that, and I'm going to still hold these principles.

And it's really, I just need to be around people who don't share the exact same beliefs, but just share a sense of community. For me, because of my analytical mind, it was kind of, all of it was kind of an experiment.

Yeah. And I say that loosely because we did join as a community. In fact, joining was a big deal for us. We were talking, if you joined a denomination, you had taken the mark of the beast.

And once I proved that the man who said this was a con artist, I realized, okay, he lied. But in the back of your head, you have that fear. So one of my bucket list items that I had was, I wanted to join and see what it was like.

And I was expecting to feel this overwhelming doom, just like the shadow of something hit me. And it didn't, you know, it was nothing else. But I got to go here, the accounting and the financial reports every once a month in the, you know, after service, which that was kind of cool.

They, in the random cult churches, you never knew where your money went. But in this particular church, it was right down to the rolls of toilet paper they're buying. Here's where your money is going.

And they would hand you a stack of papers like that. So it was a, it was a journey. It was a learning experience. But to your question, so the problem came in. Probably, I want to say it took me two years before it really hit me.

I didn't fit in. And no matter which church I tried, I didn't fit in. And that's a very common thing every single person in a support group says. We, we tried it, we didn't fit in.

And therefore we went to Denomination X, which is like one step away from what they escaped. That's usually what happens, right? Yeah. And so there came a point at which I decided, okay, I'm going to take this as though I've been, I've been born a new and I'm a child.

My parents are teaching me. I'm learning what is, what is Christianity, what is my faith. And I started asking the dumbest questions. Like, I'm sure they were annoyed with me. But I was asking just the basic things.

So Jesus died and raised from the... Dad, why do you believe this? And they would go to the passage, isn't it? What are the, what are the top 10 things that you think is most important to define yourself as a Christian?

What are they? Denomination A would give me their 10, the nomination B would give me a different 10. It was like, there was some mixture, but it was like they each had their own idea of what Christianity was.

So for me, there came a point at which I just, I took a step back from all of it. And I started studying to no end, studying the ancient early church as it was being formed.

Who are the early church fathers? They're mentioning them in the sermons that I'm listening to. Who are they? What did they believe? And I found an excellent resource online. I can't remember the name of the website, but they had literally every one of the early church fathers, they had whatever writings existed and you could download PDFs.

So I'm reading some of the strangest things by how the early church was formed, but that was their worldview and their mindset back then. And I came to understand as you're reading through it, you can kind of see how it evolves and shapes and becomes what it is today.

So for me, I just finally took a step back and said, okay, I'm going to figure out for myself what is this thing that we call Christianity? I imagine that was not a quick process.

Absolutely not. I'm glad you got it figured out though. So if you want to offer, tell me what the top 10 things actually are, that would be great. Well, we'll draw it out to keep people keep, you don't want to give all the answers to everybody and then they won't listen to the next podcast.

You know, it's funny because you said that, we'll have people who say, well, you can't be a Christian if you don't believe X, Y and Z. It must be, right? And what's interesting is some of the things that usually they put in their top 10, you don't find them in all of the gospels.

And so you're faced with the question, well, if it was that important and this is a person who's testifying that this is Christianity, this is the gospel, why didn't they include it in the gospel?

So that led me also to come to understand that some of the things that we were trained to believe was part of core Christianity, it largely exists because of a tradition. And whether the idea is right or wrong, whether you believe it or you don't believe it, it has become part of a tradition and it wasn't so important for the authors of the gospels.

Well, that's one of the biggest it, like if you had asked 15-year-old Jed, what is in the top 10 of the most important beliefs? to that make you a Christian, a good Christian. One of the ones that I would have in there was that it was post-tribulation rapture.

That not just that there's gonna be, and you know, not just dispensationalism, but like that there was gonna be a tribulation and then there was gonna be a rapture and that there was gonna be an end times and that end times was coming quickly.

But like specifically not the, oh, what was the left behind series, not the left behind series version where people are, all the Christians are sucked up into heaven before the tribulation happens, but that we will suffer through the tribulation and that we will be an army of God that is raised up to fight against the anti-Christ and stuff.

But I remember having so many arguments and that was the main thing that I sort of had like a robust apologetic to defend, say, where in scripture I could find it and why that fit with the narrative of who Jesus was and who God was and everything like that.

And now I think back, well not even now, I mean, I think in my 20s I thought back and was like, why does this matter? Even in a day to day living, like if we're not in the tribulation, it doesn't matter at all.

It's good to have some of those theories in case, oh, we do enter into the tribulation and if we don't get raptured, hey, I can be like, oh, this is why, it's not because you're not Christian, it's because this is, you know.

But like on my day to day life, did it affect how I was going about my life and in only some senses that obviously the apocalyptic beliefs did affect how I lived my life for the negative as we have talked about on many occasions.

But it was just like, we've talked so many times about these really minute little doctrinal differences

that become something, I mean when people have died, over what type of baptism is right and when you should baptize someone, like there's wars have been waged about these things that just don't really change your day to day living and experiences.

And I like cannot fathom the idea of a God that we would get to heaven and it would be like the DMV, you know. Like this is this is many people's conceptions of like I was raised with a DMV God where if you didn't have the proper paperwork and there was no like clear or, you know, documentation of exactly what paperwork you need to be on.

Everybody had, you go talk to every pastor and they're gonna give you a different list of what you need to bring into heaven, but you have to have this belief, and this belief, and this belief, and if so, then you will be rewarded in heaven or depending on your view of salvation, you might not even get into heaven on this.

I was like, I just cannot, can't an imagine that any version of a God where I'm like, I really tried my best to love people and love others and love God, and I believed that baptism was this way, and that's what my community told me, and God is like, nope, you had to be dipped in this particular way, or you had to be this age before you were baptized.

I just can't imagine not only that God would be like that, but why people would want to have, why would you want to worship a version of God like that, that it's legalistic and is exclusionary, trying his best to make sure that people don't make it, and I do realize I am going to be ruffling feathers by saying all of this, and I hope that you guys get mad at me and not John, on this one.

But I just wish that there was this, a much more compassionate spirit of acceptance, and we understand why there isn't a spirit of acceptance in the Christian community, because for some reasons, this isn't, I'm not saying this is the only reason, but acceptance was the, kryptonite, two cults, like you could not lead a cult, and have people with a general sense of appreciation and acceptance, even for other Christians, like in our cults that we were a part of, whether you were playing stringed instruments, or whether you were listening to secular music, or whether you believed in the post-tribulation rapture,

or the pre-tribulation rapture, whether you were dispensationalists, or you were, you know, whatever the, if you believed in that, revelations was already fulfilled in 300 AD, these different beliefs, these were all sort of exclusionary beliefs that if you believed them, that you couldn't be a part of the community, and this was done in order, not to get people into heaven, not to make them better people, but to make them more malleable, and to make sure that they don't leave the community, that they, their heads down, that they stay within the cult, that they're scared to leave, that they're scared

to talk to the other group. If the church down the road is just as acceptable as I hop, then why would then people are going to leave the international house prayer? Why are you going to be in a place that requires you to spend 40 hours in the prayer room when you could go down to the Baptist church down the road and find good community there and find good spiritual fulfillment? So they had to

have these thick boundaries upon what was accepted and what was, and I think that this

cascades through all of Christianity in America right now. I don't think that it's just, obviously it's extreme and cult communities, but I have had a lot of people, even in more conventional mainstream religious communities, have these same sort of symptoms of these exclusionary, you have to think the way that I think otherwise you can't be a part of my community and I just don't understand it. Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign, charismatic and other fringe movements into the New Apostolic Reformation?

You can learn this and more on William Brannum Historical Research's website, William-Brannum.org. On the book's page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Stephen Montgomery, John McKinnon, and others, with links to the paper, audio, and digital versions of each book. You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those movements. If you want to contribute to the cause, you can support the podcast by clicking the contribute button at the top. And as always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening to or watching.

On behalf of William Brannum Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support. So in your DMV example, it would be a situation where if you don't believe in the rapture as I do, you're not going to drive. And Jesus is not going to take the wheel this time, buddy.

So one of the churches we visited and attended for a while, it was the same way that you're describing. They were very adamant that you believed exactly whatever it was that there was their doctor. I'm not going to say what it was. And the minister would give examples of how he would be like on the subway in New York City. And he would just look at the person next to him and say, Hey, did you know you're going to hell? And that was his way of proselytizing them. And I'm sitting there thinking, you know, number one, if some freak did this to me on the subway,

I would just look the other way. I would ignore this guy. Number two, I don't know that God wants him to behave this way. This is not how you treat other people. And it was a learning journey for me.

That was a major milestone in my journey coming to that realization because I began to realize that the version of God that was being portrayed not just in the cult, but even like you said, even to some of the mainstream religions, it was such a weak God that it required the human to do to intervene.

And Bob Scott and I have talked about this some. I don't think we've hit it really hard. But in the ancient world, there was this idea of the divine council. And in the pagan worlds, there were gods and goddesses or whenever you're in a polytheistic religion.

They often had chaos because the gods would be at war with each other. And they would portray it as lightning is calm or famine is calm. It's because the gods are angry. They're in chaos.

But in the Israeli divine council, it was different. It was monotheistic and y'all always set supreme. And everything was in order. It was order against chaos. And a clear example of this is the book of Job, where he tells us where he asked the adversary, where were you?

And the adversary says I was running to and fro. And he says, go, go give Job a hard time. And that's God is in control of everything in the Bible. But I started attending churches.

And again, I'm learning everything new. But from the mindset, not quite of a child, because I had read the Bible. And I just started reading and rereading and rereading. And here I am reading about a divine being that is in full control of everything, where it doesn't matter.

If I were to go do something really bad, God is in control. He can bring me back. Or if I just blatantly say, OK, I don't like you anymore, God. Does that mean I'm going to hell?

No, it's a father-child relationship. If my son were to tell me, I don't like you anymore, Dad. I'm going to do everything I can to bring him back to me. And that's a divine being that's in control.

But I was listening to sermon after sermon, where the God wasn't in control. You need to get up here and have these alter calls in some churches, or you need to do X, Y.

And it was like the work was on the shoulders of the people. And so I came to realize that sadly, I reached a point where I didn't fit in. And so it led me on my journey.

But the more I read and the more I understood, the more I also still didn't fit in. Yeah. Well, and unfortunately, that's the problem is that the more you read, the more you learn, the more you didn't fit in, because there's all these different...

permutations and to choose any particular one of them, you have to be making all sorts of leaps of faiths. You know, you don't, not just a singular leap of faith, it's one thing to be like, I don't know for sure that God died and or that Jesus was crucified and raised again like that requires faith to believe it. That's the whole conversation with Thomas of like until I see the wounds in his hand or sorry, the wounded aside in the holes in his hand, like I will not believe. And Jesus comes to him, shows him and says, now do you believe it? And blessed are those who

believe or did not see and still believe, I can't remember exactly how it, but the premise being like have faith. And I get that that's there's this core sort of leap of faith that all Christians sort of have to do of believing that there is a God in heaven and that Jesus was his son and that he rose again from the dead or rose from the dead. But then there are like a million other leaps of faith that you have to have to be a part of particular denominations. You have to believe this, you have to believe this, you have to believe this. And it's like even the ones that you're

like that, that's probably true. You can't have this sort of epistemic uncertainty about it. If you're like, even let's say something like the inherent word of like biblical inerrancy was something that always messed with me because I could just never get my mind around it. I was like there's contradictions in some of these chapters. Like how does this make sense? And I'm not saying that no one ought to believe in biblical inerrancy, but like it was a difficult leap for me to make because I was like I just think that it was written by flawed human beings and some of it might

be wrong in these senses. And I understand why that threatens a lot of people, but it was just like I just it is a whole nother leap of faith to believe that like the council of Nicaea didn't have political motivations that you know all of the writings of Paul or the writings that are attributed to Paul were actually relevant and should have been included like that's a whole nother leap of faith. And I think these are very normal ones obviously and then we get into more extreme ones of leaps of faith of that God is speaking to the prophet Mike Bickel or like that took a leap of faith

to believe that Mike Bickel and that that Paul Bickel was going to be raised from the dead again like that took a leap of faith too. There's all of these sort of things where it's like if I'm being purely rational I do not have the evidence sufficient and to believe these particular things.

And so, but there was no ability to be epistemically humble in my community. There was no way that I could just be like, that's really good. I hope that Paul Bickle gets healed, but I don't know if I believe it.

I hope that at Mike is telling the truth, well, I don't know if I ever actually hope that Mike was telling the truth because a lot of what he was saying was pretty bad.

But, you know, this idea of like, well, they would be great if revival came to Kansas City, but like, I don't know if that's what God is saying. And no adult or no child was able to have that opinion and still be a part of the community.

It required everybody to believe a particular thing. And I think it's so hard. Like, if I think what you're expressing and what I've experienced is then I went to different churches and I left the community that I was raised in and I would try to find different churches and then they would have their own list of things.

Maybe it wouldn't be as extreme, but their own list of things that I had to like, make more leaps of faith. And once you make enough leaps of faith and you fall and hit the ground and break your legs, you kind of get tired of making those jumps again.

And just to trust someone, it's kind of like, if you know, if you fall in love with someone you believe in them and then they, you have an affair or something, they break your heart, it's hard to fall in love right away again.

Like, it's hard to make the leap again and to believe in someone because it's like, I have pain here and one of the most difficult things that I have experienced is having people tell me that I'm not allowed to have that pain or that I need to separate that pain from God.

This is a, this is a huge thing that people will say is like, okay, so you were a part of this cult community and they will recognize and agree like, okay, IHOP was a cult community.

Mike Pickle was doing these bad things. Your dad was being deceptive like they will grant all of that and they will be like, but you have to separate that from God. You have to separate that from Christianity.

You have to separate that from your understanding and experience with God. And only recently, I was talking with someone and I kind of came to this point where I was like, I will never ever be able to separate that.

No matter how long I live, no matter what, how many times I read the Bible, no matter what denominations I go to in the future, I will never, ever be able to separate my experience and understanding of Christianity from the history that I was raised in, the from the community and experiences that I had that formed my understanding.

I mean, of what Christianity was originally. Now, I'm not saying that that is what Christianity, like that they're, I'm not making a larger statement that they were or weren't Christian. I'm just saying, my own personal journey will always be affected by the things that I saw and they experienced.

And like, I will always have a limp from that first leap of faith that I've made and I fell and hit the ground. I will never walk without a limp from those experiences. And there's this expectation that I need to, that I have to just pretend it didn't happen, that I have to wipe this slate clean.

And I have a story, I've mentioned this story before I've never told it in full detail, but I actually don't know if I've ever mentioned this on the podcast, but for a very brief period of time, I was actually married in my mid 20s.

I don't know, have I ever told you that, John? No. Yep, so I got married when I was about 25, 26

in the height of my spiritual turmoil, not a great time to get married, wouldn't necessarily advise it. And it was really difficult because my wife was Christian and she was like firmly evangelical, Christian and was really struggling with a lot of the questions that I was dealing with.

Plus, there was just a lot of, we got married too quickly and there was a lot of issues with like the family and it was just a hard relationship. And in the midst of our marriage, there became very clear that like she couldn't go with me

on the journey that I was going down. And I actually totally respect that. Like, I think marriage is a different thing where you do different than a community you may need to be aligned on a lot of your, like if you're making leaps of faith, it's good to be doing that together.

And so anyway, all that to say, it was a very, very difficult relationship and ended my, I got divorced and it was, it was very heartbreaking. She was having an affair for some of the time that we were married and we tried to go to counseling.

It was just, it was just a very, very emotionally difficult time for me. And spiritually, like very difficult time for me. And I remember I had these close family friends who were close with both me and my ex-wife.

And we were, I met with them during the process of the divorce or when we were separated. And I remember having a conversation with them. And it basically, there was this some sense in which like at the core of it, what was causing a lot of the separation was my lack of faith.

And that was how it was kind of being presented to me. I kept being like, but like, this is what I've seen with my dad. And this is what I've seen at the international house prayer.

And like trying to deal with like, this is honestly me just very barely having an understanding of the cult community that I had come out of. And I wouldn't even have called it a cult back then and had very poor language for it.

And I'm me having to reckon with the world that I grew up with. And I remember the, it was a couple and the man who was talking to me was like, he interrupted me.

I was like telling, I was like pouring out my heart about some of my experiences with my father and how that related with my faith. And he was like, okay, you got to just stop talking about your dad.

And I remember, and then we kept talking and he was like, that's not Christianity. And it's like, that's news to me because that always was Christianity forming. And he was just so impatient on this sort of like, you're bringing all your bitterness, you're bringing in all your anger and pain that you have had from your father and from the community that you're raised in and you're bringing it into your view of what God is.

And I so wish that, you know, I wasn't a kid back then, but I feel kind of like a kid in my memory, you know, because I was just so, I was so new to the world because I had just come out of a cult.

I literally just finished writing the book about my dad like two years previously. So anyway, I so wish I could go back to my 26 year old self and be like, it's okay to be angry and be like, you'll never ever stop thinking or talking about your dad and how that affected your your faith.

I wish that I could like reaffirm that younger version of me and I hope that people hearing this too can like feel that as well of just like, you can't just ignore the pain and experiences that you have in these worlds like that will always shape.

I will never be able to pick up the Bible and read through it and not remember some of these things like the story of Abraham and Isaac that's always been hard for me because like I grew up feeling like my father sacrificed me on the altar of his faith like like and the scene, the action of like Abraham leading Isaac up to the to slaughter him is like is not an act of faith in my sort of experiences. I understand that it's written in Hebrews as one of the greatest acts of faith but like that's hard for me to read because I see it as a narcissistic

parent seeing their child as only a measure of their legacy and not as like an independent sentient being same with like the book of Job when like every all Job's sons and daughters die in whatever I can't remember what it happens but the building collapses and all his sons and daughters die and then at the end of the story God is like well but I bless Job and gave him more sons and daughters and it's like yeah but I'm the one who was caught in the rubble like that it's like my experiences of the world will always affect how I view the world in the future and

this expectation that we have to divorce ourselves from our previous pains and experiences is not only unreasonable it's kind of cruel it like you don't give people space to heal and like for sure what that man said to me who like I had not I had been faithful in my marriage my partner had had the affair like it wasn't my lack of faith like there was a lot of reasons why our marriage wasn't falling apart but I for years always like blamed myself for not having enough faith and that's horrible like downright cruel and I'm glad that like I have healed since then but yeah so whenever

anybody asks the question of like how do you separate it and how do you how do you heal or what do you believe about Christianity after it it's like such a personal question and it's like it it always will be painted by my previous experiences and that's really the crux of it so whenever I was in school they had these literary classes you would read literature some sometimes Shakespeare or whatever and you'd read through it and then at the end of it there would be this series of questions that was supposed to be thought provoking and it would basically help

you understand the story more so the more you what more you ask questions in your mind the more you thought about it the more you understood the story and you began to really connect with the author because as you can see what the author was trying to tell you in between the words by this way, right?

And I've learned in my journey post-cult that there are two categories of people. There are people who read the Bible like that and they read a passage and they'll think about it and in their mind because that's what normal people do in a normal situation.

You read and you ask questions in your head about, okay, what did I just read? What is this? Then on the flip side, there are people who have read the Bible maybe countless times, who have no idea what is actually in the Bible because they don't read it and they don't really think and process what it is they've read.

They just read it and it becomes like a verse memorization tool that's all the Bible is to them. So they don't understand. And the complex problem exists that much of the Bible is written about an ancient culture during a time when the culture was significantly different than what we have today.

When people did not have the lifespans that we have today and some of the ancient world, you can read not just in the Bible but you can read and study other ancient civilizations, it was an honor for them to die.

So in the story of Abraham, to the reader during the era in which it was written, that was a wonderful story. But to the child in modern times, they're looking at their parents and saying, oh my gosh, is Dad gonna take me out with a knife?

And yeah, sadly I have a family member who may or may not have done something like this. So I won't talk much about that but where I'm going with this is, it really takes two types of people to have a religion and how they coexist will baffle me for the rest of my life because if you critically think and critically understand what it is you're reading, it is a totally different book than if you use it as a memorization tool and don't think about what's in it.

And I'm not saying that that separates you from your faith. In many, many ways, if you critically examine the Bible and read it, it can strengthen your faith but it also strengthens it in a way that's not really taught in the churches because you're connecting directly with the author, you're not connecting directly with the pastor who's on the platform.

It's two different types of religions. So all that in mind, once you leave a cult and you're basing your experience off of the cult, in the cults, they have their favorite go to Doomsday nonsense and very authoritarian control nonsense and they have their key passages that they go through.

And so in your head, your program to know those passages that are usually not... not the ones that the other side, the people who just read, you know, as a verse memorization tool, they really aren't the ones that they think about because you're being taught a half of the Bible that the other half isn't reading, the other half of the people isn't reading.

So you escape this and here's the biggest problem that I have faced. I've read the Bible so many times. I mean, I can't tell you how many, I lost count, it was 10, 15 times.

In that method, read it, study it, study the culture, study what was the other contemporaries in the ancient world, I really studied a lot. And then when you leave to the people who use it as a verse memorization tool, it is such a, and I'm going to, I'm going to be slightly offensive because this is my opinion.

It is such a dumbed-down religion that they have because they're not reading the whole thing, they're not understanding the whole thing, nor the complexities of it. And so you may know way more than the person who you're talking to who's been a Christian all their life, but you escape to cult.

So from your mind, you're listening to this dumbed-down version of Christianity. And from their mind, they're thinking, well, he escaped a cult, so he doesn't understand it at all. I'm going to let him something.

Yeah, totally. But we're in a world where there's something like 3,000 or more cults in the United States, and I think there's like 10,000 globally. So the chances of you escaping a cult are pretty high comparatively, you know, if you compare it to Christian denominations, there's more cults than there is denominations.

So the chances that you escape one is like this, but people who leave, especially those who are critical thinkers, they leave and they go into this world where it's such a, and again, it's offensive.

I know it is, but it's this dumbed-down religion with this weak and powerless God that doesn't match the Bible at all. And so you're sitting through sermon after sermon and you're thinking, well, the God that I read about in the Bible that has full control of everything doesn't need that money drive or whatever it is that they're pushing for, you know, so you walk away thinking, not only do I not fit in, but you're thinking, well, what religion is this that I'm listening to?

This is going to seem like a non-sequitor, but have you watched the Pixar movie Inside Out? Yes. I'm going to spoil it for people who haven't watched it, so, but the premise of it is that there are these different emotions that control inside this little girl's head, and there's joy and sadness and disgust and anger, and they all kind of take different turns at the wheel as soon as they get to the wheel as soon as they get to the wheel as soon as they get guiding this young girl and as she kind of gets older.

Well, the kind of premise of the plot is the young girl starts getting overwhelmed by sadness. And the joy, who's the sort of protagonist character in it, is like, no, we have to have happy memories.

We have to preserve, and anytime sadness comes around, she distorts these memories. And so when you're talking about the people who just are memorizing scriptures, I remember, too, in my like, my Y-WAM days, there was like the devotionals.

And not that it was terrible, but there was just a lot of finding little bits of encouragement in the Bible, and memorizing those scriptures. And the only real emotion that was developed was the sort of like reassurance or positive emotion of like, what God is doing.

And that was just the sort of like cyclical thing. And it was very much the sort of like joy inside out, like being like, we just have all of these like good, we got to collect all the good happy memories of the, you know, Bible or whatever.

And then any experiences of sadness or anger, it was like, let's shove those to the side. Like, we can't have this. And the profound moral of the story, and inside out, is that joy eventually becomes aware that sadness is able to turn, is able to like bring people in, like when for community, and like when the girl is sad, like the parents know that she's not doing okay.

And like, there's a role that sadness plays, and that there's a role that the pain plays in the development of this young girl's life. And I think that this is a very, of course, I'm using Pixar to make a religious metaphor here.

But I do think that this is, that is what it is. It's like there was a lot of like very profoundly sad and disappointing and infuriating experiences that I had, that you have had, that many people have had, especially within cult communities.

And because it doesn't fit into this sort of memorized cookie cutter, clean, positive affirmation, sort of understanding of the Bible, you'll have this sort of like, let's shove these people to the side, or shove their experiences to the side.

And it, I believe, it leads to a, like you said, dumped down version of the gospel. And that's not even like a matter of talking about the intellect of the individuals who do it.

But just their own sort of process of like, you're not allowing yourself a motive. to really experience and explore the depth of both the religion and the people who are within the religion. Like you have to look like I think for that person who had told me to like just dismiss everything with my dad.

I think that like it wasn't because he wanted me to dismiss it is because he needed to dismiss it. He didn't know how to come to terms with all of the things that I was struggling with.

And so it was inconvenient for me to be expressing those things and he was getting frustrated because he was just like, I don't want to deal with these emotions regarding... I don't want to deal with fear and doubt.

I don't want to deal with anger and disappointment in regards to my relationships. So I can just bully this person and tell them not to feel those things or to not express them to me.

And that was the easiest way to move forward, which I believe is a dumb thing to do. Not only is it, you know, insensitive, but it just, it dumbs down. It mutes that your entire experience and understanding of the religion that you're a part of.

And had there been a totally opposite experience like had there been an embrace of the pain that I was experiencing, had there been a patience for me to explore those things. My path could have gone a bunch of different ways and my experience with Christianity could look very different now.

And this sort of impatience with people's experiences drives people to either shut up and fall in line or to leave the church entirely. And so I think that people have to start reckoning with it, even if they have an experience that sort of pain with themselves.

Like, I think that this is something that it's just not going to go away. It's not, you know, you don't close your eyes and those emotions disappear. And that's one of the biggest things that I have told people as I work with them.

There's this idea after you experience what other people see in you after you leave a cult. There's this idea that maybe if I just never say that I was in it ever again and just walk away silently, maybe my life will be better.

But that's not true. We are who we are because of the things we experience both good and bad. And you really have to embrace it. And whenever somebody who doesn't understand what it is that you came out of tells you to suppress it.

Well, you've been in a world of being suppressed for so long. It's like a boiled spring. You're going to bounce, man. Right. Right. Ironically on the subject. of church. If you come into conflict with one of the doctrines in the church, especially in the top 10, whatever is this denomination, there's this idea that you're forced to believe it in the way of thinking of many of the pastors, not all, but many. But whenever you're forced to do something after you've escaped a cult, you're often going to do the exact opposite. So people bounce from church to church to church because of this. So you

have to understand really how people think and why. And I think that's the biggest thing. But you also have to, in my opinion, you can't really leave a cult and embrace a dumb to down religion. You're either going to walk away from it and never walk back, or you're going to understand that this is a much more complex religion than I was ever told. We were also in the cult, given a dumb, down version. We were just given the version that nobody else gets.

So it's really odd when you think about how you how you have to transition. But the bottom line is you have to embrace it because the experiences are what molds us. So hopefully this has helped somebody. I know we've got a lot of questions and that people have asked about this. And I really don't know how to answer other than that. I'm on a journey where I am. I'm not telling you because I, to myself, don't know. Right. If you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web. You can find us at William-Brandom.org. From

more about the dark side of the new Apostolic Reformation, you can read Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.