Latest / Clear Path Christianity / What Gave Me the Courage to LEAVE || CPC Podcast Ep. 16
Transcript
- Cole Crone: Alright, bruv. Please do. In the other room if you don't mind. Deb Deb and Miss Sweet. Little bit here. excuse me ⁓ Ekaskayosa mer Okay. Record. All right, ready? So just y you could might just interject if there's anything you wanna think I should add or whatever or add an analogy or something. Okay, let me see. In a previous episode I talked about coming to the realization that I was in a fake version of Christianity. Of course. Let me all re rec can you shut that off or plug it in. So that you're gonna be able to hear that. It shouldn't be the N. T. ⁓ It'll I ⁓ if it does, I will say the F word on this recording. So can you just make sure it doesn't do it again with whatever you need? Okay. In a previous episode, I talked about coming to the realization that I was in a fake version of Christianity. Let me just for those of you who weren't tuning in to the previous few episodes, let me go ahead and just recap some of the issues. one, there was a total lack of biblical foundation. There were a series of failed prophecies, there were no qualified leaders, there were bunch of unfounded historical claims and the list could go on and on and on and on, unfortunately. My my desire to have these things, my desire to have a biblical community and all of the sort of acts to things that I was seeing in the Bible, I I wanted my church to look like that. And As I as my desire to have these things grew, ⁓ there were a group of gatekeepers who were working against what the community really needed. And sort of the final step in this was that the whole kind of like mythology of this particular group just collapsed. And I realized that my community was a scam. And and probably always was. But as I talked about in the last episode, the the cost of leaving was just too great. The the loss of community, the the fear of having everything wrong, the years of identity fusion, it it just it just made it very difficult, if not nearly impossible, to get out despite What I knew to be true, or what I firmly believed to be true. So that's kind of where this episode kind of puts a bow on this process. Because here we're going to explore sort of how the final step of this journey played out in answering the question: what gave me the courage to finally leave? Because Again, as I said in the last episode, realizing that you're in a cult or realizing that you're in an abusive community or an abusive relationship or ⁓ that you have an addiction of some kind, right? The realization stage is is is not the end, it but the beginning of a process that one must go through to get to where they want to go. And that unfortunately comes through the crippling fear stage. And in the last episode I talked about some of the things that were causing me to have a crippling fear of leaving. But but what was that final push? What did that what did that my final escape, how did that actually play out? That's going to be the topic of of this episode. So to to make a very long story slightly shorter, ⁓ I f I I finally had to come to a point where following the truth was greater than staying comfortable. So for for most of my life, again, despite the fact that I struggled always to believe that my church was actually a real church, I was continually asking some version of this question. What will happen if I leave? Now Course, I I knew the answer, right? I I had seen it many times before growing up. People who left, there was they were ostracized, they were excommunicated, they had nowhere to go, you don't have any community outside of the cult. That's how cults are set up, so that you are afraid to leave. They they make sure that you don't have community. outside of the community, right? You don't have friendships or family members or any of those things. Isolating you within the group is like step number one of being a part of a cult. And so when you leave, you have nowhere to go, you have nowhere to turn you know, no one to turn to. You're kind of just like a kite that's had its string cut. And you're just sort of now you're just kind of at the mercy of the winds. And so the more and more I thought about this question, the more and more I I dwelled upon the idea of leaving, the question slowly changed into a far more important question. And that question is, What happens if I stay? So I I moved from asking, what's going to happen if I leave? Because of course I knew the answer to that question to what happens if I stay? And and and again, I think once again, I I I knew the answer, right? What happens if I stay? Well, I know, right? It's the same old story, same old song and dance, right? My life would continue on the trajectory of the lives of my parents and my grandparents and so on and so forth. Furthermore, my kids and my grandkids. We're all gonna have the same life as well. Now that is if I kept my thoughts to myself, because the number one thing that you must never do in a cult is question things. Most grievously, convince other people to question things. That's kind of like rule number one. So if I if I kept my thoughts to myself, staying meant ignoring evidence, right? I believed I was a Christian, yet when I read the Bible, which again our whole system was meant to be based off of, I didn't find any connection points. Not one. There wasn't a single thing that looked like what the church in the New Testament was supposed to look like. When I eventually learned what the church beyond the Bible looked like. I still didn't find anything that looked anything like what my church looked like. And so I was gonna have to ignore all of that evidence. I was going to have to ⁓ pretend like I didn't know the things that I knew, the things that I had discovered, the things that I had been led to believe. I was going to have to suppress my questions. I was gonna have to stop. I was going to have to literally do an about face on the path that I was on. I was on a path of trying to find out what was actually true. And I was going to have to turn around and stop asking questions. Stop trying to find out what actually is true. I was going to have to figure out how to silence my conscience. Like many cults, the cult excuse me. ⁓ I was I was going to have to silence my conscience. Like many cults, the cult that I grew up in had a mounting body count. I don't know how much detail I'm gonna go into here, but like many cults, people die as an as a direct result of the sort of beliefs that cults have. ⁓ Sometimes it all isn't people outside of the cult, like in the case of I don't know, the Manson family. Sometimes it's the deaths of people inside the cult, kind of like in Jonestown, where the people's the People's Temple. What's the other one? Heaven's Gate. There it is. Like like, you know, the Jonestown thing with the people's temple or like the Heaven's Gate cult, right? The people inside are the ones that are being harmed. That was what it was like for me, right? Because where I came from, we didn't go to the hospital. We didn't believe in modern medicine. We believed that prayer was all that was necessary for healing. And so that's the only thing that we were left to do. And as you sure you can imagine, many, many people died as a result of that teaching. And I was going to have to basically turn a blind eye to all of that. That was part and parcel of staying. And what w what was worse for me, again, if I stayed, was that I was going to have to continue to pretend like everything was fine. As soon as you begin to Buck the system and not pretend like everything is fine, start asking too many questions, start bringing up evidence that goes against what the system wants you to believe. Once you start talking about the various immoralities taking place in the community, then people start to question: well, is this actually a good community to be a part of? Is this actually something that a good God would want people living according to? Is this how these things should work? And once people start asking those sorts of questions, the whole house of cards comes down. And so if you're gonna stay, you're going to act like you've won the lottery. You're going to act like, wow, isn't it great that I've been born at in this particular time, in this particular place? Because These are the only people going to heaven. So that's awful great, awful lucky of me to be in that position. And so eventually following the truth became a more significant endeavor in my life than staying in the comfort, staying in the familiar, staying in what I had always known and what I had hoped was actually true. Because the idea of it not being true unraveled my whole worldview. And so I began to increasingly or I began to be increasingly unable to look myself in the face because I was living, I was living out one thing while secretly believing another thing. And that that That l that walking contradiction lifestyle is exhausting on on every conceivable level. So to me, the the moral of this section of the story is that while leaving was still terrifying, staying became impossible. So at some point one had to give way to the other. I didn't see any way of reconciling the two. It was just going to be impossible. So the the second kind of piece to this How did how did I have the courage to leave? Well, part of that is because the courage was not what I expected. The courage wasn't what I anticipated it being, right? Courage is just the ability to do what is right despite the consequences. And f t for me growing up, and I think for even many of us, We might want to equate courage with confidence, right? If it's it's easy to have courage and to pursue something that you that you know to be true, right? At at the very core of your being, I know this particular thing to be true. And so I'm willing to pursue that thing no matter the cost, right? And so I thought that there There had to be this this very bold, confident ⁓ posture toward the pursuit of these you know this courageous endeavor. In reality I was still scared as I as I even the you know the night the night before you know going to another church for the first time, which was like basically committing the the ultimate sin. ⁓ I was I was scared. I I I didn't have the kind of confidence that I had hoped that I would have doing this. seemingly normal thing, like for ninety-nine percent of people living on the planet, this would be a totally normal thing. But this was a thing that I never thought I would ever do. I I was still uncertain. I was still entertaining the possibility that I was wrong about all of this, that my church actually was, you know, the arc of safety on which, you know, only those people can be saved. And and and honestly, I was still grieving. I was still grieving the idea that that I was I was inevitably going to have to leave my community behind. And so I I I wasn't I didn't feel the way I thought I would, bold and courageous as I as I walked out of that place for the final time. I I wish that had been the case. It just it just wasn't. But but I I was able to move anyway, right? Despite the fear, the uncertainty, the grief, etc., I was able to move. But I didn't leave because I knew exactly what was waiting on the other side. That there wasn't as much confidence as I as I hoped that there would be. But eventually I left because I knew I couldn't keep pretending. I just I knew that I had to get out of here because I whatever I knew that what I was in was wrong. And so even if I just moved from this wrong community to that wrong community, ⁓ well. I at least I took a chance, right? At least I tried to find something that was more in keeping with what my soul had always longed for. Now, at this point, you might think that I I'm I think that I've done something worthy of praise or or something worthy of of admiration. But that the truth of couldn't that couldn't be further from the truth. Lest lest anyone hearing my story get the wrong impression of me or the wrong impression of my journey. The real reason that courage was not what I expected it to be. Was because God entered the picture. God came on the scene in my life and gave me everything that I needed to take the steps that I never thought I could take. God radically transformed the way that I saw the world. That that transformation is what moved me. I brought nothing to the table. It Absolutely nothing. But but but fear and uncertainty and grief and and yet I was I was empowered to leave everything that I'd ever known behind. I I was I was I was able to find the truth, I was able to overcome the obstacles, and I was able to eventually make my exit. But despite my use of I was able to, I was able to, I was able to, the only reason I was able to is because this story isn't about me. My story isn't about what I have done. My story is about what God did. And while everything that I have said in this episode and previous episodes, and on this whole podcast as a whole, is one hundred percent the truth of the story. I would be telling a very narrow version of that story if I left out that important part, right? So let me give you an example. The apostle Paul wrote the following sentence from sorry, the apostle Paul wrote the following sentence from a from a Roman prison to the Philippians. Paul made this statement I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. Philippians four thirteen. And and that is the true story. That is the reality of this. The reality of this is from the beginning, going back to the beginning of of this podcast, God was the one who was opening my eyes to this truth, or to that, or coming into my life and helping me to see the reality of these things. leading me by the hand through this painful process and onto the other side. The the real story is that I've been able to do things that very few other people have been able to do from where I came from. Not because of anything that I bring to the table, but because of who he is. So so so I was able to do something that I had always believed to be impossible because it was impossible. It it it it it is impossible on my strength alone. It's not because I was Yeah. So again, this is this didn't happen because I was willing to investigate the truth claims of my community, or because I was able to overcome some kind of fear, or because I just happened to have enough people outside of the community that I was able to make a smooth transition. It's it's it's none of that. The the reason that I was able to leave my community and find new people to walk side by side through life with is because God the Father was drawing me. All of my life, for as long as I can remember, I was asking questions and pursuing truth wherever, even within the confines of that closed community, wherever I could, however I could, because God the Father was drawing me. I was I was able to I was able to understand God's communication to his people through his word. I was able to explore the the the the historicity of Christianity, the the the reliability of the scriptures. I I was able to see all the ways that my community had got it wrong because Jesus Christ came knocking. I I was I was able to have true illumination. I was able to let go of the past. I I was able to look forward to the future because the Holy Spirit brought true illumination. With without those things, I never would have been able to muster what was necessary to take the things that I had investigated and believed to be true. And carry them through the the dark forest of fear. And begin my ascent up the mountain towards true freedom, if God hadn't been beside me all the way. And and many of those things I'm only realizing, of course, in hindsight. But but it's it's so clear as I look back that that that he was with me, that he was walking beside me. So so courage was not what I expected it to be because I was seeing it from a purely natural perspective, right? What I could muster within me. But but God is by definition supernatural. And so I I I just wasn't looking in the right place. Because with Him we can do all things. How am I doing? Okay. Well I'm in my I'm in my to my conclusion. Okay. So for for most of my life, I believed that things like fear and courage couldn't coexist. If you were afraid, you couldn't have courage. I believed that I would have to overcome my fears in order to live out the truth that I had discovered. But but but God was able to show me through working in and through me that real courage is being able to pursue truth despite the fear. The fear doesn't have to go away in order for you to be courageous. In fact, you can't be courageous if there isn't the fear. So so most of us at some point or another in our lives will have moments where truth and comfort pull us in opposing directions and we'll find ourselves in this tension point. The question is not whether following the truth will cost you something. It will. Let's just assume that it will. That way we're not disappointed when that's what the case is. Because for me, that's been the case in every situation, right? The pursuit of truth has always come with a price. So the question really becomes. Whether or not you're willing to pay that price. Are you willing to go all in on the things that you believe to be true? So as I reflect on leaving a cult, the decision was still one of the hardest decisions that I'd ever made in my life. I hope the hardest decision I will ever have to make in my life. But it was also the decision that freed me from the pains of defending a system. A system that I didn't choose. A system that ⁓ I didn't even want to be in anymore. A system that I was willing to do almost anything to be free from. But but because of the fear and the anxiety and all of the brainwashing and all these things, I just I just couldn't. But but that move was what allowed me to get past those things. I no longer had to defend a system. I was freed and empowered by God to truly follow Jesus Christ. It was it was only once God entered the equation that I felt as though I could do what I once believed to be unthinkable. And I hope that ⁓ my testimony gives you some inspiration, some hope that he can do the same thing for you because he did it for me. And if he did it for me, then he can do it for you too. Okay.