#25 UNDERSTANDING RELIGIOUS TRAUMA + Ryan Bohm AMFT

Welcome to Biblically Speaking and the Theme of Healing Community

Welcome to Biblically Speaking. My name is Cassian Bellino, and I'm your host. In this podcast, we talk about the Bible in simple terms with experts, PhDs, and scholarly theologians to make understanding God easier.

These conversations have transformed my relationship with Christ and understanding of religion. Now, I'm sharing these recorded conversations with you. On this podcast, we talk about the facts, the history, and the translations to make the Bible make sense so we can get to know God our creator better.

Hello, hello, everybody. Welcome to Biblically Speaking. I am so excited to have a new guest on. Today, we have Ryan Baumann, which is a therapist. He's a little different of a guest because typically it's a theologian or a scholar, but I'm actually really excited for our conversation today.

Just a little bit of background, Ryan, you have your Master's of Science in Counseling Psychology from California Baptist University. You have a Master's of Divinity from Talbot School of Theology. That's a quick pivot.

Then you are a registered AMFT, which is an associate marriage and family therapist. You operate out of California. I just feel like we're making this turn from Christianity to therapy. I feel like there's a big overlap between the trauma we experience and our mental health, but also our relationship with God.

Thank you for coming on.

And providing a new perspective. Yeah, happy to be here. Really excited to have this conversation.

Yeah, it should be fun. It should be very fun. We've got a really great episode ahead. Yeah, it's great to be connected through Dr. Mark Clark. I feel like it's the gift that keeps on giving that when I have a great guest on.

Then I come back for like, hey, if you know anybody else, it'd be great. We have just been talking about mental health so much in the lives that I've had. What's the difference between spiritual warfare or mental health, like depression or schizophrenia?

I've talked to Sam Landa about that. Then even I had a guest on recently, which I pretended not to know her, but I was trying to be professional. It was my sister, spoiler alert, on live. We were talking about her therapy practice.

I personally, if I speak from a personal point, feel very much like I'm in therapy when I'm in church. Do you feel that way? I feel like God is healing me on a deeper level when I'm sitting in. I'm.

Just like, wow, I have a purpose and a placement in this world. That's amazing. I think that's the goal. That's what it ought to be. I've had this thought. It's not an original thought. I picked it from a professor years ago, but this idea that church ought to be a healing community.

When it operates well, it inevitably is a healing community. Unfortunately, it's not always a healing community. Probably far too often, it's a damaging community. I think that's probably what we're going to talk about today is when it does go sideways like that.

Yeah. The healing parts for me would be the community. It would be the openness and the vulnerability. I've done a ton of therapy in the past. I think what makes it effective is being able to leave the safe space and being able to be vulnerable.

This is something Maggie talks about on our live of. When you're talking with a therapist, you are unbearing the most vulnerable parts of yourself. Why can't we should feel that way in church?

Yes, absolutely. As you're sharing the verse that came to mind is Romans 8 .1, there's no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. This idea is that if you are not condemned, then you're obviously not guilty.

There's been a spiritual transaction. If you're not condemned, you can show up. You can come out of hiding. If Christ won't condemn you, then the church ought not condemn you. The church ought to work with you.

Yes, there's built into Christian theology is this idea of we can show up as we are, these authentic selves in a safe holding space, which is what therapy does. When churches operate well, they create that.

That is absolutely therapeutic. That is absolutely healing, unfortunately. I get the end where it doesn't work that way as where people find that they were condemned. There was judgment. There was guilt and these guilt-shame cycles that they can't get out of.

They don't find that healing space.

Defining Religious Trauma and the Mars Hill Example

Right, right. Our topic today is religious trauma, which is something you have focused on. You have a very unique background because you were a pastor. Now, you're a therapist. You have a very curated eye for what that would look like played out of condemnation, which is insane.

You go to a hospital when you're sick. I know that's more of a conversation we have. I do feel, and correct me if I'm wrong, before people would come to church thinking they have to be perfect, uphold perfection.

If you're falling below that anyway, you don't belong there. Maybe they don't say that outright, but maybe you feel that. That's the vibe when you.

Walk into specific churches. Yeah, that undercurrent unfortunately exists. There's an element of wherever we go, whatever community, there is a social contract. People bring in their own baggage and people bring a sense of, well, I don't want to be exposed or I don't want to be seen.

I don't want to appear like I don't know what I'm doing. You see that at a gym. I don't want to lift weights next to the person who's really strong. I don't want to be at this new restaurant where I don't know what's good.

I don't want to order like someone who doesn't know what they're doing. It's just so innocuous, so simple, and yet these stories exist. How much more so in a church or religious community where faith is so important, so personal, and then there's expectations about maybe it's not outright communicated, but doing it right, having a strong relationship.

When it's really personal, there can often be guilt and shame when there's a sense that I'm not doing it well, I'm not doing it right. We know our internal sphere in a way that others don't quite see what's going on.

We always will carry the, oh my gosh, I must be failing. Look at that person, how good they're doing. Look at that person. They have their lives together. I don't. So church can sometimes be a place, even if it's not said, even if it's a healthy community, there's a sense of like, can I really show up because everyone has it together and I don't.

Yeah. It's that double-edged sword. I mean, I'm just thinking about my personal experience is I just found a really great church here in Hawaii. I've been bopping around churches, so I've tried a couple and this one, I feel like I really belong, but everyone there is amazing.

And so there is this like, now I have to, I can't bring down the group. I can't bring down that group average. I have to also be well-dressed and well-behaved and fit in and really absorb into this community or else I'm going to be the weird one, but all is well.

It's a really cool church. Shout out to the house established here. I'm obsessed, but I'm sure, and maybe I did actually, I did feel a way about certain churches that I left where I was just like, oh yeah, this isn't, my identity here won't fit.

And I can imagine on the topic of religious trauma, if your church is your identity or like I grew up in Ohio, that was a small town. You go to church and your church is also like your friend's dad, like the pastor.

It's so embedded in the community and the group identity that if it doesn't fit well, the impacts that that will have on you. I don't think I fully understand religious trauma if I'm going to be honest, because thankfully I haven't experienced.

It. So could you explain it to it simply? Yeah, I'll do my best. And quick caveat is, I think I'm still trying to understand religious trauma because it is so unique. There is a highly subjective element and people are traumatized in religious communities by different things.

And so I really want to be cautious about saying, hey, I fully understand it and I'm going to give you a concrete definition and this speaks for everyone. I find that I am routinely surprised and constantly learning and developing and growing.

And when I talk with my colleagues who are interested in the topic, we are collaborating, working together to build kind of a knowledge base and pull from each other's kind of wisdom and experience. So I want to share that quick caveat is that there's an element of we're learning and growing and developing in this.

And it seems to be that religious trauma has been gaining more traction over the last couple of years as an idea. I'm not sure if you're familiar with it, but there was a podcast by Christianity Today on Mars Hill, the rise and fall of Mars Hill.

I think that awakened a lot of people to the topic as well and got them thinking about it differently.

Actually, yeah. I absolutely remember Dr. Mark Clark talking about that. Yes. Yes. And yeah, we were talking about like politics in the church and how people should act and relating it to the book of Daniel.

Do you want to kind of do the TLDR on that? Because I haven't.

Listened to any of the episodes. Yeah. So in Seattle was a church called Mars Hill and the pastor was a guy named Mark Driscoll. He started this church in his bedroom, I think, or his living room, and it grew and it became a mega church.

And Mark was a pretty big name. He was part of an Acts 29 church planning group, church connection group. And as his church grew and grew and grew, it was kind of like an astounding story amongst churches.

He was speaking at conferences I heard him speak a few times. And then little things kind of started leaking out, bubbling out, but it was pretty well contained. And then the church closed their doors and there was a lot of what happened with Mars Hill.

And so this podcast, Chronicles, and they interviewed a lot of staff, they interviewed people that left. I think if I remember correctly, some chose to be anonymous to make statements because they were afraid of just a retribution.

But it was presented as an incredibly toxic, abusive, and traumatic culture. And so yeah, that got conversation going. I mean, that's a good liftoff point. What does.

That mean? To me, religious trauma is an exclusive clicky vibe. And it is, you fit in, or we're going to shame you for not fitting in. But that seems so superficial.

What Religious Trauma Is and How Trauma Works

Yeah. So let's build on that. I guess the cheeky answer is religious trauma is trauma that occurs in and around a religious context. Don't do that to me. I know. Sorry. But I'll flesh it out. I'll flesh it out.

So when we look at trauma, kind of for the purposes of today, I want to highlight that trauma is a distressing event or a distressing series of events that now causes clinically significant and maladaptive symptoms long after the traumatic event has passed.

So let's use our classic example. A soldier goes into combat. Naturally, there's going to be stress responses to being in combat after they come home. Maybe two years later, they maintain a high sense of physiological arousal.

They're very vigilant. Maybe there's certain triggers that cause them to relive the traumatic experiences. They may be very withdrawn. They may have difficulty controlling their mood and regulating their mood.

And these are classic PTSD symptoms. And so trauma, religious trauma, can touch on these. But we also know with trauma, it can be vicarious or it can be personal. So I could have experienced it myself.

I may have had a near-death experience or maybe I heard about my best friend having a near-death experience or I watched them go through it. And so trauma can be.

Vicarious. Whoa. Absolutely. Like just hearing about what happened to your friend can have that.

Type of Absolutely. What? Absolutely. And it'll activate our nervous system and cause our nervous system to kind of show up in ways. I'll get to that in a second. But trauma can be deliberate. It can also be accidental.

So I may harm someone. I may try to intend to cause harm. That's a deliberate trauma on that person. Or maybe something happened, like a car accident is a great example. I didn't wake up with the intention of getting rear-ended, but it happened.

So there's.

An accidental component to that that can be very traumatic. Yeah. I would imagine all trauma would.

Be quite unintentional. Well, I mean, to the victim, maybe. But there's a difference between, let's say, I was caught in a natural disaster versus a loved one abused me. I see. Okay. Meaning and how those can be interpreted are going to be different.

And there's different stories that are told with that, different stories that are internalized. Trauma is also on a spectrum. And I think that's one of the things that maybe gets overlooked is you can have these really intense, obvious elements of trauma.

We can have very small, like they barely move the needle, traumatic stress responses. I'll give an example. When I was in high school, I was snowboarding. I fell, broke my wrist. Actually, someone ran into me and I broke my wrist.

Yikes. Yeah. A year later, I was hiking. It was in the spring. Snow was mostly melting. And on the trail was like an icy patch of snow, maybe about 20 feet to cross the snow. And I took a couple of steps and my body froze.

And I felt pain in my wrist. Yeah. And I paused and go, what just happened? Oh, yeah. The last time I was on snow, I got hurt. My amygdala has paired snow, dangerous, scary. I took a deep breath. It wasn't steep.

I'm fine. And it never bothered me ever since. But for that brief second, that was a stress response. That was a trauma response. It's very insignificant on the spectrum of trauma. Didn't really move the needle, didn't really matter much.

I got over it very quickly, but that was trauma. Fortunately, I could just think through it and move through it. Obviously, there are more extreme elements of trauma and everything in between. So I really want to highlight that trauma can.

Really be experienced on the spectrum. Just to play it both out, what would the extreme.

Version of that look like? Yeah, I could never go back to snow. I couldn't even look at snow. If I touch snow, I'd have a panic attack. I'm constantly vigilant and aware it's affecting my social relationships, all of these kinds of things.

Such an innocuous example could really take off. So imagine if the stressor really is life or death. Imagine if the stressor was physical abuse or sexual abuse or financial abuse, neglect. And let's say it's happened over a long period of time.

Let's say it's happened from a trusted person, an authority figure that I value. Now this can be far more significant, far more extreme than.

Breaking my wrist and just crossing a patch of snow. Wow. Absolutely. I had such insignificant traumas in my life. I've had a very fortunate life. So going to my therapist and I'm like, my friends excluded me when I was little.

It was a trauma. It impacted my social situation, but I just saw it in my therapist's eyes. She's a great PhD. She's amazing. But she was like, okay, let's talk about it. I'm like, as deep as we're going, I'm going to talk about my friends.

How Religious Trauma Impacts Worldview, Identity, and the Body

Yeah, I love it. Okay. But with religious trauma, so what would that look like with Mars Hill? So would that be exclusionary? Would that be shame? What does that look like?

It can be all of these things. So religious trauma is going to touch on these things that I just mentioned. And all trauma impacts worldview, but religious trauma now impacts these things that are very close to us, very sacred, very personal.

And it also impacts these things that are very communal and connect us and give us identity, give us that social currency that we can have in a religious community. So there's often a disruption of how we view God, how we view doctrine, how we view people, how we view faith in general, how we view churches.

And it has secondary and even tertiary things of how we view morals and politics and vocation, recreation. I've worked with a number of pastors and they themselves have experienced religious trauma. And now they're like, how do I do my job when I have these doubts, when I have maybe this guilt shame cycle that occurs, this distrust of the community?

So religious trauma often really attacks worldview, it really attacks identity. And there can be a sense, I've heard a number of times, not always, but a number of times where there's a sense that something was taken from me, I was robbed, I was deceived, I was misled.

And now I'm trying to find my way through this world and the foundation that was built is either now completely gone or is very unstable. And so when we look at trauma, one of the things that I think is important to recognize is we all recognize that we've all had traumatic experiences and we can get over them, we can move on them.

Not every soldier comes back with PTSD. We don't always know why that happens, but there are many who go through horrible things and they seem to bounce back. But when we look at trauma, we're looking at kind of like a physiological response.

And so maybe if there's a neuroscientist that comes on your podcast, they can really flesh this out far better than I ever could.

If you're a neuroscientist, please reach out.

Yes, please, please. But the amygdala, the part of our brain, the amygdala, it looks for kind of two things, rewards, and it looks for threats and danger. And it often is paired to what has happened in the past.

It senses a threat, it senses what's scary, and it puts our body, it activates the nervous system into fight or flight mode. And so I may have had something scary to me. And when I encounter that again, I'm not activated, I'm able to stay calm, and I'm able to stay mellow, and I just kind of navigate and go through it.

But for some people, that threat detection remains really, really strong and just kind of continues in perpetuity. And so maybe they go to a new church, it's now a safe church, there's friendly people, but every interaction, there's mistrust.

Their body is saying, this is scary, this is threatening. Maybe they get physiological symptoms, like their palms get sweaty, their heart rate starts beating quickly. Maybe there's a sense of dread, I'm not safe, I can't open up, I can't tell people anything.

Maybe there's an incredible doubt, maybe there's an overwhelming sense of guilt. So when we talk about religious trauma, I kind of want to highlight when we find ourselves in situations in and around faith, and in and around religious context, where there's a sense of like, okay, something's wrong, something's going on, or I'm bad, or God's bad, or the community's bad.

And I kind of want to highlight that element, the body is activating and warning and alerting someone a threat, and that can't be turned off. That just shows up and becomes.

Overwhelming. And how difficult would it be to be open to the word of God, when your experience with God was someone telling you that you're not good enough, or that you're going to hell.

Because of one sin that you've decided? Yeah, so I mean, the phrase, that person has flipped their lid. What comes up when you hear someone has flipped their lid? To me, it's a very physical.

Reaction, like yelling. Yeah, I would say yelling, aggression, major defenses go up.

On attack mode. Have you ever tried to really be reasonable and rational with someone who's.

Flipped their lid? And if so, how does that work? I think getting them calmed down is the only option.

There's no reasoning at that point. So trauma often can create these like, lid flip type scenarios where we're defensive, where we're reactionary. And until we can calm our body down and reduce that physiological arousal, reason and rationality are hard to entertain and to hold.

Much of what we do in churches, we try to present the Bible rationally as a piece of education. This is true, let's learn it, let's dissect it. But if someone is holding trauma, and they are in that elevated state, reason's not typically going to work super well for them.

But sometimes what can happen is we try to hammer them with truth, when what they need is actually to reduce that physiological arousal. And that happens through safe place, just getting oxygen, breathing it out, sometimes being grounded, and feeling that sense of, I am safe here.

This is a place where I can be authentic. What would you say would be the.

Difference between maybe, let's say I'm in church, and last night I sinned bad. I did all the sins. All of them, amazing. All of them in one night, and I'm at church feeling horrible about it. And I have that conviction.

What would be a clear sign of I'm in church, having a physiological experience, feeling horrible about my sin, my big sins, versus feeling horrible because I'm in a.

Church causing religious trauma? Yeah, this is so tricky. There's such fine lines between, I think, religious conviction, and guilt, and shame, and a church that perpetuates abuse. But I think one of the ways it's valuable is when we do something wrong, we typically feel guilt, and we typically feel shame.

That happens when we're kids. We tend to carry that with us, especially those who are intent about their faith. And when there's that sense of, I'm convicted, I've done something wrong, our theology ought to bring us to the cross in repentance.

And kind of the beauty of Christian theology is that we can always go to the cross. That's what Christian freedom is really about, is I can go to Christ. I'm not inhibited. I can show up to the cross.

Romans 8, 1 again, right? I'm not condemned. I have that freedom. Hebrews 4 talks about we have someone who can understand us, but did not transgress himself, right? That high priest that gets us. So we can come in freedom, openness.

And so a church that says, hey, this is how our theology works, we're going to encourage that you go to God in freedom, in joy, without guilt, without shame, knowing that the Lord loves, the Lord heals, the Lord transforms.

And as a community, we're going to model and mimic that. You can come to us. We will be with you in your authentic self. Yes, there might be consequences of certain actions. There might be things we're going to have to work through, but you are free to show up.

But what can happen in churches that really perpetuate religious trauma, the way I've heard clients and friends talk about it, is they feel that guilt, shame. There's a sense, well, I can't go to Jesus.

I have to kind of clean myself up first. And then if I've been good for a couple of days, then I can show up. And then if I go to the church and I tell them what kind of happened, they will really say like, well, you know, this is wrong.

You know, this is bad. You can't do this. They'll kind of dump on me. And so the guilt and shame of all the sins the night before now are felt again. There's no healing. There's no reconciliation. Next weekend comes, I sin again.

I feel all that guilt, all that shame. I can't go to Jesus. I can't go to my church. If I do, they pour on more guilt and shame. And this just now perpetuates and goes in circles. Wow. Yeah, that's where the theology doesn't line up.

It's hard though. I mean, I understand the fine line because it's not like your church is going to be like, oh, you sin? That's cool. Sure. They're going to hold you accountable because we're Christian and we love each other.

And I think people take that to the nth degree of like, they sit on a high horse of like, well, you sin. So it's my job as a Christian to make you feel bad. So you never do it again. I mean, what was that the Westboro Baptist Church?

I mean, their like whole thing was telling people how bad they were, but it.

Yeah. Well, I mean, like they're like, they're very extreme and, but there's a lot of churches that would not be nearly as extreme as them, but they still perpetuate this kind of model.

Right. But I guess my point is, is like the Westboro Baptist Church thinks they're doing the Christian thing. They think that they're loving people by like spotlighting their sin, even though they're doing it in that aggressive, confrontational, accusatory way where it's like, aren't you sinning too?

Like, aren't we all people here? And there's that like lack of self-awareness, but still it's, I don't know. It's a fine line between like, I can't, as a Christian, just let you do whatever you want and make you feel loved and accepted all the time.

Like I have to hold you to this higher standard. And so a church, I imagine like wants to do that without making you feel guilt and shame all over again. Sure. Yeah. And this is where it gets tricky is.

Intention and what happens in the real world can be very different things. I do get frustrated. And I don't know if you've heard this when people say like, well, I'm telling you this in love. If you have to give me that caveat, it probably highlights that, you know, you're not loving and I'm not experiencing it.

I've had all you, I'll use a Mark Clark as an example. He and I have both had conversations where we've called each other out on stuff. And there was not a hesitation, not a doubt that this guy didn't care for me and loved me and had my best interests and me to him.

There's ways we can do that. There's ways we can fight for each and work towards each other without having to give kind of these caveats. And that's a fine line just because you have the intention to do it doesn't mean you're doing it.

Yeah. And even the intention of like, I don't know, subconsciously to make them feel more pain about their sin than yourself, you know, lack of humility, I imagine. Any other things in a church that kind of jump out at you as contributing towards religious trauma?

Yeah, this is where it gets good, doesn't it? Get into the meat. Oh, gosh. So let's start with some of just like the low hanging fruit, right? You don't need me to really go off about this, right? But when we see instances of physical abuse, sexual abuse, neglect in a church, those obviously very much perpetuate trauma in a church system.

But also when churches cover this up, and just the extended impact that that has on people, and just the pain that that causes where there's a sense of doubt. So maybe, you know, I'm at a church, and I hear that they covered up something in the past.

Even though I'm not directly related, that absolutely will affect me. And I've heard story after story where people have even left their faith because the church has covered up abuses. And so to highlight, that's an absolutely super significant way that the church can perpetuate religious trauma.

There's an experience I've seen pretty, pretty common in my practice is this failure to rally principle, right? So churches talk about, we're family, we're brothers and sisters. We have this connection, we fight for each other, we contend for one another, all these kinds of things.

Someone goes through a crisis, and the church doesn't really rally around them. And they go, wait a second, I thought you'd be there for me. I thought you'd care for me, what happened? I needed resources, I needed help, and I got nothing.

And so the belief, they hold all of these beliefs. And then that doesn't match reality. Now the assumption, the worldview gets shattered. And there's a book called Shattered Assumptions, that really talks about trauma, almost always when it's really significant, really impacts the way we view the world.

We view ourselves as, we can kind of get through this, and we have a sense of control. But trauma says you're actually far more vulnerable than you thought. And people are far less trustworthy than you thought.

And so this failure to rally principle is like, wait a second, do I matter? I don't know if I matter. And then all these questions come up. I have a kind of a silly story that illuminates this. I have an amazing support system.

My friends and my family are amazing people. So this is by no means an indictment on them. But years ago, we had a medical emergency in my family. My wife had to go to the hospital, something pretty significant, pretty serious.

So I was working, spending time in the hospital, and my cat was also dying. And my wife and I are huge animal people, so trying to keep him comfortable and safe, and what was going on with that, trying to be there for my wife.

And naturally, all of the responsibilities around the house were failing. Well, someone calls me up and like, hey, we heard what's going on. We're so sorry. We'll be praying for you guys. If there's anything that you need, just let us know.

Now, that's a good safe statement, because typically, I'd say, don't worry about it. We're doing okay. Well, I was drowning at this point. Well, since you asked. Actually, I really need someone to mow my lawn.

And he goes, we'll be praying for you. And he hung up. I had a great support system, and I had friends coming and helping me, and so I wasn't left to rot. But I'm like, that's it. That experience, when people feel that in a church, wow, where was I?

And so that failure to rally kind of concept can be really damaging and really harmful, especially if they see it time and time again, or if they see the attention someone else gets. And then when they're in that situation, they don't get that.

So that's one example.

And it's so non-physical. And they made a choice. I have to respect their choice,.

But still, that hurts. Yeah, it hurts. It absolutely hurts. And for some people, it's one and done. Others, after a couple of times of that, there's that shattered worldview. One of the other things I've seen, too, and I'd be curious to see if and how you've seen this, but there's a sense of false expertise that can occur.

So pastors have to wear a lot of hats. And I can certainly appreciate the difficulty of the job of having to be good at a lot of different skills. But what can sometimes happen is pastors or the church leaders will step into a domain that's outside of their expertise, and they will speak as if they're experts.

This is how the world works. Science, history, therapy, whatever. And someone goes, wait a second, that's my domain. You very obviously don't know what you're talking about. And it now makes that source of authority no longer authoritative, and it brings in doubt.

And you can see how insidious and how it's hard to get a grasp of that. How could that affect people? But just by your reaction, I can tell, oh, you could see where.

This would go. Yeah, I've definitely met a couple. And that's why we have pre-calls before we get anybody on the live air to have that conversation. 100%. Yeah, I mean, there's definitely people that have a job, and there's other people that have expertise.

And I think we're all doing our best. And I'm grateful that I get expertise time. But I'm just thinking the small town mentality of my pastor is my savior. And if he's not as well-vetted as he should be to serve those needs, and he starts misleading people just for the sake of like, well, I've got to speak on Sunday, so I'm just going to speak about this.

I can definitely see how that can misconstrue somebody's expectations of like, well, we can't speak badly about the pastor because he's our pastor, or he's our priest,.

Or he's our pope, or whatever. Right, right. Yeah. And it's amazing when damage can be done. My wife's a CPA, and she talks about how she works with a lot of really smart people, doctors, educators, CFOs, CEOs, entrepreneurs.

And they're really smart, and they're really good at what they do. But once they get into the books, and they start talking about the financials, she's like, it is so obvious. They have no idea what they're talking about.

But because they're so smart, they have a PhD. Who would question them? She's like, but they very clearly don't know what they're talking about. And she can kind of laugh it off. That's her job. She just deals with that.

But when that happens in a church, and we're submitting to authority, it starts to kind of put cracks in someone's worldview, and it starts to become potentially damaging. This lays kind of the foundation for now further abuses and further elements of religious trauma.

So it may not be traumatic in itself, but it sets up the foundation for that.

I absolutely feel that. I'll share the story not to speak down about this church, because it literally pushed me into this podcast. And this happened five years ago when I was living in Thailand. I was going to a church, and I was so far from family.

So my church was my everything. I'm like, this is my family. And I loved the church. I was so homesick. And I walked in, and the first thing they said to me was, welcome home. And I was like, oh my god, I'm crying.

And I got to a point in my faith where I was like, I don't get it. I get why we're going to church, and I get the whole thing. But who's Peter? Can we do some background on Peter before we start reading about him?

What's going on in Corinth? What's going on in the state of the world? I wanted background. And I went up to the pastor, and it was a husband and wife. And I was like, hey, do you mind giving some context before we jump into the word?

You know, expecting this to be a source of authority and absolutely, I want you to learn. That's what I was expecting. And again, those are my expectations. But I was expecting to be like, oh my gosh, love that you want to learn more, happy to do it, or happy to meet on the side or something.

And she was like, you should go to seminary, or you should go to our Bible study. And I was like, I am in your Bible study. I am going to that actually. But I'm not going to go to seminary. I'm just, I don't have that interest.

I don't have that time. I would hate it. I just want, but I want to know, could you? And she was like, no. She essentially was like, no, you know, that's up to you. That's cool that you want that. And again, like, not her, like, I was asking kind of something of her that she didn't technically have to give to me.