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Ep. 186 – My Dad, the Predator in the Pulpit w/ Author Ryan George
403 Plays10 months ago
This week we’re joined by Ryan George, author of “Hurt and Healed by the Church: Redemption and Reconstruction After Spiritual Abuse.” Ryan was listening to a podcast one day when he heard a heartbreaking story of sexual abuse about a pastor, a pastor who happened to be his father. It’s hard to imagine being hit with such a devastating revelation, but it set off a chain reaction that forced him to square himself with his own physical abuse at the hands of his dad. In his book, Ryan recounts the full story of his upbringing, coping with his father’s crimes, doing what he can to help the victims his dad had hurt, and how he found spiritual healing in what some might think is an unlikely place: the church. We really enjoyed talking with Ryan, and we hope you enjoy the discussion (it begins at 44:00)! Find his book “Hurt and Healed by the Church: Redemption and Reconstruction After Spiritual Abuse” through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and many other book retailers, check out his podcast Everyday Adventures, and follow Ryan on Instagram (@ryplane).
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Transcript
Ryan's Discovery of His Father's Past
00:00:00
Speaker
Whoa. And so then when my dad, you know, three years later, or whatever it was told us about victim that we would call victim number one, ah he called it an affair. And so now we go, oh, well, and then I always wondered, so they drove from where they live almost two hours each way to go to marriage counseling in a different state. And I and didn't make sense to me before until I learned out how mandatory reporting works. I was like, Oh, that son of a gun was like making sure that no counselor could ever turn them in. Right? Like he's one of the victim's ah attorneys. yeah she She came to me, the victim came and she said, would you be willing to help prosecute your dad? I said, absolutely. you know I'm not going to stand in the way of justice. I'll help it. And I talked to her attorney and he was like, dude, your dad was so slick.
Casey and Sam's Wichita Stories
00:01:03
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Growing Up Christian. I'm Casey. And I'm Sam. And there's a big to-do in Wichita this weekend. There's an annual like summer carnival freak show, you know, local chili cook-off type. ah Tilt-a-whirl. That's nice. Emporium. I don't think you can call them freak shows anymore, Casey. Well, yeah. I think that's it's fair to to call it that. That's kind of what it's known for. It's called Riverfest. It happens downtown. I haven't actually been to Riverfest, but like anytime you talk to people, like if you bring up people watching,
00:01:48
Speaker
to people around here or in Kansas or something. There's two events that come up, the the state fair, which I will go to this year. I haven't been to it yet, but I definitely want to go. I can't believe you've never been to a state fair. I feel like you're like the walking fair. Just not ah the Kansas one. Yeah, but yeah, still shocking. I feel like you are like the walking embodiment of a state fair. Like everything about that seems like your thing. That's your thing. There's probably cars crashing into each other. You could probably look at some cool cars. You can watch some weird people. You can get some good food. I can honor my my elephant ears only dietary restrictions. yeah
00:02:31
Speaker
You get to watch a lot of weird shit. I don't know. Uh, cool entertainment, like real shitty bands at state fairs. That's one of the best parts. Oh yeah. It's everything. I would love to go watch like Evan essence play at the yeah the Kansas fairgrounds. I think last year, uh, like the, our, our big fair, it's called the big E. I want to say last year. or in the past couple of years, Ludacris was there, I'm almost certain. But every time you look at the lineup, it doesn't make sense. like Oh yeah, it's like- We know they're trying to capture like a broad audience. They're like, well, we need people who like Nickelback and we need people who like Ludacris. Remember Uncle Cracker? He's going to be there. That country star that said the N word.
00:03:21
Speaker
you can
00:03:25
Speaker
But yeah, it's a, so Riverfest is like the other thing that comes up that people are like, Oh yeah, the greatest people watching. It's just people come out of the woodwork from surrounding communities that don't usually make it into town, you know? Okay. And, uh, I'll make an exception just this once. It's like, we're going to go get a funnel cake and some chicken feed and then we're done until next year, yeah back into our hole. But, uh, So my company's headquarters is like right downtown. You've been there. Yep. And there's a road that ruts right through the middle of Wichita. It's kind of like a highway. That's sort of the central nervous system or whatever from East to West called Kellogg Avenue. Okay. And so everything is divided up into like North of Kellogg, South of Kellogg. That's how people describe everything. And North of Kellogg downtown is like all the like
00:04:24
Speaker
you know, downtown areas with restaurants and all of that kind of stuff. And it's pretty nice. They've cleaned it up a ton since I've been here. But, uh, south of Kellogg is rough. Like that's, that's where people make jokes. I mean, as, as close as we have to like rough neighborhoods would would be south of Kellogg, you know, but there's a, uh, there's a quick trip. That's like right near my company down there, just south of Kellogg, like right in the heart of downtown. And it is a just every day is a zombie walk. tis place just The wildest people and the warmer it is, the more that the higher the population density of them down there and they're hanging out. There'll just be like a guy sleeping on the sidewalk, you know, or whatever. Like it's, it's sort of the spot where you come and maybe like, you know, try to awkwardly get somebody to give you money or.
00:05:23
Speaker
you know, buy a burger, maybe shoplift some soda from quick trip. Okay. um I saw a person right in the heat of COVID, like early on, I saw a lady put her head under the fountain and drink straight from the fountain.
00:05:42
Speaker
ahead Disgusting. i they say actually I actually felt a physical reaction to you making that statement. and I've seen some crazy stuff at this particular creature. It's my favorite one. Like there's always something happening down there. And something was going on yesterday. Abram and I like went down in town, took the recycling and in and everything, and then stopped there on our way back through. And the security guard, they always have a security guard who's pretty busy most of the time. They were messing, they were breaking up something outside, right? There was some sort of altercation or whatever.
00:06:21
Speaker
And, uh, so we just kind of like move on past them. I go into the bathroom, you know, an inside quick trip and I'm like standing at the urinal. I'm like, here's somebody mumbling. Oh, probably definitely boogers all over the walls. Oh, there's always boogers on walls next to urinals. That's it's a constant. Yeah. It's new construction buildings come with boogers on the wall next to the urinal. But I'm like standing there and there's somebody mumbling and kind of like talking under their voice, like off to my right hand side towards the stalls. And it's always alarming, dude. Anytime you hear mumbling to yourself in public, you just go, ah, fuck. yeah Yeah. Something's about to happen to me or could I need to find a safe space immediately? Well, I'm like, God, it smells awful in here. What? Oh, God, it's somebody like
00:07:18
Speaker
Somebody dropped one in here, you know, and then I look over towards the stall and there's just a human turd on the floor. No way. right next to the but did It's like, it's like a children's. It's we deal with shit at my school all the time because it's K and one and, you know, a bunch of kindergartners and first graders run to the bathroom. And there's regular amounts of cleanups need to happen there. And that's the age group where you would expect behavior like that. And even then, even then it's still like, you kind of roll your eyes and you have to lecture them about proper bathroom behavior. You're like, come on guys. Like, you know, you know, you're not supposed to pee on the floor. You don't just rub their nose on it. Yeah. They ah stopped letting us do that in 2023.
00:08:13
Speaker
um But yeah it's crazy cuz this is children ah it's always even more it's always alarming when you're in a public restroom and it's adults having like even worse behavior than. Then six and seven year olds yeah it seems difficult to do. It's definitely don't know what situation would warrant like an accident of that sort. No, other than if you were like, let's say you have the stomach flu and you have to do the quick turn. Then I think it's understandable if, uh, in your haste, you just like wing one out, like little future King David, you know? Yeah. But in that situation, like, well, yeah, when you're doing the quick turn, I feel like.
00:09:05
Speaker
You would like you saw a an actual like turd. I feel like those situations is when you see like this, like when they like kind of paint the wall a bit. It's like a can of spray paint, you know, where it just. You see that you see a shit splatter and you know what happened. Yeah. But for that, for an actual turn to come out, the the while turning, while moving, I don't know, man. It looked like it was from a bit of a distance too, because it had like a real, uh, pyramidal structure to it. Like there was an impact. I bet. Uh, this was like in the stall, right? It was still in the stall. but Yeah. On the side. I wonder in like just in front of, and to the, if you're staring at the toilet, it would be like just in front of the toilet and kind of to the left.
00:10:00
Speaker
Okay, it's possible that a young 20 something year old did that move where you put your legs up over the stall walls and you try to shit into the toilet from the sky. Is that a thing that people actually do? Yes, that's the thing that I didn't experience it ah in college. I didn't shockingly that's not one of the weird Naked behaviors that happened at Liberty University, but it did happen at ah my friend's college people would ah Try to do sky dumps and that's where they would just try to get on the stalls in shit in the toilet from As high up as they could go. but So like are your feet like on the railings? Yeah, it's like they're like spider it up there. Yeah. Yeah, they're braced over like your knees kind of like brace over
00:10:56
Speaker
Um, like it's like all it's like reverse candy crane. Yeah. And I think in his bath, yeah, I think in his bath and the, his like, it is college, the bathroom was like, I want to say they had something on the ceiling. That was like, I don't know if it's the way the rafters were, but it was, people were able to like grab onto those as well. And they would try to like, you're almost like doing a pull up to the ceiling without your pants on trying to take it. Dump in the toilet. It's so much extra work. Yeah, and it's also yeah. Well, it's not about the effort It's about the game man. It's a game. I think you're missing. It's there's obviously no ah There's no reason ah That a dump would call for such a maneuver that would simplify things ah so it was a game and it was frowned upon deeply by the custodial
00:11:54
Speaker
ah The custodial team they hated it and there was apparently frequent understandable About no longer like people need to stop doing this I would show if they make a good memo yeah I think I don't know.
Kansas VIN Inspection Frustration
00:12:10
Speaker
I'm sure people would leave it. I'm sure they would Dude, if you if you leave something like that, you should be caned. Yeah. like they should They should put you in stocks and whip the back of your legs until they're purple. like There's just little things like that that yeah I just don't— i like I don't have any under— That wasn't funny to you ever in college.
00:12:31
Speaker
No, that's terrible. I hated any to like I got I would get pissed when you go into the bathroom and someone would just leave their shit in there because they did such a big shit. They want everyone to see it. I hated those people. Yeah. Yeah, that's a whole personality archetype in college, like the third guy. Oh, yeah, it's the the thing that blows my mind and you see it all the time. is like you walk into a public bathroom, you walk up to the urinal, and there's like the little like those little packets that people... Are they are those zins? Are they the little packets? Oh, yeah, the like yeah the nicotine pouch things. Zin pouches and gum. People spit them in the urinal. Yeah, that picks me up. It's like somebody has to pick that out of there. They know. There's no other way to get it out. It makes me so angry when I see that. The world...
00:13:28
Speaker
The world of their trash can. I think you can, like, it's obviously a microcosm, but I think you can attribute like most awful things that humanity does. Like, it's like, well, yeah, I mean, take a look at the, you know, the zen in the urinal. Like the height of human arrogance. Exactly.
00:13:53
Speaker
Yeah, of course people are capable of genocide, dude. They spit their gum in the urinal. Yeah. As soon as you see that, you i can I would believe anything. I would believe those people could be made to do anything. They're already sociopaths. They already don't consider the feelings or needs of other people. ah they' It's not even like, I bet they're not even like, it's not like they're trying Maybe they are trying to ruin somebody's day, but at least then you could like, you know, parse out why they are like the way that like they, like they're, if they're actively just trying to be an asshole, you'd be like, well, something must have happened to you. Like people aren't even on these people's radar. That's how little they care about the world around them. Everyone's an NPC. It's their world and everybody else is living in it. And n they could be, you know, human atrocities just based on that, that perspective. They don't care about anyone. They're like, yeah, I mean, it's distant. They don't, they haven't thought once about, uh, the 75,000 pounds of bombs dropped on Palestinians. They're too busy spitting ah zins and urinals, you know? Yep. It's true. Very true. So, uh, so aside from that.
00:15:15
Speaker
I recently bought a, um, an old Jeep Grand Cherokee. It's like a 93 and I bought it on like an auction site. That's kind of like for, you know, like nicer, older vehicles and stuff, and had to have it shipped up here. And, uh, it presented a few problems already. Oh yeah. I don't, I don't make good decisions with that stuff. That's a better pattern. Yep. And like, I will fully admit that, but hearing people say like, whoa, this is what you get. It makes me so mad that I, I just about freak out, but I, uh, I've been working on this thing and getting it ready to go and stuff. I had to fix a few things right off the bat and kind of to the point now where I'm like ready to get it titled and everything.
00:16:09
Speaker
Uh, but Kansas has this stupid law where if you buy a vehicle out of state, it has an out of state title, you have to do a Vin inspection, which basically means you go down to like the highway patrol office. You have to tow the vehicle because it doesn't have a plate. So you can't drive it. And you're having it checked by literal highway patrol people. So you have to tow it to the office. They won't look at it on a truck bed. Or like in a trailer, you have to unload it in order for them to do the VIN inspection, which basically they take your title. So dumb. They look at the vehicle and they go. Yep. That matches. Here's your certificate. I mean, it's, it's just takes, it's nothing. It's is such a stupid like procedure and stuff. And like, I've run into it before, cause I bought like a motorcycle out of state and I had this thing in the back of my truck and I went straight to the office to get it.
00:17:07
Speaker
you know, to get this stuff done. And the kid comes out and he goes, Oh, I can't, I can't look at it in the truck. Like, well what do you mean? He's like, we're not allowed to look at it in the truck. Like, well, what am I supposed to do? And he's like, I don't know, man, you're going to have to get it out of the truck. I can't do the inspection without it. So now I'm like by myself trying to unload a motorcycle, like a full size street bike out of the truck so that he can go. Okay. they I like how he calls it an inspect like they call it an inspection like it's it's more of like just a quick glance at some numbers like I can't do the inspection in the back of the truck like yeah they make it sound like that entails something like if I didn't know where it like it's on the frame you can see it from the outside of the truck like you could stand there and look at it if I had to if I was doing something like that for the first time and I brought it and they're like man we got to do this inspection but we can't
00:18:06
Speaker
We can't do it unless it's off the truck or whatever. If you get it off, they just do a quick look at it and they go, all right, you're all set. I would be blown away. I'd be like, that's not an inspection. I get my car inspected. Do you get your car inspected? Do you have inspection stickers? We don't have to do that here. Okay. So I have to, you get that every year and they test, you know, the regular things. They like shake your tires really, really hard and make sure they don't fall off. They test your blinkers. They make sure but whatever everything's in basic general working order. And then they'll also fail you if there's like too much rust, which is,
00:18:43
Speaker
Also, the way around that is you just put duct tape over the rust and they go, we can't see it. It's like they have no object permanence for rust. You just cover it up. It doesn't count anymore as rust. um But like, that's an inspection. That's what I would expect if I had to do something like that. And if all they did was check a number after you go through all that work, I feel like I'd lose my shit. Yeah. So I had to go rent a trailer from U-Haul and it's there only, the office is only open till three 30. So I'm it's, it's like one 30 now. I'm like, okay, I'm going to go rent the trailer. I'm going to run home, load this thing up, which I've never done before. So I'll have to figure that out, you know, uh, take it down there, get the inspection done. And if I book it, maybe I can make it back to here in time to get it registered and stuff.
00:19:35
Speaker
So I go to U-Haul and it's like a storage unit place that also does U-Haul rentals and everything. and Is there any other kind? um Maybe not, no. Seriously, that's probably true. It's like the perfect business together. If I had a, i I thought for a while when I was miserable at my last job and I i would just, or every day I was on, like I was driving, I would just look at what people did for a living and try, like brainstorm constantly. What could I do? And the one thing I fell on constantly was storage, self storage. Yeah. My partner at work, he has one.
00:20:14
Speaker
Yeah, I still kind of regret not like having the balls or motivation to try to do something like that because I just don't have that entrepreneurial spirit. But I feel like any like and then I would see new ones being built like in different areas. So we'll just buy this little area of plot of land and put up a somewhat small self storage center. ah And then immediately, like, it seems like they're, they fill up. Everyone always has shit they need to put somewhere that they're like too afraid to throw out or get rid of yourself. So I feel like, cause I'll be like, well, I couldn't put one here cause it's too close to the one right there and the one down the street that way. And then within six months I could see a new one being built in between those two. And you're like, I guess I don't know, uh, how market research for self storage units work, but.
00:21:06
Speaker
I wish I got in that lane. You just sit at a counter all day and rent people trucks and shit. I would make me suicidal within a week. I would die in there. At one point, before I started working for the company that I do now, you know my dad and I had talked about like like, okay, well, what kind of business could we run?
Casey's Business Ventures and Monotony
00:21:28
Speaker
you know And this is fresh out of college where nobody should trust me. I shouldn't be trusted to run a business now. Any more than I already do. And like out of college, I was, I was completely worthless. yeah And, uh, we, for a minute, you drank all the lemonade at your lemonade stands every time.
00:21:48
Speaker
yeah
00:21:51
Speaker
But we looked at a UPS store for a minute and like, I went and shadowed the guy that owned it and ran it and, um, It was 2009, so there was just no jobs anywhere. But I was like, I, I don't think I, I don't think I can do this. Like the, like the, the look on the guys face and Hey, everybody's different, right? It doesn't make you inferior or superior to be able to like, do those kinds of tasks and enjoy it. I mean, it's better to enjoy things. If you can like do those things and enjoy them, then that's great. You know, but like, I went and shadowed this guy and it's.
00:22:30
Speaker
quiet There's no music playing in there. And it smells like paper products. And I remember like he got really excited when somebody brought in this like oblong thing that they needed to ship because he's like, Ooh, we're going to get to make a box for this one. And I was like, I can't do, I can't do this. That's the most exciting part of his day. When I worked in fulfillment, I always hated when I had to a custom make boxes to ship shit out. It was the worst part of my day. I would put it off until the end of the day, not just being able to like unfold a box and tape it, having to actually like create one. Killed it, yeah killed it for me. I hated doing that so much. So me and that guy would not have gotten along or we would have been a great pair. You know, he would have been like, i'd look, I got this.
00:23:27
Speaker
Yeah, here you can sort stamps or something. It is funny. Like there's a, there's like, uh, there's a level of like Western decadence that I think we're like, I know I'm infected with where, you know, other places, people would be like, just really happy to have something of their own and a business that they can pour themselves into and provide for their family and stuff. And me, I'm like. boom du I want to play games and watch videos though. You would be able to watch a lot of YouTube videos sitting at one of those desks though. Oh yeah, I could have learned all about the reptilians in a matter of weeks.
00:24:09
Speaker
Especially at that point. but So I'm at this U-Haul place. I get there. I'm in a hurry. it's a probably the The guy that's running the counter, he's probably mid 60s, late 60s. He's a big boy and he doesn't get around very good. And he was super nice, as helpful as he could be. So i' very by all accounts, great dude. But he could not run a computer to save his life. And like, I i know you can reserve stuff online through U-Haul, but I figured like, well, it'll just be faster to go there. And it's probably easier for them to just do it all the, you know, right there at the counter or whatever.
00:25:00
Speaker
He's basically using the exact same interface as like they have on their website for the consumer to use. you know And like, dude, he just can't figure it out. Because they ask you, because it's a trailer, you know so like they want to know what kind of vehicle you have that you're going to be towing it with. They want to know what kind of vehicle is going on the trailer, what type of hitch it is, you know all of these different things. You've got to upload your driver's license photo and all this stuff to it. And, um, about the third time that he like wiped all of his progress accidentally, I was like, refresh. Yeah. I was like, you know, I got all this stuff memory. You want me to just jump back there and do it? And he's like, Oh, sure. So I just went in the back and like did it all myself, but he, uh, so he was doing, he would do this thing though, while he was thinking.
00:25:53
Speaker
Well, he's like baffled by the computer, right? He's like kind of leaning over the desk and he's, he's staring at the screen with his mouth open and he's going, uh, like mouthing the words, you know, and squinting at the computer and stuff. And like I said, it's pretty big boy. And I, I just like noticed that whenever he's thinking he's got his hand over his right boob. and He's got his nipple between his like pointer and middle finger and he's like he's like rolling it Between his fingers and like after I saw it like oh, that's what what is that? I couldn't stop looking at it like everything from that point forward. I just kept staring at him like like twiddling his nipple
00:26:43
Speaker
but
00:26:46
Speaker
I'm surprised you could even fill out the form after that. I feel like when I notice shit like that, it's so distracting that it kills any level of productivity I'm having. and It's the only thing you can focus on. That's hilarious. Very nice man, and he got it done eventually, so... His nipple came? Is that what you mean? Maybe. He got a little juice out of there.
00:27:12
Speaker
Oh my god, that's so funny. i Dude, well I... It was um one of the the gas station that I usually hit on my way home from work. It's always been like self-serve. Is that what you call it? Self-serve? I don't know. Service, whatever. I went there yesterday on my way home from, or two days ago on my way home from work and The guy, like there's a guy out there. He's like, you know, you could stay in your car. It's full service. I was like, it's never been full. I don't, I hate full service gas stations. I hate them so much. Yeah. and But full service gas stations are usually designed a little differently than the self service ones because
00:27:50
Speaker
you know You don't have to put in credit card information. like If you put in a card, you can bypass the PIN. You don't have to put in zip codes. It just it runs your shit. They set up, they lock it in, they go over to the next one, and they're like, boom, boom, boom. It's not a full-service gas station. It's like a guy inside who got bored and decided like last week that it's now a full-service gas station. because Some people are getting out of their car to get gas and he's like, it's full service. You could, and they're like, shut the fuck up, dude. I'm getting my own gas. And he like doesn't fight with them about it. So then he like, I'm like, all right, I guess I'll sit in my car then and wait for you to get over here, even though this would be faster. If I did it myself, he comes over, takes my card and he goes, uh, it says you need to put in the zip code. I'm like, yeah, that's because it's not. So then I tell him the zip code and he goes, it's not working.
00:28:42
Speaker
So I say it again, he goes, something's wrong with the card, man. I was like, my God, I just want myself. So he gives it back and I give him my credit card. I was using my debit card. I give him my credit card. He goes, you need a zip code for this too. Same one. I was like, yeah, it's not working. I was like, you're typing it in wrong. And he goes, I don't think so. Like. So then he says, so then he just says the number to me and then I'm like, that's not it. And I say the number and then he, he goes to try again and he like repeats it back and he goes, I'm like, no, that's not the number. The number is but we'll do it one at a time, dude. And he just like go through each number. He goes, Oh my God. it's but Sorry, man. You know, it's just been one of those days. I guess I just heard, just starts making up all these excuses. I'm like, whatever you heard it wrong. It's a lot of similar numbers in my zip code. Uh, so.
00:29:33
Speaker
I, it's easy to jumble. Like if you, it's easy to hear it wrong. It's easy for your brain to like kind of mess up or swap some of the numbers. I wasn't even that mad about it. I would felt slightly inconvenienced, but I just get really frustrated. Like I get easily frustrated and like, just get me out. Like I will, it's not a real full service gas station. If it was, you wouldn't be asking me these questions. Why did you just make up last week that you're now a full service gas station? Now I can't come here anymore. yeah that's what that That's exactly what I thought. I'm like, that well, this is the last time. Like for i for him, he's like, I bet a lot more people will show up if I pump their gas for them. And after just one time, I'm like, I'm never getting gas from that place again. Are you supposed to tip when you have a full service one? I don't think so. He didn't even give me a receipt. So. Ah, man. Yeah. That concept's just.
00:30:29
Speaker
We don't need it. No, I hate it. I hate it so much. I'm like, who wants to have somebody handling their credit card anyways, you know? It's just better at this point to just let people pump it and be done with it. Yep. Well, any more nipple twisting stories or should we go ahead and introduce our guest? No. um No, although if I could give a plug real quick.
Brianna Joy Gray's Advocacy and Journalism Control
00:31:01
Speaker
Yeah. I posted in the discord about this. I texted you about it, but, um, I don't know if anybody watches, uh, rising on the Hills YouTube channel, but it's like a.
00:31:12
Speaker
Uh, I think Monday through Friday kind of news talk show thing, typically two hosts, um, one conservative and one more of a left leaning variety, you know, uh, the host of rising over the past, I don't know, a couple of years here is this lady. She's a lawyer and just like, uh, just a brilliant lady named Brianna Joy gray. And, um, she's been. Since October 7th and stuff, she's been like a very vocal critic of like how Israel has responded, some of the military actions and stuff they've taken, like just been a real like advocate for the Palestinian people and stuff. And it's like gotten her into hot hot water, made her a target from a bunch of different like you know nutty
00:32:02
Speaker
Zionists or conservative groups or whatever, you know, the lines are really blurry around this issue. It's it's it really isn't like a left or right thing, but um she's really like caused a stir because she's been such a like art and supporter of of ah the Palestinians and like she's had some debates on there with like very pro Israel IDF apologist people and she's great. She is a fantastic journalist and just a ah brilliant lady and She got fired this week from the hill over It's it's a really lame Story, but basically like there's a lady who is a host sister of one of the hostages from October 7th and
00:32:56
Speaker
She like asked to come on the show, said she wanted to speak to Brianna specifically. And it's just a very strange interview, like how it's the questions and things like that. um There was some some tension there, for sure, because, I mean, it it seemed clear that this lady had an idea of what she wanted out of the interview, and that was the kind of like pinch and own Brianna, you know? Um, so afterwards, uh, the Hill fired her for it. And it's been sheep. So she did an interview with Glenn Greenwald on his YouTube channel. You can find it there, but talks about some of the lead up to this and the pressures that have been put on them over the past, you know, six, eight months here to cover this in a specific way, to not talk about certain parts of it. And just really like an attempt to control the messaging around the the war in Gaza.
00:33:56
Speaker
And, um, I dunno, it's, it's scary stuff. You know, I mean, there's been a bunch of journalists that have been pushed out or, uh, or fired from their, their papers, websites, organizations, you know, over their support of, of Palestine. And, uh, it's just, it's a, it's shocking, like some of the stuff that's going on. Uh, all that to say that I would highly recommend everybody go follow Brianna Joy Gray on, uh, follower on X and Instagram and stuff like that. I think she's most active on X if I remember right. Um, follow her on YouTube. She has a podcast of her own called, uh, bad faith.
00:34:41
Speaker
where she talks to a lot of different people and just, you know, after everything that's happened, I feel like she's been just a really excellent source of information about the issue and, uh, she's been shut down. So go follow her on all that stuff and, uh, I think show her some support. So. Well, all right. That's crazy. I, uh, my God, I feel like this, uh, covering this story. since ah really since October 7th, I feel like it's gotten maybe more, sure I don't know if more journalists fight. I feel like this is in my lifetime when it comes to covering ah international news events, this has certainly been the one that is the most divided and has the most repercussions for not towing the line. like
00:35:38
Speaker
There was always people who had an issue with the US invasion of Iraq in Afghanistan and people would talk about that. um But this one is very bizarre in the way that it's getting parsed out in the the repercussions for people trying to have an honest representation of what's going on. Yeah, there's definitely like some some, you know, big money donors of a lot of these institutions that are exerting the leverage they have to to shape coverage. And um I mean, you know, the first thing that really stands out in my mind, I know there's a few people fired early on for for their stance on it. But, you know, the the the hearings around the the protests at
00:36:25
Speaker
Harvard and Princeton and stuff like that, you know, I forget which, which one of the presidents was fired over, you know, their response to it. And what are you doing to combat anti-Semitism on campus? And just, it's just been a, a lot of that type of stuff. And it's ridiculous. And I feel like, you know, I don't know, you know, but it's not like any of us really have any power in those realms, but you know, you can, you can follow and watch the people who have stood up for what's right. So I don't know. It's just something that has just been on my mind since ah since I heard about it. Yeah.
00:37:09
Speaker
All right, let me go ahead and introduce our guest.
Ryan's Book Introduction and Father's Actions
00:37:12
Speaker
um This week we have on author Ryan George. um It was actually funny how I ended up getting connected with him. We have another guest that I have scheduled to speak with who put out a children's book. um And it was through talking to his ah publishing agent or whatever, I forget you call it. A publicist, wow, there we go, publicist, that was tough. um And she, ah the publicist reached back out and was like, hey, like getting an idea for what, you like your podcast is, um ah she had a pitch for ah Ryan George, because he had just put out his new book.
00:38:00
Speaker
um And we i was as soon as I saw like the the first few sentences, the blurb, I was like, Oh, I'm in like this guy's got to have an interesting story. So, uh, Ryan basically like his, I mean, the short of his story is, um, he had found out, but as an adult listening to a podcast, uh, that his father who was a pastor in the independent fundamental, fundamental Baptist church, IFB, uh, that's the whole shiny, happy people, Bill Gothard shit. We've obviously talked about that a good bit on the podcast.
00:38:38
Speaker
dugger Yep, um he found out on ah a podcast that his dad um Had Was had sexually abused people ah in the past um Young women so it well this was prior to them being women sexually abused children um and that kind of flip shit upside down for him. He was kind of ah already like, had moved on from like IFB, but his, that him having to kind of go back and think about all of that and his place in the church. So that his new book is called Hurt and Healed by the Church. And I think he obviously has a different perspective on things than a lot of our guests are the typical direction we go in, because
00:39:24
Speaker
you know A lot of the people we talk to have left the church um and he found it to be ah a healing place and a place where he could be honest and open about the things that he was dealing with, the things his family was dealing with. ah ah really ah I was able to read through some of his book ah before we had him on and I appreciate his perspective of just having that um He didn't have that prescriptive approach. And we've all heard that before where it's like, well, because this worked for me, uh, the real thing is that they're true like, it's really just like a bait and switch in some ways for a lot of people, like, and that's why everyone needs to become a Christian again. And I i just didn't, you know, even if that would be like.
00:40:09
Speaker
part of his hope, if that's what he believes. like i don't I didn't feel that pressure. I didn't feel that pressure in his book. I didn't feel that pressure in the conversation. Just a good guy to have a good conversation with. ah His story's wild, and it was great getting to talk to him. um And I'm looking forward to going through more of his book, too. I want to finish it. I want to hear the story ah play out um beginning to end, because he starts out with a lot of the meaty stuff in the story. um But it's just about his his journey um in the to to healing and and dealing with would such horrific news. um And then how it impacted his family and his relationships to his family as well.
00:40:53
Speaker
I thought one one of the things that I found kind of fascinating with this, I feel like when you you hear about these stories of like parental abuse and stuff like that, you know which for him was not sexual, it was physical abuse. like His dad beat him, punished him in physical ways and stuff like that. and you i I think you just it's hard to wrap your head around, and so you have a tendency to kind of like two-dimensionalize the people that do it. um What I found kind of fascinating was some of the stuff that he'd said about like,
00:41:30
Speaker
you know, how his dad would punish him, what would spark the conflict, the effort that his dad went to hide the fact that he was physically abusing him, you know, from the other children and maybe his mom. I don't know. it didn't I didn't really get a clear answer on whether or not his mom was aware of what was going on. But I think either way, it sounded like she wouldn't have probably stood in the way of anything. Right. um But and that but the the rationalizing the way he's being punished to him was, it's wild. like the you know He talks at one point about his dad, like they were in some sort of an argument or something like that. And his dad like took off his belt and handed it to him and was like, hit me with this. And he was like, no, I'm not going to hit you with it. He's like, hit me with it. and he's
00:42:27
Speaker
I don't I don't want to hit you with these like you see how I feel I don't I don't want to hit you either But you know like then the rest of my games and stuff and I think you know from what he said it it was only like later down the road, you know, maybe even after he found out about the sexual abuse and stuff that he Really even entertained the idea that he had been abused himself Mm-hmm, which tells you the I mean that really gives you a picture of the extent to which that the mind games went on. Yeah, for sure. And I think that that's a theme also within, you know, abuse in the church is because especially from like elders, ah pastors, things like that, because there's always that rationalizing of like, I mean, you can use the Bible to rationalize ah serious physical punishment. ah He talks a little bit about that too. And it's, and then,
00:43:26
Speaker
You can always, yeah, you can always rationalize what you need to rationalize. And I think we all know that that's. the case within, it can be the case within Christianity, but um when it's abuse, and then you have to, and then they, when they overstep to a point where they can't rationalize the action, the behavior, they bring in, you know, the grace and forgiveness of Jesus Christ as it's, when it's convenient, which is... Which he used on a bunch of his young yeah female victims. it's ah It's a great conversation. We really enjoyed having Ryan on um and getting to
00:44:02
Speaker
flush out some of his story a bit for you guys. So ah again, his book is called Hurt and Healed by the Church, and then we'll have links to it and his socials and stuff um in the podcast description. Yeah. So like the show, leave us a review, join our Discord, links in our Instagram bio, and enjoy our discussion with Ryan George.
00:44:29
Speaker
Hey, everybody. We are back with our guest, Ryan George, where you're talking to Ryan about his new book, Hurt and Healed by the Church. Ryan, thank you so much for joining us, man. Oh, I'm stoked for this conversation. Let's get to it. Yeah, I'm very excited about it. When I was introduced to you, the pitch was that little blurb of your story is an immediate, like... It's quite the hook, huh? Yeah, it's quite the hook. So we'll dive into that pretty quick. But I did... I did have an opportunity to like, I wish I had an opportunity to read more of it. ah Didn't have a lot of time but I was able to like skim through it, read a few chapters here and there and I was immediately pulled in. um I mean you start the book off with the hook right so that definitely helps but pulled in quick and there were some things.
00:45:18
Speaker
ah For us, in our podcast, we kind of switch lanes a lot with the types of guests that we have. We might have, you know, a stand-up comic one day, you know, your poster child, Exvangelical, who's got, you know, they just want to burn some shit down, perhaps. um hes tattoos yeah And then like every everyone every once in a while, people who are still actively involved in Christianity. And when we talk to those people, we don't really know where it's going to go. So I was pleasantly surprised ah when I was going through the introduction of the first couple chapters of your book. And ah the language you had was very generous. You used words like for me in a very let not a so much of a prescriptive tone. And I appreciated that. And I knew immediately that this wasn't going to turn into something uncomfortably awkward. So.
00:46:05
Speaker
And I can tell by the first five minutes of the conversation we had off mic that ah you got some, there's some similarities here. So i'm I'm definitely excited to do this. Sweet, me too. um So why don't we just start with you kind of giving that hook, you know, I want to hear like your words, the hooks that pulls people in your blurb. I
00:46:29
Speaker
I think it would be best coming from you. Sweet. Yeah. What would you do if you found out on a podcast that your dad, who's a pastor, is a serial sexual predator? Not what you did, probably. And camera too. Not what you did.
00:46:46
Speaker
Oh man, that's wild. But yeah, the opening scene in my book is my dad up on top of me, my senior year of high school. So he was not sexually abusive to me. He was verbally, religiously, and physically abusive with me. My dad hung me. My dad used minus Fahrenheit temperatures to freeze me. Discipline is what he called it. Throw me, choke me, you know, whatever. Threatened to knock all my teeth out. He said, you'll be picking your teeth off the floor. And then he would use the Bible against me and say, hey, in the Old Testament, we were allowed to stone you for being disrespectful for your parents. So this is a reprieve. oh wow it's So there's shame on top of that. um And it was like a switch. So my dad wasn't like that when I was younger. I've talked to my counselor. She's like, seriously, okay there's got to be something before. And I said, no, I think when it was, so when he turned 40, so I was out of been 15 when he turned 40.
00:47:32
Speaker
um My dad was a gifted athlete in high school and fancied himself to still be an athlete at 40. And on his 40th birthday, he challenged me to a foot race in a driveway. We had a long country driveway. We lived in between soybean fields. And I said, I'll see it. Let's do it. Let's do it. And I was taller than him already at 15. I was taller than him by like 13 years old. And so we got out there and I smoked his ass. I mean, I slowed down at the end to be merciful. And he thought that was a window of opportunity. All my siblings saw it, right? And then right about that time is when he had, he and my mom had chosen to homeschool me, which I absolutely hated. And so almost all the fights started with something over homeschool. Cause he was my pastor, he was my teacher, he was my dad, right? And he was my employer later in college. He was my, I was his subcontractor. So oh to all those lanes, imagine having that person in all of those spaces telling you you're less than, right? Telling you that you're going to hell.
00:48:28
Speaker
Telling you I'm disappointed in you or I don't like to grow yet. You're dating or whatever oh It can be brutal to get it from all those lanes even if it's from the same person Sure. So a lot of that start so a lot the shift you said in your dad was when you were around 15 Yeah, it was really, well, maybe even a touch earlier is when we shifted to homeschool. So I shifted in eighth grade is when we We had gone to really small cult schools growing up. In fact, IFP schools. yeah ah One of the schools we left in Pennsylvania, my parents were two of the four teachers for the whole school. So like my dad
00:49:04
Speaker
They had one room. It was third to 12th grade in one room and he was half the teacher. That's what I did. How's that even? Oh, I guess that is. I was going to say, how's that legal? And then I forgot you did that. Yeah, I did that. ACE. ACE baby. You can go a hundred students to a, to one professor in that way. Yeah Yeah, you don't need them. It's in the book. It's in the coloring book Dude, I did I did and if you were really good at it a ce I did in second grade I know that we're bragging about second grade but in second grade I did second grade advanced placement second grade and like a third or a half of third grade in one calendar year Like yeah, I just got bored a ce will let you do that turns out it's not great for you
00:49:44
Speaker
Not necessarily. Yeah. Oh, man. There's so few people. We could watch cartoons on Friday if we got all of our stuff done. So for me, like every Friday, I'm sitting there watching like... Adventures in Odyssey. Oh, no, no, no. We were super old school. It was reel to reel or like, oh, like Charlie Chaplin. I remember watching him on the reel. Oh, reel. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And as a gang, we didn't have a TV. So that was high entertainment for me. lower and hard school families annually crank the projector. Like you're like you're about to watch an old like a film or something. I got to driver's ed in Maryland where we ended up. I took driver's ed. You did it through the local school, but companies competed to be the vendors. Right. And so what they would compete with was the car that you got to drive and driver's ed. Like the competing one had an Iraq Z. We had a Mustang convertible for our driver's ed car.
00:50:34
Speaker
Well, they spent so much time and energy and money on that that they didn't on the rest of it. And so we still had reel-to-reel drivers, Ed, in 1994 or whenever it was that I took the class. And I was the only kid in the class that knew how to run the reel-to-reel because I had gone to an IFE school. They just passed you simply because you were able to support them in that way. Dude, the best scene. And I kept rewinding it. They're like, how do you know how to rewind? there was It was the mist of alcohol um section. And it was ah one of the mists is, well, I've been drinking all my life with some seven-year-old golf.
00:51:05
Speaker
you know, club guy. He's like, I've been drinking all my life. It doesn't affect me. And then he totals his golf cart right in front of us. And we just kept laughing. I kept rewinding it. And my, uh, my boomer instructor was like, what's wrong with you kids? And that was the most popular I'd ever been in my life was keep rewinding and watching that guy crashes golf. but Did you have ah the No Zones on Reel? That's the one that stuck out for me the most. It's just a really cool, like it was definitely 90s style. ah So maybe they made that one right after. Maybe they switch when they switched from Reel to VHS, they were like, there you go we'll tape the No Zones. But it was just a lot of really cool like dorks rapping. Nice. Because that's a better way to reach the youth than put together a little rap video.
00:51:51
Speaker
Yeah. So that one was rough. um But I find it so fascinating. So if you're thinking back to like, you know, as a preteen, you did like, when, when the shift in your dad started, that must have thrown you through such a loop, dude.
Family Dynamics and Homeschooling Impact
00:52:08
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. Because my dad was kind. Where are you in your siblings range and how did it affect them too? So my dad was not physically abusive with any of my five siblings. I'm the oldest of six. When I left for college, my baby sister was three months old. My mom was at least nine months pregnant at my high school graduation. So that's the range right there. okay yeah Same bike, same plumbing, like same two parents for all of us. Are there other boys in the family? Just one. My brother, who is an incredible, I'm not allowed to tell you what he does for the military. He's a badass. And what was his age compared to you?
00:52:43
Speaker
He's 13 years younger than me. He was born at night that I, first time I had a girl fall asleep on my shoulder in junior high. And it was right before I was homeschooled. And I was like, dad, you're taking me away from opportunity. There's girls on these church buses. That was the real, you're ruining my life dad moment. Yeah. Cause at my dad's church, there wasn't like the only girls in my dad's church were my sisters. And so ah and it was a sacrifice and I understood he could have sold it to me the way it's like, Hey, look how hard it says to get up all your sisters and your little brother and drive all the way to another state to go to school. I literally went to school in a different state every day. Cause that was the closest IFB school to where we lived. And eventually it just got to be too hard for my parents to make the truck, you know.
00:53:25
Speaker
So that was kind of the, the impulse there. It wasn't like there was some disciplinary event or something that. No. And they started, it was a good breaking point because so ah the kids in my family are in three pods. We come in three sections and the second set group was about to start kindergarten. And so it's just a clean break. So after me and my oldest sister, um, everybody was homeschooled all the way through. They, they don't have any experience other than homeschool until they got to college. was uh now like the physical abuse did that happen in front of your siblings or was that something where you got pulled aside pulled aside for sure yeah yeah it was it was usually done after they went to bed you know my bedtime was later
00:54:08
Speaker
Um, or, you know, some of the stuff like when my dad sent me out into the, I went back and look at the thermometer. It was negative 32 degrees to quote unquote cool off. Like it was, they'd already gone to bed. You know, it was, it was at night. He's like, you know, I wrapped myself in carpet padding to keep warm. I got under the, um, the camper top shell of my dad's pickup truck to get out of the wind. Um, so yeah, other moments like when my dad hung me off the ground, um, choking me and stuff, uh, They weren't there. And what's amazing is the brute strength of my dad. So he's a little guy, he's five foot eight. And he reached up with one arm while he's hanging me this whole time. He's gonna talk, my feet are dangling. And he's doing it with one arm while he's sitting on the garden tractor. Just his anger was almost like a bionic, like a Samson thing.
00:54:52
Speaker
Um, the, the one time he threw me, I went back and measured and I had, I cleared my bed. So I stayed at least, you know, three feet off the ground and I went back and measured and it was somewhere between eight and 12 feet. My dad chest passed me in the air and I was, you know, six foot tall and 130 pounds or whatever. So I mean, he just, the brute strength was there. That is wild. I, one of the things that you had mentioned, um, in your book was. how he would come down on you for like your sin, like you're a dirty sinner, you're awful, and you were like, I mean, I'm not doing drugs, I'm not drinking, I'm not having sex, I'm not, I'm not, I'm doing all the things that anyone should be doing. I'm not even friends with people who do. Yeah, yeah, that's right, you said that. And it's like, um,
00:55:43
Speaker
It's in that would just was there any like idea of where like would it just come out of nowhere like one day he would just get was there ever a event so is it just I'm angry. And I'm coming after you now like were you able to get any sort of idea of like when or why that was it was almost always an escalate escalated argument or if I talk back to my mom like if I snap back at my mom. Okay, you know this funny how your memory works like some things you can remember The one time is actually because I kicked my sister out of my physically out of my room, you know um And he said hey you want to see just like to be a bully and that's when he threw me and I was so scared He's like see how you feel right now. He's like, that's how your little sister feels But I ran away from home a few times a couple times overnight and
00:56:28
Speaker
I got found in my buddy's garden. He had a gun pointed at me. He's like, man, I thought you were an intruder, but I didn't have a cell phone. I didn't have a light. I didn't have anything. I walked, I don't know, 10, 12 miles from my parents house onto an Island in the Chesapeake Bay to get to his house. And I was laying in the mulch in his garden, just trying to get out of the wind. And, you know, so I, I, it was, it was tumultuous for sure. I'm sure my dad would say that I triggered all of it. Right. Yeah. And so even just is wrapped in something like that, where it was like, you're, this is, this is the just desserts for what you did. And like, so yeah I mean, did you, did you feel like, I mean, was it, was it, did you feel like there was something wrong with what was happening or did you feel like, well, I don't like this, but.
00:57:21
Speaker
No, I didn't know it would take years. I mean, I was married for years before I was even able to use the word abuse because my dad would call it creative discipline. So I'll give an example. So I bought the first CD player in the house. Give them creative. Yeah. The service merchandise. Do you remember this store? You would buy your electronics and it would come out on a conveyor belt. It was like Best Buy before Best Buy. I heard about it. The whole experience was that your thing came out of the wall on a conveyor belt to you. It was like magic Christmas. If I saved up with my earnings, I cut grass for a living and i I bought the first CD player in the house and I got grounded for something. He's like, all right, I'm going to take your stereo. And I said, you can't take my stereo. You don't own it. You can take whatever away from me that you own, but you don't own my state. Take my, take the truck. I don't own that. Take whatever.
00:58:05
Speaker
He said, that's all right. He's like, I know it's a status symbol for you, but I pay the electricity. So just give me the power cord. You can keep it on your shelf. All your friends know you have the latest and greatest CD player, you know, um but I get the power cord. And so he would do stuff like that. I remember one time I went to get spanked. I think it was the last time he was going to spank me. And you're a teenager. You're a teenager getting spanked. I was probably 12. It was in that transition time. And the last time he brought it in and he handed me the belt, and I couldn't do it. I couldn't hit him. I didn't want to hit anybody. You can imagine with being hit growing up, I didn't want to hit anybody. And he said, yeah, I don't want to hit you either. So don't make me do it.
00:58:42
Speaker
And so like, I just thought he was creative, you know, like he would, the ways, the interesting ways that he would ground me, he would ground me from just one little thing so that it would be like the burr under your saddle, you know. um And for dumb stuff, I let my so my sisters and brothers watch the Big Green, which is like the soccer version of the Mighty Ducks. Yeah. Great movie. Oh, I love that movie, especially ah some of the songs in there. But um I didn't ask permission. I just showed them it. But we were allowed to watch Mighty Ducks, so I figured, you know. But it was the fact that he had to be in control of every little thing. It was the kind it was the ah authoritarian stuff. it was
00:59:18
Speaker
I got to tell you guys, and I'm not trying to take this conversation political, but like when I hear Trump talk, I hear my dad talk, but it's this whole, yeah you do it. my I don't care if it's right. You do it my way because I told you that's how you do it. And if not, there's hell to pay. where So, oh, so that's an interesting direction and that's fine to take it in that direction. Um, when Trump first started running, ah did you connect, did it take you a minute to connect to that? Or was that like an immediate, like, cause you were saying it wasn't, it was, Trump started running before, I want to say that you really started maybe coming to terms and thinking about writing this book and a lot of the shit blew up. I had fully left and I was out. i I hadn't started therapy yet, that part is true. Okay. um It's funny talking to my counselor, the burst of people going into therapy after Trump got elected, I wonder if a whole bunch of people got triggered the same way, right?
01:00:12
Speaker
um I knew my dad was authoritarian by that point. um and i knew I knew my dad was sexually deviant. I didn't know all the details that I would find out ah by the end of Trump's term, but um yeah, I knew he was messed up. and so there was a lot of My dad's not as tall as Trump. He's definitely not as rich as Trump. Are his hands bigger? probably Probably, but it wouldn't take much from what I've heard. So yeah, I don't i don't know. That's an interesting. But now, like there's and Mark Driscoll, I don't know if you remember the... Who the hell do you think you are? You know, from a Christianity Today's, ah whatever that was, the Mars Hill podcast. Man, I heard my dad in that too. like You can hear it in a lot of authoritarian voices because what it is, it's a super fragile ego that's compensating with bravado and violence where necessary.
01:01:05
Speaker
What's the other guy, ah Sam? Who's that other jerk off that we've talked about? the ah like There's witches in this congregation. Oh, well, Jack, Kyle's Jack. I mean, there's a bunch of them. That's, uh, uh, some Tennessee. Yeah. And I can't remember his name. Oh, Greg lock. So not so much his, his accent keeps him safe. Yeah. There was one IFB pastor, um, in Indiana that would make, I had not seen this, but I heard.
01:01:35
Speaker
through the grapevine that um his lieutenants who all wore matching ties, just like Trump's guys did in New York, they all wore matching ties to him. And at random points during the service, he would have him drop down and do pushups on stage to prove who the alpha male was. And his father-in-law, his father-in-law, I linked to this in the book. You can find it on YouTube. It was recorded. He said that every person who goes to jail for rape, their victim should be in the next cell next to him. And he would yell that from the pulpit. Whoa. Yeah. And he had the biggest IFB church in America. He had over 30,000 people in his church. He had 86 buses in his bus ministry. Like that dude was revered. My dad looked up to that guy. That is wild. It's like douchebag brinksmanship has been going on a lot longer than I thought.
01:02:20
Speaker
ah and why Well, you know, um if you've seen Shiny Happy People, a lot of that is the ecosystem I grew up in. yeah They show that page in Bill Gothard's manual that tells predators how to get their victims to be quiet. Like the talking points, the how to how to use God and Jesus in different ways to get, like they told they would tell sexual assault victims, this is your chance to show off God's grace and mercy for the Lord's anointed. Like you bearing this burden is a gift to you. I mean, it's just gross. Yeah. That's hard to stomach hearing those ideas. My dad, after he was sexually, I think two of his assault victims, we've we've been able to confirm this so far.
01:02:59
Speaker
After he would do what he did, these despicable gross things he did, he would then pray out loud in front of them and ask God for forgiveness and then turn to them and say, look, I just asked God for forgiveness. We know from scripture, God just forgave me. So now there's no need for you to tell anybody because I've been forgiven and anything you say is going to be gossip. And then he would quote all kinds of verses like, you know, just crap stuff. And that's, says you hear about that a lot. Like i when like the big Catholic Church scandal thing blew too, you would hear, you know, a lot of those same patterns. That that is the pattern within, not just Christianity, any sort of like predatory
01:03:39
Speaker
be Larry Nassar, I'm sure, something similar. Ted Haggard did the same thing. Okay. I didn't sort of phone calls of him with one of the men that he like you know um made advances on that was you know supposed to be in his counsel or whatever. you know he He did the same thing of like, you know it's isn't it better to forgive? I mean, it was definitely a softer spoken version of the same thing, but it was yeah, same thing. Same thing. you do You think there's any like that this is heavily speculative. ah But when you talk about your dad getting like so furious about your your sin when you really weren't doing anything wrong. Do you think any of that is related to him? Just there's a little bit of self hatred there for what he's done and he's taking it out on you. Or do you think he's just too much and like he's not even able to really think about his behavior that way psychopath.
01:04:38
Speaker
I don't know. I think there's remorse there. I don't want to make my dad out to be like he he didn't feel bad for what he did. I mean, he would come back sometimes and apologize or whatever. um And hurt people hurt people. You know, my dad was abused. His dad was abused. My grandfather was beaten by his dad with chains. Jesus Christ. There's one of my ancestors. I have not seen this book. I've been told by my uncle. One of my ancestors was mentioned in a book about being the meanest man in America. So like it, that stuff rolls downhill, right? Like, of course it makes sense. It passes from generation. I try to give my dad some grace in that, but at the same time I broke that chain, figuratively speaking. So I know that it's, it was possible to do, but part of it was, you know, I didn't have six kids. I wasn't working two full-time jobs. I wasn't home educating and all, you know, like there's a line in the book. I said, uh, I was talking about how tired my dad was. I said, my dad didn't take a vacation. I think once in like 12 years.
01:05:36
Speaker
And he's home educating. He's the only pastor's church. He's setting it up every Sunday. he's working My dad dug ditches until I went to college for a living and then he cleans carpets. like That's his business now. Very manual, sticky, dirty. You need a shower when you come home from work type of jobs. And then you teach Bible class to your kids in grade. And then he wrote four sermons a week by hand. He wrote an article in the local paper every week. like Then he went door to door visitation every Thursday. like I just don't even know how he did it. So I think he his he was so worn down physically and emotionally that it didn't take very much. you know The fuse was just short. You said you you said something earlier about like how you knew that he was a sexual deviant, but that you didn't know
01:06:23
Speaker
That he had been an abuser. I didn't grown up, but like after we were married, you know, like we'd heard a story. So my, I would have been married about a year. So then 2001 we heard he had quote unquote had an affair with a 19 year old. We would learn. 20 years later that it was a consensual start before she was 19. It was repeated. It was it was just gross. There was ah They got a handwritten letter from him. There's he was being considered for a documentary on IFB pastor abuse and so they had they had some pretty good receipts on him and so we knew that we knew like ah
01:06:56
Speaker
and A few years later, we learned about another victim. like We didn't learn about it all at once, but what happened was when the podcast came out three, four years ago, it put all the pieces together. and there were things you know My mom would never tell us the rest of the story. My dad still hasn't told us all of the story. The the victim that we know would be like victim number one chronologically ah There's two victims that heard or two witnesses that heard when they went to tell my mom that my mom said, oh, not again. And to this day, I don't and my siblings don't, we don't know who the people was before, oh, not again. And we don't know how many.
01:07:30
Speaker
Oh, not again. There were, you know, we left Tennessee under weird circumstances and we used to have college kids in our house all the time. Girls would come and get their fittings. My mom was a seamstress. The college kids that couldn't go home for Thanksgiving would come over to our house. We had our babies. We we had girls in our house all the time. It wouldn't surprise me now if one of those or more was a victim. Then when he was a school teacher in Pennsylvania, you know, we had 40 some kids in a school with four teachers. Like there's a lot, I know there's rooms where you can go get lost and make out with your girlfriend. So I'm sure, In second grade, I thought I was a player. ah But so I know there could have been places my dad could have gone and done. you know So we just don't even know. There's so much mystery to it now. Are your parents still together? Depends on how you define that. They live in the same house, and they run a business together. But yeah, they're not in the same bedroom. And growing up, like ah was there and i I guess it's hard to necessarily know. but
01:08:29
Speaker
Did you perceive your parents as having like a good relationship growing up or did you just, Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I remember. So my, my bathroom quote unquote was out on the porch. We had a, it was really cold in the wintertime and it was really warm in the summer, but that I could go take a dump there anytime I wanted. I remember going out there and it was like added onto the house later. And I heard my parents joking around in the shower as a teenager. So I mean, they were still, yeah, I don't know when the wheels came off. Like I don't know. I remember when my dad gave me the talk, you know, the big one. And he was like, yeah, on Sunday afternoons, uh, don't knock on the door. You know, I was like, that's how we end this talk. We're going to, you're going to tell me when you're doing my mom. So yeah. So, I mean, I had no clue. I had zero clue. That's so, so even into adulthood, like in, and as stuff started coming out was, uh,
01:09:19
Speaker
What was your perception on how she handled was it? Did but she just... Well, at first, i alonged with it for years and years, I pitied my mom. You know, my dad had that affair right after she popped out her her sixth kid, you know, and she was struggling with her health. The doctors had to break her her pelvis to get my sister out. ah So she was dealing with health problems and whatever else. And so like my guess is my dad just directed his sexual energy somewhere else. And so like for a long time, it was pity because we didn't know the rest of the story. What was told to us is someone cheated on
01:09:53
Speaker
my mom, so like you'd feel horrible for my mom. And then the the second victim that we learned about in 2012, dad worked out a deal with with me and the victim that when we went up to confront him, me he's like, you're not telling either of your families, you're not telling the victim's family, you're not telling Ryan, you're not telling your mom, like you're not telling your brothers and sisters until I say. And I wanted to honor the victim. The victim wasn't ready yet. She hadn't gotten into therapy. She hadn't practiced her story and all that kind of stuff. And so I waited until she was comfortable to tell her story. And I went back to her in 2019 because ah we were at a gathering. So my parents, they have a big house, like massive old, like late 1800s, early 1900s house, a pool, their pastor misses. So people are coming in and out. My dad's got a business. There's just a whole bunch of people there.
01:10:39
Speaker
And my wife was painting in one of the rooms and she pulled her earbuds out. She's like, what? And she heard my dad talking to a nine and 11 year old about how the women in Solomon Solomon were praised for their body parts. And it was like a record scratch moment. And so I went back to victim number two that we knew about. And I said, Hey, this just happened at my parents house. Like I think let's pray. We've actually fasted and prayed for a month off and on. And we're like, I think we need to do something about this. Like I want to honor your story, but if you're ready, like I think we need to, I think we need to go public with this, at least to her family and to mine and to tell my mom, you know? And so yeah, 2019 was one of the hardest, hardest years of my life.
01:11:18
Speaker
i yeah I can't imagine finding all that information out. And then having enough ah having enough breadcrumbs to then you're kind of hit with a huge flood. It's not just like do this insulated like in a vacuum moment of impropriety. it's like Oh, fuck. And you just, everything connects all those years because it's, you know, it's not that if you were in a PI or some sort of sleuth trying to find some nefarious shit, you couldn't have maybe started a piece and again, but it's like, it's your dad. You're just, you're not, you're not looking for the, that darkness. You're not looking to find
01:12:02
Speaker
where things may or may not, where things may have looked weird. You're just kind of like, you're you're one, you're a kid for most of it, but to be hit with that, did you was that one of those things that happened when when that moment where you realized and there was a confirmation that there was something nefarious happening? It just- The end scene that in ah the first Oceans 11 where they're walking out And they're showing you how everything happened. Yeah. Oh, they had a second version of the basement. Oh, that and and and they're like, Oh, and, and the casino owners like putting together is like, Oh, that guy walked in here. That guy, it was kind of like that, but gross. Yeah. That's a really good. Cause you saw it happen.
01:12:47
Speaker
And your perception was, that's just a gambler. That's the old guy at this table. Oh, that's just the repairman. Oh, that's just of this, right? And you go, and so what I have now is is actually a mystery, because I don't know what some of that stuff was. And so one of the things, and I didn't think anything of it at the time. In 1998, 1999, somewhere in there, my mom and I were doing door-to-door visitation on the island ah where my dad's church was, and just visiting strangers and saying, hey, do you have a faith? Do you have a church? If not, we'd love to invite you to ours. And this stranger, I still don't know who this lady is. ah She said, well, what church do you go to? And we named my dad's church. And she said, oh, I would never go there. That pastor is having an affair. And my mom's like right here, right? And she goes, I think you have it wrong. That's my husband, I would know. And this stranger looked at my mom and said, oh, honey, you don't know your husband. Whoa. And so then when my dad, you know, three years later or whatever it was, told us about victim that we would call victim number one. ah
01:13:46
Speaker
he called it an affair. And so now we go, oh, well, and then I always wondered, so they drove from where they live almost two hours each way to go to marriage counseling in a different state. And I and didn't make sense to me before until I learned out how mandatory reporting works. I was like, Oh, that son of a gun was like making sure that no counselor could ever turn them in. Right? Like he's one of the victims, uh, attorneys, yeah she, she came to me, the victim came and she said, would you be willing to help prosecute your dad? I said, absolutely. you know I'm not going to stand the way of justice. I'll help it. And I talked to her attorney and he was like, dude, your dad was so slick. I have a that attorney and I don't know if you can't say this. So if you can't, that's fine, but I, the, there's an attorney who I know of who his entire
01:14:31
Speaker
platform. He's from Pennsylvania. His entire platform is built on really trying to hold church leaders accountable. Uh, that may be him. I don't even know. Yeah. Boz. Is it? Uh, he's a actually oh it wasn't a boss. No, no, no. It wasn't boss. Okay. Yeah. He's like the grandson of Billy Graham and his entire legal platform is holding pastors accountable for their sexual misconduct. I'm glad for it. I think one of the things that like really like digs at your brain sometimes with with stories like this is, you know, you you talked about like how much your dad put into
01:15:18
Speaker
Like his quote unquote ministry, you know, setting up the church and writing four sermons a week and stuff like that. Just like a lot of the, the, the behavior of a person who is devout and dedicated to this ministry. You know, I think like the question that comes up, I feel like for people when, when they hear this kind of thing is like, well, does he actually believe any of this stuff? And I know that's not a face value question, but like you do have to kind of wonder like, what are the mental gymnastics that he's going through when, you know, obviously to do, to do this, to go through the steps that you were talking about of like going to marriage counseling, you know, over state lines, you know, ah doing the research to know.
01:16:05
Speaker
That that's the case and to do it and follow through and stuff like that, you know, sending you to a school in like a different place and like set me, you know, sectioning off your family and and isolating you from other people. Like there had to be so much of his bandwidth that was tied up in like. protecting himself from the things that he had done while still maintaining control over you guys. Eventually, you just run out of time and energy, right? Like you can't, especially if you're lying, eventually you have to you have to keep a database of all your lies. But does did my dad believe all that stuff? Absolutely. To this day, my dad my dad still believes he's holier than me.
01:16:52
Speaker
like I think that's what's tough about IFB in that fundamentalist bent is that more than a fundamentalism, I think more than any any form of fundamentalism. It just allows you to, because it's all wrapped up in the idea that you believe the right things. There's very little outside of that. I mean, it's the same with CrossFit. It's the same with essential oils. It's the same with any other, you know, thing where you you're right now, Trumpism, right? MAGA. Like, there is no other reality. How many MAGA people this weekend were posting that meme of saying, well, i I worship a convicted felon as well because Jesus is like Trump. And you're like, What the actual hell like, you know, and so when you're in it, that's all, you know, I'm sure my dad thinks that he's done so much for the kingdom to compensate for what he did wrong, but I don't know. Yeah. And
Fundamentalism's Evolving Beliefs
01:17:51
Speaker
that's also, I think the interesting thing about fundamentalism is it it really can be a numbers game. Christianity can be a numbers game too, where it's like, well, yeah, you go, look what I've done. These people have gotten saved. I've baptized this many people. Yeah.
01:18:04
Speaker
you know heard a few along the way, but look at all, i've done yeah, you do ah get, it doesn't, when, when the only stakes and the only thing that's important is. what you believe happens in eternity. It allows for the actions in this life. take I would think the scariest verse in the Bible for my dad is the one where Jesus is talking about, ah I don't know if he's a parable or like a prediction, but he was like, many are going to say, but God, didn't we do all this stuff in your name? Didn't we do this and this and this? And he's going to say, I don't know you.
01:18:36
Speaker
I'm sorry, man. Like i don't I don't know who you are. And i I would think that would be so scary for someone like my dad. And that's convicting to me, right? I can say, well, my streak, I've been serving on the same team in my church for 18 years. Look at what I, you know what I'm saying? I just, I was an observer break. I deserve to go have an affair or what, you know, like you could, I haven't, this but I'm just saying, like I can see how someone could go, look, at I've done all these things. you know My wife is ah works in missions, she's all over the world. She just got back from the border of Ukraine and Russia, live fire 200 yards away from them. ah She can say, hey, look, I deserve whatever this coping mechanism is. And she doesn't, you know I love her for that. But there is that self congratulatory, kind of give yourself an excuse. We saw that with Ravi Zacharias, you know the guy who was like a,
01:19:26
Speaker
Apologist going around and then he would be like, but I deserve to get a massage from these women. you know yeah That's a perfect example. The human condition in general is like, it's unless you're going to stop and pause and and do the work, like our our default mode I think is to, like it's that it's the ah it's my world and everybody's living in it, main character syndrome type shit. where yeah like I mean, we watch, moot you can watch movies where felt that character that you like makes that misstep, but is ultimately great. And you can, like, there's so many, or, you know, you can point to some great leaders who had missteps. And I think we allow ourselves, I think that is our general defensive mindset of just, I, you you have, you're always trying to rationalize
01:20:19
Speaker
Everything that you believe uh, which is in ah in fundamentalism everything that you believe is it's a numbers game It's just uh, you're good if you check the right boxes. So And they create more boxes, right? So fundamental so fundamentalism by nature by definition should have the fewest fundamentals of any religion When the reverse is true, right and that's same for muslim That's the same for any religion that you put, you know, fundamentalism type uh authoritarian regimes in is they create more boxes to check Yeah, yeah. Oh, well, if I only have to have like, if I'm going to have three unchecked boxes, let me create 57 check boxes, so that these three don't mean as much. That, ah i that kind of makes me think of um ah in,
01:21:05
Speaker
in your book, I highlighted this because the the the line stuck out to me. And I think that regardless of where people end up, um evangelical, ex-vangelical, post-vangelic, whatever one you pick. um I'm just going to read it real quick because I think it connects to here and I think it resonates with a lot of people regardless where they landed. It says, you wrote, um back then growing up meant gaining more ways to defend my beliefs and finding more discipline to abide by the legalist parameters of my religion. I didn't realize that some of those extra biblical standards were younger than the incandescent light bulb and in some cases younger than my grandparents, far from centuries old orthodoxy. All I knew
01:21:49
Speaker
was the part of the purest religion, the rightist faith, the holiest church, and I want to uphold my end of the deal. And I think that is fundamentalism at its finest. It's new. The beliefs don't go far back. Some of them started a couple hundred years ago. That Christian science was an older cult. I was like, are you serious?
01:22:14
Speaker
Right? Yeah, I mean, you even look, ah And I don't know where you would land on this, but even you look at like, you know, our type typical, like evangelical dispensationalism and time stuff was John Nelson Darby in the 1800s. Yeah. And it doesn't date back 2000 years. It doesn't date back 1500 years. That wasn't on anyone's radar until the 1800s. Um, not that like, you know, apocalypticism hasn't always existed in some form or fashion, but in our modern day evangelical sense and
01:22:48
Speaker
A lot of our fundamentalist cults just point to that as kind of the big scary factor in all of this. Like that's right around the corner. What's going to happen if you don't do the right thing? And and that that to me is, I think that excerpt is kind of fundamental as a nutshell. It's new, but they made us believe it was old. um And they made us believe that if we didn't believe it, then we didn't align ourselves with Jesus or God or what have you. I almost wonder if fundamentalism can exist for long periods of time. Like is it kind of, is there a fundamentalist like doom loop where, I mean, cause it's constantly at war with itself and subjecting like those around it to purity tests and it just whittles its way down all the time, you know? Like there's no big tent fundamentalism really. I mean, it always evolves into, you know, struggle sessions and cullings.
01:23:49
Speaker
Well, and that's part of why it works. I can't speak to all kinds of it, but for IFB, the most important letter is the I, right? Like every church gets to make it in their own image. So there's pastors out there. I, if you guys, I don't know if you follow the Instagram account, bad sermons, but all they do is post clips of these IFB pastors put online. They, they go like find out. outrage Oh my gosh, it's hilarious. Like some pastors are preaching against like eating candy bars or one guy preached against having open-toed shoes because that's showing skin There was no I agree with that guy. I'm because I feel like so many people who wear open-toed shoes don't have the toenails for it. I used to sell shoes in college, so I worked for my dad my other job. I worked for a shoe store, and ah there should never be open-toed shoes for men. My 24-year-old agenda is to ban chakos and abortion pills. That's what I want. Get them out.
01:24:47
Speaker
Yeah, at least cross cover the toes. But yeah, so like we had going down to our college, it's interesting. So I'm 15 minutes from Liberty University and fall over. That's where we went. There you go. i live whatever bread baby yeah So I'm in Evington. ah So but LU is on US 29 and Pensacola Christian College is on US 29, both. So when we would head south to go to Pensacola Christian College, there were, we counted 20 some IFB churches on 29. So we just rounded it to 29 on 29. And I bet you could find a different set at each of those churches, right? Cause a local guy runs his fiefdom and he says, no, you guys are allowed to, brothers and sisters can swim together, but not boys and girls from the church. Right. Or like my dad's rule is guys and girls can swim together, but both have to wear shirts over their bathing suits.
01:25:37
Speaker
or whatever. like And so what happens is you get all these weird little rules. And sweatpants and cinder block shoes. You can buy gas on Sunday, but you can't buy food or whatever, right? like
Abuse and Hypocrisy in Churches
01:25:49
Speaker
It was crazy. Just splitting hair. it's oh Yeah. And that that's got to come from like that.
01:25:57
Speaker
It that's just coming from within, you know, that's there's just not no reason for it. It's like I feel this way. I think that's the danger. I wouldn't mind getting into some of this, too, but because you talk about it in your book that that weaponized biblical language and shit is like. That's ah the danger of these insulated groups where they you you can you all they all convince themselves that the feelings they have about everything, they're not just personal or private their their godsent and they have to disseminate that amongst their flock and It's such a that's
01:26:39
Speaker
That's the dangerous game of all, that's all cults, really. That is, so yeah. So what that work is, that guy gets to say, thus says the Lord, right? They confuse, they use a lot, they confuse things on purpose. They like to use the Old Testament
Personal Faith Journey and Community
01:26:52
Speaker
where it helps them, right? And then the Old Testament, the prophet could say, no, no, no, this is from the Lord. It's not written anywhere, but it's from the Lord, right? Which all that stuff was done away with Jesus, and no matter what version of dispensational or not. Like Jesus, we all know Jesus did away with the way stuff used to work. And, but they would claim that and be like, so I can say this and say, thus saith the Lord. And because they say other things that are actually in there, then who are you going to argue? Like, well, that's that's Isaiah or that's Nehemiah or whoever, you know, that's whoever this prophet is. That's Jonah or whoever. They get to make it up.
01:27:26
Speaker
And so that's the dangerous part is now this guy's got a blank check and he can write and cash anything he wants, including victims, right? He'd be like, Hey, ah one of my friends churches, i and there's podcasts about this guy, he got busted, but he would have teenagers do sexual services on him in his office and then go out and preach in the pulpit, like in his church office and then walk out and in his, in his church, he would preach against women wearing pants. Right. And so you'd have, Oh, she can, this teenager can do this in your office for you. And then you can go preach that she's not allowed to wear pants. Like it's just mind boggling the mental gymnastics that it requires to, to maintain that system. Yeah. I truly wonder how, cause that's, I mean, that's, that's the problem that obviously so many people have with religion.
01:28:16
Speaker
all religion in general. and Some people overreact and act like it's uniquely a Christian problem. it's not um but But it does, regardless of whether or not it's uniquely Christian, that polls people i mean that if the people in charge can justify that or work their way around it or figure out how in their mind they want to explain it away when they get caught, like thats That's such a big part of people going, there's no there is no power here. This is not real. It does not work.
01:28:53
Speaker
um and And so now for me, the way that my faith community, I have two faith communities that I'm a part of. One is ah like what we would call a church and the other is a prayer church organization that I started. And both of them are a response to that and that there are, there's nobody teaching or if like at at my my Sunday church, if you call it, like there's, everything's in tables. So the guy might set it up and you might do a little homily or whatever, but then the discussion is at the tables. and And it makes sense that I would fall into that after being in an authoritarian system, right? So I've got guys at my table on Wednesday nights and from 17 to 80 and we all get equal say, no one gets the final word. Nobody gets to say, thus says the Lord, right? And that's a reaction for me to go, well, let's just dig into the red letters of the Bible and see what's in there. Hey, what do you think about this? Hey, what do you think about that? That egalitarian inoculates a lot of that.
01:29:43
Speaker
It gets rid of the ego, right? Because somebody else can say, well, I mean, that's, that's an opinion, but nobody has the final, like, here's the hammer going down. This is the man of God said, this is how it's going to be. And so a lot of the things in my current faith communities are a reaction to the one that I grew up in. They're the opposite of, right? Like we have my, my wife is basically a pastor. She doesn't have that label, but that's what she does. Like, and she wouldn't have been allowed to speak at my church growing up, right? Like yeah those different things are a response to go, no, no, no, no, no. that's That's a bastardized version of what church can be and what it should be. And so, yeah in some ways, that the environments I'm in now are as weird to normal church
01:30:26
Speaker
in the other direction. People walk into our church. and We used to be a mega church. We were huge, like 4,000 on an Easter Sunday. And now I think we're like 800 people on a Sunday. And you walk in and our sanctuary is just tables. And you're like, wait a second, on a Sunday? like this is But the people who are still there go, you know what? I walk in there. My heart is safe. Nobody's telling me. I have to think a certain way. We have a bunch of people who are, I would call them pre-believers, they're just checking it out. And they're like, no, I'm comfortable here to tell you. I remember the first time I went to a circle at our church and the couple who were leading the table, now we don't have table leaders on Sundays, but this was like a midweek group.
01:31:02
Speaker
And they were having a hard time getting pregnant. And they said, we're having a hard time believing that God is good right now. Like we love him, but we don't know if we like him. And I didn't know that you were allowed to say that, right? Because the authoritarian thing that I grew up in is you have the same answers. You never admit when you have doubts, fear, struggles, challenges, temptations, insecurities, all that stuff. And so we're now it's normative. ah One of the phrases we use in the group that I have on Wednesday nights is give people the gift of going second. So whoever's boldest at the table, take it as deep and as intimate and as get as far behind the facade as you can. Because that's so counter cultural to evangelical culture, right? And we've we've got guys coming now from like six different churches because they yeah ah this is refreshing to not have, like I was talking to a buddy the other day, his pastor has somebody, he has a special parking spot. He has secret service come to his door and walk him into the building I was like my pastor parks out in the field like 200 yards from our church when he comes in in the morning Like it's so foreign to me this whole like keeping the men on a pedestal That most of faith environments that i'm in that my wife's involved in that egalitarian circle, um counter dicks all of that Interesting yeah, it seems like uh
01:32:17
Speaker
There's, and maybe it's a part of the fundamentalist thing too, but, um, one of the things that we talk about a lot is Christian, like the evangelicalism that we grew up in and stuff, they have this, like, this like obsessive predilection with like. ah being certain and being correct about things and being certain and being correct are the end goal of like so much of what they do, you know, and that's where you get like these long detailed doctrinal statements that you have to sign to get into the church, you know, and and stuff like 14. Do you sign up on this? Right. Exactly. And it sounds like.
01:33:03
Speaker
what your church is doing is somewhat rejecting like that that impulse and leaving room for people to talk their way through things and and to sort of you know, feel out where they, what they actually believe rather than just like
Embracing Uncertainty in Faith
01:33:20
Speaker
planting a flag in something and, and, and stating that this is their belief, even though it's not something that they've like really worked through or have any sort of commitment to. Hmm. Have you guys read that book by Pete ends the sin of certainty? Yeah. Pete ends was big for me. Um, shifting kind of.
01:33:39
Speaker
shifting out of what I grew up in. It was really important. So one of the reasons that my church is, I think this way. So my pastors are adrenaline junkies. I have two pastors who used to race motorcycles. One who was an ice climber, white water paddler. One of them's jumped out of planes with me. One of them flew experimental aircraft. One of them just got back diving in the great barrier reef. Like adventure is like all over. One of my buddies who doesn't go to church calls it adventure church. Like there's extreme sports. I used to have a guy in my parking team at church who flew ah those like backpack fans with the parachutes, you know? a yeah whole and And I'm an adrenaline junkie. I've been all over the world. ah Both polar circles. I've surfed in the Arctic. I go out on the wings of airplanes while they're doing like tumbling maneuvers and stuff.
01:34:17
Speaker
And so what I know about faith is that, um, there's more scared and unsure. I am the better the rush, right? So the fifth time you ride the roller coaster, it's not as scary, even though your body's doing the same thing because your mind has figured out, no, no, no, there's certainty. I'm not going to come out, but until there's certainty, there's fear, right? Like if, if I trust my harness and my pilot and my airplane and all this stuff before I go out and wing walk, like I'm not as scared anymore. Right. And so what I've learned in that is taking that into the faith space with these adrenaline junky pastors is to go, yeah, the more uncertain we are, the more rewarding it is when we surrender to that thing, when we have the faith to trust that God is good in this moment, when it's hard to see if that makes any sense. And so I'm just surrounded. I mean, some of my mentors in the faith are white water guides and like, I'm just surrounded by guys who do dumb stuff all over the planet. And so it translates into our faith because we go, hey, I know.
01:35:12
Speaker
When I do the hard thing, the scary thing, I'm going to be rewarded. and and so that We're incentivized. you know There is such a thing as like a dopamine addiction. like Scientists are finding this out now. that It's happening in our faith that we're getting addicted. If we haven't had this like uncomfortable challenge spiritually recently, then something's a little off. like If I haven't been uncomfortable for my faith in a month, I start to shake like I've had too much coffee. you know and so I think part of it is just the culture that I'm in. I don't think it's a universal thing, but it's made it easier for me to realize that faith is the opposite of certainty. Faith is fears, doubts, all those things, insecurity rolled into one. And I can't have faith unless I have both of those.
01:35:55
Speaker
ah Can I ask you to flesh out what you mean by reward? Because I think some people might could take that plenty of different directions growing up in Christianity where it's like, I paid my penance. I got my blessings from God. What's that reward for you? What are you feeling about that? Autoerotic asphyxiation. It's my favorite chapter of the book, dude. Oh, gosh. Now there's this weird sense that you're in the right place at the right time. And I don't know that I've found adequate words. I'm a writer by trade. I have you know a writing degree. I've written three books and I don't know how many 600 blog posts or whatever, but i I fail with words to describe what that feels like to know. Oh.
01:36:39
Speaker
I'll give you an example once. This is weird. This is kind of mystical. I'm embracing more mystical stuff now. But i before I go on one of these adventures around the world, I will pray to God, will you will you show me why it is that I'm drawn to this place at this point in time? like something's going Why in the world am I doing this? like I don't understand. And that prayer gets answered every trip, by the way. But my first time I went to Iceland, I went in the dark. um We could Thanksgiving. And so like you get like, I don't know, six hours a daylight or whatever, and then it's super dark. Well, I was standing on this famous beach called Vic Beach, V-I-K. It's it's known Black Sand Beach and these really weird looking lava lava rocks that are very distinctive. like You could make a logo out of them, like the Patagonia is for Fitzroy down in Patagonia. um And I was there at night.
01:37:26
Speaker
And the waves are coming in. Can you guys hear that printer? You're good. I don't think so. My wife forgot that I'm recording and she just hit print on something. Anyway, so let me say, so I'm standing on Vic beach, very distinctive rock formations, all black lava. I'm on black sand, black sky, black water. And this was the year we confronted my dad. This was the year that our daughter came to live with us before we decided to adopt. This was so much upheaval in my business and my family, whatever. And I'm standing up there, I don't know, nine o'clock at night. I said, guys, my life back home feels like this. I don't know where the horizon line is. I don't know what ends up. Like I know gravity's holding me in place, but that's about it. I know I'm in Iceland.
01:38:06
Speaker
And I come home three days later and at our church, our weekend church, they have like video playing behind the lyrics when we're singing. And it was a scene from Vic Beach that the guys didn't know that I was there, had stock footage rolling behind there. And I'm looking at lyrics talking about God's sovereignty and that he knows what he's doing. And it's just in those moments just go, okay, all right, I'm going to embrace being a dad to this kid I didn't know. I'm going to embrace this path of saying true things about my dad. I'm going to embrace this change in my business, whatever. And so I've had this over and over last year when I went to Arctic circle to do survival training up in the snow, um, got answered my prayer by the time I got out of JFK and the rest of the trip was a cherry on top because he'd already answered my prayer to go, no, no, no. You were meant to be on this plane on this specific flight for this specific moment. And it's just a sense of contentment. And like, man, I'm alive for this. I remember the first time I took ah a wing walking class. So when you go out in the wings of a plane, there's actually a school you go to up in Washington state and they teach you the choreograph.
01:39:04
Speaker
how to get out on the wings, do everything before you start tumbling. And I got back to the ground and my classmates yelled over to like, how was it? you know Over the engine and I said, I've never been more alive. Cuz you just defeated gravity. You're hanging upside down 3,000 feet off the ground with your feet. you know
Healing in Safe Faith Communities
01:39:21
Speaker
And I felt that way in my face so many times. where You go, I've never felt more alive than I feel right now. And I don't know how to, That's the inadequacies. I don't know how to help somebody else have that feeling. And in some ways you maybe can't. um I think what I like about what you're saying, the one I'm hearing is like, and I'm saying this mostly because of, you know, our audience is predominantly people who are out. um And sometimes I think when people who are out here, things
01:39:58
Speaker
from a particularly Christian perspective where they hear more traditional Christian language, there's a little bit of a triggering moment. It gets their hackles up and it's hard for them to like actually process the deeper things that are being said there. And I think that what you're saying and what you're communicating and that peace and that acceptance of uncertainty from ah ah from a slightly different perspective, I feel like I can connect with what you're saying when like in a moment where I was able to finally embrace this and despite me going in a different direction, that unknown and that comfort and that peace in in a sort of mystery. And I hear, I think that's what, I think what you're saying is what a lot of people, regardless of where they've ended up is, is sure is hoping for, where like just that moment of im I'm on at least the right path or that acceptance of who we are or that acceptance and hope for where we're going,
01:40:57
Speaker
um I think those are, that's what I'm hearing from you. And I think that's beautiful. And I think sometimes when people hear that, who are out and who have been hurt, hear that cloaked in Christian language, miss the deeper meaning behind that. So I just. want And even that gets weaponized, right? Like people try to. Oh, well, sinners hurt sinners or hurt people hurt people or, you know, the church is just full of imperfect people. You should come on back. Like, no, man. Like if someone molested me in a YMCA, I'm probably going to work out everywhere else but a YMCA. Right. Right. I get it. And so like, I've, I've been there when people try to minimize and, you know, pat you on the head and be like, was it really that bad? Like, can't you just forgive? and
01:41:40
Speaker
I hate it. I think a lot of the abuse of the church, a lot of the damage that's done by the abuse, I should say, is done after the abuse. right yeah yeah Like in some ways, the stuff that was said to me religiously later, or said about me by my family or whatever was worse than getting punched by my dad. My dad never punched me. He would choke me or throw me or whatever, but like those physical moments, those are over in 30 seconds, right? Um, some of the things that are said afterwards, like I remember one of my dad's victims when she came forward, one of the older ladies in the church said, well, what did you expect young lady?
01:42:15
Speaker
You know, like, as if to put the blame on the young lady, like, what'd you expect? You know? And so you've got these situations where you go, so so much of the harm is where you make the victim feel responsible for what happened to them. one One of them, one of my dad's victims, when he got done, he, he told this little girl, I think she was like 14 at the time. He's like, Oh, I thought you would like to, I thought you'd be okay. Like of the girls that I know in your group, like I thought you were the one that would be okay with this. Like how gross is that? Right. Which shows you how literally, I mean, all they're going to hear is he thinks that that's how, that's how I portray myself as someone who would want
01:42:55
Speaker
who would would be okay with that. Well, like- How much would that mess with your head for years? yes Yeah, of course. Oh my God. And so I tell people all the time, like, i I don't think that the call is for us to go back to Sunday services or even to church as we might know it. I think it is defined safe people. and then it eventually save people of faith that are out there. Like one of the reasons I believe in sovereignty is because ah the streak, this crazy streak that I'm on of continually falling into these environments where people's hearts are safe and they hold my story with grace, right? Like it just blows my mind looking back. Cause I hear so many stories of people like my dad's victims who people didn't believe him for 20 years at a time, you know? And so I just keep falling into these spaces where people of faith are like, oh, that sucks.
01:43:41
Speaker
How does that, you know, the follow up questions, let me know that they care, you know, that they're not trying to just whitewash it. And so I don't think church is a solution, but eventually for me, what happens is, so my counselor has a saying that I really like. She says, wounds in relationships are only ever healed. in other relationships, right? Like that that tear happens in a specific place. And I think that the tear that happens in churches, to take that one step further, can be healed in a safe faith community. It may be a group of people that meet for coffee. It may be a book club. It may be a Christian counselor. I don't know what, it could be any number of things. It may not even be a Christian for a while. But I think if we asked Jesus to prove, he said, hey, if you want to find the real me,
01:44:21
Speaker
You can find me if you look like if you seek, if you knock all those different verbs, he said, I will open myself up. to Like you will, you'll get to know who I am. And I think the safer we get around people of faith, when we find those people, eventually we'll find that Jesus is just as safe. Uh, and that's how I ended up where I did, whereas other people haven't. I mean, I love that man. I love, what you're doing, um the way you talk about try your mission to create safe spaces within Christianity. Because at the end of the day, like yeah some people some people leave, but a lot of people want to stay and they just want to stay and be safe and they need those spaces. There are always going to be people
01:45:02
Speaker
who are drifting towards faith, the Christian faith, and it's our obligation to give them safe spaces to do that. And the church should be the safest space, right? It should be. Like of any environment in the world. It should be that you think about the people who felt safe around Jesus, like Roman leaders who did not want to talk to Jewish people would come and bow down to him and say, would you help my kid? Or Nicodemus coming to Jesus at night is like, hey, I can't say this out in the daylight, but I think you're the real deal.
01:45:34
Speaker
And I think you're safe. I think you got what I want. Can I talk to you about it? And that happened, children, old people, men and women, the women at the well, people outcast. Everybody felt safe around Jesus. And I was like, what if that was a reputation of the church? What if there never was shiny, happy people in the Houston Star Telegram report or Camp Kanukuk or, I mean, the list we know keeps going on and on and on. What if the reverse was true? If the safest person you could be with was a pastor, it would be amazing.
01:46:06
Speaker
Yeah, it sucks. I wouldn't have to write a book at the end of the day, like ah it it makes you think about the lack of safe space because ah not to keep this going. I and know we've rounded our time, but it just.
01:46:23
Speaker
the it's it's a nice thing to say like maybe the safest person should be a pastor or it's like but it god the amount of stories you hear of just it's not our dynamics outside of faith instead of it's like the safest place to be should just like it just places should just be safe, church or not. And it fucking sucks that we we have to do these gymnastics to figure out how to talk about it in a way that it that allows people to experience like to have their experiences and validate them and then also
01:47:05
Speaker
wreck Yeah, just whatever. um I don't need to draw it on. this just Yeah. Yeah, it's funny. I was listening to an interview that you did with ah another person who I think was a passer earlier today. and It's funny to to like to see the juxtaposition of like what you're describing versus what So many people are familiar with like, in this one conversation where like, you were kind of talking about similar things, like, Hey, I don't think that church is necessarily the answer. I think you got to find the, you know, what you're talking about. Like you got to find this spot where people are willing to, to be gentle with you and, and, you know, and, and, ah and there's, you can hear the impulse to
01:47:55
Speaker
Okay, but just to be clear, i know it's just really important, and you know you need to go to church. you know like yeah and and i think all that All that's great, but you know i mean there's just something special when a lot of but believers get together and you just don't get that other place. It's like, stop trying. You don't need to defend that. like Whatever you think you're doing, like it's hard to imagine. you're trying to like make a case for this to people who don't think it's true. It feels more like you're checking a box for your congregation here is like, i I just got to make sure that I state because this is a thing that we believe that, you know, and it's like interrupting your thought to, to say this like useless thing. And I mean, it doesn't, the guy seems, he seems fine. Like, but it's just, it's kind of like that exactly what a lot of people like remember from that community, from when they were
01:48:46
Speaker
in those environments, you know, is like the impulse to protect the organization, you know, above all else. And it gets in the way of really like, you know, ministering to people in the way that you, you should and and you could, you miss this opportunity to be the kind of spot that you're describing for people, you know. And I think it's like a, it's a, It's just a good, like, lesson for people who are, you know, who do, are, you know, an authority figure in a church and stuff is like, don't worry about checking the box. Just listen and take notes here. And you can square it with your beliefs later, you know? But like, just be quiet. Be a person. Listen for a second.
01:49:36
Speaker
Yeah, one of the so one of the prayer circles I'm in um on a weekly basis, we have people who who would define themselves as Christians and people who don't. And one of the rules we have is you don't have to pray, but you you have to be prayed for. And so like what we want people to know is, hey, even if you're not comfortable with this, we want you to see our heart for you. Right. Like as a response, like imagine if you walked into a church and you knew somebody there is going to pray for you today. I remember the first day, the first Sunday uncomfortable.
01:50:09
Speaker
i do chi up and Some prayers are uncomfortable. I'll give you that.
Support and Compassion in Faith Communities
01:50:14
Speaker
but I remember the first Sunday after we went from being rows of chairs to being circles, being tables. Um, there's a guy walked in the back door is his first time ever at our church and he sat at my table and he said, uh, I don't go here, but my wife died this week. And I need to go somewhere. And he sat down at our table and there were little talking points on the screens that we could, we just shut down. Like we just abandoned the program, if you will. And just laid our hands and prayed on it was like, tell us about your wife, man. Like, you know, and that dude, if he'd have walked in any other Sunday, would have walked back out.
01:50:51
Speaker
having never met that kind of compassion. i had So I work in the parking lots at our church. For the last 18 years, I'm one of the people the that organizes the cars and waves when you come in. And I had the same thing. I had a lady on the sidewalk. And I'd recognize her. I'd parked her a few times. ah But I didn't know her name yet. And she clasped in my arms on the sidewalk. And she said, my daughter died this week. Will you pray for me? And in that moment, it's this holy, I mean, you get goosebumps, right? Like, why did she pick me? But she knew I was safe. She'd see me direct her in with her granddaughter. She was watching her daughter's child um while her daughter was going through chemo or whatever. And I didn't know all this. I just was joking with her about how straight she could get her suburban into the spot, you know? and like
01:51:36
Speaker
ah there's a There's a way that you can communicate safety to people that they recognize. I had a guy show up in my Wednesday night group last week. This dude has not been here probably eight years. And he's like, I'm dying. I got bone marrow cancer. I'm lonely. I'm dying alone. And I knew I could come here. And I was like, man, what if that was the reputation of every community of faith in my town? Forget the rest of the country. that when someone's going through something, it doesn't always have to be death. Those are those three examples, but I've had, I had two of them where my buddy showed up and we were going around and say, Hey, this is what we're going to talk about tonight. And one of my buddies said, guys, I can't connect it. Why am I going to talk about this? My wife lost her pregnancy today. I wanted to be a dad so fricking bad and I don't get to be a dad. How do you want me to talk about the book of acts? And so we're like, all right, let's let's not talk about the book of acts.
01:52:28
Speaker
And I looked over my buddy, Nate, whose wife had lost her pregnancy the month earlier. I said, how about you start the prayer circle, dude? And in tears, I mean, we could hear the tears hitting the floor, the wood floor. He's praying over our other buddy who lost a pregnancy that day or the day before. And that was such a holy moment. And how many other machismo, you know, we see these Christian conferences where they've got the monster trucks and the duck dynasty guy and whatever else trying to tell you what to be a man. And here's do saying, you know what I'm saying? Like what, what if for sure men of faith were, were that safe to where, you know, someone's not just going to pray for you. You're going to pray for you in tears and you could hear the tears hit the floor.
01:53:07
Speaker
that And these are manly dudes. These are guys who shoot guns and scratch themselves and wear steel toe boots and chop down trees and you know ride four wheelers and everything else. but but they also are safe souls, right? And i I can't be that for everybody, but I can be that for the people in my faith circle and the lives I touch. I can be the opposite of my dad. I can be the safe person that people find. And I would hope that whoever's watching or listening to this would say, hey, I can't ah can't change the church. I can't change the even industrial evangelical industrial complex, but I can change the 12 people that I work with or whatever it is, you know?
01:53:44
Speaker
I had a lady walk up to me, I just found out who she was a few weeks ago, but she walked up to me in the back of the church and handed me a three by five card. And I opened it up and it says, can you pray that I feel God? Like, I don't even know how to feel God. I was like, who walks up to a stranger and hands him a three by five card with that, right? And it's probably the same prompt. When I was writing my last book up in Portland, this lady walked up to me in like a burger joint. ah This is 2019. This is the year we confronted my dad. This is the year I became a dad when the young lady came to live with us. She walks up to me out of the blue and says, hey, I have a word for the Lord for you. And I was like, okay. And she says, your word for this year is dad, father. And I was like, lady, you don't know. I've had all three versions of a vasectomy. I didn't tell her that. i was like i'm not I was scared to be a dad. I didn't want to be my dad.
01:54:33
Speaker
how in the world you come up to me saying the word father, right? But she knew like that was a holy assignment. And now I'd love to go. I don't even know who this lady is. I would love to search the streets of Portland to find her. But somehow she said, this guy looks safe enough for me to approach him with this random word from the Lord in a, in Portland of all play. We're not talking to like Lynchburg, Virginia. We're talking like totally different place. So I don't know. ah I've had these moments. I believe it's possible. I wouldn't have written in the book if I didn't think I could call people to what's possible.
01:55:03
Speaker
Well, I, one of the things that stands out as different out of all the things you said, what I heard you say that was, uh, that stuck out to me was talking about the first guy. And he said, tell me about your wife. And I just think that invitation for someone to talk about their pain is i less common. So i just I hear that and go, that's sick. I think that's what people need.
Chosen Family and Belonging in Faith
01:55:27
Speaker
They do. Instead of, let's pray for you. We're just going to say a bunch of shit because we know the shit. and Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah. um that that's kind of that's said That's tough. for That's ah frustrating for me. to
01:55:40
Speaker
That general perspective so you to just even just making that statement tell us about your wife. That's probably all of you guys married or like you know what do you miss about it is I appreciate hearing that that's what stuck out to me ah the most Other things you've said so well in the soup in closing um having listened to several of your interviews and It's very negative. It's very negative. Don't you have anything nice to say about the IFB?
01:56:11
Speaker
Sure. so you know Just give us one like really cool thing about them. Yes. I will say this. I actually had had an answer for that. Somebody asked me a while ago. oh Mac and cheese. Was it haircuts? It wasn't haircuts, was it? Oh, man, I had it written down. Oh, yeah, yeah. it's Okay. ah No, mac and cheese is a big part, especially my mom's baked, a deep dish mac and cheese. um One of the things that the IFB taught me, so my dad was disowned for becoming IFB, among other things. And so our family became church.
01:56:47
Speaker
And so one of the things I learned, and I didn't have language for this until I became an adoptive parent, is that chosen family is still family, right? And that a faith community can feel like family. So as you can imagine, me writing this book has not gone over well in my family of origin. and ah My mom has disowned me. um I have siblings that don't want to talk to me, don't want me to be around. those were That was a cost I was willing to pay because the family that I have in my faith that I've developed in my faith communities now is this close, if not closer than anything I ever experienced in my family of origin. um It was so funny. Again, I'm in the parking lot Sunday and this little girl, I think she's four. I think she turns five next week.
01:57:32
Speaker
comes running across the asphalt. Uncle Ryan, not related to me at all. Uncle Ryan and like crashes into my arms in the middle of the asphalt. And there was a lady on the sidewalk looks over and she laughs. She's like, Uncle Ryan? I was like, yeah, this kid's my niece. right like And so my daughter wasn't born into my family. She came in when she was 18. And there's all these people that are brothers and sisters, not the weird religious way we would say that, but like they've been there for me in the darkest hours of my life. you know And I think the IFB does a really good job of now they take it to the extreme and turn it into the cult version where this is your family cast off everybody else in your life. But they did give me that idea that chosen family is family. And I think i I'm living the healthy version of that now, if that makes any sense.
01:58:22
Speaker
That's a good answer. You turn Casey's joke into an actual thing. so I want to congratulate you for that because that does not happen often. so but i I do get a lot of practice. You're not the first person to ask a question. How do you like that, Casey? You're not even special anymore. Families keep their mouths closed.
01:58:42
Speaker
well i mean That's what my family would love for me to do. That's for sure.
01:58:47
Speaker
Well, Ryan, this was awesome, man. Thanks so much for joining us. Really appreciate your time. I can't wait to get more into the book. I appreciate your perspective and the way you've been tackling some of these issues. Thanks for letting me laugh some more than I normally get to do on these interviews. I really appreciate it. Are you telling me the 700 Club wasn't hilarious? I want to be careful, man. I had a really good time with those people. They don't know who we are. It's fine. Okay. Well, where's a good place for people to find your
Speaker's Work and Where to Find It
01:59:15
Speaker
work? Uh, so Instagram is my like hub for everything. I've got links in my profile to everything that's at Ryplane. If you're interested in my books and some of the free giveaways. So like I have a list of resources, uh, of the books that I recommend for people who are wrestling with all this stuff. You can go to books by Ryan dot.com. All right. I'll put links in the description. Uh, thanks everybody for listening. We will see you next time.
01:59:51
Speaker
you