The Pulling the Thread Podcast

Summary
In this episode David LeBlanc interviews Jeramiah, he notes that his questions of faith began with questioning the Jehovah’s Witness teachings, particularly in relation to the New Testament. His early objections were based on inconsistencies he found within the text and the interpretations provided by the Jehovah’s Witnesses. This led him to explore other religious traditions, and eventually, he found himself involved with a Christian woman who introduced him to charismatic meetings within the Assemblies of God.

Jeramiah then recounts his experience before attending Bible college. They discuss the manipulation tactics used in churches, exposing the human side behind the spiritual façade. The conversation explores the speaker’s decision to attend Bible college, influenced by a pastor who encouraged them to pursue ministry. Jeramiah contrasts this supportive conversation with the conflicted discussions with his father.
Jeramiah expresses frustration with the theological focus and lack of critical examination in their Bible college courses.

This podcast delves into the speaker’s journey, touching on topics such as conflict, personal struggles, and exposure to critical scholarship in Old Testament survey classes. It’s fascinating to explore how personal experiences and encounters with different religious perspectives can shape one’s spiritual journey.

Transcript

Hello, welcome to the Pulling the Threads podcast. This is another two parter and this interview, David Le Blank is interviewing me. This one went kind of long so I decided to cut it into two. Hopefully, you enjoy the first part, learning about my story with some new details you may not have heard before and make sure you tune in next week for the second part. Also make sure you like and subscribe and follow on youtube, follow us on Spotify and join the Facebook group as well as join the discussion at Jesus the Jew within Judaism dot com. And I hope to see you on the next podcast. And yeah, so today we’re gonna do a different type podcast. Instead of me interviewing somebody today, David is gonna interview me. And yeah, so why don’t you go ahead and start?

Well, hi. Hi, Jeremiah. This, I’m Dave Le Blank and I’ve had my own podcast that I’ve kind of deactivated. I used to do a lot of interviews myself. So, so you asked me to do this for you, which I’m happy to do it, what’s striking to me is just as a form of introduction. You’ve introduced me a couple of times to your audience, but you and I have very many similarities to our background, not completely parallel, but there’s a lot of parallels, especially as we go further on our journey. I guess, you know, most of your audience that’s not new to your program will be familiar with where you’re at. but for the sake of just setting a groundwork here before we delve into your story. How would you describe your self spiritually today? Like where, where would you find yourself camping? Your, what your, your wagon at right now?

Where would I count my wagon? I mean, I identify as Jewish. I went through conversion. So, I mean, situationally that’s, you know, practice the holidays, practice Kosher shabbat, all that kind of stuff. I’m definitely more of a philosophical person. And so, I would say that I’m grounded historically and factually and like the way things are. If you would ask me about religion in general, I would say that I’m agnostic about most denominational organized religions. I, you know, believe in God, a higher power that I feel is, helped me throughout my life or at least help me make better decisions that I would make of my own. And, you know, if we get into my story, we can talk, talk about why I feel that that’s something that’s still important to me. But it kind of all goes back to, the, the, it’s, it’s kind of the thought about the divine spark in everybody. The nets would say Elohim that there’s this divine spark in, in everything and the, the things that kind of cover things up. I, I don’t think that, you know, for me and my family, Judaism is the religion that I practice and that morally philosophically, ethically aligns with my personal value system and I guess always has, but when it comes to like the denominations, the structures, the people, I believe all of that’s fallible, it’s human. So, I mean, I, I don’t subscribe to the view that there’s only one way and there’s no other way. For me, this is what works. And, and then, you know, within Judaism, you know, we say the righteous of all, you know, people have a place in the world to come. But I guess to start it off, that’s kind of where I’m, I would situate myself.

That’s, that’s fair. Yeah. And for, for disclosure, for the audience, for those who don’t know, I share with you a journey out of Christianity and into Judaism, I also formally converted with my wife through the Conservative movement as you did. And the reason I bring this up is because those who are seeking there’s many different types of people that would subscribe or watch videos such as you and I have produced that deal with more scholarly kind of an intellectual approach to the concepts of religion or, or various different traditions. That would be certainly outside the purview of what, you know, when many people think about observant Jews, they think of the black hat crowd with, you know, the ultra orthodox, you know, praying at the western wall kind of thing. You know, in their little communities in the cities of America and, and, and elsewhere. So you obviously like myself have been fascinated over the years, especially recently with the philosophies and the variety of thought within the Jewish world that is available. But you’re not so much attracted, maybe that’s the wrong word, but you don’t really gravitate towards the more extreme versions of Jewish orthodoxy. Which I find is very interesting to me because not to make it about me. But like you, I had a very I had a variety of background experiences and religion that one of the things I wanted to avoid as I as I matured was getting into more extremism after coming out of extremism, you know, so now that we’ve established where you’re at currently, you have a fascinating background that you shared some bullet points with me prior to this interview. And I wanted to start right at the beginning, which I think is a really interesting place to begin for people to understand how you’ve arrived, where you’re at. Now, you shared with me that you were raised in a home of Jehovah’s Witnesses from the time you were very young and that you didn’t take long before you started questioning various aspects of that as you matured and, and get towards puberty, you had a very inquisitive mind and that by the time you were 18, you were openly asking questions about everything. And you also mentioned that there was some tension in your family with your dad, which I also experienced, which I think was a big impact on why I was also searching. So I, I wondered if you could speak to those early years, what your home life was like and how your home life affected the way you viewed your family’s religious devotion and, and how that affected you as you grew into maturity.

All right. Well, I would say to start it off that my home life drove me to God to, to, to wanting to believe in a higher benevolent power that cared about my plight. So, you know, growing up in a home where emotional and physical violence is normalized, your views a bit skewed from what people who grow up in a safe home would be. You know, I, I, I experienced physical emotional and sexual abuse from my father. And it, it was something that took me many years to deal with. Now my father isn’t the one that converted to Jovi’s Witnesses. My mother converted to Java’s Witness when I was four. And I’ll kind of get into my dad’s background in a little bit. Maybe all the stuff going on. The ingredients played into the soup that made me, of course, because they’re my parents. But my mom had a sudden infant death. at I think it was like 3.5 months, a stillborn child and then she just kind of handled the idea of having another child. So she had an abortion written with guilt. The Jova Witnesses come knocking on the door and provide her something that was appealing to a broken soul at that time. So my mom became a Jehovah’s Witness and she was pretty devout about it through everything all in it. It, you know, when you don’t have to take responsibility for yourself, for your problems and somebody tells you what to do. It’s a, it’s a easy way to go when you’re going through hard times. So I feel like they take advantage of people that way. So in, in, in, you know, my, my background on my mom’s side is a little bit mixed. My grandfather was an Irish Catholic. So before she converted, I think they went to some Irish Catholic stuff. When she was a kid, there is some nominal like Jewish ancestry that goes back to Spain and Sephardic. But logically I wasn’t Jewish. That’s why I chose to convert. But there’s some ancestry there. It, it, but the, the big thing is my parents raised me. My mom, my mom decided she was kind of left in charge of it. So she made me and my sister go to the Jova witness thing. My father was German of German descent and his family was Catholic. He went to parochial schools. He was sent to Sunday school. He would go in the front door and out the back door. But he was not an adherent to Catholicism. When I was growing up, he got into the Celestine prophecy or something like that. It was some metaphysical book about seeing the or, or on people. You have a blue or green or kind of stuff you talk about. He studied some Jehovah’s witness stuff. And then he studied with a native American witch doctor. And had me a little concerned for a while there because right around the time of the Hail Bob Comet, he was, he was talking about some of that stuff and he had a conversation with me and this, this plays into like the mental health issues. Later. He had a conversation with me about if you commit suicide, make a point with it. And this is in like, you know, there’s a spaceship behind this comet and, you know, I guess that they were going to commit suicide to go up this space ship in the sky. When the, that group committed suicide, I was kind of in desperation trying to find, reach out to my father to make sure he was still alive, come to find out he was, he was just associated with people who had strange beliefs and espoused some of them. But, I never adhered to his way of life. One of the defining moments for me and this would have been later on. This is because I’m jumping around. It wouldn’t be formative. It’s more when I was, my parents went through divorce between my junior high and high school, it would have been around junior high, maybe eighth grade. Actually, no, it was the summer, summer school before eighth grade, high school. So it was right between junior high and high school. I, my parents were living separate and I was given the involuntary choice of being with my father, involuntary as they didn’t have a choice. But, so I come home from school and he goes, you know, tell me something about your day. What did you like? And so like, this science teacher was told me like some really cool stuff and I was just like, kind of going off like that. That, that this is so cool, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then all of a sudden he just got really, he won. He became dogmatic, basically telling me it was crazy. And I was like, well, he’s a tenured professor. He studied this, this is his specialty. I’m gonna go with science on this one because he was espousing just some fringe theory that wasn’t grounded or rooted in any kind of science or history or facts or anything. And so anyways, he comes around, comes around the table, chases me down the hallway, punches me in the throat, we end up on the ground. He’s got me pinned to the floor and he goes, why did we do this? And I’m like you punched me. I don’t know. That was how my father was though.

So, so it went from having a conversation. So he, he just became very volatile and you were just trying to share information, answering his question and I don’t, you know, neither one of us want to be labor on this aspect, but just I’m just trying to understand. So it, it’s, it sounds to me like it escalated extremely quickly in a very confusing way, but it, it seems like it was not so confusing in that it was a repeated pattern of this. And he, and he literally got violent when you, when you started proclaiming things that he was threatened by ideas that he was threatened by.

Yeah, and that was kind of how he was. He talked about in his childhood, how he was bullied and he had physical violence happen to him that while was pinned to the ground. He starts to tell me this story. About how of all places to get a lesson like this one when he, I think he was around 18 or something. Must have been around the time I was born. A couple of his friends got him drunk is why I’m on my back being pinned to the floor and they ended up stealing his car and leaving him without a car. So the next day he goes and he finds each one of them, he beats them up and then he gets his car back. Quite an interesting place to tell me a story like that. So it was, it was, it was a, a challenging environment. You know, it’s took me many years of therapy, counseling, support group to get to a point where I, I’ve worked through it and, you know, as a father, I feel like I’ve done a great job with my Children navigating the difficulty. So it’s not like something I, and I’ve got to interesting place in my life that, mhm. I am thankful that I am stronger and more aware and I’m stronger than I would be if I hadn’t had those experience, I would not wish those experiences on anybody. But I am thankful for the strength that I have that other people don’t have the same strength. So to go back for one second because I just wanna emphasize something here that you’re, you’re touching on it.

And I know that, you know, we, we never wanna, we never wanna spend time talking about our own attributes. So I wanna do that for you here for a second because you know, here you are, you have this blog and this podcast and you’re trying to pursue an intellectual conversation about origins pulling the thread podcast. And you’ve expressed to me privately and also publicly that your, your motivation in this is to really provide a platform that can help people that are similar to you. And I that really have genuine questions that are not, you know, just not, we’re not trolls trying to just tear people’s faith structures down. We’re, we’re literally trying to give people an opportunity to explore these ideas just as you have. And I, I just want to say that I’m not a psychologist but to be able to live a functional life as an adult, hold a job, raise, Children go through relationship stress and still have the mental strength to be able to explore these ideas and a, a at depths like you do. I think it’s a great, it’s a great, I don’t wanna say testimony, but it’s a great example of the human spirit and how you really can’t hold us down if we don’t let ourselves be held down no matter what we’ve been through. But we should always be empathetic to where people are coming from because we just don’t know what they’ve been through. You know, people are carrying around a lot of pain. Right. And, and so if you haven’t been through pain, it’s hard to be empathetic with others pain. And so I’ve always sensed that from you in the, in the time that you and I have interacted that you, you are a very empathetic person. And you’ve always maintained a great sense of humor, which I think is a great sign of mental health. Is having a sense of humor about yourself and about your life. And, and so this is fascinating. So, so you went through this really dysfunctional relationship with your dad? I should ask you, I’m, I’m, I’m sure that some of your audience might want to know. Is your dad still alive?

Yeah, my father is still alive. And it’s a, he’s alive. I haven’t talked to him in many years because unfortunately, he chooses to still be like that. And I don’t want my Children to ever see me interact with my father in a way that would teach them that that kind of behavior is normal or OK. Even if I handle it, right, I don’t want to see that kind. I don’t want them to see that kind of father son interaction. Because I’m sorry, I’m sorry, go ahead. I say even in my adult life, he still chooses to get in my face and become try to get physically violent and, and stuff like that.

You can’t afford that on your Children. Yeah. No, but how about your mom? Where, where is your mom at today?

My mom and sister are still very committed to the Joel’s Witness religion. So because of that, we’ve went through periods of I’ve been disassociated. I got this fellowship from the Jovi’s Witness because of all things. I was training in martial arts to be able to protect myself. So I didn’t have to be afraid of my father. In case he did something violent to me that wasn’t, you know, And I felt like telling me I couldn’t train in martial arts to defend myself against a violent attack just wasn’t something I could hold on to. So, but in my childhood as, as challenging as it was what gave me peace and centered me was I would go for walks and I would talk to God and I would pray and I just pour out my soul, you know, somewhere in there I experience freedom, acceptance. And then crying out for help that, you know, but the, the, the conflict with my dad, I was talking about where we were literally arguing about something my science teacher told me and it was like that he was into all these fringe theories and I was very much into like grounded facts and evidence and stuff like that. And I think, like, you kind of made a comment earlier in, in all these kind of events that happened like early, early on, I didn’t just accept or adopt like my mom’s Jova witness thing. By the time I was eight, which means she had only been doing it for about four years because I was four when she started I was already asking how to go to heaven. And one of the elders was like, you got to know the truth and become one of the 144,000. And all this is convoluted. They’re stringing scriptures together and I’m just like scratching my head like, OK, that’s a bit much. It’s a lot. And I remember I walked away from that and I was walking to the front of like their, what are the, the kingdom hall is what they call it? And I was walking to the front and I was like, I was, I started to do a prayer that was like the way they would. And then I checked myself. I was like, oh Lord, teach me the truth. I don’t know, teach me your truth. I wanna know the truth. And so at that early age that, that, that kernel was embedded in me like I wanna know the truth. And so the way that, you know, authentic between inauthentic when you’re dealing with money, they have you look at real like legit money and you study it, you get comfortable with it, the smell and everything so that when you’re given a fake, you know, the difference stream, real and fake. And so I feel like for me, I read the new world, new World translation cover to cover once I, the, the New Testament presented so many challenges for me. And then I started again and I read the snack again and I just, at that point, I was just like there was too much that I had issues with the New Testament and I started going to the elders and challenging him on their view that, you know, Jesus wasn’t God and different things. I’m like the text, it doesn’t make sense. This isn’t lining up. And you know what one of the, well, what they ended this way, let me finish with this ended this way and, and, and my, my supposition was different than what they said. But they’re like, you know, understanding that I don’t agree. They’re like, well, you know, there are some things that you just have to take on faith and I’m kind of making a mental note to myself though. Yeah, you’re crazy. And I don’t subscribe to that was kind of my, what I took on faith when he said that I, I didn’t, I didn’t take things at faith. I was like, no, we need to have proof and evidence for this stuff. So, what were you gonna say?

Yeah, I apologize for jumping on you. I, I wanted to ask you when you started having problems with The New Testament, You, you threw in the comment that you always appreciated the, of course, the is a phrase you learned much later. Were you having a problem with the New Testament at that young age? Because it, because your reading of the New Testament was difficult to square with Jehovah’s Witnesses doctrine or were you having a problem with the New Testament because of, or in addition to your reading of the Old Testament of the Yes.

OK. Well, so one, my first objections to the New Testament were almost at Matthew. It didn’t line up with it to not. And then secondly, the arguments I started having with the elders was about their interpretation of the New Testament. So my first thing was like, this doesn’t line up salvation is this way and it’s not, what is this new salvation? But it’s not supported and it’s not what is this? It’s, it’s a little bit convoluted. But to some degree, I kind of did take some of it on faith for a long time. I learned the question but, and then the other one was I really took them to task with their interpretation of the New Testament because I started to look into what I call the purple people leaders, their diag their purple diag. It was a old, it has the Hebrew English translation with the transliteration under it and then their English translation on the side. So I had started like, I was like, all right, if anything is true one, it should, should I, if you test it against itself, it should be proven true among among itself, right? So my first thing is I’m hearing these things about Jehovah’s witness that maybe it’s a cult, maybe there’s this and that. And so I’m like, well, let me test the thing against itself and see if it actually holds weight. So I started to look at the, the Greek text, the translation and then I look at their trans their translation and their transliteration isn’t the same as the, the, the transliteration under where it goes Greek to, to transliteration, English, they’re adding words and I’m like, well, wait a second. So the actual Greek text does not support what you’re saying. And so at that time, it supported more of a traditional Christian view at that time when I left Jehovah’s Witnesses, which was about when I was 18. Then I did take a path into Christianity because at that time, based on the text I was looking at that would have made more sense for me to explore and test it, you know, against itself kind of thing. But so, I mean, to answer your question, it was a bit of, it didn’t match the, which the Joe’s witness is called, he the Hebrew scriptures and they call the New Testament, the Greek scriptures, which it’s a little nicer to have that term than Old and New Testament every time you say it. So my brain wasn’t, my brain wasn’t completely embedded with the Old Testament, New Testament. They say Hebrew scriptures and Greek scriptures, which so that dichotomy, you know, that, that works. I mean, one’s a Hebrew text, one’s a Greek text. So, yeah. OK.

Right. But so yeah, but your initial objections were that you weren’t able to corroborate the claims upon their own testimony. So it wasn’t like you were taking other religions or other sex claims and working it against them. You, you were just having issues with their own explanations about their own tradition because there was an incongruity in the text itself to what they were telling you. You, you weren’t adding it up. So that made you open to exploring some other traditions. And then you mentioned to me that at some point after becoming an adult, you ended up meeting a Christian woman who it sounds like you had some type of relationship with and she invited you to a charismatic meeting. So explain that a little bit and how you ended up getting exposed to the assemblies of God.

Well, so I was living with a woman. It’s quite interesting, story there. But, I, I’m not gonna get too much into that one.

Oh, no, I don’t, I’m just saying this is your next transition.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, it was, it was a really interesting, there was a lot of moving pieces on that one. I, I won’t get too into it because it could get off into the weeds. But, yeah, relationships have kind of influenced some of my choices to keep, I guess the people happy. But, and I was open, like I had, I had, I had been kicked out of the Joh Witnesses. I’m, I went to the library and I was reading on Judaism and Buddhism and, yeah, you know, even at that time I remember thinking that Judaism is one of the oldest religions and, you know, it, it was one that stuck out to me, but I was looking at all of them really. And like I had a torn rotator cuff. What was I doing that? I got a torn rotator cuff. I think I was doing martial arts at the time. But I was, I, I don’t recall what I did anyway. She invited me to this crusade at the Oceanside pier, amphitheater. I think it was about the door Christian Fellowship. They’re a really strong evangelical charismatic, you know, Pentecostal healing, laying on the hands, you know, the, they had a big, big crusade down at the amphitheater there and, you know, but I, I went by earlier and, you know, they, they kind of put this, incense in the air so it kind of has a certain smell in the air and stuff like that. I, I just remember the, the smell of the incense that they had kind of burned in the place to make it have a certain odor before, like I noticed it before, but I, I think it was meant to add to the ambiance of the experience. You know, we had the worship so it was really intense with the alter calls and stuff and you kind of feel like if you don’t go down, you gotta go because everybody else is going, the only thing I put you in a fight is, have you actually read my book or you just scanned it?

And I’m not sure if you actually read it yet.

I skimmed through it. So, well, the only, I’m not putting you in the spot, I’m just, the only reason I ask is because I had a whole chapter in my book about when I first got born again that I, I was, I befriended a, a guy I met at a business meeting and he was part of a Southern Baptist church.

And so I used to go with him and I had been raised Roman Catholic. So I had never really experienced this Baptist style of service and I found that, you know, the choir singing was interesting. It was a lot more entertaining than, you know, than the, than the Roman thing where you, you kneel and you sit up and you sit and you stand and you kneel and but I was fascinated by the preaching. But then as you just mentioned, now this is now this is in a Southern Baptist environment. This is not the Charismatic, which is, you know, slightly more over the top or, or, or a lot more over the top than what this was. But they had kneel at the front of the church and at the end of every service and this was true of all Baptist environments that I had been in throughout my life. There would always be a slow melodic piano song at the end where the, the pastor would kind of continue with his little homily and they would start to invite people forward who wanted to either accept Jesus or, or, or pray. And of course, mostly it was people just praying about things. And I, and it’s funny, you made me laugh when you said that because as, as a new believer who really was committed to wanting to really press in, you know, I, I had this attitude and I mentioned this in my book, I was in it to win it, man. Like like if you’re gonna do an altar call, I’m gonna go forward. I don’t care if I have to make up a reason. I, I’ll think about something to pray about as I’m walking forward. But I want to be counted as one of those who was serious every single week. So there was never a time I didn’t go forward. And I think that probably was true of a lot of people that, you know, you come to this new faith and you want everyone to say, hey, you can count on me. I’m here, I’m here, you know, kind of thing. I wonder if that was some of what some of what you experience when you get exposed to that.

I mean, there was, there was a lot of peer pressure to run to the altar and like the way they’re preaching about all these sins and stuff is to like, trigger this thought that God watches. He’s gonna tell, tell them exactly my sin. I gotta run and this, you know. So I mean, it’s just like they’re just, but it’s like word. So they’re just throwing out random potential sins. So somebody feels guilty to cover everything, right? Yeah. So to, to answer your question, like how I got into the assemblies of God, you know, so I went to that, that crusade there and hm I, I don’t wanna say gave my heart to Jesus because I don’t know, like that was Joe’s Witness, I already believed he existed. Like, I don’t, you know, like, but that was the terminology born again, gave your life to him, whatever. And I started going to a small home Bible study for a while and then we ended up going to an assemblies of God, me and the woman I was dating at the time. And it was one of those ones that came back from the Pensacola revival. So there was a lot, there was a lot of really intense revival related stuff.

The Brownsville, yeah, speaking in tongues, laying on a pan, a profit.

Yeah. Yeah. Very intense. You know, the, the, it was like they did basically Hillsong style worship. And you know, the preaching, the altar calls, we had various evangelists and prophets come through and it was heavily into like the prophetic movement and just like all that revival stuff. How, how old was a lot of emotionalism? Huh?

How old were you at this time?

So between 18 and 21 because I went when I was 21 you’re still, you’re still involved in martial arts and just a little less. So at that time. Yeah, I was, yeah, I was up until, yeah, 97. Yeah. But you didn’t, you didn’t have any Children at this time and, and, but just for context, I think this is really important to take note of for those who aren’t really tracking here or, or maybe a kind of maybe this is obvious.

But so you had been dis fellowship by Jehovah’s Witnesses younger than that. So you already had this dysfunctional relationship with your dad and your mom, not her personally but her fellowship, this fellowship. You and so you really were kind of sent adrift spiritually kind of on your own. And so you mentioned earlier about the Jehovah’s Witnesses, how they seem to kind of prey on people who are in crisis. But wouldn’t you say that that’s also the case with these evangelistic outreach type, you know, secret friendly type environments where where people are kind of broken, they’re kind of like going through hard times, they’re maybe lacking relationship stability, they’re lacking home stability and this becomes like a warm blanket of sorts. That would you say that that’s accurate?

Very much. So, preying on human weakness to gain tithing supporters, preying on people, you know, I was you know, cut off from my family in a I, I felt so the woman, I was in an abusive relationship where I was experiencing like being I got punched, I got attacked with car keys. I wasn’t doing this back. But from a cycle of abuse, I moved to a cycle of abuse. So I was in an emotionally wake, emotionally weak space myself. OK.

Yeah. Right. Right. So, so, so, so even this woman was, she had issues Yes.

When you have a broken family environment, you sometimes fall in with people who, the feeling of the familial feeling for people who’ve been through trauma is sometimes broken and you attract people like that. So I had yet to have learned how to make better choices with my life. And so yes, I was in a very dysfunctional relationship and the fallacy I had growing up thinking I could love somebody when they’re like that with. It’s not gonna help a personally, you’ve gotta, you know, walk away from people when they’re like that, but that was something I had to learn later in life. So anyways, yes, I was in an emotionally weak space. Their methods preyed upon my weakness. And then all of this excitement gave me something to focus on other than the pain and trauma in my life. So this excitement, I mean, this was interesting stuff. I mean, now, mind you, they’re talking about people being raised from the dead and being people being healed and real actual miracles. You know, I did a mission trip down to Baja California. And you know, nobody’s getting out of wheelchairs, the blind aren’t seeing, you know, there’s no actual, there, there was a episode where people I know at mental health crisis had manifested demons. I think it was a mental health breakdown. But it was treated like a demon which I think was actually probably worse for that person. And, and part of it was directed at me and I was like, yeah, I’m not even part of that situation. So it people are saying there’s a demon here, there’s a demon there, this is a demon that’s a demon. You’re like, really, that’s just a human that’s been through trauma. They, they need emotional support, they need to learn how to manage. Are, are you, are you saying that you were thinking that then or this is back in reflection, looking back on it. I didn’t know what it was at the time, but I know when they threw the aspiration to me, there wasn’t a demon involved and I had, I actually did nothing. It was, I’m like, literally observing what’s happening and like, well, the demon came in through you and I what over the phone? By the way, I was just sitting here like, not actually even, I mean, it was somebody who had a grudge against me and felt like I was a corrupting influence yet I was not actually doing anything. So like if you don’t do something, they like, oh a demon made you do it, which I think goes to a, the dichotomy of the Christian view of good and evil God and Satan, you know, the devil made me do it. No, I’m curious.

Yeah. So I, I wanna, I wanna to really hone in on what you’re talking about real briefly. Without, without taking anything away from your overall story here. Because I think in, in reading your blogs and listening to you, I think this is really germane to a lot of the things that you really try to hit on. So you talked about your Jehovah’s witness experience where you, you looked at the faith wanting to believe, but having logical inconsistencies in your mind with things that you were being told to believe versus what you were reading and seeing and hearing and believing in actual reality. And so now you’re in this environment where again, we’ve already established, you’ve been cast adrift, you don’t have a strong support system behind you. And now you’re in this highly emotionally charged kind of electric atmosphere where, where there’s almost an expectation of, you know, it’s almost like being at Mount Zion, everybody’s expecting like miracles any moment. And, and they’re almost projecting it upon the audience even when it’s not there. Not almost they are. And so was there was there like before you got involved in missionary work and all the stuff, I’m wondering if there was this period during this time where, where you just had this really uneasy feeling that things weren’t sitting well with you even though you were participating in it or were you kind of along for the ride and kind of dawned on you that this was not right later.

So I’ve always been very Polly, Annie There’s the old Disney movie Pollyanna. She was very happy. Go lucky and everything. My, naive to a degree, always believe the best, very positive. Despite all the stuff that happened to me, you know, essentially relationships that are burning buildings behind me, still a very positive view of the world. So there were things that did bother me and get my attention that I’m just kind of like, what is that? But I didn’t stop at that time and go, oh, let’s just throw the baby out with the bathwater and find a new thing. It was, I, I was exploring it and like all things to the depth that I can always go all in on things honestly, you know, one of the philosophies that probably is the, the, that defines me in the way that I process things comes from Jeek and do the martial art that Bruce Lee invented that was formative in, in my experience. And it’s, you know, to research your own own experience to, to honestly express yourself. And so, you know, they, they, because it’s a scientific fighting art, the, the idea of science was something that always kind of it, it, it always came back to me. So like, you know, that kind of was a, was a grounding for me. But in that early experience, there were things that were, you know, flags on the field that I just kind of was like, ok, well, that’s interesting. But then I was full in with it. I was working at the church. I got to see behind the scenes and then I went to bible college. Because, you know, this experience I had as a child where when I was alone, I was able to pray and center and then make good decisions for my life. And I felt like I connected with the divine. I wanted to replicate this in, I guess a religious setting because that’s the way I felt I needed to do that. So to kind of go back to a question earlier, I would define myself more as spiritual and religious now. But I felt like I had to find God in a religious setting. And I was passionate about it because I was able to work through things in it, in my soul. Get to a place where the trauma didn’t hold me back. And so I want to get to a place where I can make this meaningful to others or where I can make this meaningful in my life. And, and I’m, I’m being led to believe it’s the environment around me where I think it might have been the choices that I made versus the environment. But at the time, I felt like the environment around me was feeding this, they’re praying for healing, you know, miracles. It was very exciting. But I saw way and, and the things I saw like behind the scenes at the church seeing very human process, intentional means of method manipulation. That we had a, an evangelist come through who taught how to manipulate a crowd to get them to heal, like literally like spill the tea and that was the assemblies of God.

They had people that would go around training churches on how to handle those types of events. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, and literally explain the whole process and kind of like manipulating and the like trying to get people to fall out. And I’m like, like, damn. Yeah, absolutely. I was like, not vision.

It’s not the altruistic ideal.

Yeah. So I was just like, wow, like, OK, so, and that, that kind of pulled back the curtain for me a little bit and that was right before I went to bible college. You know, I, I, I had seen the humanity, the, the things that were attributed to the spirit during the sermon was stuff that I watched the pastor struggle with and asked me for the message to speak that week. And I’m like, yeah, God’s not talking to me right now, bro. But, you know, it was a very human process. But we’re attributing all this stuff to the divine. There’s, you know, all these methods to manipulate people. And so I’ve already got this with the Joe’s Witnesses. Like, let’s go with something foundational and compare it to these other things. And, I’m already starting to see the, the, the ingredients of the soup. So, I went to Bible college and while I’m there, I kind of, I, I became more studious. You know, like, did you go to Bible college? Huh?

Where did you go to Bible College? Southwestern Assemblies of God University, studying church planning and pastoral ministries. So, so let me ask you a question because I know how Assemblies of God works. So I’m just kind of leading you here. But so at some point, correct me if I’m wrong, someone saw your eagerness and your zeal and pulled you aside, someone that you had some respect for some measure of respect and encouraged you to go down this path. Like we think that you would be blessed. God would use you if you went. Right.

Yes. So my pastor definitely had this kind of, I had volunteered at the, the, the church. I was basically a janitor at the church and building sets for plays and stuff. And but yeah, he, he pulled me in his office and he started talking to me about the calling. You know, you feel the calling God calling you and I think you’d be a candidate and you know, there’s this assembly that got a college here in California, but it’s too liberal. I don’t think you should do it. You should go to this one. I went to in Texas, it’s in walks, a hatch Texas walks a what, what’s a walk of we, you know, and, so he encouraged me to go to the, the bible college he went to. So, yeah, I mean, that was, that, that was probably what led me to make that decision, especially where I went. But you weren’t, you didn’t really have a career at that point.

You were just working odd jobs, whatever. And, and you’re serving at the church. So you didn’t have a career that you had to give up to go do this. But how did you and if you did correct me? But how did you feel like this is what I’m really after here. How did the pastor pulling you aside and talking to you about your calling? How did that inside your heart and your mind? And like, like how did that make you feel? And, and, and how would you attribute your response to that conversation?

Well, let me juxtapose that with the conversations I was having with my dad. So at the time I was going to Marica College and I was with the goal of studying physical therapy. And because I was doing martial arts and I was training Olympic taekwondo and I wanted to compete in Olympic Taekwondo and then come back and be a sports trainer. But, that, that, yeah, and so while I’m going to school there, my father who at the time is the divorce decree, had to help pay for college, didn’t want me to go. And he was very conflict oriented. So I started to with, it was this period of time I started to withdraw from college because his abusive behavior, my grades were starting to suffer because he was just calling and harassing me and I was having a hard time. Right. Well, juxtapose that I wasn’t living with him, but Jackson was that I wasn’t he, I was living with my mom because I chose to live with my mom that you were forced to live with your dad.

That’s why I asked, well, I was there, I was forced to be with them for a night and then, you know, but I wasn’t living with my father.

I, when the divorce happened, I chose to live with my mom because it was a safe place. But, but to answer your question so that the conversations I’m having with my father about my future is very conflict oriented. He doesn’t want to pay for college and then come along and an adult male who’s having a positive conversation with me about what do you think God wants me to do? And I have to say that, I mean, it felt good to have an adult male, have a non conflict oriented conversation with me about my future. Now, I was at a place that I had a future that I was working on. But I decided to go with the, of God, based upon the conflict with my father needing a break from everything and then this conversation he’s having with me. So, yeah, it was very human thing. Yeah, that, that’s why it’s, it’s, I, I, that’s why I pressed that issue is because I often wonder and of course, you and I can only speculate on this.

We’re not, you know, researchers in this, in this way where we’re doing scientific, you know, double blind studies on this types of stuff. But I suspect that a great many people that go into full time ministry and in some of these lay capacities and some of these charismatic and evangelical environments that are less formalized in terms of their educational requirements, you know, like you talk about an assemblies of God College, it reminds me of also the Calgary Chapel. So Calver Chapel has a college in so in Southern California. And so if you go to college at Calgary Chapel, they’ll ordain you and give you an education and they’ll give you a nominal survey of various courses. But it’s all from an evangelical apologist, apologist perspective. You’re not actually getting academic learning like you get say at Yale or Harvard or something like that. You’re, you’re getting an apologist of version of how you should understand the history of your faith, right?

And that was very annoying that was very annoying. When I talk about, I went in Bible college, I was, I was annoyed by the statement of faith because like my New Testament survey class, they give you this book and it’s the theology with a bunch of verses and then you got to study and it’s like, what am I studying? Like, you’re, you know, I, I remember we, we did a Hermanos class and we’re talking about, I mean, half of the, the, the courses are Ice Jesus when we have a, her class is talking about looking at the passage within its context and its culture and you know, who are, you know, the, the, this, the who, what, where, why and how and all that, of a passage. And I’m like, yeah, that, that’s what we should do. And then I go over to my, you know, Galatians class and it’s like hopping through the verses. And you’re like, to be honest, I, you know, in this martial art, we do, we’re doing bilateral coordination when you’re using your right and left hemisphere. Sometimes, you know, it crashes in the middle and like you can kind of feel your neural load. I felt like I was feeling a neuro neuro overload and I’m like, ok, I’m not even sure within the context that verse means what you’re saying in your statement of faith. So a lot of my frustration with the Southwestern and some of these, I got Bible calls began really, like, I’m studying a statement of faith, not the Bible itself. And I, and I started to have conflict with my, with my professors about the text of scripture versus forcing this theological conundrum in down somebody’s throat. And I remember one of my classes that it was kind of like near the end of my tenure at, at Southwestern and it was the, the Old Testament survey class. You know, they, they, they get into document hypothesis and, you know, amazing thing is they’re getting all textual critical on the, on the Old Testament. This is not something they do with the New Testament, which is an amazing thing because you’re like very critical of this, but no critical at all. No, there’s nothing critical of the New Testament and all. And you’re just like there’s a little this, this is not, you know, it’s contradictory and, I’m glad to even the documentary hypothesis with you. Yeah. Yeah. Part of that Old Testament survey class. Yeah. Huh. Yeah.

They probably thought they were enormously progressive for doing that.

I guess so. But yeah, it was one of the topics in there. Yeah. I distinctly remember it. That was your first exposure that correct? Was that, was that your first exposure to the critical scholarship approach? Yeah. But I mean, I think I had already been doing it myself incidentally, you know, looking at things within the