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Theology. History. Psychology.
We wanted to resume after I've been gone for a little bit by going back to our religious trauma series. We had this episode and one more left planned before we wrapped up the series, I just wanted to get back into it. But today we want to cover the psychology of religious trauma. Some of the things that we want to talk about are not just the psychology behind it, but let's define it, right? What is religious trauma?
Nick:What is trauma? And how does it affect individuals both physically but psychologically in short and long term as well? So I've got my resident expert Orlando with me, and he's going to help us out with some of those definitions, he's gonna go in-depth about the effects of trauma and just helping us reframe our understanding of it. So I'm excited to finally get back into the podcast and hopefully the plan moving forward is to go back to posting regularly and being active again on the podcast. So it's good to be back and thank you for tuning in after our hiatus.
Nick:So Orlando, do you want to go ahead and take it away and get us started on talking about what trauma is and defining that for us?
Orlando:Yeah. And it's really good to be back in the saddle of podcasting. Yeah, it's always fun. It's always a pleasure of your time. So yeah, today we are going to be talking about what is religious trauma.
Orlando:And so to really understand that, we have to understand what is trauma. And trauma is the result of the physiological experience of overwhelm, which happens when something that is too much, too fast, too soon threatens our ability to cope in return to a felt sense of safety. Researchers have found that trauma is subjective, perceptive, and a physiological response to a person, a place, or a thing that overwhelms the nervous system's ability to cope. So practically, this means that trauma is in the eye of the beholder, right? So what is traumatic for one person may not be traumatic for another.
Orlando:And the body may experience trauma as a result of either a real threat or a perceived threat. So let's get into the two different kinds or two different categories of trauma that are going be most relevant to us. So you've got what's known as a single incident traumatic event, and then you have complex trauma. A single incident is just, well, just that. A single incident such as a car accident, a natural disaster, some form of violence happening to an individual.
Orlando:And one of the defining features of single incident trauma is that there is a before and an after, right? Before the incident, life was different, then something happened, and life changes, often for the worse. Then we have complex trauma, and that's really going to be the focus of religious trauma. And so complex trauma is a result of experiencing consistent and pervasive threat or overwhelm without being able to escape. And so if someone is subjected to danger, abuse, neglect, overwhelm, or instability for long periods of time, it can lead to them living in survival mode or in a constant state of fight, flight, freeze, or fawning.
Orlando:And so those are the four common ways of coping in trying to get out of a traumatic situation. So let's take a pause here. Complex trauma is, as far as I know, not a diagnosis in the DSM, unfortunately. I believe it was van der Kolk, Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, who advocated along with other clinicians to have complex PTSD be a diagnosis.
Orlando:But for one reason or another, that was ultimately denied. Hopefully in the DSM six that will be included because there is a lot of clinical research to indicate that this is a real diagnosis. And it clearly encapsulates a lot of these symptoms and realities that clients have been experiencing really throughout their whole lives. And so let's talk about adverse religious experiences. There may be people who are aware of what's known as an ACE, an adverse childhood experience.
Orlando:But there's a book that I've been reading titled When Religion Hurts You, and the author posits a play off of adverse childhood experiences, which is adverse religious experiences. And I think it really is clever way of understanding how a high control religion can severely impact the well-being and the functioning of individuals. So, I want to start first by giving a definition of what a high control religion is, and then we can get into what is an adverse religious experience. So, a basic definition of a high control religion is this: a high demand, high control religion is a faith community that requires obedience, discourages its members from questioning its rules, principles, and practices. It expects subservience and loyalty.
Orlando:It discourages trusting relationships outside the group, perpetuates the notion that those within the group are right and superior to those outside of it. It also promotes extreme or polarizing beliefs and expects its members to suppress their authentic selves in exchange for the sense of belonging and security that the group offers. So that, in essence, is what a high control religion is. Now let's discuss what is an adverse religious experience. An adverse religious experience can be described as any experience of a religious belief, a practice, or a structure that undermines an individual's sense of safety or autonomy, and negatively impacts their physical, social, emotional, relational, or psychological well-being.
Nick:And that's kind of what we want to focus on today. But I did want to share that chart real quick, Orlando, before we move on, because I feel like that chart really concisely puts everything that we're going to talk about really in this episode in one nicely shareable format. So let me share my screen real quick.
Orlando:Yeah, let's take a look at that.
Nick:And let's take a look at that chart. So Orlando shared this chart with me earlier, and it's similar to what we're talking about, right? This chart is titled childhood religious indoctrination. And we're gonna, once again, like we always do in our meeting notes, we're gonna put the sources for where we got everything so that you could read more about it and look into it for yourselves. But what Orlando was just describing about a high control religion, this chart really does a great job at showing that to us in this different format because you can see here this closed religious environment, right?
Nick:So this high control religion is this closed loop system, right? Everything is happening outside of this closed loop. And then there's a whole world outside of it that is not allowed to enter in. Right? So like you can see in the right hand side of this chart, blockage from other people and worldviews.
Nick:So in a high control religion where you have this closed loop system, you're going to be given a lot of things. You're going to be given a lot of things like fear, right? Shame and guilt, punishment, isolation. These are some of the things that you'll be getting inside of the closed loop system, but you're also going to have things withheld from you. In other words, information from outside the system will not be entering in, right?
Nick:And some of those things are information withheld about science, sex, politics, history, culture, psychology, and some of the ways that we see this play out in churches today, right? For example, politics as one of the items there. It doesn't mean that no information about any politics comes into this closed loop system, Or that 100% of information about politics is withheld. But really, it's politics that disagree or worldviews or viewpoints that disagree with the pervasive worldview of this closed loop system. Those are being withheld from you, So most people in a high controlled religion, more often than not, they're only being exposed to one set of ideas, one worldview, right?
Nick:One set of beliefs. And the same thing can be said about psychology. Right? So if you're in this closed loop system, a lot of people are being fed bs, like mental health is fake. Like there's, you know, mental health in the field of psychology, and you shouldn't be listening to any of that kind of stuff.
Nick:That's all fake. And then history also, It's they're being taught their own definition of history. So why I really like this chart besides the fact that it puts everything in this concise format is that it really also highlights what we want to do with this podcast, right? Because some of the information withheld from this closed loop system is kind of like the subheader of our podcast, right? History, theology, psychology.
Nick:That's what we want to cover because we want to try to break down these barriers and really try to analyze some of our own personal experiences in a closed loop, high controlled religious environment. So anyways, that's a bit of an aside rant there that I'll let Orlando take it back over, but just wanted to share this with you to show you some of the things we'll be discussing today, right? Because not only are these things that are happening in the churches today in these high control churches, but then there's long term effects of being exposed to these things, So having information withheld, using these tactics like fear, shame, guilt, punishment, they have consequences, right? And some of those consequences is that it can result in developmental delays in children and those children eventually grow up to be adults, right? And they're delayed in emotional development, intellectual development, sexual and social development as a result of the things that they're exposed to.
Nick:So I'll let Orlando get a little bit deeper into this for us.
Orlando:Yeah, I really love that chart because it shows all that results in this developmental delay, which creates people who can be taken advantage of. Right? At the center of the chart, you had repressed critical thinking. Critical thinking is absolutely essential if you want to navigate life successfully. And if you are missing all of these different categories of ideas, then it's gonna be a lot easier to take advantage of you.
Orlando:And throughout history, we have authoritarian leaders take advantage of individuals with repressed critical thinking due to their upbringing. And those individuals have been galvanized to join large movements that end up in war and destruction. And so there are real implications to this, not just at the individual level, but also at the societal level. So let's dive into some examples of what can be considered adverse religious experiences. The list that we'll be going through is not exhaustive, right?
Orlando:It's not authoritative. So there could be some stuff that doesn't get mentioned that could absolutely qualify as an adverse religious experience. So we're just gonna go through a list of what those are, and then we'll briefly touch on each one of those. So we've got fear of hell or eternal conscious torment, purity, virginity, or abstinence culture, Altar calls, healings or scary sermons, spanking and corporal punishment, and patriarchy and oppression. All right, so let's take a look at that first one, fear of hell or eternal conscious torment.
Orlando:And maybe it might be helpful to define eternal conscious torment, right? Because sometimes that's a term that gets thrown around in theological circles. But what it essentially means is that in certain denominations of Christianity, there is this belief that if you are not saved, right, you're lost, right, you have rejected God for whatever reason. The punishment for that is that for the rest of eternity, upon death, you will be put into what is known as hell, a place where you are essentially on fire. You are enduring this this torture for the rest of eternity.
Orlando:Essentially, God keeps you artificially alive for you to be set on fire and to remain on fire and to experience really what is the cruelest and most sadistic punishment imaginable. And for many individuals in these denominations, they are told, if you want to avoid that, you've got to get on board with what we promote.
Nick:Yeah, and then just to interject real quick, Orlando and I do not subscribe to that theology, right? We believe that that is erroneous theology to believe that it is theologically, biblically correct, or that this is even something that the character of the God that we believe in would even allow. Right. So we do not subscribe to this mentality or we do not subscribe to this theological ideology and neither does the Seventh day Advent ist Church for that matter, This is very much a sinners in the hand of an angry God kind of ideology, right? That classic fear mongering and which we believe is a misinterpretation of Scripture.
Nick:But I say that because first of all, want to make sure that we're very clear and that we do not subscribe to that ideology, but it doesn't mean that the Adventist Church does not have their own version of fear mongering, right, and adverse religious experiences, right, because while they may not preach about eternal conscious torment and this everlasting torture in hell, they very much preach about the, like, the two camps, right, being saved or being lost. And so as opposed to like heaven and hell, it's more like saved and lost. But then hell is not so much the punishment in the Adventist church, but this persecution at the end times is very much the focus. Right? So the thought of, like, in the end times, you will not be able to buy and sell if you profess to be a Christian.
Nick:Right? And you're going to go to the supermarket and the microchip under your hand won't work when you try to scan your palm at the checkout counter, right? Or we're going to have to run to the hills and hide in caves because we're going to be physically persecuted by militia of anti Christian and government agencies, So it's not so much that we're that we have this picture of this fear mongering of hell, but we definitely have this anxiety inducing picture of man, we need to be on the lookout for how we behave. But also we need to be, know, on the lookout at the end times for not this is not spiritual persecution in this case, but a very real physical persecution. But I don't know if that was your experience or not Orlando in the church.
Orlando:Yeah. I'd say it's very similar. I remember Oh, it must have been my I think I was in the fifth grade. And after church, we were invited to some church member's house and we had lunch and all that. Then after lunch, we were shown, a DVD from Amazing Facts.
Orlando:I think it was like the the final events. Right? And it was
Nick:The final events of bible prophecy.
Orlando:That's it. That's it.
Nick:With like, CGI, circa 1995 CGI.
Orlando:Oh, yeah. The CGI was painful to behold, but it was enough to convey this image that at the end of time, we're gonna be hunted down like dogs. Right? And Satan is gonna command all of his, human minions to chase after us, right? And I think it's just such bad framing, I know we'll kinda get into this later, but what's missing from that picture is Jesus.
Orlando:Jesus literally said, Yo, I will always be with you until the end of the age. And the thing is, Christians throughout history have been persecuted. The early church was persecuted. There's persecution in the Middle Ages. Christians are currently being persecuted now.
Orlando:Not like the persecution that a lot of evangelicals talk about. Oh, they took the Christmas trees off of the Starbucks cups and weren't being persecuted. There are Christians being persecuted all throughout countries in Africa.
Nick:Yeah. We're talking about a real persecution, right? Not like we can't say the pledge of allegiance at our local schools anymore, but it's like people's lives are on the line here. Like, it's like or not the pledge of allegiance, but I was thinking, like, they no longer post the 10 commandments right Yeah. At the local schools.
Nick:And because the 10 commandments are not posted, you know, framed in the hallway of that school, all morality is out the window. Like, we are leading the next generation into perdition because, you know, they're taking Jesus out of the schools. Right? No. We mean, like, real persecution.
Nick:Like, right now, as we speak on this earth, there are people who are being persecuted for their faith. And by persecuted, we mean their lives are on the line. They are being hunted. Right? But like Orlando was saying, how are we framing this?
Nick:Because when you're a kid and you hear these sermons in church, you don't leave the church feeling like, you know, I can trust in Christ through adversity or that even if things don't work out well here on earth, that we have the promise of, of another life, right? A promise of heaven and that God will always be with us. No, it's always framed in this, like, let's queue up this bad CGI of, like, a city on fire and, like, people are running to and fro, it's like pandemonium. It's like just mayhem. And there's, like, buildings on fire, and there's people with pitchforks chasing down the Christians.
Nick:That's in my experience, that's how it's been. It's always been painted in that light.
Orlando:Yeah. And I think at least within the American evangelical context, I think one of the reasons why there is this phenomenon where the evangelicals paint a target on themselves, Oh, we're the ones being persecuted. One of the reasons for that is Christianity does have a historical tradition of being persecuted. And perhaps the lack of actual persecution faced by American evangelicals is perhaps because they're not actually living out the tenants of the Bible. Like, if they were to actually live out the tenets, especially of the New Testament, they would absolutely be persecuted.
Orlando:They'd be the first ones to say, We will not bow to Caesar. Right? And what do American evangelicals do? They worship at the altar of nationalism. Right?
Orlando:Like the whole thing of having an American flag in church. To an early Christian, the equivalent of that would be having the Roman flag in their little house church. That would be so foreign to them because they viewed the Roman Empire as an entity that generates orders of magnitude of oppression and violence. And if American evangelicals were to take cues from the early church, they'd realize, oh, wow, the nationalism that we have been engaging in is a false god. We are guilty of syncretism, trying to merge patriotism and Christianity.
Orlando:It's an evil, toxic mix. So let's move on to the second adverse religious experience, purity, virginity or abstinence culture. This is a really interesting one.
Nick:We could do a whole episode on this one bullet point.
Orlando:We sure could. Let's define it, right? Purity culture encompasses the messaging from all religiously based movements that prioritize abstinence before marriage, virginity, sexual purity, and teach significant consequences for not abiding by such lifestyles. Yeah, this is a really interesting one because I do believe that there is merit to having a healthy sexual ethic to govern our lives. I do believe that the Bible gives us a healthy sex ethic.
Orlando:At the same time, there are individuals in various Christian denominations that have a very unbalanced view on sex, which ultimately is influenced by the cultures that they grew up in. So for example, for those who may have received some form of sex education in Christian private schools, one potential analogy that would be used to describe the effects of premarital sex could be where you take a piece of tape, right? And you stick it onto something, then you rip it off. And you do that a few times. And then the instructor says, Notice how it's not as sticky?
Orlando:That means that you lose your value, you lose your effectiveness. You're just less valuable. You're used goods.
Nick:Holy crap, bro. Never heard that before, but that's nutty!
Orlando:Oh yeah, it's very common. And there seems to be a bit of an overlap of these abstinence only messages with bad framing, along with what's considered more secular red pill stuff. And by red pill, the whole Andrew Tate, incel groups where it's just like, Yeah, women are evil and they owe us all that. There's some interesting overlap because all of the onus for purity culture is put on women. Women are essentially seen as the gatekeepers of sex.
Orlando:And it is a woman's responsibility for men not to lust. And it's men's responsibility for what? I don't know, because purity culture does not place an emphasis on men. The women just need to stop dressing promiscuously.
Nick:Yeah, I was going to say that if you haven't seen our gender roles episode in this religious trauma series, you definitely need to go and check that one out since we cover some of these things, right? How the responsibility is usually placed on the woman. And we've gone over some of those things in other episodes as well. But what's crazy to me is what you were mentioning about how both sides of the coin, right? If you have a spiritual, what's the word like a a spiritual source for this information, then it's usually like it's still putting the emphasis on the woman, right?
Nick:Like, don't be a stumbling block. And that's what we covered in one of our episodes. Right? I believe it was the gender roles episode, but I could be wrong in which we covered the don't be a stumbling block. Right.
Nick:But then in secular media outside of the church, also see this overlap, like red pill things like Andrew Tate, like you mentioned, but the result is the same. It's devaluing women. You know, Andrew Tate does not preach respecting women as equals. He thinks women have no intrinsic value. He treats them like trash.
Nick:So there but that's the that's the kind of thing that this ideology is putting out there into the ether Right? This is the kind of thing that people are consuming. And then it results in these erroneous ideas. And that's that's the important thing that I think we need to highlight is not not only does this information exists or not only does this ideology exists, but there's real consequences to that ideology. And then just going back to that graph, And we're since we're talking about sex and how this is some of this information is withheld, right?
Nick:So some of these things like instead of talking about safe sex, right, that information is completely outside of this closed loop system. It's just no sex, And abstinence. There's no such thing as as the middle ground or safe sex or educating others about sex because this is information that's withheld. But then a result of that, this category right here, then you have developmental delays that like include developmental delays and attitudes towards sex. Right?
Nick:And just these attitudes about the value of women, the value of an individual, how intrinsic value and sex are interconnected. All of these ideas come out of that mindset.
Orlando:Let's chat about the next example, spanking and corporal punishment. There are a lot of individuals who use Bible verses to support spanking children. What I notice is that most misbehavior among children is often the result of a dysregulated nervous system. And so you have these high control religions that tell individuals, Assault your kids. And for most people, they aren't used to hearing the word assault to describe spanking.
Orlando:But if you have a friend who is the same age as you, and they are emotionally dysregulated, they're going through a hard time, and you try to reason with them a little bit, but they're just really, really dysregulated, what are you going to do next? Is hitting them in the cards for you? Is that an option? Of course not. And yet, many people in high control religions are taught that it is acceptable to assault a child as a form of punishment in order to teach them to be quote unquote a good human being.
Nick:And that goes back to the whole information withheld column in that chart, And psychology being this particular category, but just talking about self regulation, right? And if like babies and children, right, they're incapable of self regulating. Like I have an almost three month old now. And when she starts crying, and you know, your patience is being tested, because you're like, man, why are you crying so much? It's, you're treated great here, you've got you've got the life here.
Nick:You just remind yourself, like, she is incapable of self regulating of self soothing, of getting herself out of that headspace. So that's your job as the adult is you're helping that child regulate, You're helping them out. But if you if this information is withheld and your understanding of psychology and mental health is that it's all it's all a farce, then, yeah, the only thing that you're most likely hearing is this child is misbehaving because you're not spanking them enough. That's the that's the direct result of lack of corporal punishment is a direct cause of your child behaving this way, not the fact that they can't self regulate?
Orlando:So there's a group known as the Independent Fundamental Baptists. Within that particular group, many members were instructed, in order to discipline your children, you need to hit them as early as infancy. And what you would do is you would place your infant on the floor, and you would put a toy in front of them. And every time they would crawl toward the toy, you would hit them with like a little stick, and you would keep hitting them
Nick:until- kind of operant conditioning am I hearing right now? That's some Pavlov's dog crap right there.
Orlando:It's despicable, and yet it's based off of a misunderstanding of spare the rod, spoil the child. And yet in the Bible, the rod is symbolic of what a shepherd would hold. And the shepherd would not use the rod to beat the sheep over the head. It was to guide them. He'd lift it up and they would see, Oh, okay, this is where I need to go.
Orlando:So the rod was a symbol of correction, of teaching, of discipline, not just corporal punishment. But you have most of these individuals reading the King James Bible and they don't know what half the words mean in there. So- Yeah,
Nick:bro. So context of the rod is in a shepherding or guiding context versus using it as tool of punishment.
Orlando:Absolutely.
Nick:And then before we move on to the next section here, just wanted to give a quick shout outbook recommendation. This book is called Parenting Right From the Start. It was written by Dr. Vanessa LaPointe, and it says here, Laying a Healthy Foundation in the Baby and Toddler Years. So this book here is written by a psychologist and she covers things like, self regulation and how that relates to different parenting styles, but just really interesting read if you're interested in that kind of developmental psychology, if you're going to be a parent or are a parent, or if you just want to learn more about developmental psychology and things like self regulation and how that can affect a child and therefore eventually affect an adult.
Nick:This is a good read there.
Orlando:All right. So yeah, patriarchy and oppression. Right? So in a lot of high control religions, right, and we're gonna focus on mainly Christian high control religions. Patriarchy is recognized as the way that God ordered creation.
Orlando:Right? You know, God created Adam first, not Eve. Right? And they also take gender roles out of the Godhead, which, man, a lot of Christians do this. And there are quite a few Adventists that do this.
Orlando:And they'll say, well, in the same way that God the Father is on top and Jesus is his son. Right? And they have to and Jesus has to take orders from God the father. Man is in charge in women in her and, you know, the wife has to follow along. Right?
Nick:And Spoiler alert. Go watch our gender roles episode because it's a bunch of crap, and we and we break that down in our gender roles episode.
Orlando:Absolutely. And so you have a lot of people who are known as complementarians, they don't realize that they are compromising the doctrine of the Trinity in order to justify their understanding of gender roles, which is ultimately influenced by culture rather than scripture. And so most complementarians will not realize that because they look at the world and they realize, well, it's just always been this way. Therefore, it feels right. And so in patriarchal culture, men are at the top.
Orlando:They make the decisions, they hold power, create rules, determine moral authority. And now, in recent times, relatively speaking, that has begun to be challenged, right? Great strides have been made in advocating and getting more rights for women, rights that should have been theirs to begin with. And in these high control religions, that is just not the case. If anything, high control religions will bemoan the fact that feminism even exists.
Orlando:You'll hear proponents of high control religions who will say, Feminism is cancer. That's a common phrase. Or, Feminism is bad. We need to do away with women's suffrage. There are individuals like that out there who say these things and who are taken seriously by their adherence.
Nick:And then that's why you have so many people in these close religious loops and these conservative high control religions that are so attracted to the Andrew Tates of the world. Right? So someone who is not necessarily speaking from a theological perspective, right? Or, or putting forth ideas from like a biblical exposition. Like that's not the point of his, of his podcast or the media that he puts out.
Nick:Right? Yet Christians, conservative Christians are attracted to Andrew Tate and the things that he says, because it just reinforces this patriarchal mindset, right? That devalues women, that puts men in this hierarchical superior position. So they draw to him like moths to a flame, right?
Orlando:Absolutely. And there is an overlap between the more high control religions and also secular individuals who believe in evolutionary psychology. Evolutionary psychology, a lot of those individuals, they preach this idea that men are at the top of the food chain and women are down here. Their purpose is to be a baby factory and men need to take their role. And so it's kind of like this weird horseshoe effect where the opposite ends of the spectrum touch on certain topics.
Orlando:Let's transition. We're gonna talk about how do adverse religious experiences affect individuals? And in particular, how does it affect an individual at the nervous system level? Because this is really important to understand. So in regard to the nervous system, there is a very long nerve that runs all throughout the body that's known as the vagus nerve.
Orlando:The vagus nerve can be divided into two parts. The parts that we're going be interested in are the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system. The sympathetic nervous system regulates our breathing, heart rhythm, blood flow and pressure, body temperature. It's what is activated when we see a real, perceived or a remembered threat. And so the sympathetic nervous system, we consider that the gas pedal, right?
Orlando:It moves us toward a fight or flight response, right? But then we also have the parasympathetic nervous system. This system can be considered to be the brakes for the nervous system, right? It helps us stay in a calm state, right? It slows our heart rate, it stimulates our gut for digestive purposes and helps us to return to a calm state where we can grow and restore, right?
Orlando:And so these two branches of the nervous system, what the gas pedal and the brake, right? Parasympathetic and sympathetic form what's called the autonomic nervous system. And when an individual is in a safe environment, the autonomic system registers that in the body by keeping the body in a calm state. However, if there is a real or perceived danger on the horizon, the autonomic nervous system can move the body into a more activated or nervous or mobilized state. Right?
Orlando:And so the autonomic nervous system can do that without us thinking about it. You don't have to think to yourself, okay, I perceive danger. Now I need my heart to pump more blood. I need my digestive system to kind of shut down. That way, I can have more blood diverted to important areas.
Orlando:It is something that is done automatically. So, for instance, when the autonomic nervous system senses a threat, the body activates organs and parts of the body such as the hypothalamus, the pituitary gland, in order to create cortisol and adrenaline, which gives us additional energy to fight or flight. It also suppresses digestive functions like hunger or needing to use the bathroom, since in the face of danger, it would be inconvenient to have to go. So all that stuff just kind of gets shut down and other functions get prioritized. Right?
Orlando:And so the process in which the nervous system evaluates risk is known as neuroception. It is an automatic and subconscious process that involves various areas of our brain scanning the environment and communicating back to the nervous system whether we are in danger or not. Let's suppose that we live in an environment where there is chronic stress. You are in an environment where you're told the devil's always out to get you. Those people out in the world, they're bad.
Orlando:Don't read any worldly books. Don't read any books from authors that aren't upon our denomination. If you live in an environment where there is long lasting stress or is overwhelming, our bodies respond with physiological symptoms and psychological symptoms that eventually become protective or coping measures. And over time, we will live in a chronic state of disregulation. The sympathetic nervous system, remember the gas pedal, it is when you live in an environment where there is constant stress and activation, when you're getting constant messages from leaders saying, You gotta watch out, gotta watch out.
Orlando:Jesus could be coming back at any time. And if you internalize that and your body perceives that as a threat, you are now in a constant state of activation. That gas pedal is getting pressed down to the floor and it's staying there. And that leads to a whole host of negative side effects for both the body and the mind. And so there are different reactions that the body can have.
Orlando:You've got fight, flight, freeze, or fawning. And so fight and flight are pretty simple. Right? If there there is a situation in which you can fight, you fight. Right?
Orlando:However, if you are in a religious system where, you're told to obey your leaders, you have to listen to what they say, then fighting isn't probably going to be an option. Flight could be an option, But what if you're told, if you leave the system, you're lost. We have the truth. We have explanation for everything. And if you leave us, you're rejecting that.
Orlando:You're rejecting God. And if you internalize that message, suddenly flight or leaving isn't really an option anymore. And so you're left with two other options in terms of the nervous system, freeze or fawn. And with freezing, the sympathetic nervous system still stays active, right? So that gas pedal is pushed down to the floor.
Orlando:But the brake pedal is also pressed down to the floor as well. And so you may look like someone who is just with the system or whatever, but there is just a deep battle within you and just all this conflict. But you know, I can't leave and I can't fight it. I'm stuck, right? And that situation where the sympathetic system is active, gas pedal to the floor, but the brakes are on, that leads to you living in a body that is full of cortisol.
Orlando:And that has devastating effects for a person's physical health and emotional health. And the other option is fawning, and this could be understood as appeasing. And so for an individual who realizes I am just stuck in this situation, oh, at least I can appease captor or appease the people around me. And this one is quite sad because it often ends up enabling those around them, right? And the nervous system has determined that meeting others' needs, making oneself small, doing what others want, and reassuring others, that gives them a sense of safety.
Orlando:And we all crave a sense of safety. All of us have this deep need to feel safe at the nervous system level.
Nick:Except that in that high control religion, your sense of safety comes at a price. You're giving something in order to get that sense of safety.
Orlando:So let's, we can talk a little bit more about freeze, because I think this is a really interesting phenomenon. So the nervous system engages the freeze response when it recognizes that fight, fleeing, or fawning are just unavailable. And so freeze often looks like being quiet in hiding. While a person who's in freeze mode might appear to be small, shallow, or still, underneath the surface, there is that significant activation, right? Now, when the sympathetic nervous system is activated, the prefrontal cortex tends to shut down because blood is diverted from the prefrontal cortex in order to go to the areas of the brain that correspond, with survival.
Nick:Basically, the logic is let's cut down to essential systems only, right? If we need to survive, let's only power what will help us in aid in survival, nothing else. Right? So the you were saying the prefrontal cortex, right? Like the higher function of thinking and where our personality is and just more of our reasoning capabilities.
Nick:Those reasoning capabilities get dampened when that survival mode kicks in, right?
Orlando:Absolutely. And that's what makes us stand out from other mammals, right? This is the thing that imbues upon us rationality, deep decision making processes that animals just don't have, right? And so when that shuts down, you are truly in survival mode. Whenever the threat does pass, the prefrontal cortex starts to reengage.
Orlando:And with it, our thoughts, our cognitions, and our meaning making abilities begin to come back online. However, if you have the perspective of, Oh, that experience wasn't so bad, or Other people have it worse than me. I made such a big deal over nothing. That's how trauma gets stuck in the body. We don't nearly have enough time to explore how trauma gets stuck in the body.
Orlando:Suffice it to say, as individuals go through these experiences time and time again, they begin to exist in a world where they are constantly hypervigilant, constantly activated, and their view of the world kind of shifts and they just believe the world is a cruel place. It's painful. It's very judgmental.
Nick:But then also think about the reinforcement of those ideas and the reinforcement of that trauma. Like if you go to church every weekend and you I mean, I'm not saying that every church is this way, okay, or that like your local church is going to be this way, but I'm saying in these high control religions or environments, if those if those trauma inducing ideas are reinforced every weekend, then that gas pedal, you know, just when you try to regulate where you try to try to get that out of your system, it gets reinforced constantly. So having that constant reinforcement can't be good for you either.
Orlando:Absolutely. And I want to say that religion or its practices and belief, are not inherently traumatic. Right? I'm not saying that at all. Rather, it's the effect of the experience.
Orlando:It's the effect of the belief or the practice on an individual. That is what we're talking about. How a person's nervous system responded or still responds to various religious teachings, beliefs, practices. That is what is in question. Because you have some individuals who may not have that bodily response to a certain idea or a certain doctrine or certain practice, but someone else might.
Orlando:And I think that engenders a conversation to be had. Okay, why do these ideas have effects on some people, but not on others? And if they are having this effect on some people, maybe we ought to have a conversation about how this idea is getting framed within the system. And so maybe that's something that we can dive into right now. The bad framing of biblical ideas, like we were talking about earlier, persecution, the traditional Adventist idea is that at the end of Earth's history, there will be a system in place that is extremely evil, malicious, and that wants to just force this mass amount of evil onto people.
Orlando:And they will buy into it in order to survive. Those who stand up and say, You know what? We do not want to buy into this evil system. God has redeemed us. He has given us principles to live by, and we will not sacrifice our principles for temporary safety.
Orlando:However, that framing is often absent when many Adventists talk about the persecution at the end. It's, oh, they're gonna hunt us down. The government's gonna be after us. They're gonna be sending out the black helicopters and whatnot. They're gonna scramble the jets.
Orlando:Exactly. And they're gonna be hunting us down, us Sabbath keepers. I'm just like, Man, where is Jesus in all And of
Nick:even like, I'm not saying, just for the sake of this exercise, let's just focus in on the language that is used, Not even the fact that they're excluding Jesus out of it. Right? But for the sake of this exercise, if we're looking at the language used, they're catastrophizing the end times saying like, you know, they're gonna scramble the Black Hawk helicopters and they're gonna, they're gonna send the drones after us while we're hiding in the in the cave. So therefore, we should not live in big cities, and we should live in the middle of nowhere because that's what the Bible says we should do to be prepared for the end times. Know?
Nick:But it's like, if even without saying, where's Jesus in this equation? Where did you even arrive at that equation to begin with? Like this catastrophizing picture of like all hell breaking loose. Where did you arrive at that picture for this is exactly how it's going to look like in the first place?
Orlando:It's a fair question to ask. If we believe that Jesus said, I am always with you till the end of the age, then we really have nothing to worry about, right? Like the Christians of old who were persecuted and some of them died, well, that's outside of their control. It's just accepting reality for what it is. Yeah, if we ever reach a point in time where that persecution does come back, then that's out of our control.
Orlando:And if that's the case, all right, I'll make the best of it. If I die, I die. And my life is secure in Christ. I don't have to worry about that. But that focus isn't there.
Orlando:And I think that's a focus that ultimately comes from Adventism. There are pockets of Adventism having a hard time offering assurance of salvation to individuals.
Nick:Yeah. I think one hand of it, one side of the coin is like you said, you're taking these biblical ideas, but are these and you're like, you just have bad applications of it, right? Or the focus is slightly off kilter from where it should be. And I think the other side of the coin, is, you know, another part of why we started this podcast is just straight up exposing false theology, you know, in general, just some ideas are not even just, oh, we're, you know, the focus is off kilter, but some ideas are just like, man, this is just not biblical or this is like an incorrect interpretation of scripture. And that's why we're doing this, right?
Nick:Because sometimes it's like, okay, is this thought that you have, this ideology that you have about, you know, eternal conscious torment, right? Or is this perception that you have of who God is, who what his character is like? Where did you get that from? Is that based on scripture? Is that informed by culture?
Nick:Right? Is that informed by the politics that you were raised with? I mean, etc. But what we want to do is just let's get back to Sola Scriptura and read Scripture and really see like this is the truth of who God is. This is the truth of His character.
Nick:And maybe we're just misinterpreting this text altogether. Right. And so just hopefully, we can put some positivity out into the ether and say like, hey, let's in this particular case with persecution, let's shift that focus instead of fear mongering. Let's shift the focus to I will be with you always even to the end of the age. Right.
Nick:And then in other theologically erroneous ideas like eternal burning hell, let's shift the focus. Let's not just not just shift the focus, but also let's dive deep into scripture and see that. Is this something that is biblically supported? This is this even line up with what we believe is a true character of Christ?
Orlando:Yeah, that's excellent. And I think to add onto that, addressing this corporate habit of making everything about salvation. The foods that you eat, the clothes that you wear, the adornment that you choose to put on, every decision, your salvation's on the line. And it just creates a situation where your salvation is like a light switch. It could be on or off at any time, right?
Orlando:Salvation or damnation, all within the span of a few seconds every day, all your life. Mean, think about this. If that is how you live life, if that is how you've been instructed to live in a state of, I could lose my salvation by making the wrong choice, salvation on or off, that creates an internal state of anxiety where you are unsure of your salvation. And that is ultimately the supreme existential question. Will I be saved?
Orlando:Everything else pales in comparison. Will I be saved? That is the ultimate question. And if we are teaching people to constantly wonder, am I gonna be saved? Should I even say that I'm saved?
Orlando:Right? You are creating a culture of anxiety. When you exist in that body, you cannot rest. You will always have that baseline level of anxiety churning within you.
Nick:And anxiety is prevalent in our church today, and in high control religions like it, right? So I think the flip side of the coin is if we were to focus on the reframing things, if we were to focus on, let's see what the Bible actually says about this, right? Let's get rid of that wall in the chart of this knowledge that we're keeping outside of this closed loop system, then we can start to break down the consequences of that also, right? We can see that the levels of anxiety may decrease, right? The levels of traumatic experiences felt in the church will decrease because we're not putting garbage out anymore, but we're reframing how we how we view God and how we view scripture and how we talk about Him.