Cross-Examined

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Do you know how to defend the faith and also
engage the culture. Well, if you're anywhere near Tupelo, Mississippi,
I'm going to be with my friends at the American
Family Radio Network at the AFA Activate Summit. That's June thirteenth,
next Friday. Hope to see you there. Go to our
website cross Examined dot org for more where you can
go to the American Family Association website and get information there. Also,

(00:26):
don't forget about CIA, the Cross Examined Instructor Academy that
is going to be held in Charlotte for the eighteenth
year or eighteenth annual CIA. That's where you're going to
learn how to be a better apologist. And if you
don't want to present, you don't have to. You can
take the non presenter track. We have a presenting track
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(00:47):
You have to apply. It's not free, but it's well
worth it. We have people that come back five, six, seven,
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So check out CIA, the Cross Examine Instructor. Let me
go back to my guest, the Great Anna Kiko, who's
doing some great work not only as an apologist for
the University of Tennessee at Knoxville at the Ratio Christie

(01:09):
she directs the Ratio Christi group there, but she counsels
people on spiritual abuse who have been involved in spiritual abuse.
And Anna, before the break, you were talking about kind
of an extreme example of people actually being seduced to
move into a compound. But I often hear of this
happening in what appear to be normal churches, a spiritual abuse,

(01:32):
not that they're moving off to a compound. Can you
give us an example of that and how you've dealt
with it.

Speaker 2 (01:36):
Yeah, I'll give you some generic iterations now that I
see a lot so very deeply. These are Christians who
are really wanting to study the Word, to be serious
about their faith, and so they get sucked into environments
that are a lot more controlling and authoritative than they
would normally tolerate for the reason of serious discipleship. That's

(01:57):
what they're looking for, and so they tend towards you know,
theologies that they're the ones listening to John MacArthur sermons
on the regular right, very deeply serious, and these are
people who are going to read material from like Doug
Wilson's side of things, where it's going to be serious,
but it's a little bit it's almost creepy, and how
authoritative it is. There's a subordinating element to it, and

(02:20):
we're not sure how that's going down. And Doug Wilson
might get in trouble here pretty soon, i think, given
the amount of things that are coming out about his
little compound in Moscow. But these Christians are serious, right,
they want real theology, they're authentic, they want to move
forward in maturity, and so what happens is they then
get sucked into whatever the local iteration of somebody claiming

(02:41):
to be serious and really offering their own version of slavery, legalism, pietism, asceticism.
There are a lot of these individuals, and now narcissisic
personality disorder as a disorder from a psychological perspective, does
tend towards very legalistic. They're looking for complyings, they're looking
for uniformity as opposed to unity, and those two things

(03:04):
can be conflated really, really rapidly. So these individuals go
into these groups where you've got a leader who has
taken a mode that they would say is just really
serious Christianity, and they've made themselves the standard of holiness
and they're getting away with it because they are simply
presenting an air of I'm deeply holy. Sin is a

(03:27):
part for me. Right, they start they start saying things like, well,
I'm not saying I don't sin anymore, but also the
congregation is saying they don't sin anymore, and they're not
correcting them, or they're inserting themselves as leaders into the
lives of the individuals of the congregation in a way
that is a massive overstep, like commenting on the privacy

(03:48):
of a marriage bed, like inserting eldership protocols into how
a kid is raised without the consent of the parents. Right,
it's like, it's it's too far, it's too controlling, it's
too preference oriented. Right, you can start to kind of
tell what the preference of the leadership are based on

(04:08):
how the women dress. Right. There are certain things that
are okay, Like you walk in and all the women
have Kavu backpacks, and it's like, where did that come from?
That's kind of weird. Why, Or everybody's dressed as a
Puritan and it's like, well, that's you're free to do that,
but also why that doesn't seem like the natural extension
of freedom in the lives of independent human beings. That's

(04:30):
more like somebody somewhere implied that this is the standard
of holiness, and now if you don't look like this,
you're under suspicion that you're not really holy anymore. The
word we use for this, or at least the word
that I use for this, is pseudodoxy. These are the
unspoken norms that go uncorrected by the leadership because it
works for their ability to continue to control people. Very subversive,

(04:55):
very nefarious, turns into abuse nearly immediately. We see this
a lot in marital problems. So even as things as
dark as marital rape, for example, in the case of
like the Doug Wilson iterations of things where it's completely
it's it turns into like a master slave element for

(05:16):
the men and women of the congregation, and it goes uncorrected.
That's a huge deal.

Speaker 1 (05:20):
Are you saying that that's going on in his compound
or there's been accusations of that.

Speaker 2 (05:24):
No, No, I'm absolutely saying that that's going on in Moscow,
though yep. I will stand by that there are too
many victims of this nonsense that I've taken care of.

Speaker 1 (05:33):
Ohah, so they've come, they've come to you for counseling. Yes, okay, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (05:38):
Yep, he's got I hope, I hope he takes this
all very seriously and does something quickly, because this nonsense
can't keep going on.

Speaker 1 (05:47):
How do you treat somebody who has been in this
abusive situation? First of all, let me ask you this,
because when somebody's in that situation, they probably fear their
con On one hand, they are attracted to what is
being done. On the other hand, they're repulsed by it,
and they feel that if they leave somehow they're going

(06:08):
to be they're going to be maybe damned forever, you know,
or they're going to be ostracized. So how do you
how do you counsel them, What do you say to them?
How do you how do you bring them out and
make them whole again?

Speaker 2 (06:24):
Yeah. We focus on the fact that spiritual abuse physiologically
will shut down two thirds of a nervous system, so
you cease to be able to have any trust in
any of your feelings or the sensations of your body anymore.
It's very similar to how the military teaches you to
be extremely controlled and to only operate with cognition. Very similar.

(06:45):
And so when I deal with somebody who's come out
of a recently spiritual abusive environment, they often feel crazy
and like they don't know who they are. And the
initial impact of saying to the person who's been in
that type of environment, I see you, You're not crazy.
You're allowed to say what your eyes saw, because very

(07:05):
often they just they will gaslight. Gaslighting is like, maybe
I didn't see what I saw. Maybe I maybe I
didn't hear what I heard. You know, maybe I misunderstood,
and you didn't misunderstand. Like your brain was operational, you
had eyes that functioned. It's okay to say that out
loud and just to begin there, to get them to

(07:25):
begin to trust again the way that a nervous system operates,
and that feelings, oftentimes you don't want them to drive right,
But feelings are not nothing. They very often that deep
sinking something's wrong is your spirit and you're allowed to
focus on that for a minute and go stop. I'm
gonna stop. I'm not gonna move forward. I'm just gonna

(07:46):
investigate I'm unnerved, right, I need I need to stop,
and it's okay to do that. You actually are valuable.
You are not just a toy in someone else's game.

Speaker 1 (08:00):
And what have you seen that what's the tipping point
that causes people to say, I need to get out
of this, I need counseling.

Speaker 2 (08:08):
They normally have a mental breakdown of sorts after you
put somebody under that much pressure and scrutiny. And that
it's God who is doing the judging of the person, right,
the person who's representing God has set themselves up as
God's mouth peace. And so now the fact that you're
not performing for the ministry the way that the leader

(08:28):
thinks you ought to be is now tantamount to you
losing your salvation, as opposed to you needing a sabbatical
or you needing a spa day, or you need to
just work somewhere else or take a break because you matter.
And it's okay to like have needs to take care
of your family, to not forfeit your marriage covenant, on
behalf of whatever the ministry leader wants for you. Those

(08:51):
things are all critical components to the life of a
Christian and they're not at odds with one another. You
don't have to you don't have to put yourself aside
in order to serve in a way that's healthy in
the Kingdom of God. And so when somebody has been
put under so much pressure, something breaks. Anything from even
an aneurysm, I've seen, you have physiological reactions. You can

(09:13):
have what's called idiopathic diseases show up. Idiopathic in clinical
terminology means we have no idea where this came from.
A lot of times that's a psychological crush point. It's
your brain going, I'm in so much distress, I'm going
to make it physically impossible for you to go to work.
And it's those places that where nobody can help them anymore,

(09:34):
and they would rather be in hell than to continue
in the ministry that they show up at the door
and say, I don't know what else to do. This
is why that work is so important, is because these
beautiful individuals have been horribly abused and they are not
in hell. They are just authentically telling the truth and
unwilling to continue to lie to themselves about it anymore.

(09:56):
It's wonderful to virtue nice.

Speaker 1 (10:00):
You also point out, and I'd like to unpack this
for us, that there were people saying they spoke for
God even in the Bible, and they didn't. Can you
unpack that for us?

Speaker 3 (10:10):
Yes?

Speaker 2 (10:11):
Jeremi Chapter five one of my favorite moments in scripture,
because Jeremiah says that the Lord refers to the people
who are doing this, who are behaving as though they
are prophets speaking as on behalf of God, but they're
actually talking about themselves. He calls them fat and sleek
their dispositions. They're fat and sleek in their dispositions, and

(10:32):
I think that's such a good way of describing precisely
what narcissist personality disorder looks like in real time. Right.
Their headspace is fat and sleep. They're gluttonous in what
they're willing to consume from the people around them for
their own gain. And that's what these prophets were doing.
And that's what Jeremiah was warning against, is that they're

(10:52):
making things up to gain clout, power, money, any of
the things that you would gain nowadays by doing the
same thing. And we need to be really mindful of
the people who claim, in fact, with even with the
NR which I mentioned earlier, people who are regularly claiming
to be prophets who are prophesigned falsely. And we know
because you tweeted it, and wouldn't you note it like

(11:15):
the person you said was going to be president isn't.
And that makes you a false prophet. And we don't
need to listen to your prophecies anymore. God doesn't need
these prophets. He can handle it himself. So once they've
messed up, I think it's time for buy. We don't
need to listen to you anymore.

Speaker 1 (11:32):
Yes, as John says in First John two, all that's
in the world the lust of the eyes, the lust
of the flesh, and the boastful pride of life. Those
three things, ladies and gentlemen, sex, money, and power can
cause any of us or influence any of us to sin.
And we have to check check ourselves. Buy those three sex, money,
and power, because especially if you're in a situation where

(11:56):
you have power over people, you might tend to use
that for your own, your own selfish desires. And that's
what happens in cults, and it gets to the point
that it gets so far out of control that many
people are abused by it. And my guest today, Anna Kitko,
deals with people who are coming out of these situations,

(12:18):
and give the website again, Anna, in case people are
just tuning in.

Speaker 2 (12:21):
Certainly, if you're local to the Smoky Mountain area, it's
full Circle Counseling and wellness as well as Integrated Wellness Tennessee.
And then of course if you're global and you won't access,
it's be embold and.

Speaker 1 (12:32):
Be Embolden dot com. We'll put that in the show notes.
If you're listening to this on radio, find the I
Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist podcast or
YouTube channel Cross Examined YouTube channel. You'll see all the
notes in the show notes. And we've got another segment
with annas I Don't Go Anywhere. We're back right after
the break.

Speaker 3 (13:10):
Could you answer this question, why doesn't God let everyone
into heaven? Or do all religions get you to heaven?

Speaker 2 (13:16):
Well?

Speaker 3 (13:16):
Frank Turk can, And now you can watch him tackle
the toughest questions from his latest college tour appearance see
Real Students Challenge Frank, and watch how true spiritual abuse?

Speaker 1 (13:28):
How do you identify it? How do you get out
of it? How do you how much a kid who's
counseled a lot of people have been spiritually abused, can
give us some insights and also some resources that we
can go to if we think we have been spiritually abused,
or we know people that are in a situation right

(13:48):
now in fact, and I'd like you to unpack for us, uh,
the things someone needs to look for if they're in
a situation that may signal that they are in a
spiritually abusive situation. What would they be?

Speaker 2 (14:04):
Yeah, So the number one is you can't ask questions,
you can't question the authorities. There's something about the expectation
that you're just supposed to obey, that there's a compliance
type protocol and that scrutiny is not welcome, a huge
red flag. You want to scrutinize a way, and you
want to have leadership that is open to them being
tested that really matters. You want to look for an

(14:24):
accountability framework. Beware of a place that has no oversight
for the leadership that really matters, or if the leadership
themselves are their own oversight. Really problematic turns into cultishness
very quickly. Make sure you pay attention to any type
of performance being a part of the acceptability of you
in the congregation. You're there to receive the comfort and

(14:50):
the knowledge of God as you move through your life
in the sanctification process, and as to be introduced to
the Lord Jesus Christ. If you haven't been introduced yet,
you are not the to perform for a bunch of elders.
You're not there to do anything but be served. And
if in turn you desire to serve others, praise God.

(15:10):
But the leadership should be servant oriented. So any type
of leadership that except that wants you to do all
of the work and for them to sit back and
enjoy you all of the work that you're doing, that's
a problem. Then of course, looking for any type of bullying,
that's another big ones. If the elders or the pastor
are different in staff meetings or in their home life

(15:30):
than they are in the pulpit or on the stage,
you have a major problem they are to face, and
that's a huge deal.

Speaker 1 (15:37):
I haven't asked you this, so I don't know if
you've looked into this. I listened to one episode of
the Mars Hill podcast. Oh yes, Mark Books with Mark Driscoll.
Have you looked into that? I haven't, so I don't
have a strong opinion on it. What's your view.

Speaker 2 (15:53):
Mark has a lot of problems. My view is that
Mark really struggles with narcissis personality disorder himself. He did
not take seriously what happened at Mars Hill and set
up shop in Arizona and is trying to do it again.
I would be very careful with him. I think this
is one of those cases where you have an individual
who is wielding christian Ish things in order to garner

(16:14):
clout and power and have you pay for their lifestyle
for the rest of their lives. I'm not a huge fan.
I don't like that he did not show any humility
or repentance. I think I would love to see that
from him in the future. You know, the same thing
is true with the stuff that's coming out on Signs
of Patriarchy, for example, which is a podcast documenting what's
going on with Doug Wilson's stuff. So if you want

(16:36):
to kind of do the same thing as Mars Hill,
you can do that with that podcast there. I would
love to see Doug actually address some of the stuff.
I'd come from the same tradition that Doug claims to
hail from, and I've got a lot of questions because
John Calvin never taught half the things coming out of
his mouth. So this is a huge problem, huge, huge problem.
Where is his oversight exactly?

Speaker 1 (16:55):
Well, here's the interesting thing. So many of these guys
say so many things that are right that it confuses people.
It may have been Chesterton. I don't know if he
said this, but it sounds like Chesterton. He said that
discernment is not being able to tell the difference between
true and faults, but to be able to tell the
difference between true and almost true, right, And that is

(17:19):
true discernment. And there are, obviously there are a lot
of distinctions and nuances in theology that if you're untrained,
you might miss. And that's where charismatic leaders can take
advantage of.

Speaker 2 (17:33):
People, absolutely absolutely, because when you're going to church, going
to go to church, you're not there to fight a
war against coercion. That's not why you showed up. Most
of us have lives and families to raise, and things
to be concerned with, and businesses to run and any
of the other things you've been designed by God to
do for the body of Christ. And praise God for that.
So when you walk into the church doors and they're

(17:54):
designed to hide from you in a course of environment,
what is actually going going on? That can be shocking.
You did not know. This is supposed to be the
safest place in the world. This is supposed to be
for kids, or you know, going to Sunday school and
or you're building community. So for that space to be
almost right, right, that's Satan concrete in a heartbeat, and

(18:16):
he will and so we need to be mindful of that. Unfortunately,
that's just the reality for the US right now, as
well as abroad, but very much so in the US.

Speaker 1 (18:25):
What else would be helpful to our listeners to know
about this?

Speaker 2 (18:28):
Annah, Yeah, if you could come alongside those who have
been spiritually abused, they're a great deal. It's terrifying to
the high degree that it is of how many people.
I think the last poll that was done it was
something in the eighties, is eighty eight percent of Americans
claim to be both Christian and having experienced spiritual abuse
in Christian settings. We now have frameworks clinically to measure

(18:51):
those things. I'm one of the authors of one of them,
especially in like deliberance settings. I'm noticing there's a great
deal of abuse going on in these in SOO sessions
for example, I do not recommend going to any of those.
Be very careful in any type of exorcis of setting,
especially if they're charging money. Any type of prophetic room
sort of situations where you're going to receive your prophecy

(19:13):
for the day. I would very much avoid that. If
they're charging for it, that's simony, which is warned against
in the scriptures. They're already breaking every protocol in the
scriptures they could to warn to warn you that, hey,
this is not a safe environment. Don't go in there,
this is not holy spirit. Run, this is somebody trying
to get your money. So please be careful and come

(19:34):
alongside those who have been taken advantage of and let
them know that they're seen and they're not crazy.

Speaker 1 (19:39):
Yeah. So many people want to get a word from
God every day when the word of God is sitting
on their bookshelf and they ignore that but want some
sort of special revelation from God. Ladies and gentlemen, If
God was going to tell you what to do every day,
why would you even have a Bible. Why would you
have a book of proverbs? What's the point? You know,
not that God can't communicate with you directly if he

(20:00):
wanted to. Of course he could. But is that the
normative way God works. I don't think so. I don't
think he works that way normatively. And he gives us
a word so we can study the word and know
what we ought to do. And this word everyone has
so we can study it together and learn from one another.
But if God were to communicate with us every day uniquely,

(20:23):
how would we even test that?

Speaker 2 (20:25):
So big deal. But for the most part too, God
doesn't charge. It doesn't charge money as all of the
fraudulent gods. So as soon as that happens, just run.
It's you have plenty of other options. Just run.

Speaker 1 (20:39):
What do you What kind of recommendations do you have
for apologists to help their communities when they see people
who have been spiritually abused?

Speaker 2 (20:48):
Yes, yeah, make sure that you're not belittling them. Make
sure that you're not, you know, being like, well you
are really dumb, like you in this coming. That's not
the case. Most people do not join cults. They just postpone,
leaving them. The whole design of a coercive environment is
that you won't see it coming. And if they were effective,

(21:10):
no one would, including apologists. They would be walking in
In fact, I've got two cases where really good apologists
didn't see that they were actually teaching an apologetics class
in one of the coercive control environments and being wielded
as an emblem of look how serious we are, Look
how effective we are. We're teaching apologetics. Who else is

(21:31):
doing that? And they were using the apologists to hide behind.

Speaker 1 (21:35):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (21:36):
Yes, so we need to be really really humble about
how effective these brain spaces are and that they're designed
to be that way. And if we can study what
that looks like, and there are many ways to do that,
then we can identify them faster become immune to them.

Speaker 1 (21:54):
Are there any books you'd recommend? Yes, there is, or
would you recommend, like if you did, I know there's
probably not one, But just just give us one of
your top recommendations, right.

Speaker 2 (22:02):
The quickest one, the easiest one. This is really good. Right.
This is understanding spiritual abuse, what it is and how
to respond. That's Karen Ridkovski. You can get it on Amazon.
It's quick, it's easy. If you're on my end of
the spectrum with training and you're deeply serious in the
reformed camp, necessary stuff, that kind of stuff Michael Krueger
did bully pulpit, and that's for Christian leaders in that

(22:24):
setting to be mindful of how quickly that reform theology
and its caveats can be wielded in a way that's
narcissistic and damaging. There are lots, but if you want,
if you are ex military, some of the stuff that
you can look at is the Korean War and what
happened with the POW's post Korean War and some of
those studies. Just google them. Wonderful you get an idea

(22:45):
because the way we know about how course of control
works and the nervous system impact it has is by
studying POWs from that war who endured it when it
was being designed.

Speaker 1 (22:55):
Wow. Yes, Well Michael Kruger is very good. He's here
in Charlotte at RTS, Yes, Reform Theological Seminary, your alma mater.
And he's not only good on this, he's good on
the cannon. That's kind of his focus. You know, what
books should be in the New Testament or in the Bible.
So he's got it. I think he's got a blog
called cannon Fodder.

Speaker 2 (23:13):
That's right, excellent.

Speaker 1 (23:15):
Yeah, So Krueger is good in a lot of things.
So yeah, look him up, ladies and gentlemen. And I
you know, when my wife and I first became Christians,
we got invited to a International Church of Christ Bible study.
You know who they.

Speaker 2 (23:27):
Are, right, yes, yes, Orlando.

Speaker 1 (23:30):
Yeah, well at that time they were out of there
with the Boston Movement. Yes, yes, and same thing they were.
They would kind of love bomb youa you know, like
they would come over to the house and we had
a baby at that point and one on the way,
and they bring three people, one person, four people. One
person would would sit down and do a Bible study

(23:53):
with you, you know, their Bible study. Another person would watch
the kid, another person would cook dinner, and another person
would clean the house. And you go, wow, this is
such a good deal, right right, And before you know it,
they started making demands on you. Yeah, and we started
reading the scriptures for ourselves and we're going this is bizarre. Yeah,
this is you know. They would tell you, you know,

(24:15):
you can't buy that car, or you can't go out
for dinner or you and we're going, what are you
kidding me?

Speaker 2 (24:21):
Yeah, that's the personal preferences is like, why are you
commenting on that?

Speaker 1 (24:25):
Right?

Speaker 2 (24:25):
It's an odd thing to go after.

Speaker 1 (24:27):
Right, Yeah, you love that car more than God. You
know that kind of stuff.

Speaker 2 (24:32):
We need it, Yeah, give it to us. Yeah, is
it better than you?

Speaker 1 (24:35):
Yeah's right, that's right. So it's just what the stuff
you were saying. I go, Yeah, I can remember that.
We were fortunate enough not to get deeply involved in
that and shortly after that went to seminary. But yeah,
there are cults out there. So Anna, thanks so much
for all your expertise and doing this podcast. If you
would give the website again, both for Ratio Christy and

(24:56):
for Embolden Yes.

Speaker 2 (24:58):
So Russia Christie dot org. That's an international politics ministry
Campus politics alliance. Highly recommend love working for them, and
then of course be Emboldened dot com for International Spiritual.

Speaker 1 (25:10):
Bank Bimbolden dot com. And you can see all those
links in the show notes. Ladies and gentlemen, look for
the I Don't have enough Faith to be an Atheist
podcast or the cross Examined YouTube channel two words cross
Examined with the D on the end of it. All right,
see you next time, God bless.

Speaker 3 (25:31):
Would you like to go even deeper in your faith?
After today's show, check out the online courses at cross
Examine dot org taught by Frank Turk and leading Christian thinkers,
study I don't have enough faith to be an atheist,
exploring relations or investigate the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.
Courses are flexible, self paced, and you can watch a
free preview right now. Go to cross examine dot org.

(25:53):
That's cross Examined with a D at the end dot
org and start learning today