The Eric Metaxas Show - Carrie Sheffield

Episode Date: May 30, 2024

Carrie Sheffield shares her latest book, "Motorhome Prophecies: A Journey of Healing and Forgiveness".

Folks, welcome to the Eric Mattaxas show, sponsored by Legacy Precious Metals. There's never been a better time to invest in precious metals. Visit legacy p.m.investments.com. That's legacy p.m.investments.com. Welcome to the Eric Mataxis show. Ladies and gentlemen, we ask you now to count down from 10, silently, if you don't mind. And when you get to one, you'll hear one of the greatest voices on this or any other planet.

Three, two, one. Eric Matt Taxi! Welcome to the program. They tell me it's Wednesday. I don't believe them. They lie. But let's say that it is Wednesday, May 29th. A lot of exciting stuff.

Today, in both hours, we're talking to Kerry Sheffield. Now, folks, there are very few people who have a story like Carrie Sheffield. It is an amazing story. She has a book out. about it. I've read the book. It's just unbelievable what she went through at the hands of a an overbearing, religious, cult-like figure, her father. Terrible, terrible, terrible. But the story ends with real hope. She found faith in Jesus. She's walking with God. But her story, story is so interesting and instructive and fact, just fascinating. So she is my guest today,

Carrie Sheffield. Her book is The Motor Home Prophecies. It's amazing. It's amazing. A couple things to mention before we get to Carrie. Number one, this Friday, May 31st, the only showing in Connecticut of letter to the American Church, the documentary film based on my book, Letter to the American Church, it's going to be in Bethel, Connecticut, this Friday, the church is his vineyard. I've been there many times.

I've spoken there. They are heroic figures. They are, I tell you, sometimes you meet people and you think, wow, they are, the folks who lead this church,

Gary Baldelli and Carrie. Gary has an inoperable brain tumor. I don't know if he's going to be there. He's about my age. So is his beloved wife, Carrie. I think they'll be there. I'm not sure. I may be there. That's this Friday in Connecticut. I will know better between now and then whether I can be there. But I think I will be there. That is May 31st. That's this Friday. 6.30 p.m. His vineyard church. It's on Vale Road in Bethel, Connecticut. So I believe I'm going to be there. I don't see why I wouldn't be there. So maybe if you're there, it's kind of exciting. Eric, if you are there, it's sort of like these New Orlando. I think they have them in China. They're like 5D, like Smellivision theaters where it rains and, you know, there's all the stuff. So if you're at the theater, it's like they watch the movie and you're excited, but you're there. It's like. It's a kind of hyper reality. It's a hyper reality.

It's like if the cowardly lion were real and you go to see the Wizard of Oz and then you get to hug the cowardly lion and say thank you for your performance. Exactly. And then the household level of hyper reality. Yeah. Yeah. The house falls on the witch, all that stuff. Yeah.

So I'm going to be there this Friday, Bethel, Connecticut. If you want to meet me or assault me, this will be the place to do it. his vineyard church, Bethel, Connecticut, showing letter to the American church, showing the documentary this Friday. But part of why I wanted to bring this up is that if you live in Connecticut or across the New York border in New York,

there's no place in Connecticut that is showing the film, which tells you about all the churches in Connecticut. I don't know where you go to church, but if you live in Connecticut, you know, It's fascinating to me. So his vineyard is showing the film if you want to see it. Obviously, it's free.

It's going to be 6.30 this Friday, Letter to the American Church, The Film. Now, if you haven't yet seen the film, folks, please do yourself a favor. Go to letter to the Americanchurch.com. Letter to the Americanchurch.com. It will fire you up. It will fire you up. Go to letter to the American Church.com. If you go to the website, letter to the American Church.com, not only can you see the film,

but you can see all the churches in America, the brave churches that are choosing to screen the film for free for people to go and see it. And when you think of the thousands and thousands and thousands of churches in this country, how many are not doing that? That tells you the state of the American church. So you know, you want to be in a church that is awake to where we are in the moment, that is actually fighting for what's right and good. and true. And if you're going to a church that's looking the other way, may I suggest you're part of the problem? You should not be supporting a church that's looking the other way. This is very, very important. So I wanted to say that again, this Friday, May 31st, letter to the American church being shown at his vineyard church in Bethel, Connecticut. I will be there. I believe

we'll have books to sign or you can bring a book and I'll sign it. I should mention Chris because I haven't in a while. If you're not signed up for a newsletter, go to Eric Mataxis.com because it says where I will be speaking. I have a rather busy travel and speaking schedule. I'm going to be in, my goodness, Seattle, Saturday, June 8th and Sunday, June 9th. I will be in Seattle speaking there at actually a couple of events in Seattle, in case you you're in the Seattle area. There's just a lot of traveling.

I look at my schedule. I can't really believe my mom's 90th birthday is coming up, so I will not be traveling that weekend. I'm going to be with mom. And then in July, I'm going to be in Oxford, England, for the Socrates in the city retreat, four-day retreat. I still can't believe that we've pulled this off.

If you, as of now, we still have spots available. We're capping it at like 45 people. It's not a gigantic thing. So if you're interested in going, we're going to be punting on the river Sherwell. We wanted to do punting on the river Cam, but the river Cam is now located in Cambridge, hence the name Cambridge. So the river Sherwell, that is in Oxford. The history there is just astonishing. We'll have a number of tours.

The Ashmolean Museum is there. There's so much. I'm going to get started. I don't want to talk about it. But we're going to be doing a lot in Oxford. that's in July. At the end of July, I'm going to be down in Florida at the TPP USA Faith Conference. I'm looking at my book. When is that? That's July 26, 27, TPSA. That's in Palm Beach. Who doesn't want to be in Palm Beach at the end of July? I ask you. So, Chris, am I forgetting anything? I think I'm forgetting a lot of stuff. Well, that's a pretty good start. You know, we're working on, you know, one of the things is kind of down the road, we're working on turning your book, Is Atheism Dead, into a streaming series?

So that's something that I'm actually working on right now, try to help make that happen. So that's very exciting. We're working very hard on that. A lot of my traveling and stuff is geared around that to try to turn Is Atheism Dead and a number of my other books into streaming TV series. You want to get the word out. We need your help if you're interested. We really do need your help. So that's the kind of thing that we're very busy when we're not doing this radio show.

There are a couple of things that I did want to mention. On this program, either tomorrow, which is Thursday or Friday, I don't know which, we have Naomi Wolf coming on. I had a fascinating conversation with her. We will air that tomorrow, Thursday or Friday. we have John Zmirak. You don't want a week without John Zmirak. He'll be on the program. John MacArthur will be on the program.

Folks, the great John MacArthur has a book out. I cannot wait to talk to John MacArthur, honestly. And we've got a number of other guests that we're working on, or so I'm told. Let me remind you, this is the last week to give to CSI to free a slave and Sudan. And if that touches you, and I can't imagine that it wouldn't, we'd love you to participate. However you can, you go to metaxis talk.com. That's the website, metaxis talk.com. You'll see the banner right at the top.

It's a beautiful thing. It's a really, really beautiful thing. You get to be a part of it. I also want to encourage you at the end of this week. We're going to be offering a lot of Socrates merchandise. We haven't offered it yet, but it's been designed. It's gorgeous. if you're signed up for Socrates Plus, you get big discounts on that.

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There's a lot of stuff available at Socrates Plus. Socrates in the city. Okay. When we come back, wait till you hear. this story. Kerry Sheffield is my guest. For 10 years, Patriot Mobile has been America's only Christian conservative wireless provider. And when I say only, trust me, they're the only one. Glenn and the team have been great supporters of this show, which is why I am proud to partner with them. Patriot Mobile offers dependable nationwide coverage, giving you the ability to access all three

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You're going to love this free new tool they've added. Legacy p.m. Investments.com. legacy PM Investments.com. Check it out. Welcome back. I'm thrilled to have as my guest for this hour. Carrie Sheffield, Carrie, I don't know how to sum you up. How do I sum you up? You're the author. Let's start here. You're the author of a brand new book, which I have been reading, not done yet, but oh my goodness, it is called Motor Home Prophecies. It's amazing, Carrie. And I want to ask you, Before we talk about, you know, this op-ed you've written for Fox News.com,

sum up for my audience as you can what your book Motor Home Prophecies is about. Yeah. I've got a copy here for those who are watching in video. The title is Motor Home Prophecies, A Journey of Healing and Forgiveness. And it's called Motor Home Prophecies because I have seven biological siblings. And with our parents, we had 10 people living in and out. I described the childhood as creating between third world and first world existence. So we spent large stretches of my childhood living in a motorhome.

Sometimes we didn't even have a motorhome. My mom gave birth to my brother when our family lived in a tent. So I lived in sheds, tents, motorhomes, but we also had houses as well. When I took my ACT exam to go to college, we were living in a shed in the Ozarks with no running water. We had to get it piped in with a green hose. And it was all done in the name of, of my dad's offshoot Mormon cult. He was eventually excommunicated from the official Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,

but he claimed that he would become president someday and that the Holy Ghost was leading him to basically have us live in poverty because that made us more righteous. Your book, I mean, honestly, it's extraordinary to read what you went through. I mean, it's just amazing. People, you know, I think because I came to faith, late in life. I mean, I became serious about my Christian faith around my 25th birthday. And I always saw people kind of sniping about, you know, religion gone wrong. I thought, they haven't seen

how a lack of religion goes wrong. I mean, we live in such a secular world, you know, with demonic things going on and people are complaining about, you know, oh, your church was a little strict or this or that. But when somebody reads a book like your book, Motor Home Prophecies, you realize the depth of the horrors that can come from religion gone wrong. And it's not just because I'm a Christian and I don't believe in Mormon doctrine, but the point is that your father, what he put you and your family through, because he believed God was leading him to do this, it is a it is a it is a it is a it is a it is a very real raw picture of religion gone wrong and we you can see it

within the Christian faith or outside of the Christian faith or bordering the Christian faith it doesn't matter it's still people doing things in the name of God that are not really God's will but what what you lived I mean I'm amazed you know that you survived it the way you you did that you've done so well I mean I I'd really love to talk to you about the book. So let's talk about the book because it's, it is extraordinary when you describe your childhood. I mean, the things that are in this book, I just couldn't believe that you had to go through this.

Yeah. And Eric, I just, I want to thank you. And to anybody who's a longtime listener or watcher of Eric show, Eric show was the very first show where I actually talked about my Christian conversion ever publicly. And that was back in 2018. And it was still very raw for. me. I was baptized December 3rd, 2017 as a Protestant Christian, but I had spent 12 years as an exonastic exactly for those reasons that you talk about, Eric, that I was so angry at this evil

done to me in the name of God. I could not fathom that there either was a God who existed or that there was a God who loved me because either this God didn't exist or he was a total jerk or he was indifferent to me. And so that was the place that I lived in for about 12 years. And when I would see evil done in the church like a pedophile priest or an embezzling, you know, pastor or, you know, women getting abused in the church, I would say, well, of course, that's, that's just how, that's how Christians are. It's all just mumbo, jumbo, it's a sociological construct used to control people. That was how I thought about religion for those 12 years. And let's be clear. In many cases, it is. And that's why we need to have sympathy and love for people who have been hurt by religion because it's real. And this is, you know, it's hard for us because, you know, we want to be on this one all the way on the side of something. We have to be clear, folks, there's good and there's evil. And there's a lot of evil in the church. There's a lot of evil in religion. God doesn't say, well, I'm going to give it a pass because it's in the church. On the contrary, it's just the opposite.

that your story reminds me to some extent of Ayan Hirsi Ali, who was raised in an incredibly oppressive, radical Muslim world. She throws it off to become an atheist, basically, because she sees all religion as bad, but then she eventually comes recently to call herself a Christian. So it's a fascinating thing. It's important that we understand how the devil wants to use religion. In other words, if I were the devil, that's exactly where I would go. That's, you know, it was religious people in Jesus' day who ended up murdering him. It wasn't atheists. It wasn't Hellenistic philosophers. It wasn't pagans. It was the most religious people of the day. So your book, Motor Home Prophecies is a, it's just a, it's, it's an

astonishingly honest account, very, very powerful. I, tell my audience a little bit of what you grew up with because I think that because it happens to be in the context of, you know, the Mormon church, the Church of Latter-day Saints, a lot of people would say, well, that's, you know, that, that, that theology, oh, they're off in their theology. But I want to say, folks, this kind of stuff also happens with people who are ostensibly within the Christian faith. I mean, confusion is confusion and not hearing from God when you claim to be hearing from God. It really doesn't matter. So you lived through this and you are such a dutiful daughter. That's what really blows my mind, Carrie, is how many people, they just want to, they just want to love their mothers and fathers and they go along with this kind of stuff.

And of course, you did that basically as long as you possibly could. Yeah, I really went along with it because you want to believe your dad. your dad's your first hero. And so for the longest time, I believe that he was a prophet, not to mention the stuff that he was preaching, he would mix in really good things. And so when you have the counterfeit mixed in with the real, it's kind of hard to disaggregate that. And so that's part of why I stayed for as long as I did. That and I was a child and, you know, I don't really have a choice. I mean, I was brainwashed. So one of my very first memories around age four was child custody coming to take the kids away. And we were brainwashed. I have four older brothers at that

point. And I had a younger sister. So six kids. Later on, we had eight kids. But the six of us were taken to the child custody offices and interviewed. And we had been so brainwashed to defend our dad and told that these people were evil and satanic that they were going to take us away, that everything's fine, nothing to see here. And then that was in Massachusetts. And then we were taking. taken away, you know, thousands of miles away to Utah. So a few of the things that we went through, you know, in terms of the psychological abuse. So every morning and every night, we were indoctrinated. It was called family prayer sessions to basically, you know, embrace dear leader and, and hear his revelations and here all of the wonderful things he had done in his past and all his miraculous

interventions that he'd seen from God. And he would also have us, if we'd had any dreams the night before, he would be the interpreter of the dreams. And he had a dream book where he would write down what the dreams meant. And it was always that he was called by God and that my dad said that Satan himself was personally tormenting our family, that lesser demons had been reassigned. He used that word reassigned because of this exceedingly. powerful call that he had on his life. And I don't know how demonology works. Eric, I don't,

I don't know if you do, but to me it seemed a little bit grandiose to say that the lesser demons weren't good enough for you that you needed Satan himself. But, um, well, look, there's, there's always truth mixed in with falsehood. That's what's so diabolical, right? Now, there's no such thing as a pure lie. So your father, much of what he said from what I read in the book and what you just said right now is, is true, right? Now, because if you're serving God, you're going to be on any level, you know, the enemy, the demons are going to be assigned to you. So there's a truth there. That's what makes it so difficult to try to discern.

And as a kid, the idea that, you know, you have this father who really, it does sound like it's brainwashing. And it's not like he was trying to do that. He believed what he was trying to do. But as you describe it in the book, you know, as a father reading this, it's just heartbreaking because, you know, what you all went through in trying to be good children to your mother and father, it really is just, it's very affecting. And so, folks, I hope you'll get a copy of the motorhome prophecies. We'll continue to talk to Carrie throughout the hour, but the book is motorhome prophecies. It's just extraordinary on many levels. We'll keep going. We'll be right.

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That's N-U-T-R-A-M-E-D-I-X.com. Neutrametics.com. Use the code Eric for 15% off. again, Neutrametics, N-U-T-R-A-M-E-D-I-X.com. Nutrametics.com, use the code Eric for 15% off. Most welcome back. We're talking to Carrie Sheffield, author of Motor Home Prophecies. Carrie, what led you finally to tell this story?

Because it's an amazing story. It's very brave of you to reveal all these things about your past and what you've been through. So I really think at this moment in time, part of why God wanted me to write this book, was because we're dealing right now with a mental health epidemic. We have, and you mentioned the Fox News op-ed at the top of the show, I wrote a Fox News op-ed about the fact that we have the highest suicide rate in our country since 1941. That's the Great Depression. And we have the highest number of suicides ever.

So the most recent data is from 2022, almost 50,000 people committed suicide. Just to put in perspective, that's almost 17 times the number of, of people killed in 9-11, and that's just in one year. We have the highest depression rate ever. What's terrifying, though, is that it is young people. And typically, depression and suicide is most common among people about to die, people in their 80s and 70s, because they're in a lot of physical pain, and they just want to check out. Now, the suicide and the depression rates are skyrocketing among young people, among Gen Z. And so God, for whatever reason, put me in a family, where mental illness was pretty much like we had the entire, I mean, not, I'm exaggerating,

but almost all of the disorders in the DSM-5 were talking. Two of my brothers got schizophrenia. One of them groped me and tried to rape me. My dad said that it was my fault because I dressed like a slut. My other brother who has schizophrenia said I tried to seduce him some now sex with me. My dad said the same thing. And, you know, Three of my siblings have attempted suicide. I have been suicidal. I suffered with anxiety, depression, PTSD. Other siblings have had things like disassociative personality disorder,

borderline personality disorder. And these things, these mental disorders, you see Jesus casting out demons and casting out mental illness. And so I wrote the op-ed to end the book to share how I went from an insanely abusive cult environment where my father told my brothers they deserved their schizophrenia because they were evil and Satan had gotten to them and that's why they deserved it. And if they were more righteous and followed my dad more, they would become healed from it, which is a lie because out of my, I like to joke, it's my big fat Mormon family. I now at this point have hundreds of cousins

and second cousins like really big families. We're talking like eight kids, 11 kids, 10 kids, eight kids like my cousins, I have cousins old enough to be my parents and they have kids now. So out of all these hundreds of people, there are no schizophrenics except two in my family. So when you're talking about epigenetics, there is a genetic tendency toward mental illness, but it will not express itself if you are in a loving environment. And if you were in a traumatic environment, this is proven over and over as a child, you are far more likely to get schizophrenia. So in seeing what's happening with our country and our culture,

I went from a place of extreme religious abuse to swinging the other direction of I hate God. I don't believe in God. I wasn't atheist, but I was agnostic. I said, I don't know, but it seems like either there isn't a God or he's a total jerk. And either extreme is unhealthy. And the book is about how I found what I now call healthy faith. And so I have a campaign that I'm working on called Healthy Faith. And what I described in my Fox op-ed is that there's a book.

There's overwhelming scientific evidence that faith and religious practice and healthy religious community can literally save your life. It is highly associated, religious practice, religious community, faith in God is highly, highly associated with less suicide, less depression, less substance abuse. And so that's why I, in my life, real time, have witnessed a restructuring, it's called neuroplasticity of your brain. As I have come into a walk with Christ. My depression has gone down. I'm not suicidal anymore. It's just like God has redeemed my mind. And so I present in the Fox News op-ed some of these scientific studies to prove this. What is the title of the Fox News op-ed? The title Fox op-ed is faith and religion promote strong

mental health. So why pray-tell do atheists run the industry? And so the second, the corollary of that is that, is that, on the one hand, you have overwhelming evidence, which I can talk about some of these studies, Harvard School Public Health, which has a developed Catholic researcher leading this, and they're trying to cancel him. But they're producing lots of studies to show, for example, that weekly religious attendance for women results in a 68% less likelihood of death by suicide, drug overdose, or alcohol overdose. It's 33% less likely for men, in both cases, wildly statistically significant. The National Bureau of Economic Research, which is one of the most prestigious economic research firms, it's a feeder into the Federal Reserve and to Treasury, they found states with lower religious

participation saw higher deaths of despair, which are suicides and opioid and overdoses. The Psychiatric Times did multiple literature reviews, longitudinal, just observational, just different literature reviews, overwhelming evidence that, religiosity in 90% of these studies they looked at, 90% of them showed a strong relationship between religiosity and lower substance abuse. 70% of the studies showed a strong relationship between low depression and religiosity. So I go into some of these studies, only to say that there's this phrase, trust the science, and yet, guess which occupation is the most atheist?

Psychologists. We'll continue to talk to Carrie. is motorhome prophecies. It's just extraordinary on many levels. We'll keep going. We'll be right back. You might have heard Mike Lindell and My Pillo no longer have the support of their box stores or shopping channels the way they used to. Yes, it's because of cancel culture. But as a result, they get to pass the savings on to you directly by having a $25 extravaganza. When Mike started My Pillo, it was just a one product company. With the help of his dedicated employees, they now have hundreds of products, some you may not even know about. To get the word out, I want to invite

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The amazing offer will not last long. Go to MyPillow.com. Use promo code Eric or call 800-9783057. That's promo code Eric, 80097830573057 promo 57 promo code Eric or go to mypillow.com and use promo code Eric. Folks, welcome back. We're talking to Carrie Sheffield, author of Motor Home Prophecies. I remember my dear late friend, BJ Weber, I'm looking at a picture of him right now. At 9-11, he was, this is days after 9-11, we're in New York City, and he was at one of these places where, you know, people are showing up.

to find their loved ones, to say, is my loved one on this list or whatever? I just remember him telling a story of a Hispanic woman, barely spoke English, and she talked about she'd lost her son or something like this, and how the person assigned to her just immediately goes to put a pill in her mouth. Here, take this for your anxiety, just to put a pill in her mouth. She would not take the pill and she said, I don't want pills. I want to pray. And I thought, yeah, that's right. Most people understand that there is a spiritual component. If you're a human being, most people listening to this program are human beings, there is a spiritual component to your life. Whether you like it or don't, it's real. And if you get in line with that, it's going to be better for you. And so here we are talking about a word. that says that stuff doesn't even exist. We won't even go there. Never mind the facts that you have just quoted. These are the facts that people who have plugged into God on some healthy level

are much less likely to want to commit suicide, whatever. You know, when you were talking about the younger people, I thought to myself, if you tell people the truth, like, yeah, the world's screwed up and there's a lot of religious people that are screwed up, but here's the deal. a God who loves you created you, purpose for you to exist, wants a relationship with you, wants to love you, and wants to bless you so that you can be the person that he created for you to be and you're going to live forever if you believe in him. These are all true things. Or you can tell somebody, well, there's no God.

Life has no meaning. Your life has no meaning. If you kill yourself, it really doesn't mean anything. It's not good or bad. It's just, it's nothing. these are as dramatically different narratives as anyone could possibly get. And we wonder why there is a suicide epidemic because people have been told either overtly or implicitly that life has no meaning, your life has no meaning, there is no God, take a pill,

do this or do that. I mean, if you're honest with yourself, how are you not going to want to end your life when you suffer. I mean, this is, it strikes me as rational based on that lie. If you believe that lie, that would be rational. Yeah. I mean, Eric, that's a really poignant, compelling story that you just told about this woman, that that's, that's the solution, the immediate knee-jerk solution, uh, solution supposedly, um, to something that is much deeper. And that, that's what's happening also with the transgender thing. It's like, oh, you know, So many of these children, sadly, are, they're dealing with comorbidities.

A lot of them have eating disorders or some type of autism or social anxiety or depression or some other underlying illness. And then the answer is to chop off body parts. You know, this is not healthy. This is trying to create your own framework because you've rejected truth. And the, again, the Harvard School public. health, they worked also with Harvard Medical School. And what they reported was that the spiritual needs of patients with serious illnesses are frequently unaddressed within medical care. And

unaddressed spiritual needs can be associated with poor patient quality of life. So I mentioned that in the Fox News op-ed because, as I mentioned, the most atheist and agnostic occupation is psychologists. That's what Harvard found when they did a survey of faculty. Say more about that, what you just said. I don't want to cut you off. You said that the world of psychology is effectively atheistic. In other words, they don't even bring God in, which it really is insane. It's not just insane because it's wrong, but based on the evidence and based on the demographics in America, you would think that they would have the ability to at least tip their hat to the, to the thesis that there is a God. But they don't do that. They really kind of, they just see things through an atheistic lens,

which is absurd and ultimately harmful. Yeah, and it's not to say that if you're atheists or agnostic, you can't be a good therapist or mental health care provider. I just posit in my Fox News op-ed that this is potentially a problem, and that's based on this data from Harvard Medical School that's saying that patient care is harmed when you, you don't take spiritual care into account. And a lot of patients say, my spiritual needs are not being met.

So the fact that 61% of psychologists say they are atheists or agnostic, 61%. And then on the flip side, 80% of Americans say they do believe in God. So you have this total mismatch in terms of worldview. And I'm saying this as someone who's consumed a lot of therapy. There is a big difference between a secular therapist who respects and understands my worldview. and one who is a Christian or Jew, I had a really great Jewish therapist. My current therapist is Christian.

And I see such a big difference in terms of how they're able to integrate the type of neuroplasticity, the retraining of your brain, which is a physical process. Talk therapy isn't just some flusy little thing on the couch. Talk therapy is actually retraining the neural pathways. It's a physical practice because when you have depression and anxiety, is a physical problem. The synapses of your brain are on a feedback loop,

and they need to be retrained. And you're not going to get that by just your average conversation. You have to go through this intensive retraining and rewiring. And so I'm a big believer in therapy, but it's got to be done well. Otherwise, it can really harm you. Well, you know, I think I was saying this to Jordan Peterson recently, that Jesus did not cast out metaphors.

So yes, there are times when, you know, it's a pure issue of, it's some kind of a mental construct. Sometimes it's an actual demon. God is real. And we have to understand that sometimes it's both. Sometimes it is a medical issue. It's a this, it's a that.

It's strictly medical. But you don't push God out of that conversation, but sometimes really that's he ought to be at the center of that conversation. And if you're talking to a psychologist or psychiatrist who doesn't even have that category, you're going to have a problem. We'll be back to continue a conversation with Kerry Sheffield. The book is Motor Home Prophecies. Hey, folks, our friends at Americans for Prosperity are at it again.

Actually, they're now on the front lines fighting the border crisis. The politicians aren't going to solve this problem on their own. It's kind of going to take some good old fashioned grassroots activism, and that's what APF specializes in, which is to say good old fashioned grassroots activism. So Americans for Prosperity Foundation has taken hundreds of concerned citizens to see the border for themselves, turning them into informed activists. Americans for Prosperity knows what we need. For example, more border agents, more walls, more technology. That's what makes Americans for prosperity. unique. They do the tough work of organizing, mobilizing

everyday Americans to make a difference. That's you and me. In fact, they've just announced a major campaign to hold Biden and his allies accountable for the crisis at the border. Learn more at secure border, secure america.com. That's secure border secure america.com. Speaking of friends of the Eric Mattaxas show,

the Herzog Foundation exists to catalyze and accelerate the development of quality, Christ-centered K-12 education. Their vision is for families. and culture to flourish through quality Christian education, making the ecosystems of Christian education more accessible and sustainable for families across the nation. I think that's you. Their mission will be lived out by providing programs such as online content,

up-to-date news, training and events, grants, hands-on organizational improvement initiatives. We've talked to them many times. We'll continue to talk to them, but you can check them out at HerzogFoundation.com. HerzogFoundation.com. Yeah, we had Chris, Stigal on from them.

He was terrific. I tell you, it's just great to partner with folks like them with Americans for prosperity. There's so many different people involved in, you know, saving the world, basically.

Genevieve on recently, too. She was tremendous. Genevieve Collins, yeah. No, it's, honestly, I get, you know, we need hope. And I guess these folks, the ones I just mentioned,

who are sponsors on the program, they give me hope. Also, they're helping others, you know, they're helping Americans figure out how do I get it done? How do I get involved? And, you know, because we all need to be involved. I keep talking about that. I talked about it in my book, if you can keep it because it is, it's our job to keep the republic. This is not something that, again, how did we get to where we are?

We kind of drifted into thinking like, well, I don't need to do that. It'll just take care of itself. The Constitution is the Constitution. And part of what we do on the show is highlighting stories of people that are. getting involved that are doing things and also giving people like me, I'm a little guy, the opportunity to help out with people that are doing things in other places like CSI, rolling up their sleeves and we can partner with them and actually make a difference. Yes. Yes. Exactly. Okay. Speaking of making a difference, two things before I go.

I want you to mention our involvement with CSI, Christian Solidarity International. If you've not yet jumped at the chance, folks, please go to metaxis talk.com. Please do this today. We want everyone to be involved. We've only had something like 130 people actually do this. But I know that more than 130 people listen to the program. And if you're feeling guilty, good, because this is an awesome thing. You really want to do this.

Just go to metaxis talk.com, click on the banner. We've all got to give something to something. And people often ask, well, I don't know what's reputable, what's good, you know, what this is, it doesn't get better. Go to metaxisotachistalk.com. You'll see the banner for CSI. I'll give you the phone number. Hey, here's the phone number. 888-253-3522.

888-253-3522. And while I'm at it, let me mention Socrates Plus. sign up for Socrates Plus. It's, I mean, we'll talk about it another time, but I'm so excited that we have created this streaming digital platform. Socrates Plus, feed your mind, folks. Feed your mind, feed your soul. Go to Socratesandcity.com.

You can check it out and you can see Socrates Plus is there. Thank you very much.