Theology in the Raw - A Raw Testimony from a Male Survivor

Episode Date: October 16, 2025

Check out the Theology in the Raw Patreon community for bonus content, extra episodes, and discounted event tickets! Today’s guest is my longtime friend Dr. Joel Willitts. On this episode, Joel shares his difficult journey navigating faith and life after being sexually abused by a family member in his youth. It’s an incredibly raw conversation —if you’re sensitive to these topics, please make sure to prepare yourself before listening.Joel is a Professor in the Biblical and Theological Studies Department at North Park University in Chicago, IL, where he’s taught for over twenty years. His academic journey began at Liberty University (B.A. '92), followed by a Th.M. from Dallas Seminary ('00), and an M.Phil. (’02) and Ph.D. (’07) from Cambridge University. His intellectual curiosities are many, included the Jewish Context of the New Testament and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He enjoys travel, running marathons, watching baseball (especially the Yankees!), listening to U2, and reading. He live in the suburbs of Chicago and has boy-girl twins who are freshmen at North Park University. He’s been married to Karla for 33 years. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The Exiles in Babylon conference is happening again, April 30th to May 2nd in Minneapolis, and this one is going to be spicy. We're talking about mental health and the gospel. How should the church respond to immigration? We're also having a dialogical debate about Christians and war with Shane Claiborne and Paul Copan. And we're also having another dialogical debate between Peter ends and Sandy Richter over the historical reliability of the Bible. We also added a pre-conference addressing how Christians should think about artificial intelligence. We have several experts coming to lead us in that conversation. Other speakers include Dan Allender, Matthew Sorens, Liliana, Reza, Joshua Smith, Chinway, Williams,

and several others. And of course, worth the price of admission, Street Hems is coming back as well, folks. Most of all, the in-person experience at exiles is just super unique. I mean, it's, I don't know. If you've been there, you know what I'm talking about. It's hard to describe. You just got to go and experience it for yourself. Right now, we're running.

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Register at Theology and the raw.com. The care for the sexually broken in our churches has much to be desired. Especially with men, the way sexuality is kind of presented. It seems so far away, it leaves people feeling more shame and just hiding more. Hey friends, welcome back to another episode of Theology and Rod. This is going to be our third, uh, episode in the series that we recorded live in person in Wheaton, Illinois. This one is with my

very good friend, Dr. Joel Willits, who is a Bible professor at North Park University. Now, I want to give you a word of warning ahead of time. Joel is going to share about his story of surviving sexual abuse. And Joel, as you'll see, he's a very, honest person and he shares details about his story. So just want to let you know ahead of time if you are a survivor or if you are sensitive to these kind of details. You might want to, I don't know, skip this episode or at least listen, carefully prepare yourself before you dive in. But I didn't, I wanted Joel to be honest. I wanted him to share his story and not not shrink back from being honest.

He loves being honest. And so I wanted Joel to be Joel. So without further ado, please welcome back to the show, the one and only, Dr. Joel Willis. Hey, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Theology in the realm here with my very good friend, Dr. Joel Willits.

I usually introduce my guest, but since we are here live in the Holy Post studio, thanks to the Holy Post Relateness users are set up, who are you and what do you do who am I I'm still trying to figure that out so I am a professor

of Bill and the Electric Studies at North Park University here in Chicago and been there about 21 years so that's kind of crazy 21 years yeah 21 years I remember when you got the job yeah yeah and they've kept me around you know and it's great

I love the context of the city you know it's just a different just different issues and perspectives in the urban setting. And it just keeps me grounded. So, yeah. And I've been married for 33 years to my wonderful wife, Carla. And I guess the most exciting thing happening in our family is that my twin children,

boy girl twin, Mary and Zion, are freshmen at North Park this semester. So it's kind of – Do they have you for classes? No. But, well, I was just going to say, so I'm standing out talking to a colleague, you know, outside, and in the corner of my eye, I see this, I see this student walking. And I kind of look, I don't recognize, you know, I just, and it's like, my son Zion is like right on top of me. So I didn't even, I didn't even recognize him, you know. And my colleague did. So it was like, oh, Zion, you know. And then earlier, we have chapel on Wednesdays. And, you know, I got to sit right next to my dad. daughter in chapel and so so it's crazy fun the thing about this i don't have the kids in my classes uh currently but their friends are in my classes oh okay so um mary runs on the track or the cross-country team and so two of her teammates are in my my paul class so um it's just

weird you know it's just really weird like thankfully i have a pretty good reputation as a professor you You know, I think, I think the only thing they say about me is I'm hard, but, but, you know, they're not, my kids aren't having to bear the wrath of, you know, students who just hate, you know, me as a professor, so. Do you think they'll gain, like, a whole new appreciation of their dad? Like, when they hear, like, positive things about you and like, oh, Dr. Willits is probably Dr. Willits, you know, and so smart. I think they think it's really cool.

Yeah. Yeah. Although it's funny because, you know, I'll text him and I'll say. you know hey I'm on campus today you know you want to you want to touch base there's a Starbucks right across campus so I'll buy you a coffee or something and like my daughter is like all over that you know we we've met several times my son on the other hand he's like dad I'm just really busy just really like you're a freshman like what are you busy doing you know you just don't want to hang out with the old free coffee yeah yeah so science

kind of you know he's he's he's he's loving his uh his freedom and uh you know becoming a young adult and we're we're excited about that doesn't that doesn't bothers but it's just kind of funny i am running right now it's a big part of my life right now i've been a runner for a while um but i am running two marathons actually one this month and then the chicago marathon next month so a lot of my life uh over the summer has just been like training running yeah Yeah, like miles and miles. Like you run every morning, pretty much? No, I don't run every morning, but I'll run three times during the week, and then on Sunday mornings I'll run a long run.

So thankfully I've done that, but the longest I ran this training season was 22. Oh, jeez. So I ran 22 miles. And so, and I enjoy it. So it's not, it is, it is something I enjoy, but that takes a lot of time. Yeah, yeah, it does. For me, I'm slow. Yeah.

I always tell my wife, like, I really want to do a marathon or do, like, a triathlon and stuff. And her first thing is, do you know how much training that is? Like, you're going to be gone, like, on top of all your work and responsibilities. And, like, on Saturdays, you have to, like, spend all morning running and stuff. Yes. I couldn't, my body wouldn't handle that far. I'm trying to get up to, like, a half marathon. I still, it's just, I ran to the gym.

So my gym is, like, 2.2 miles away. So sometimes I'll run to the gym, workout, and then run back. It's a great workout. Yeah. But the other day, I timed it. I had a meeting to get to after, and I was like a quarter of the way home. And my left ankle just goes out. It's just that sharp pain.

I'm like, oh, I just need to. Right, right. So I keep walking, keep walking. It's just, it won't, it won't fix itself. And so I, like, walk home late to my meeting. So, yeah, it's those. But you probably are, do you run fast? Do you, like, you're trying to run fast or you just out fragile?

No, I'm at about a, the fastest pace would be like an eight. and a half minute mile but typically nine nine and a half okay yeah to me that's really fast that's really fast i mean if i'm going three miles maybe i could sort of run you know keep that up but like maybe i mean 10 minute mile maybe yeah like you would you would be not this episode is going to be about running go anywhere but you i think if you willfully kind of brought your pace down um to something that was more like they kind of suggest can't Could you hold a conversation? Okay.

So if you run at a pace where you could hold a conversation, that's a really good pace for running longer. Okay. That'd be a 10 minute. Yeah. And I bet I would be confident, because I'm nobody special, I would be confident that you could absolutely do a half marathon. Yeah. Yeah. I need to get, like we talked before, like my lower back tightens up.

I've got other just issues, super tight hips. And so I think between older age, playing a sport growing up, tightness in the back. It's just sometimes I can't. Sometimes I could do, I did seven miles of the day. Yeah, I mean, that's wrong. It was great. Yeah. I mean.

Yeah. But then the next day I'll go 2.2 and my ankle will go out. Yeah. But, you know, who's not very many people running seven. So that's good for you. Anyway. So you are a, I mean, your passion is biblical scholarship, what I think of you. Like, you can spend all day, all week, all month, knee-deep, and journal articles,

commentaries, working through something. Like, is that, I mean, would that be a good description? Pretty much. I mean, I can get really tunneled into something and kind of forget time and space. But, yeah, I mean, I love, you know, I'm not a grammarian, so I don't love to tunnel into, you know, you know verbal aspect and you know like these real technical things i'm more like jewish context the new testament you know how how do we read the new testament uh as it would have been understood in the first century jewish greco roman context so so that really like is uh you know i don't

but it's very interesting i have a deep intellectual curiosity about that and and and so um you know in terms of academic work that's i i do really uh love to do that i you know i was just yesterday i was i had had a conversation with somebody and we were they were wanting to my opinion on roman seven uh one through not the not the part that's always got but the part one uh roman seven one through six marriage analogy and everything and anyway i had studied that back in you know grad school and i think i wrote an exegetical paper you remember the exegetical papers but i hadn't really given it a lot of extra thought but i had my like i had my kind of this is what i but in this conversation uh was very rich it was a pastor friend of mine um it like he kind of brought up stuff and i'm

like, you know, I can really think about this again. So this is just so like me. So whatever I was supposed to have done yesterday, it didn't get done. Yeah. Totally. So I spent the day, you know, coming up with a novel theory. Really? Yeah. Oh, yeah. You get out of paper on it? We could spend this. I mean, it's half baked. But like, I think I'm, I'm on to something. So, uh, so anyway. But. So anyway, but. that exegesis type stuff you know like that is just so captivating and I you know I don't really do a lot of of that you know where I'm like diagramming sentences and you know like working in discourse analysis and you know just like you know bringing out pencils and you know

rulers and making lines and I've never been I've never been a diagram or discourse analysis all it just feel I I'm probably wrong okay I'm sure there's major benefit and my discourse analysis people like Cindy Westfall would probably you know slap me across the head right now but yeah I'm already judging you yeah yeah I just I don't know I just like to feel the or just like get inside the text and just kind of just yeah yeah just live in it a little bit rather than dissect yeah yeah yeah but there's there's a place for both yeah yeah um so yeah that's I mean I love to teach, and I teach, I do a lot of teaching, undergraduates primarily. But if I have the time, you know, and the space, you know, I'll be working on something and it's normally how to

understand a theme or a passage as a piece of Jewish literature. Because of course, you know, we often don't think like this, but the whole New Testament was written by Jews. I mean, okay, maybe Luke, but, you know, frankly, Luke seems pretty Jewish, you know. So it's Jewish literature, just like any other kind of Jewish literature. And so the idea that we talk about Jewish backgrounds in the New Testament is, I think, problematic because it's, it is part of Second Temple Jewish. literature, so. And Greco-Roman literature, right? I mean, he represents, in a sense, too, because so much of Greco-Roman literature is written

from elites, right, about the basses or about whatever. And this is one of the few texts that body of literature that's kind of written from the perspective of, I mean, Paul's a Roman citizen, obviously, but I mean, kind of sees more of a firsthand account of life on the ground by non-elites, you know, which gives, I came across this other day, from somebody who's a classicist or not a biblical scholar, but a Greco-Roman scholar. And their view of the New Testament is like, gosh, this, this is a really unique contribution to our more holistic understanding. It's funny how classicists think about New Testament and New Testament studies in ways that New Testament scholars don't think about

New Testament studies. Like I remember one of my professors, this is the first time I heard this, but he would say, you know, we look at the four Gospels and think problem. Yeah. The classic, classicist looks at four Gospels and thinks, wow, you know, we got evidence, you know. So that's who you are. So, but, okay, turn the corner. But that's not what we're here for. No, no, no.

So just to give a bit of background, because it's interesting that the book you're working on now is not a book of New Testament scholarship. Why don't we, I'll just let you describe. What is the book you're working on? And this topic will probably occupy the rest of our... Yes, yes. Well, I say this kind of tongue-in-cheek, but somebody will ask me, so what are you working on?

I'll always sort of, you know, kind of take a deep breath in there. Well... We're going to make a friend or lose one. I'm writing about sexual abuse, childhood sexual abuse. and and I'm writing it about it because I, myself, am a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. And so this book is very much a deep reflection on how my body and my mind and my emotions and my spirit. however we understand what the full body is,

but how bent it was because of that experience. I was abused by a stepbrother from age 13 to like early 16. And, you know, the aftermath of being abused is in many ways worse than, the abuse itself um and so um the the the book is kind of a a memoiresque book and i it's not it's not a traditional memoir because i i um i have a lot of like different topics along the way so so there's it's it's sort of a combination of of me telling stories that happened me and Some of them are quite intense, meaning they're explicit.

You describe in detail? I describe in detail the first time I was abused because it kind of becomes a formula for what that abuse was like then going forward. And, you know, I'm trying to move, move. beyond abstractions and and euphemisms, small talk conversations where it would be very inappropriate to kind of talk in detail because, and this isn't without like, this is deeply thought through because part of my, the burden of why I'm writing. this book is because I feel like we talk about sexual abuse and um and I'm talking about like

my experience has been it mostly in the evangelical church so a lot a lot of what I speak about in terms of my experience um you know is is just within that context um but I feel like it's time for people to to like get a an image of what it means when somebody says i was abused as a child um because we'd say you're you know your cyber child abuse and and that of course that's terrible um but does it does it um what does it um what does it communicate like like when i say that what what image what images come to mind what what um what is full what is filling that like like that that statement and and i i feel like um the um the need for the kind of empathy that survivors need will require some willingness to be very vulnerable

and to hold the shame of telling what happened. I won't go into any details now, but what I saw and what I felt and the physical elements, it's just pretty terrible. You know, what my 13-year-old self experienced, I had no category. I was a pre-pubescent 13-year-old. I mean, I don't even think I had hit puberty yet.

Okay. And I was introduced to an erotic sexual relationship. And this is a crazy thing. Even like, it's so weird because you talk, you, you've been talking about these kinds of things that are like, Is that that really happened to me? Like, because it's like, it, it's just shocking. But like, I learned about sexuality.

I was disciples in sexuality by another man. And you weren't like same sex attracted then or now? I mean, it wasn't... No, no, I talk about this in the book. I think it's really important. I know what it is to feel same-sex attractive. For the beginning, at least, of that relationship, I was captivated by the experience.

you know there's something called grooming which is how an abuser prepares a victim and my abuser was just a amazing a sophisticated I mean I have to give him because he invited because he invited me into something that I took to be something that I was equally signing up for. So you, because when people hear abuse, they think, and gosh, I've got a way sense of my terminology, but something that's like you're forcing somebody into something, even holding someone down and something very aggressive. Your case was not that, right? No, no, I, I, No, it wasn't. I mean, you hear of these rape cases of sexual abuse. And I tell a story about someone I've read about who was a young, it was middle school or something.

And he was visiting a family member in another state. And while he was out sort of hanging out outside, this older boy came and took him behind the garage and raped him. I mean, that's terrible. I mean, that's absolutely terrible. But on the one hand, for me, I sometimes, I know this sounds sick, but I sometimes wish I was abused like that and not like the way I was. Because when you're abused like that, you know who the white hats are and who the black hats are. I mean, like, there's no lack of clarity that you were, that you were attacked and raped, and you had no, no involvement.

In fact, your power was stripped from you. Right. You had no agency. In cases like mine, I, I. I was groomed to think I had agency. And so the sexuality, I talk about dark and light sexuality in the book. And I learned a sexuality of the dark of the dark. the sexuality that I was sort of and kind of brought into was a sexuality that happens

that happened behind a closed bedroom door with the the blinds pulled it was it was dark the room was dark so and metaphorically it was dark because it was um I was involved in sexual acts that I would not have chosen, but nevertheless, I enjoyed. So you asked me about, I'm not same-sex attracted, but I know what it feels like to be same-sex attracted. because for the better part of a couple of years

I was attracted to my abuser really just your abuser not other men at all no no um just still to talk to the girls or oh yeah yeah yeah I tell I yeah I include those kinds of things because I because it you know I'm living two lives at the same time at 15 I'm living a a life i say outside my bedroom door and i'm living a life inside my bedroom door and those two

are parallel tracks they never ever cross over each other and in in the the life that is outside the door i'm you know i'm just a your average 15 year old who is into girls and my summer of my 15 year old summer was like the greatest summer in my life and you know i was playing on a baseball all-star team you know i was like part of like the you know the cool crowd and and one of my one of our friends cousins who was down from new jersey uh like i had a fling with and so it was like and she was two years older than me so i was like living like Like the high life, you know, back to the book, it's kind of a joke chapter because I talk about, it just said about that around that time, that song, The Summer of 69, you know, that was the summer of 69. Yeah.

So, I did a spoof on that called The Summer of 86. And I tried to write a song for this. Like I was going to, I was legitimately going to try to write a song. And I spent, I don't know, two or three. hours using chat gpt to try to like help me figure out how to write a song and i just couldn't do it i just couldn't couldn't do it so i decided you know what i'm going to tell chat gpti all the things i would put in a song and see if they can come up with a song did they did they did whoever they is yeah so so i uh i i i i sort of put that song in in in the book you know

It talks about, you know, all the elements of kind of my, you know, my big summer. And but then what I do is, again, because this is the same time. So you're asking kind of there's this life and then there's this life. And in the first rendition of the song, I say nothing about the fact that at the very same time I'm being sexually abused. I'm in this same-sex relationship. I mean, like, same-sex attracted in that relationship and having sexual activity. That's same-sex, sexual activity. I mean, that's hard to say for me because I'm straight.

Right. Or I'm not straight in any sense of the word. You're straight in a sense that now and since then, you're not, you don't look around and, like, you don't have. bisexual attraction right no I don't I don't but I but I carry it like I have I know too much I have experienced too much like like we can come back to it but just to finish so I I I have chat GPT do the song again with now this element of sexual abuse and it It was really interesting how it sort of changed the song and kind of added this dark kind of layer to it.

So I included that as a like a contrast, because that would have been more accurate as to what was going on, but I was not self-aware enough. So, so that parallel lives thing, you know, I, writing the book and just a side note so i'm almost finished the book so it's it's basically done um i am still in the process of trying to find a publisher for it um and and and of course the kind of book i'm writing is is you know it's going to take a very particular editor with a particular

like vision for the how this book can really impact men, um, and women, particularly spouses and partners and, um, and pastors as well. But, um, so I'm, I'm kind of, this is a, this is a work of passion that, I guess it's possible won't be published. I'm not into self-publishing. Like, I'm just, like, if somebody doesn't think it's worth something, then, like, I'm not going to, you know, like, self-published. Would standard evangelical publishers be a little nervous to publish something like this? Because is it more graphic, explicit, than your average? It's gritty.

Oh, yeah. It's, like. But so is sexual abuse. I know. It's honest. That should be evangelicals. That should be, like, exactly the kind of thing. Part of my whole vision for the book is this is the kind of book that needs to be written.

Yeah. And it needs to be written by a man because there have been great work and many stories of memoir-esque books about women's suffering in sexual abuse. but you will not find a book and I've tried and if someone can prove me wrong great I'd love to see it but that is a man's willingness to tell their story kind of no holds barred yeah like um and it's not all graphic i mean but like um there are things that need to be needed to be presented so that the actual struggle in the aftermath of my you know four decades since would have any real meaning you know and and and so i i i I think it's a book that is appropriately talked about in this context was it's raw.

Yeah. It's raw. Yeah. And so, and I've had many conversations with friends and people who I trust and I've sort of shared parts of it with with friends and various kinds of ministries. and and um and i i keep hearing the response of this is really needed and in one particular case and i was i was not surprised after after they said it but they said pastors really need to read this Why is that?

Because he made the claim, and I actually agree with it, because it's part of my own story, that pastors, some, I'm not going to quantify, but they went into ministry because they're trying to run from some trauma experience in their life. and you see that with, you know, all of these high-profile, you know, scandals. You know, these, because when you get into ministry, it does kind of, it has this power to kind of keep you a bit in line, you know, because you know what's at stake. but if you've really been traumatized eventually those sort of those measures

break down and you can't outrun it and you you know you somebody discovers that you

are watching porn and some people have, you know, have, you know, been, been exposed as, you know, frequenting massage parlors. And, and, like, for me, like, I totally get it. Like, I have no judgment on that. I see a people who are just so. tired of trying to white-knuckle it that they're just trying to find some sort of relief from

just how hard it is to be human in the kind of world we live in and of all people pastors are in a very difficult place because if they show any kind of weakness in regard to anything's sexually related, it's the end of their ministry. And so, you know, I didn't think about that, but to have someone who's willing to name their own story and to talk about the way that has shown up in in disordered kinds of sexual behavior. I think I would hope, I hope that that might in some ways invite. them to some place of self-discovery and get on a healing, a healing path. I had thought about it would be, it's great for pastors or important, like pastors are

an audience for me because I feel like the care for the sexually broken in our churches has much to be desired. yeah oh yeah and the way especially with men the way sexuality is kind of presented and the way the sexual man is presented um for many of us who have had trauma um we we don't relate to it and and the sort of i have a chapter called uh something like some solomon like sexuality you know because you always go to song solomon and and and just this kind of like vision of of of of this holy sexuality um and um and and and how uh my experience and the many men i've had the privilege of

knowing um that sexuality is is is so it seems so far uh away or like impossible and so um it leaves uh people um feeling more shame and just hiding more um and so um and so um I would hope that maybe my story could create a deeper sense of empathy and a kind of care that is needed for somebody who has been sexually traumatized to, like, grow. So, you know, whenever you write a book, you have this vision of what you think it's going to be. And then as you're doing it, it kind of, it kind of turns into something else. And you think of new things that you hadn't originally thought. I need to talk about that. I need to get that in there.

But originally, the book was going to be really pessimistic. Okay. Like the title, the word and tells sexually bent. and the emphasis was going to be on the limits of healing. Because in the evangelical circles that I have grown up in and have known, there's the idea that if you, do certain practices like read your Bible and pray and be involved in a accountability group and that you'll grow and in that sin that you've struggled with, you will struggle. And that sin

that you've struggled with, you will eventually become freer from it, if not completely free from it. there could be an impatience with believers who aren't on the right are not following the right you know like on the right timeline right you know you know you go to a a care night or something at a church and you go through the class and and you know you finish and you know you feel like you're you maybe feel worse than you than you did when you started because you've discovered some things that have like really been like really true like powerful and and it hasn't been it hasn't resulted in some sort of like transformation but it's it's made it even more it's made it heavier or um and and so like programs that are uh that are that are very

ordered and have like a scope in a sequence and people are supposed to move along. That is, that is like death to the spiritual life of someone who's been sexual abused. Because, like, healing just happens, has to be tailored to each individual's experience and journey and time frame. And there is no programmatic path on which everybody can do. No. And, and a tremendous amount. of patience and a willingness to see that the person desires loves Jesus, desires to be holy.

But their bodies work against them. Interesting. And they'll feel shame for not desiring it. Like, if you just desire it, then you do these things, and this is what's going to happen. But if they can't even desire, like, I don't even desire it in this moment. Yeah. Or worse, they desire it. They follow the plan.

It doesn't work. And it doesn't work. So what do they do? It's like a chapter on accountability. I could go all day on accountability. I really have a problem with the whole concept of accountability. Let's go there. That's interesting.

I've heard other people say this. I would love to hear your reasons. And it relates to this perfectly. because I was terrible at accountability, just absolutely terrible. As a partner for somebody else? Yes. Or as somebody keeping you accountable or both? All of it.

I was great at keeping somebody else accountable. I, so, like, accountability, I learned about it in the 90s when I was in college, okay? And someone, like, may have thought, like I did, that, like, accountability apparently is something that, you know, kind of has always been done. It's like a practice, like a spiritual practice, accountability, right? No one's there a question, whether accountability partner is good or not. Well, the idea of accountability, you know where it came from? promise keepers

that concept didn't exist before promisekeepers of course there were there are things about accountability like life together and like praying for each other and being each other's lives and encouragement confession that sort of thing

but this but it was never called that you know in pietistic movements monastic movements but the idea was that this accountability is a way that we can kind of have a person that can be another set of eyes in our life to help us not to sin so much I mean the idea that's sort of the goal of it is to sin less right so so like if you get together and you're like I'll just be crass but like you get together two guys get together and they're like

well this week I masturbated five times and I kicked my dog three times because I was really angry and the other guy says oh man I'm I mean that's you know I'm sorry that that that was your experience this week. Let's pray about it and like, you know, I'm being praying for you this week and, and, you know, let's try harder. And the other guy's like, his time is and he's like, I masturbated seven times and I kicked my dog four times. So, and the other guy's like, oh man, you know, that's really tough. I'm so sorry. We'll pray for each other and we'll do better next time so whenever they meet next week or two weeks it's the same okay well this week I masturbated 10 times and I only kicked my dog four or three times this week um I you know

it's just like this are you say so it doesn't work or you just get together and talk about well I'm saying that what about the fear of like if somebody is like being held accountable for porn or whatever a lot of shame and yes doing it and And then just this is my thought on, I don't think I've ever been a part of accountability group, by the way. Not because I'm imposed, we just haven't. But I can imagine like, gosh, if I'm going to have to fess this up, that's going to be extra motivation for me to not do it. Right. So what is that? What is, so let's just analyze that. Yeah. Is that the right logic? Like, that is the kind of.

It's, yeah. So, so what is your motivation for living righteously? shame shame guilt pain that always works really well for holiness um but so what i would happen is i would confess my struggles and of course you know you can hold accountable you can be accountable for all kinds of issues it just seems like especially when you're a young adult it's always about like sexuality and in a virgin culture it's all about masturbation because they're not necessarily going sleeping around with people they're just you know they're just they're just they're about like loving your enemies or caring for the poor not watching porn and not masturbating so but um it happened to be you know sexual struggle was was was a big thing for me because of my experience and and so eventually

I just got so full of shame I just wouldn't I didn't wouldn't be honest anymore I just started to lie I just lied I'm sorry to laugh yeah no no no it's

I know I'm being I'm being very cynical about it because I couldn't stop and the whole goal of accountability is to stop sinning do you think you would have done better if there wasn't accountability or it just was new it just didn't help i needed something but the biggest problem with accountability

as i've thought about it is the metaphor um when you think of accountability what is the and you'll appreciate this word is the semantic domain. What is the context for this term accountability? It's very legal, like an account or a debt. Okay. It's very transactional. Transactional, right.

It's keeping accounts. It's ledgers and debts and payments. It's like a business. metaphor receipts transactions checks and balances you know

regulation it's a terrible metaphor for how we should relate to one another for spiritual growth because the metaphor then determines the practice like metaphors work this way

like our metaphor that we live by shape how we approach things. So if we think of time as money, then the way we calculate time will be different than if we think as time as a gift, for example. That's maybe not the greatest illustration. So if accountability is our metaphor,

how do we treat one another when we're talking about our our the struggles of holiness and sanctification well it treats it kind of mechanically like a check like checking off certain boxes yeah and counting like so like yeah that's what I was kind of saying like so you did this this many times like can we get less can can you do less next week yeah so my whole my critique is we've allowed this terrible, unbiblical, theologically vacuous

idea. I mean, does God ever treat us like a businessman? Do we get treated like we're a part of an accountability group? No, that's not the way

it's not the way worse. And so I offer, the alternative which is confession and confessor so and i just have to say this is bonhofer he has so many things to say but in his life together one of his chapters was on confession and what is so powerful about that is that relationship is a relationship where you tell the most vulnerable things to another person, just one person, you confess your sin. And the point is that that other person who stands in the place of Christ announces over you, you are forgiven.

You are forgiven, I was just going to say. Hmm. I mean, confess your sins one or another. I mean, that's literally... Biblical. It's biblical. carrying one of those burdens, Galatians, you're, yeah. Like, not keeping accounts, but every time I come to you, Preston.

I've sinned in doing this. And you say to me as representative of Christ, right? You don't want to use, but like, you're forgiven. And what that then does is it creates the opportunity for curiosity, for relationship to, to foster self-knowledge. It allows them, invites. So what's going on? And there's no judgment. There's no account.

There's no like checks and balances. You could confess the same thing every single week. And it's always the same. word. And in that kind of environment, one feels safe enough to open oneself up to the Word of Christ and the curiosity that brings self-knowledge that can then, the Spirit then can transform us because we're not hiding. Yeah. Yeah. There's no shame. So, like, I feel like

we really need to reject this idea. And it's ubiquitous. Like, I mean, I mean, it's like, you might have thought this was like Jesus taught this. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I've never even questioned it. Well, until some friends of mine, maybe you included have kind of raised some of these concerns. Like, huh, I'd never even thought the next second. What I needed as a 18-year-old, as I first began to name my abuse, I needed that.

What I got was stop sinning. Did you go, so I'm glad, because I wanted to go back to your story, were you completely secret, silent about this whole, like nobody else knew about it for? For a few years. Okay. Yeah. So it ended when I was 16. Okay.

And I kind of compartmentalized it. just never thought about it at all until i was a i was a a soft it was my sophomore year of of college i was a camp counselor out in your neck of the woods at hum lake hum lake christian camp best you know it was amazing experience um but one of my one of my kids high school students in my in my camp i was i was on the counseling staff so i would be like put in with churches that needed like another counselor. So, but a guy named, uh, name, uh, name Ryan, I think his name was, he told me a story about how he'd been molested.

And it was the first time that I recognized myself as having had the same experience. Was it so compartmentalized that you haven't even, uh, debriefed with yourself about it almost? Really? Like he kind of became aware like, oh, that's what I. Like I had no category for abuse. And again, I kind of thought I was, you know, a willing participant. Right.

And it was the first time I could recognize the power. Because in any abusive relationship, there's always a power dynamic. Sure. And I was invited. I was coerced into that relationship. And what I experienced, and even the pleasure that I got from it, wasn't because of a decision I made. That had been done to me.

Yeah. And so that was the first time. So that would have been 19, 90. Two years after the relationship ended. Yeah. Yeah, two, three years. In terms of the relationship, too, like, was it your old, your encounter with your cousin,

your abuser, were you only encounters with him sexual or were there other emotional, maybe romantic, just relational connections? Or was it just every now and then you would hang out and he would kind of coax you into sexual acts? there was a relationship it was my stepbrother so we we had a relationship

outside the bedroom door before you know family and everything and we related in a very like I guess normal way

because nobody nobody noticed anything so outside the bedroom your relationship with him was just like it would have normally i mean just hanging out and yeah but we had a signal and um and so if if if we were out you know sitting in in the in the in the tv room or something and it was usually he was kind of in charge you know that was the other thing i wasn't in charge but he would shoot me a look

and I know what that look was and so he would get up and then after a few minutes I would get up so nobody would you know think twice about it he saw what I most needed and that was attention and care and he gave me that he paid attention he spoke lovingly to me he offered as twisted

as twisted as it is and it's twisted but it was love for me well and um and to be honest at the time

because of my mom had my part a big part of the story is that is a divorce my family I'm from a broken family and whenever the family system breaks down it's the it's just the it's the most vulnerable situation for kids because nobody's paying attention and my mom moves to

Florida she remarried my stepbrother and my stepdad lived in a two-bedroom condo in Florida so my middle sister Beth and I and my mom moved into this condo they weren't married so my mom and my sister slept in this in the master bedroom the man who became my step I'd slept on the couch and I was put in my stepbrother's room to share a room. And then when we moved into a house, we continued to share a room. And he was about the only person that was really paying attention to me. he knew how to make me feel good. In the book, I have a poem.

I'm not really a poet. You're writing songs and poetry. And it's one of the more difficult elements of the book, like in terms of its, it will make somebody i'm sure very uncomfortable because i i this was out of a therapy session but i was uh i was encouraged by my therapist because we had been talking about all the darkness of sexual abuse and he was wanting me to see how even in that darkness there was the beauty of what god had created in me, and what I had been feeling, what I felt from him wasn't bad.

Because you felt probably tons of shame for feeling, not feeling as horrible about your behavior. Well, that those responses were God's Tov, you know, Tov Me'Ode. That's the chapter, it's Tov Me'Ode, because... Tov is a Hebrew word for good. Good. That's right. Very good. Very good.

But oh, yeah. Yeah. And, and so what I felt from that relationship, those were good things. They were stolen from me. He made what should be beautiful, sullied. And, but it was. It was an invitation to honor the goodness of what God meant for my sexuality. I don't know if that makes sense.

So I wrote a poem, a love poem. A love poem. A love poem. A love poem about my abuser. This is... Yeah. Okay, keep going. I'm just trying because I hear, I understand what you mean by these terms and what you're saying. You've, you've given enough qualification that, you know, that he offered you love, but it was a twist. It was twisted. But without denying the reality of your bodily response to his offer as twisted as it is. So I'm still, I'm trying to open up whole new categories where this can even fit in in my brain. So you wrote a love poem.

It started out as a narrative story. And I wrote it and then put it aside because I shared it with my therapist and we talked all about it. And then when I was going to kind of think about writing this book, I pulled it back out. and I started I started to work on it again and having given it a few years you know I just felt like I had to go deeper

than what I had written like there was more there and it felt like the poetry would be able to capture just how deep that experience was in a way that prose

did. Now I don't know if it's a good like I'm not a poet. Wasn't chat GPT this time? This was it. This was me. This was me. Yeah.

So what would you say to somebody that said whatever feeling you have, this is not love. Abuse cannot be love. Like I can hear, I'm sure people listening or maybe a little startled, maybe a little, be fellow survivors saying I was abused too ain't no way I'm writing a love poem but I mean

this is your story not yeah yeah but how would you respond to somebody that maybe is really hung up on you know I I would agree there was nothing that it was I was perpetrated against he didn't love me right oh okay he was using me for his own twisted evil purposes. Got it. But your response... But my response, I'm saying, is Tovman Ode. It's the beauty that God intended for a body to feel and to express and to respond.

So, no, it wasn't love. Right. But it was to the 13-year-old. It elicited a genuine love on your response. Yeah, I felt loved. Yeah. It's part of what makes it such a brutal story for me. Like, I don't may seem like I'm talking about it so easily, you know,

but that's where it's just like, oh. You've been processing this for a decade. 30 years? And even more recently in a way that's more holistic and getting to the roots of it. I mean, so, yeah. Yeah, so I acknowledged it when I was. I think my sophomore year to college, but it lay dormant. I didn't, I had no knowledge of a process.

I kind of took the, you know, what God meant for evil, God meant for good. Beautiful verse, very important, you know, Genesis 50, verse 10, Joseph, you know, was sold in slavery. And so what, what you brothers meant for evil, God meant for good. powerful verse but i turned it into a motto that this happened so that i could be a a helper to others so it totally shut down any curiosity it also shut down the shame as well because hey i could be shameful us, but God is going to use it in other people's lives. So it wasn't until I was in my 40s and just leaking, like, anger and, and disconnection relationally and still struggling with sexual addiction and that it was like, you know,

I need to probably go talk to someone. And so that was in 2013. And so since 2013, I have been in what I call the work, the work. And intensely for a few years, very intensely, and then less so. But having returned to the story for this book, I've re-entered. all again and you know some things I I'm I was familiar with other things I saw differently and there were some new discoveries in the process of writing this and I and I probably close to the end so I just want to say so the main the main

audience for my book are survivors not because my story is going to be just like their story although I don't think my story is going to be that uncommon but because I want survivors to know men

that they're not alone and that their struggle over their adult life decades is completely understandable and at the end of the book I said it was going to be pessimistic like you know in this life until new creation there are ways in which you're just never going to heal and you may struggle with certain sin or other patterns because they're so embodied like if you could just quit it then you would goes back to the accountability thing but what ended up

at the end of this book, and I wrote the end kind of when I was in the middle of writing it, but that the reality, the realization that if I can never feel like I was able to get that far in the sanctification process that there were patterns that I just have not been able to change because they're so deep that God's goodness will be his word to me and Psalm 236

says tovahesed the goodness and the loving kindness of the lord and the verb is translated typically will follow after me all the days of my life with that verb Radhaf means to pursue to hunt and followed behind me is such a weak way of saying it and so it was like it's like god's goodness and kindness are chasing me down and the last word is not about what i am able how far i can get in my sanctification i keep i keep pursuing it but it's that the kindness of the lord brings repent and the goodness and kindness of the Lord are chasing me down. And for a survivor, that's about the best news anyone could hear.

I think we have to end on that line. That was a really good wrap up. And actually, man, I would love, because I know you're not fully done at the book yet, and you're still, it's just wet cement, fresh. It's opened up new emotions, I'm sure. I would love to have you back on for part two. when the book comes out. Okay.

Because we haven't even gotten to, like, I would love to know, like, okay, from 18 to now, or maybe pre-you're going to therapy in 2013, like how has it affected your life, sexuality? There's so many other questions I have, but let's cut it off there. And maybe have you back on in a year or so when the book is coming out.

I would be very honored. Yeah, it would be fun. Yeah. Dude, thanks so much for your honesty, man. It's contagious. when I first met you is a pub in the UK when you're studying at Cambridge

I was in Aberdeen we're at a conference together and we'd already met before a couple times but I remember instantly I was like this dude's an honest dude and I was like I love that about you man

it's so contagious I wish more Christians were as honest and authentic as you are so thanks for being on a very honest podcast and I just thank you for your willingness

to go places many might not risk but are so important. Thank you.