god has a purpose for me.
or at least he did.
i grew up believing that we were created by a loving god. that we were all god’s children. that he loved us equally. never in my life was anything more dear to me...more important.
during my teenage years, as my life got off track, i began to become increasingly saddened by the feeling that i’d lost touch with god--that the communion i had once enjoyed became compromised. drugs and alcohol had managed to push out of my life things like joy, love, security, faith.
my parents also became distressed. they saw their only son slipping away, becoming more and more depressed, angry, violent. they prayed for me and over me. they contacted other believers and launched a nation-wide campaign of prayer. they attempted to counsel me—to love me back to health.
my parents were never hateful. they never attempted to shame me. they didn’t yell or threaten. what did they do? they prayed. they employed every reasonable, legal, ethical, godly avenue in an attempt to bring their son back.
in march of 1983 their prayers (and the prayers of thousands of others)were answered.
my parents were out for the evening and i sat on the edge of my bed angry and depressed. i’d been expelled from the performing arts program that i’d entered as a college freshmen less than a year earlier. i was virtually unemployable, because i was too depressed and too insecure to get to work every day. my life’s dreams had been shattered, in that i saw no avenue to pursue my music. my father had sat and lovingly explained to me that he was unable to fix my life for me—that i would have to find a way to access the power to get well.
i could not access that power.
i knew that i did not possess the strength to turn my life around. i had tried time and time again. i was nothing. nobody.
enter god.
as i sat on the edge of my bed, considering the least painful way to end my life, i threw out one final challenge to god. “if my life has meaning, show me now or i will end it now.”
immediately, the telephone rang. “hello seeking, it’s mrs. k. you know john has been sick [alcoholic].”
“i know mrs. k. how is he?”
mrs. k. went on to explain that john had been out drinking for a couple days. he had come home out of control, yelling, threatening. now he was passed-out in the basement.
mrs. k. explained that john needed to go to an aa meeting. she had located a meeting which was scheduled to start within the hour and asked me if i would come over, awaken john and take him to the meeting.
i was never one to turn away a friend in need. i forgot about my despair, grabbed the key to my parents’ car, which i had secretly copied so i could drive when they weren’t around, lit a joint and headed over to pick up john. that’s how i ended up at my first aa meeting.
two days later i was in rehab.
the men at the meeting did not try to convince me to join aa. nor, did they try to convince me that i was an alcoholic or drug addict. they asked for no commitment of any kind. they simply recommended that i admit myself into a drug and alcohol treatment program.
when i sat down and told my father about this experience, mostly to distract him from the fact that i’d taken their car, he said, “i will do anything i can to help you.”
he never mentioned cost. he didn’t ask if i was really going to try. he never brought up my transgressions. my father was a man of faith. he knew an answer to prayer when he saw one.
in rehab, i was scared. the place was cold. locked metal doors blocked me from the outside world. the facility was surrounded by a tall chain link fence with razor wire. my suite-mate had tattoos and worshipped the devil. they brought a young man into my room who was high on crank and acutely psychotic. he was to be my new roommate.
i didn’t belong here.
someone had left a piece of paper on my night stand and on that paper was printed the “our father”. i was scared to death. i knew the prayer by heart, so i turned over the paper, pulled a pencil (no pens allowed) out of the nightstand drawer and rewrote the “our father” in my own words. next, i got down on my knees and said the prayer, fully expecting god’s intervention.
god immediately spoke to me. he didn’t use audible language, nor did the heaven’s open. instead i remembered some stories i had learned as a child. first, i remembered the story of the prodigal son. i imagined the father standing outside his house each day, scanning the horizon, awaiting his son’s return. like my own parents, like god, the father did not rebuke his son or ask him to make promises. he did not remind his son that he’d blown his father’s hard earned wealth on wine and whores. instead, he welcomed his son back, with open arms. the father rejoiced at the return of his son.
this was god’s grace, that my parents had modeled for me throughout my childhood.
the second story i remembered was that of moses. i thought of moses standing before the burning bush, before god. i imagined moses’ fear as god commanded him to throw down his staff, his only defense against the harsh desert. i imagined moses running as the staff became a snake, afraid that god was going to destroy him for his refusal to follow god’s orders and free the people, enslaved by the egyptians.
then, at god’s command, moses picked up the snake and it became a staff again...god’s staff.
i remembered the words to a song i’d learned. the song, by ken medema, a blind pianist and composer, was called moses. the words to “moses” were swimming through my mind.
oh, god
it’s a rod again
it’s a rod again
with rod of god, stirke the rock and the water will come
with the rod of god, part the water’s of the sea
with the rod of god you can strike pharaoh dead
with the rod of god you can set my people free.
then...
what do you hold in your hand today?
to what or to whom are you bound?
are you willing to give it to god right now?
give it up. let it go. throw it down.
there was no ambiguity in this message for me.
my staff, my experience with drugs and alcohol, was no longer to be my security. god was my security, my drug-abuse disorder, was now god’s and it would be used to help others find freedom--freedom which i was certain had been granted to me through a simple prayer.
everything changed from that point...and it was a sustained change.
both of the young men, my roommate and suitemate, were from broken homes. their parents had given up on them. they needed to be loved. there were others as well. the pain i’d experienced was easy to accept, because i knew that it served a purpose. it provided me with the empathy to help others. i was grateful.
no one told me to feel this way.
i decided to devote my life to helping druggies. after rehab, i drove my parents’ car, filled with other kids, to aa, na and pdap meetings. i volunteered for pdap, a non-profit organization, as a counselor’s assistant. i brought drug addicts home with me. sometimes they stole from me. there was nowhere i was unwilling to go to help someone.
over the years, junkies have kicked dope on my couch. i have stayed with them, encouraging them...”dude, this will be over soon...you can do this” while they went through withdrawals. i’ve begged for free medical care for sick dopers and alcoholics. i’ve given them jobs, money, love.
i never felt as though i was earning my salvation. nor did i feel any external pressure to help others. i wasn’t attempting to get anything, make money, or gain status. i never thought i should be applauded for this work. helping people was an end in and of itself.
i slept by a pager and was frequently awakened in the middle of the night. ministers, parents and counselors would call. sometimes it was a parent of a 15 or 16
year old that had run away and was on the streets. “do you think you can find him and convince him to come home?” they’d ask. other times it was someone who simply needed to talk. there were times when things got a little dicey. it was all good with me—fun.
when i was living with my parents, my mother would hear my pager at night and would quietly go to the kitchen and fix me a cup of coffee. she and my father saw to it that i had a car, gas, money, whatever i needed to attend to my “purpose”. there was never a single instance where they showed anything other than full support—not even when i dragged dopers back to their house.
i took the first opportunity available to enter a drug and alcohol counselor training school. i was well-trained at the school, which had an diverse faculty of highly respected therapists, counselors, certification board members, physicians, and psychologists.
for several years, i continued this course. when i reentered college my focus was split between human services and journalism. this would help me to reach others on a number of levels. i connected with people at school who needed help.
once, a guy from school, an awesome guitarist, called me from southwest missouri. he was suffering from dt’s. i knew that if he didn’t get some alcohol soon, he could seize and die. i sent him to a bar and told him to drink and wait, while i figured out a way to pick him up and get him to rehab. he had no money, but i was able to beg a treatment program to take him in exchange for his piece of crap car. he’s still sober today.
i never felt as though i had “all the answers”. i never felt compelled to convert others to my belief system. i didn’t see myself as “more spiritual” or more special. i didn’t think that my calling was necessarily the same as that of others. i didn’t have any special power or knowledge. my role was to be available—to “do my best and leave the rest to god” as they say.
i was also far from perfect. i counted on god to do his work despite my shortcomings, which were numerous.
mostly i was strengthened and inspired by my close relationship with a loving god who had a purpose for me.
four years after that fateful night when i found god, i met bob.
enter bob. exit god.
when i met bob, i met a hero. he had written a book and had worked with rock stars and other celebrities. he was “the father of drug intervention”...and he said needed my help.
we spent the night together, in his hotel room, while he gently coaxed me into telling him everything about myself--my fears, my struggles, my beliefs. at times i cried. he held me in his arms and told me he loved me. that he alone understood. that he, like me, had found god’s purpose for his life.
he told me that god had brought us together. he said that he had helped thousands and that together we would help thousands more.
i left his hotel room, as the sun was rising, energized, waiting for the phone to ring...for that next call, that next opportunity to help someone. this is what i do. i help people.
bob aligned his pulse with mine. he systematically drew me in. my faith, which was strength to me, represented vulnerability to him. he used that faith, my purpose, to draw me into his fold and destroy my essence for his own selfish purposes.
i was young and naive. i had assumed since he also “walked with god” that he would not deceive me. i didn’t even realize that this level of deception was possible. it never crossed my mind that he was anything other than the child of a loving god who had been rescued from a life, much more painful than my own, and given a purpose.
i also didn’t know that, at that time, his programs in the west were being shut-down. he needed another program fast and my father was the president of the board of directors of a struggling non-profit treatment program in the midwest. bob had traveled to come offering to help the crippling program, which was about to close.
he began by building on my judeo-christian beliefs, fortifying those beliefs with his own stories of the “miracles” he’d experienced, witnessed. in time, he replaced others who’d had an influence on me, giving me insight into god’s ways, explaining the spiritual significance of events, writings, biblical passages. he introduced me to new literature. he presented himself as a true believer, never hinting at the deep hatred he had for jews and christians.
he patiently and methodically began to reshape my beliefs.
i didn't see it coming. i had never known a sociopath.
the idea, for example, that god sometimes spoke through people became, god spoke solely through people--then god spoke through certain people, then his people, and ultimately through him, through bob alone.
during the early years, he spent a great deal of time mentoring me in regard to becoming more “christ-like” an ideal with which i was very familiar. he helped me to understand the importance of surrounding myself with those who were christ-like--his followers.
then, in a hidden effort to begin moving me away from the belief in a supernatural god, he began to move me toward the idea of god as a metaphor. christ-like meant trying to live the example that christ set...but, beware of the mistakes that christ made...the ones that got him killed. “jesus could have done so much more if he hadn’t f#cked-up and gotten himself killed," he claimed.
bob was christ-like and had nearly been destroyed by making the same mistakes. this, he explained, was the reason his programs had been shut-down. he, like christ, had allowed himself to fall into the trap of martyrdom. by learning to parse the good from the bad, i could avoid this trap. he would show me how.
he also spoke to me about the concept of spiritual warfare. there existed, according to bob, a very real evil “force” in this world, "the dark side” as he termed it. we should be on guard against the dark side. "whenever we are on the right track, truly doing good, the dark side will rear its ugly head. therefore, when others are questioning you, when your thoughts become doubtful, whenever, you begin to think that his (bob's) way is not truth, you know you are doing good work. the dark side is trying to stop you. therefore, you have to stop those negative thoughts." this is what bob taught me.
in time, a lot of good people became a part of the dark side, friends, former staff, those who spoke out against bob, my parents and siblings, society at large, organized religion, and finally god.
after he had drawn me in far enough, he became overtly vicious. once, in another hotel room, he looked me in the eyes. “we’re going to have a man to man talk...” he said. “the man (pointing to himself) to a man (pointing at me).” what followed was a screaming barrage of insults and demeaning remarks. i was devastated. no one in my life had ever talked to me the way that he talked to me that day. finally, as i sat, head in hands sobbing, he “put me back together." he did this because he loved me. he was "having my back." over time, these attacks became more frequent and more vicious. i learned to fear them.
i learned to “confront” people as well—to “have their backs”. i became vicious.
it was over a decade from the time i met bob until he was finally able to get me to completely, as a matter of public ritual, renounce god and all prior beliefs. it was absolutely necessary i learned, following a verbal beating. my unwillingness to let go of god was destroying my wife and daughter.
“let go of your f#cked-up god bullsh!t or let go of them [my wife and daughter]. you’re dragging them down with you.”
i can still remember the day that i did it. i was in the bedroom he and his wife shared. i had broken all meaningful contact with the outside world. I hadn't spoken to my parents or siblings for years. i spent my days and nights doing bob's work--part of a group of followers that slaved in order to support his lavish lifestyle.
i was sitting on their ottoman. they were both present.
there was no god. nothing out there. now, i was finally free.
from what had i been freed? the fear, the anxiety, the pain, the hardship. what i didn’t realize at the time was that i’d already been freed from these, years earlier. i didn’t see that the fear, pain, anxiety and hardship i felt were not the result of my flawed beliefs, but were instead the direct result of my involvement with bob. more acutely, that he had purposefully and systematically, planted those undesirable feelings and phobias within me in order to keep me subservient to him.
like screwtape to wormwood, he had already instructed me on how i could use god as a means to an end, rather than faith being an end in and of itself. now god became a way to control others. a way to make others “accountable to the unenforceable laws”...for their own good, of course.
i secretly and silently grieved over my final severance with god. i kept telling myself that my grief was my unconscious attempt to sabotage my own growth. i thought about the beautiful religious music that had been so dear to me. i also mourned the loss of the religious stories and parables that had inspired me time and time again.
it seems strange, but until i finally cut-off god completely, i hadn’t thought about those things in years. of course, like so many things in bob’s cult, my grief had to be hidden. we were not allowed to feel pain. pain was a sign of weakness. to express any feeling other than joy and enthusiasm meant risking punishment. and punishment could be brutal.
i suffered alone.
i could find relief only in knowing that it was the right thing to do. this god thing had to be stamped out, lest my wife and daughter suffer due to my own selfish desire to believe.
bob and his wife attempted to destroy my marriage and family. for several years, they drove a wedge between us, coercing us into “reporting” on each other. our house was not our house, it was his. bob and his wife were “present” in our house, at our meals, in our bedroom, 24 hours a day 7 days a week. there was no sanctuary in our home, because anything we said or did would be reported to them. i was constantly on guard, watching every comment, every facial expression, every act for fear that these would be reported to the bob and his wife and used against me.
when my wife and i had the thought that we might want to have another child (we’d had one prior to being fully indoctrinated), my wife went to them to ask their approval. the result was that they pushed harder to drive us apart. they put a total stop to our sex life. not only would a child make it more difficult to separate my wife from me, but it angered them that my wife would even have this desire independent of them. bob's wife had thought she was much closer to separating us than she had been.
they controlled every aspect of our parenting of our daughter. at one point, i suffered a brutal verbal beating by bob and his wife, followed by weeks of being ostracized by them, my friends in the organization, and my wife.
my crime? i helped my daughter remove some excess salad dressing that she had accidentally spilled on her salad. according to bob's wife, this act somehow represented an undermining of my wife’s authority and a statement of male-chauvinism. in addition to the former punishment, she saw to it that my wife and i were not intimate for months.
thirteen years ago i left bob and his organization. thankfully, i was able to get my wife and child out as well. it wasn’t easy. in order to get them out, i had to become as crafty and manipulative as bob.
after a turn of events caused me to realize that bob's organization was a destructive cult, i had to fool him and the others, causing them to believe that i was still loyal to them until i was able to create an opportunity to reach my wife. it was during this period that bob told me that, now that i realized there was nothing out there (meaning no god), i needed to put my full faith in him. “i am the closest thing to a god that you’ll ever have,” he said.
it was too late. he had been god to me for a long time, but not any more.
a lot has changed over 13 years. my wife and i have enjoyed great intimacy at times. we have had two more children. my oldest daughter is an excellent student and gifted musician. we are, for the most part, happy. i have retained employment and been able to make ends meet. i have also been fortunate enough to continue my education, taking college classes and attending frequent workshops, seminars and conferences related to my work. i get to listen to and play music again. long gone is the fear that my actions, thoughts, moods are going to be reported. also gone is the once constant fear of being torn away from my family or being banished from the spiritual fold.
for years i had nightmares that bob and his wife came and took my family away. i still occassionally have those dreams.
i enjoy spending time with my 3 daughters. we laugh and play heartily. i am a good father and take pride in my attentiveness as a father.
also, i have rekindled my passion for helping people. it is rewarding to see the impact of my work on the individuals and families i have helped. this brings me joy.
that said, there is one thing that continues to elude me...faith. as hard as i’ve tried, i simply can’t believe for a sustained period. i have attended churches, read religious and spiritual materials, prayed. i’ve literally strained to believe; yet faith continues to elude me.
when i begin to believe, i can’t seem to help feeling as though i’m setting myself up to be conned once again. worse, everything that i hear or read from those who do have faith, in regard to what is necessary to obtain it, sounds suspiciously familiar to the things i was taught by bob.
i know there are those that will say that millions have been harmed and in the name of religion. and certainly that’s true. i have no doubt that others, like bob have used god and religion for evil purposes. many have been harmed by their local churches. others have lived in fear and guilt handed out through mainstream religious doctrine.
religions have been responsible for tragedies such as war, racism, sexual discrimination, slavery, sexual abuse, bigotry, hate, homophobia, abuse of power, and fascism just to name a few. however, until i met bob, that was not my experience. the god that was in my heart would never do these things.
i was taught that all people were equal in the eyes of god—that you couldn’t judge a person by the color of their skin, their sexuality, their culture or heritage, or the size of their bank account. i was never a huge proponent of organized religion, which i had learned was not what truly what represented “the church”. a church, to me, was simply an organization where, believers could gather and enjoy fellowship.
i was warned from an early age to never put my faith in any individual—that all of us had a direct link to god and had no need for an intercessory. i was taught and believed that god alone had the corner on truth. i believed that there were many paths to god.
i grew up believing that god would reveal himself to everyone. that he was concerned with our day to day lives. that he would help us when we needed help. that we were all god’s children. that he loved us equally.
i grew up believing that we were created by a loving god.
never in my life was anything more dear to me...more important.
god has a purpose for me.
or at least he did.
where did it go?
epilogue
no doubt, some will judge me harshly for allowing myself to be fooled in such a dramatic way. others will claim that, had i truly had faith, or the right kind of faith, or believed in the right god, i would have been "protected" from this evil. but i am telling this story because i believe that virtually anyone is vulnerable. scientology, children of god, the branch davidians, end time ministries, the unification church, the cornerstone program, pathway drug abuse program, the way international, lifespring, the jim roberts group, synanon, erhardt seminar trainin and fundamentalist latter day saints are a just a few organizations that have coaxed thousands away from their lives, their families, their faiths.
they promise truth and deliver lies.
in my case, it never occurred to me that anyone could be as manipulative as bob. additionally, i was vulnerable precisely because i believed that my faith would protect me from lies.
how did i allow someone to have such total control over my life? why didn't i just leave in the beginning? how could anyone give away so much power?