Case Study: "God the Psychotic Cult Leader"

Here is another case study from my own healing work. As indicated below, this is our best recollection of a Theophostic healing time shortly after we returned from the advanced Theophostic training in October of 1998. We wish we had taken notes at the time or shortly after because our memories of the details of the actual healing prayer time are now sketchy. We hope that this will still provide more valuable information about Theophostic healing prayer.

"Tex" Watson, a young man who is now a committed Christian but was once a member of the Charles Manson cult, describes how Manson would ask one of his followers "What is your most treasured possession?" When the one questioned would obediently answer, Manson would tell him or her to go and get it. Then he would say, "Do you love me more this? Put it on the ground. Pour gasoline on it. Burn it. Now tell me you love me."

Throughout most of my life–from early childhood until October 1998, I have struggled with fearing the Lord's will/plan for my life. Instead of feeling safe in the Lord's love for me, trusting that His plans were good, and being truly willing to lay down anything in my life if it were necessary, I felt that the Lord was threatened by my ten speed bicycle and that He spent a lot of His time prowling around snatching things away from his children, demanding that they give them up in order to prove their allegiance, submission, and obedience. I had a deep conviction that one of His top priorities in His plan for my life would be to take away anything I really wanted in order to keep my priorities straight. I felt that God was insecure, angry, and selfish and that He needed to be in control in some sick and dysfunctional way. This may seem strange to some of you, but at some place deep inside I felt that God was a lot like Tex Watson's description of Charles Manson. I felt that God was more like a psychotic cult leader than a loving father.

My parents would tell me that the Lord loved me and that I could trust His care. I wanted desperately to believe them and tried to convince myself that they were right. But in my heart I was always waiting for the Lord to make things fall through. Every time it looked like I was going to lose something important I would immediately say to myself: "See! The Lord is letting me down and messing up my life, just like I have been afraid he would."

I wanted very much to get married so I feared the Lord would make me be single to prevent me from loving anyone more than Him. I had a few treasured possessions I had saved for years to purchase, so I feared the Lord would take my binoculars and bicycle to prevent me from loving anything more than Him. My academic career was very important to me so I feared the Lord would intentionally mess up my studies and give me bad grades to prevent me from getting too attached to academic success.

I worked hard to convince myself (and the Lord) that these things weren't that important to me. I could surrender my plans "if I really wanted to." But I could never completely escape the fear that He would destroy my life "just to make sure I had things straight." I can remember bargaining with the Lord: "You can have all my other stuff if I can keep my bicycle and binoculars," or even "I'll throw in the bicycle AND the binoculars if you let me get married and don't mess up my grades." Using decoys was another strategy. If I could just convince myself that my hiking boots, coin collection, and savings account were the most important things in the world, the Lord might take those and "miss" my binoculars, grades and girlfriend – my heart's "secret" treasures. This strategy was particularly challenging because it had to be done as indirectly and subconsciously as possible. If I realized consciously that I really did want my binoculars, academic success, and marriage more than anything else the whole plan would collapse.

This struggle improved slowly with years of discipleship and personal spiritual growth, with thousands of hours of thinking, studying, praying, pastoral care, and reading true stories of the Lord's faithfulness. I became deeply convinced in my adult cognitive mind that these thoughts and feelings were the "wrong answer" to the question "What is God like?" but I had to spend a lot of time and energy using cognitive tools to hold on to the truth about the Lord's nature and to fight off these negative thoughts and feelings. Even with these defensive and coping tools in place I would still struggle with the negative thoughts and feelings occasionally. It took larger and larger triggers to bring them out and I got better and better at stuffing them back in, but if it looked like I was about to lose something really important, I would discover I still had a place that believed God was like a psychotic cult leader.

I never wanted to believe or feel these things, and these negative beliefs were never fully conscious. I would have argued vehemently if you had told me I believed God was like a psychotic cult leader. I don't think I knew what to do with the place in my heart that carried such outrageous and heretical beliefs. "How can it be that some part of me believes God is a psychotic cult leader? I am a committed Christian designing my whole life around discipleship!"

Unfortunately, we don't have good records from the actual Theophostic session addressing this concern. This was one of the first really powerful Theophostic healing experiences in our own lives so we had not learned to tape or take notes. Within several days of returning from the advanced training in October of 1998, something came up as Charlotte and I were about to fall asleep. We decided to try Theophostic on whatever it was that was upsetting me, and so had an informal session from about 12:00 midnight to1:30 a.m. I don't even remember what the initial trigger was, but it was not clearly connected to the "God is a psychotic cult leader" thoughts and feelings. We asked the Lord to guide the process and then I tried to just pay attention to the thoughts and feelings that came into my heart and mind. I tried to describe to Charlotte as accurately as possible the thoughts and feelings that were coming to me. I remember feeling that I was wandering all over the place, and commented repeatedly "This doesn't make any sense, it's not working." After 45-60 minutes of what felt to me like fruitless wandering, I came to a series of memories with intense emotions attached.

I remembered being a small child and hearing "teachings" (sermons) in our 1960's-social-justice- radical-discipleship church. It felt like every other Sunday was on "Take up your cross and follow me," and the ones in between were distributed equally between "If you do not hate your father and mother,...you are not worthy of me," "If your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out, ...if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off," the story of Abraham and Isaac, and the story about the rich young ruler: "Sell all you have, give it to the poor, and come follow me."

I remembered being 3 to 5 years old, watching TV and seeing Life magazine pictures about the civil rights movement (Note: We didn't even have a TV in our home, but this film footage was everywhere. There were usually Life magazines lying around.) I remembered the graphic photographs and TV footage of kids getting attacked by German Shepherds, fire hoses, and police with night sticks.

During this same time in my life, church meetings were sometimes held in our living room, next to my bedroom. My bed was right by the door, and I remembered hearing people talking about how God had taken away their jobs, boyfriends, or some other treasure so that they wouldn't have an idol – so that nothing would be before God in their lives.

If I was going to be a "real" Christian, if I was really going to "Take up my cross," I should be living out these teachings. I remembered thinking about what it would be like to be in a civil rights protest and get attacked by dogs and police, to pluck out one of my eyes or cut off one of my hands, to sell all that I had and walk out into the alley naked (at four years old, "all" included clothing). I had no idea where one went in response to "and then come and follow me." I wanted to be a real Christian but didn't have the courage to do any of these things. I therefore had a chronic sense of being a coward and a failure. I was afraid that although I was not courageous or obedient enough to volunteer, God would take away anything I treasured "so that nothing would be before Him in my life." I was afraid that God would make bad things happen to me "to purify me."

I cried for some time as I remembered what it felt like be three to five years old and trying to deal with this stuff – what it felt like to believe that the Lord was controlling in an insecure, angry, and selfish way, and that He would take the good and send the bad in order to break me and stay in control of my life (core lie #1) –what it felt like to believe I was supposed to love and trust this God, and that I was a coward and a failure as a Christian because I did not have the courage and obedience to embrace Him and His plans for my life (core lie #2).

Charlotte was praying that the Lord would bring His truth to replace these lies. Suddenly I just felt like all these thoughts were ridiculous instead of true. "This isn't true. That's not what the Lord is like!"

The feeling that God is a psychotic cult leader has been completely gone since this time of healing prayer in October of 1998. Now these negative thoughts just feel ridiculous and untrue. Not only do I notice that these thoughts and feelings don't get triggered when things go wrong, but it feels like that place "deep down inside" is gone – I don't feel like it is down there lurking. I don't feel like I have to work to hold on to the truth about the Lord's love and goodness.

I do believe that I should love the Lord with all my heart and all my mind and all my strength, and that I should love and obey the Lord before all else. I want to be at the place where there is nothing in my life more important than my relationship with God. But now I feel that the Lord is trying to bring me to this place in the most gentle way possible, as a loving Father. He might allow pain in this process, but only if it is the only possible way to accomplish a greater good.

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