We Are Threatened From Within By Nuts

In my 60 years on this blue marble in the vast universe, I’ve encountered evil, goodness, cruelty and kindness. I’ve listened to great classical compositions that were penned by a deaf man and ridiculous oratory from speeches to campfire tales from people who could hear. Hear, but never able to listen. Or think.

Being half a century old or more can be painful. Nobody can deny that. I went to a specialist for arthritis. He tried everything he could throw at me but nothing worked. He finally diagnosed fibromyalgia and tried treating that. Now I can’t take the drug I was on because I would fall, pass out and lose my memory. Doesn’t matter to me if it’s fibro or not; it hurts. Old bone fractures hurt. I get lower back pain like the devil. Dignity leaves bit by bit as you age too; accidents before you can get to the latrine are humiliating and can drive you to tears with shame even if you’re alone. The things my body has endured…over 35 traffic accidents, being squashed, falling from heights that should have killed me, drugs, fights, and of course smoking and heart attacks…have all combined to make me take aspirin and Tylenol three times a day, and those only barely moderate the pain.

None of that bothers me nearly as much as what my mind has had to go through. Brainwashing. Terror. Trauma. Nightmares. Anxiety and panic attacks. Self-loathing. Self doubt. Not being able to trust my own mind, never knowing what my mood would be, never being happy. Being scared of everything and brave about nothing. Certain that leaving the military was the biggest mistake I’ve ever made. Had I stayed my marriage would have survived and my kids would be alive today.

It pains me then, that I’m seeing something so outside my experience, awful though that experience is, that I find it astounding.

You know what I’m talking about? Yeah, the elephant in the room. On March fourth, according to QAnon, the real inauguration was to take place in Washington. It didn’t happen but that’s not the end of it.

The theories are nuts: that Trump and Biden are working together. That they have switched bodies. That Trump would be inaugurated for real. That Grant was the last US president who was legitimate.

There’s more. The age-old myth has returned that the Rothschild family runs all but 7 countries in the world; that they own the US Federal Reserve, that they started the War of 1812 to begin consolidation of assets and power. Then there’s the ones about the illuminati and new world order. Blaming the Rothschilds is exactly the kind of trick the Koch brothers want you to believe.

Today I found this. If you can get through the statistics, what you will get out of it shouldn’t surprise you. But it should cause you at least some degree of worry.

Christian Persecution

It’s never been clear which Roman imperator (emperor) began the persecution of Christians. Was it Caligula, who followed the demented and isolated Tiberius, who spent his last years chasing nude children through the woods of Capri? There’s no way to know; Caligula was not in power very long when he fell ill from a mysterious malady which changed him dramatically. It could have started then, but months after his “recovery” he was assassinated while taking a bath.

People usually blame Nero. He was a real character whom the common people loved, at least at first. He took care of them and yet that changed. Probably following the great fire, which he was blamed for starting. He wasn’t in Rome at the time, which gave scholars a chance to call such circumstances an alibi; as imperator he could have left town and simply left orders for soldiers to torch the wooden buildings of the mostly poor sector. I personally doubt this; he is known to have received a dispatch during his performance and that he rushed back to Rome and at his own risk pulled people to safety. That would have been enough to unhinge any leader. What he saw, burned people, what he heard, people screaming, and what he smelled that night was traumatic.

When it comes to the theory that he was urged to blame the fire on Christians we have no real proof. But afterward, we have equally difficult stories to confirm that at evening dinner parties in his personal garden, he impaled Christians high on stakes and burned them for light to see by. The sources are too few and we don’t know. What we do know is, he built a lavish, even by Roman standards, palace on grounds once occupied by the commoners, and this changed his esteem with them and the Praetorian guards as well. When an emperor lost the loyalty and faith of the Praetorian Guard, he was doomed. So it was with Nero, as with many imperators who followed him. That particular body of Roman legionaries was the only one allowed in the city proper; should another division or element thereof ride or march into Rome, it was considered an invasion, no questions asked. The guard turned on Nero before that became necessary and with some maneuvering by people he trusted, his fate was sealed. He committed suicide to prevent his assassination.

Other emperors would follow who did in fact view Christianity as a cult and a threat to the empire; undermining taxation and monetary tribute to the gods of Rome, many of which were from the Greco-Roman contact hundreds of years earlier, before Sparta fell to the Republic.

Religion had its price, always has. With first century CE growth of Christianity, it became more brutal than ever.

When You Become The Thing You Hate

It would turn out that as with all things, men of power, wealth and influence changed the simple tenets of Christ to something twisted and obscene. When it became the official religion of the Roman Empire, the story of Jesus had already been modified. To what extent we will never know, but now instead of a few men in sandals walking between Jerusalem, Rome and Antioch with a simple message, it was a monied movement and a major business.

Churches were built until cathedrals were the preferred style, but big or little, simple or intricately constructed, they covered the land after the last of the mighty Roman Empire. That’s when things got weird.

The Crusades. The inquisitions. Dear God, the Christian church turned into a place where people were terrorized to become Christians and murdered if they refused. How did that happen? Where had faith in the peaceful Jesus of Nazareth gone? That man who dared anyone to stone an adulteress, who preached love and forgiveness, the guy they quoted from pulpit and pew, had become nothing more than an alibi for their grotesque lifestyle. “I’m forgiven” they would say. “I’m upholding Christ’s values”, they’d scream. This, while coming into post secular modern day, has become a battle cry for all who advocate death and suffering, obscenity and every evil thing in the book.

Pat Robertson has been a Christian Evangelical TV host for decades. In that time he has done a lot of damage. He’s contradictory, never sticking to any value: he once showed a photograph of Michelle Obama and declared, “That’s not a First Lady.”

When faced with pornographic photographs of Melania Trump, he called them “art”. Which is scummy, to say the least and purely hypocritical to say the most. Pat has called for the assassination of foreign leaders, among others. Perhaps his most deranged bit of doggerel, though, came when he said that “To be against Trump is to be against God,” and that Trump was ordained by God.

He was hardly alone, merely one of the biggest blowhards in a pile of human flotsam. But the white, right-wing voters clung to Trump especially in the Christian community. Other Christian leaders screamed that this was all wrong, but it was too late. The Trump cult was a reality. It wasn’t a passing fad, nor was it trivial in the least. On the day the US Capitol was attacked by domestic terrorists, we found out how serious it really is. The terrorist group consisted of a variety of people from military veterans, police officers, firefighters, QAnon “operatives”, and more. As shameful as it was, most are without a shred of remorse, instead encouraged by how far they got that day. And now, more militia groups are planning to join the next act of terrorism.

BOLO

I’m not bullshitting here: be vigilant. Be on the lookout. Anyone you know can be getting fired up right now. They may not have been in Washington that day. They may not have been a Q adherent that day. But people are too often emotionally changed by evil. They see it as desirable. Some feel apart and isolated and are desperate for a sense of belonging, and will listen to the most vile rhetoric and act on it. Others fear the “blacking” of America, a myth and a tool of manipulation against weak, bigoted, scared people who grew up in white neighborhoods or, conversely, in mixed neighborhoods and had bad experiences. Fear and hate mixed with bitterness are the ingredients of the white supremacist; weak, closed-minded and predisposed to extreme thinking, they now represent the biggest threat to this country.

And not one of them is a Christian. Never forget that.

They’re actually using Jesus as a mascot. Think about it.

Pat Robertson Prays To Jesus For An Election Result Reversal

Televangelist Pat Robertson has come up with some goofy ideas in his time. He once thought God wanted the United States to assassinate Hugo Chavez.

Aside from the fact that Robertson claims to be a Christian and not an orthodox Jew, meaning that the law would permit execution by mobs with stones as opposed to the forgiveness and mercy preached by Jesus of Nazareth, theres a bigger issue here.

Robertson announced that “we cannot let this stand” and in so doing actually incited rebellion by Christians against the laws and government of the United States. He also came dangerously close to pleading to Satan for him to cease making people believe that Joe Biden won.

Technically this is a misuse of the tenets and intent of Christianity. It, like so much of what he says in the name of God, is heresy.

That’s scary. Heretics, as judged by inquisition in the past, were often executed. Usually in public and by extreme methods. Those who were spared were often forced to undergo torture to determine if they were witches or possessed by demons as well as spreading ideas and views not condoned by the church. At first the Roman Catholic Church but even, and especially after the reformation, it kept happening. Protestants are not guiltless in evil practices now or through their history.

Only today, for the most part, it is not the Roman Catholic Church engaging in heresy, but ultra conservative Christians from the protestant churches. Pope Francis is often referred to as a heretic for being too progressive. That is nonsense; he merely recognizes that all people have the right to seek God and pray in His house. He raised eyebrows when he told a boy that his father was surely in Heaven. The boy grieved for his papa, who was an atheist but had his four children baptized. Watch this extraordinary video and you can see Christ working through Francis. Because surely this is what Jesus would do:

Francis has never liked the actions or the words of President Trump. He knows that Trump is no Christian. I wonder what he’d say about Pat Robertson.

Calling out on television for Democrats to be executed by firing squad was one recent example of one televangelist going far outside the laws set forth by Jesus in his New Covenant. From the days before Constantine, Christians have shed blood and rebelled with murderous results, always against the teachings of Christ, in whose name they killed.

Today, there is genuine reason for concern. In the latter books of the Bible, whether Protestant or Catholic canon, there are many warnings about “apostasy” in the prophecy of the last days. It is even mentioned in Daniel.

Apostasy is, simply put, false teaching. In other words heresy in word and put into practice. And it is everywhere, never more so than the protestant right, the Evangelical churches and in televangelists. I have said before and repeat it here: no one can support Donald Trump and be a Christian. The two are grossly at odds with each other. Donald Trump cares nothing for God, and he panders to evangelicals for their support. Money. Votes. Otherwise he has no use, only contempt, for them.

The proof is glaring: three thousand children were kidnapped by the United States, children of immigrants. Most are lost forever as the bureaucracy failed to monitor and document their dispersal to facilities in various states, including at least one operated by Betsy DeVos. Conflict of interest? Nope. She did whatever Trump wanted her to do.

Then there was the travesty of his foreign policy. A disastrous mess wherein allies were denigrated and enemies put upon pedestals. The Russia scandal was, and remains, all too real. Vladimir Putin had long before compromised Trump through financial debt and illegal dealings as well as a possible sexual scandal. Men were convicted of complicity with Russian operatives and more in the 2016 Trump campaign and more is being revealed as I write this.

The pandemic has offered Trump every chance to make good decisions and to mitigate the impact. He has steadfastly refused all opportunities and instead committed more crimes against humanity, this time directly victimizing the citizens of the country he swore to faithfully serve. The coronavirus continues to spread, but Trump takes credit for a vaccine, a bold lie, just one of many thousands he’s told in the time since he announced his candidacy in 2015. And the results of those lies are tragic: so many shattered lives, so many dead. Children traumatized and forever wounded. Inept, ignorant leaders have gone in and out the revolving doors of the White House. It never ends.

This Christmas season, an important holiday for Christians, is not a happy time. The people who started the year 2020 with jobs and whole families are mourning the deaths of a quarter million kin and friends, they have no food to eat, their friends have abandoned them, and they cannot heat their homes as winter weather moves in. Utilities shut off service, moratoriums on evictions have expired, and anyone proud of what Donald Trump has done is brainwashed or delusional, which should really scare you. There’s no cure for that except the power of the very God so many claim to serve, yet fail to do while inflicting pain and engaging in terrorism through speech and hateful behavior.

The miracle Pat Robertson prays for will not happen. The electoral votes have been officially sealed by Congress and Joe Biden is our president-elect. I find it comforting and hopeful that he and his vice president will repair some of the damage done by Trump and his unholy political allies, but it will take time. They will be dealing with Mitch McConnell, for one thing, a man so devoid of humanity that the words “let them die” have actually come from him. Food stamps, disability benefits, social security and every kind of aid the poor and infirm depend upon to survive have all been targeted by McConnell and others. He’s inhuman yet Pat Robertson and the base Evangelicals back him.

Which doesn’t make sense because Evangelical leaders like Robertson have Christian charity programs, which makes them the super-hypocrites of the modern age.

I contend that these people are not only not true Christians, but that they are frauds who never believed in the divinity of Jesus.

They take photographs and videos of truckloads of bottled water arriving at scenes of recent disasters but Jesus warned, “when you give alms, do not be showy. Do it quietly.” It’s good that they help. But the way they present themselves as good guys in white hats saving the world is a sin, a lie and wrong.

What’s even worse is that some pastors claim the “seed gospel”, a money scam that, once begun, can bilk gullible people out of thousands of dollars. They promise you riches and prosperity but what usually happens is that people get relieved of their savings, and, their faith shattered, leave the church and become bitter opposition to all Christians everywhere. That’s a terrible, horrible way to end up.

People who go to a church seeking God, seeking spiritual help especially in times like this, often end up worse off than before they went.

Now, Christians, real believers, are leaving the churches.

Jesus surely hates what has been done in his name. One of his warnings went like this: “In this world you will have a lot of troubles, but be brave, for I have conquered the world.”

You know he never promised anything else; of the rich, he said that a camel could more easily pass through the eye of a needle than could a rich man enter God’s kingdom. That’s not subtle; the reference to a needle’s eye was a narrow and low city gate. Even a horse would have trouble with some of them since the whole idea of a wall and gate was for defense against military attack.

He also said that anyone who wanted to follow him had to take up their own crosses and follow him while bearing that burden. Carrying a cross was not meant as a separate ordeal in itself. It meant trial, torment, being hated, hunted, scorned, beaten and killed. His charge was to lead simple lives and to have faith. And a little bit of faith can do wonders.

After the events in my post “Attacked!” I asked for help from a Catholic priest. I know he did the Rosary and prayed. Since then no further attacks have happened, and the only thing bothering me is the usual nightmares. Demons love to play in dreams. As spirits, they can do that. And the closer you get to belief and Christian faith, the better the chances are of drawing an attack. Satan doesn’t want you to start believing in him. But when you do, he hates it and goes to work.

In these days of suffering and death, I find comfort that the Virgin Mother is open to our pleas. Cry out to her, and she will intercede and pray for you; this is powerful faith. Pat Robertson doesn’t understand things like that. He’s lost his way, he speaks heresy and promotes hate.

The protests in Washington are all about Trump being wrongfully deposed. Behold, a preacher who holds up a demon as God’s chosen.

Men like Robertson drive and fuel the bigoted hatred they are supposed to proclaim are hateful before God.

Remember what Christmas is really about. Remember one special woman who believes in you as much as she believed in God when she was visited by an angel. Think about love, forgiveness, compassion, anonymity and charity. Help people who need it, and don’t regret it for a minute. Remember he whose life we’re about to celebrate in our hearts, no matter our situation.

Above all else, try not to feel hate. It will never help you with your troubles. It has never served me well.

God bless you, and, for what it’s worth, have a happy Christmas as best you can.

Crises In Faith: Pat Robertson And The Bastards Of Heresy

When you’re lonely and sick, when you don’t know who you are and realize you never did…you think some things. You have regrets. Because it is a time when even the strong can’t help but lose self esteem, self confidence. I don’t know how I’ve been this way for so many years and survived the times when it got worse. When I was barely human, reduced to misery I can never describe. How much can a man take? When he looks for spiritual guidance and instead finds a host of jackals who look at him as prey? How does anyone live through that?

1999

I was working at Airgas near Catonsville, Maryland. I ran a generator which produced Acetylene gas. You know, the stuff used for cutting torches. I rented the ground floor of a house, and was alone for the first time since I’d been married. I needed something I didn’t have. Most of my time was occupied and divided between work and sleep. The work was exhausting and left us in the Flammable Gas Section saturated with ammonia and lime, byproducts of acetylene generation. I’d return home filthy, stinking and exhausted. In the summer, it got hot. There was a drought so severe that the local news did a report from Liberty Reservoir. The water levels had gone so far down that places no one had ever seen were not only exposed, but growing grass.

Heat exhaustion was a constant. I’d get a shower and come out naked, the house hot and stinking as if a dead dog was under a crawlspace. Yes, that’s happened before, but this was the first time I had experienced it. Despite telling my landlord, he shrugged it off. Said he couldn’t smell anything. I think he buried his dogs in the crawlspace. He lived out back by the waterfront. Had a bunch of dogs. Anyway…

My bedroom was my refuge. It had a window unit, and in the cold air, no smell was present. I’d just cook in the kitchen and eat in the bedroom. I watched a lot of TV. Basic cable came with the apartment. For a while, I was content. But lonely. A 39-year-old man, single. Lonely. Not wanting anything to do with women because of the stalking (more like terrorism) I’d endured, I had to settle for watching TV. Working at night, that meant that I was bound to run into the 700 Club. Daytime television is not, and never has been, much fun. And feeling that emptiness inside myself, well, I saw the show one day and I remembered my roots, growing up in a Southern Baptist church. I needed God. My faith had long since left me; a broken family, a divorce, two stalkers…it just seemed as if the God I believed in wasn’t there when I needed him.

Pat Robertson was not unknown to me, but I had never seen the show. I watched as he and a co-host, a woman, prayed for healing for people they didn’t know. I was fascinated and taken in. Who, after all, needed a healing more? Plagues of nightmares since my childhood came and went. My mind was chaos. I could watch Monday Night Football and not be able to talk about it the next day. I didn’t even remember the score.

Off and on, there were drugs and booze. I preferred the drugs, but my addiction became so acute that I ended up withdrawing and spent all week in bed.

I keep sidetracking. Sorry. Back to the 700 Club. Pat Robertson snared me. I took him for a man of faith. I feel rather silly about it now, but then, I needed something. I thought he had answers. People would email the guy and claim to have been healed as he prayed. But his prayers were, like a fortune teller’s predictions, tricks. Generic, but bound to have something that many people would hook onto like a fish going for a piece of bait. He’d say, eyes closed, “I see someone who’s knees have bothered you for a long time, and the Lord is healing you now”. I waited for weeks until he would describe my problems. Never happened. Of course to him, people like me are vermin. No one deserves neither pity nor prayer; victims of abuse might remind him of liberal causes.

I heard the commentary he did when his news anchor was on. I saw him give a whiteboard talk about adultery.

Wait. Hold on a second.

His explanation was gross. It was in the Ten Commandments, he said, because wives and concubines were regarded as a man’s property, “and you are not to plunder that”.

Plunder?

Property? Property?

I was thinking, well, if that’s how it was then, maybe it’s changed a bit in the modern sense, when a wife isn’t considered “property.”

Jesus taught that it was a grave sin to even think of adulterous contact. And at the time, even in first century Israel, wives were not the property of a man. Even by strict Jewish law, even if they had to keep a low profile much of the time, they were hardly property.

It showed me that Robertson thought like a real sexist. My eyes opened. Then I saw one of their telethon episodes. The calls kept coming, people led astray by this fake, pledging money, trying to become”gold members” or some bullshit.

He’d show truckloads of bottled water and supplies going out to relief for disaster victims. I doubted that the money he was swindling was even dented by water bottles. Later he’d say things that proved he does not empathize with victims of disaster.

I’d been shaken by Christian leaders before; disillusioned and disgusted. Why, how I had fallen for this thief and heretic was a source of shame I shared with no one. Everyone knew I was an asshole, but that kind of went with being me; I couldn’t bear to prove myself an idiot on top of that.

I stopped watching, but not before I sampled some more bullshit. He had a reporter do a story about a teen who committed suicide after being really into Dungeons and Dragons, a dice game that could nowadays be likened to videogames like Final Fantasy, Baldur’s Gate, and many other video games known as role playing games. Imagine how I, with my past, with demons I’d come into close contact with, reacted. The report said it was an epidemic, kids seeing shadows at night in their bedrooms, even being possessed. And killing themselves. Freak me out!

Well, I believed stories like that. But I don’t remember ever having played any game that drew demons to me. What’s more is that when later I researched this “epidemic” of suicides among D&D players, I found something weird. There was only one such case, and the reason for the death was disputed. And that source also mentioned the 700 Club as exploiting the boy’s death to promote a campaign against D&D as a link to possession. Ouch, Pat! What the hell?

There’s more. Oh, there’s always more. Rants against “homosexuals”. You know, I’m not gonna sit here and play God, nor am I going to put words in his mouth.

Does God hate gay or lesbian people? I honestly don’t believe that’s true, and I’m not going to say so.

Did God whip up Hurricane Katrina to punish witches and gays? Oh, come on. Really? How’s that even a question?

And Haiti, did God cause the earthquake as punishment for the revolt against French colonialism and slavery?

Pat…

You’re just a pathetic racist. That’s no good, telling people that, speaking for God when he loves his children, saying a disaster is divine retribution. You don’t know that. I’m Going out on a limb here, but I’d like to say that those who would do God’s work should comfort people, not shame them and scare the shit out of them. Shame on you, Pat.

Anyway, back to 1999…

That fall, there were mad, terrifying predictions that when the clocks turned to 00:00 hours on 1 January 2000, the world could practically end. I never believed it, because for one thing, the only reason this was being predicted was because computers would automatically go back to 1900 instead of 2000. I knew better. Was never worried. On New Year’s Eve, I laid in bed, watching Time’s Square. That stupid ball came down, and, of course, everything was fine.

I don’t know how the evangelicals had predicted things would go, but Pat Robertson had already made predictions of the dates of the end of the world. He hasn’t been right yet. You know why? Because Jesus said, “Of that day and hour no one knows, not even I, but only the Father.” Translation: do not waste time worrying about it and do not frighten others with things you cannot possibly know. Instead live every day the best way you can and have faith.

But Robertson claimed God had told him. Shown him visions. I’ve got doubts about God talking to Pat Robertson.

I have another WordPress site, “How Close Are We?” in which I examine various things, and my feeling is that we are causing that day and hour to get closer. We still can’t know what will happen or when, but we are definitely pushing our luck. And God does not have to tell me. I can see dreadful things on the horizon without ever opening a bible.

But Robertson doesn’t stop at end-times predictions. No, he speaks for God. Go to his Wikipedia page and there’s actually a subheading that lists controversies. Now a man who claims to be a Christian is going to draw fire; no one can lead a life free of mistakes and sin, but he is extraordinarily consistent in setting himself up for harsh criticism. Of course, no Christian should ever wish that anyone would die, but he did much worse when he called for Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez to be assassinated. That’s not something Jesus ever did. He didn’t call for Pontius Pilate or Caesar Tiberius to be killed. He said, “Love your enemies, do good to those who spitefully use you.” And he said “You know the commandment, an eye for an eye, but a new commandment I give you; that you shall love one another.”

That’s it. Period. And it makes Pat Robertson a heretic. But recently he’s cemented that with astonishing things he’s said such as, “To be against Trump is to be against God.”

That’s heresy. That’s putting words in God’s mouth that anyone with a lick of sense knows is a lie. Know what Jesus said about lies? Well, he called Satan “the father of all lies.” That’s as plain as you can get.

There is no evidence for, and plenty against, Trump being some anointed leader chosen by God. The evangelicals of the far right fell for him because his racist and hateful views are their unspoken own. They fear and hate the same things he does. He appealed to them for votes, claiming to be something he’s not. He even said in an interview that he’s never felt a need to pray.

Pat, you’re not what you say you are.

Once I saw him read a letter. It was from a woman who had a Buddhist friend, and the friend asked her to go with her to a temple. The woman was asking Robertson if it was okay. He said, “Yeah, if you take your faith with you I guess so,” and later he called Buddhism a religion of demons. He’s also called Islam a satanic cult consisting of killers. It’s far from the truth; only those who listen to the babble of the far right believe that. Anyone who has ever worked with or known a Buddhist or Muslim will tell you they’re anything but. My experience with them has been positive. I fear Repubicans way more than I can ever fear Muslims.

And Robertson is hardly alone. From noted televangelists to Southern Baptist pastors, there are heretics, teachers of apostasy, those who lead believers astray of the Gospels, the doctrinal teachings of Jesus. I’ve had enough of Franklin Graham and Joel Osteen. And don’t get me even started on the seed Gospel, wherein you’re told you can get rich by giving pastors and televangelists money. That’s a grave sin, stealing from people by lying to them, and necessarily lying to them about the true meaning of the doctrine. That’s heresy and thievery.

Every time I’ve hit a spiritual low, I’ve looked for guidance. I’ve never gotten any. I’ve had to look within and keep my faith simple and easy to manage. It’s a hard way to go, but it beats what lies beyond.

A few years later, I would be on the road to homelessness. I looked up one day and said angrily, “Either you do something about this, or I will.”

I couldn’t make it on my own. I needed help. My health both mentally and physically was going south. I could no longer hold down a job. When my situation didn’t improve, I figured God didn’t care. That made sense; who was I to have a prayer answered? I tried three times to kill myself. I spent time after that in a hospital, and on labor day weekend of 2005 I was discharged. I’ve never gone back.

Sometimes, just a little bit of faith can go a long way. I still had a lot of sinning to do. I was near death after a heart attack and surgery. I don’t want to go back to the place I went. I don’t. I brought it all on myself. But it doesn’t have to stay that way. And I don’t have to go back to that dark, lonely place. It had nothing to do with going to church or giving Pat Robertson money.

It’s just about faith. That’s all it’s ever been about. I’ve lived a nightmare. I have. But even if I am an asshole, at least I didn’t turn out like Pat Robertson.