There are so many people who are so much more articulate than I am.
I continually struggle to find the words to express what I’ve just learned or why I’m doing what I’m doing.
Recently, I’ve gotten myself into an area that could be called a “parallel study”. Ex-Scientologists who have done the Student Hat will know what I’m talking about here: It’s a course of study in a seemingly unrelated field which, by mindfully traveling that course, you learn more about your main line of research.
My main line of research continues to be:
“What the hell happened to me when I got myself involved in Scientology, maintained my membership, then got myself out? And what happened when I flipped 180 degrees into Anti-Scientology – only to be horrified by the tribalism and cruelty I saw there, too, and had to leave that?”
Through a long and circuitous route of studying the history of Jerusalem before there were Jews there, to the city states of ancient Canaan, back into the ancient history of Mesopotamia, up through the first 300 years of Christianity – before there was a Bible – and into the Holy Roman Empire and its history of using ideology to get people to commit genocide, now I’ve finally landed onto the YouTube channel of an Ex-Christian called @JezebelVibes.
I have found that Kristie Burke is my spirit animal from a parallel universe. She describes what I am doing better than I have ever been able to in 25 years of being out of Scientology.
Kristie Burke Describes Why She Does What She Does
In this short section of the intro video on her channel, JezebelVibes describes why she is doing what she’s doing as an Ex-Christian. It is exactly the reason I’m Alanzo.
So succinct. And, for me at least, incredibly powerful.
If you can understand Kristie Burke as an Ex-Christian, then you can understand Alanzo as an Ex-Scientologist.
It’s the section of this video she calls “Why I Talk About God”.
Here’s her transcript:
“People ask me all the time: why do I talk about God as if he exists? I do this because I think hypothetical syllogism is a really good way to get people to critically examine what they believe.’
“Personally along my journey, I was very unconvinced when people would try to give me reasons why the Bible wasn’t true or reliable. I had to watch my entire worldview crack from within in order to really deconstruct what I believe.‘
“I had to question the inconsistencies within the framework of the doctrine that I was holding to be true. I had to question God’s character and God’s system and start really examining what I believed about God, what I believed about religion and faith in the afterlife, before I could even get to a point where I realized that none of it was true or that the Bible was not reliable.’
“This is not the case for everyone. Everyone deconstructs differently. But my approach is to encourage people to think critically about the beliefs they already hold, and to work within the hypothetical framework that what they believe is true, so that I can expose the inconsistencies, the hypocrisy, the flaws, the contradictions.‘
“When you do that, it gets people to think more critically about their beliefs. And to really start breaking them apart to see if what they believe is true.”
I’ve got a few years on her, so I’ve had to add one more ideology (anti-Scientology) to deconstruct.
Maybe life, if you live it long enough seeking the truth of your own existence, is just one ideology after another collapsing on you, over and over.
Maybe if you are not going from one existential crisis to another, you’re doing it wrong.
Maybe the most horrible way to live is to get yourself stuck in an ideology such as Christianity, or Scientology, or Buddhism, or Atheism, or AntiCultism.
And maybe getting yourself stuck in one of these ideologies, and believing you now know the truth, you turn around and laugh at how stupid and delusional everyone else is for not believing as you do.
Maybe that’s the nightmare scenario we should all be trying to avoid.
Maybe.
Just maybe.
I highly recommend Ex-Scientologists check out Kristie’s channel, watch her well-documented and insightful journey, and see if you can’t pick up a few things from her.