Brainwash be gone. A podcast for women who've left a high control, high demand religion. In every episode, we deconstruct one specific rule you were taught so you can let go of the harmful conditioning and live an amazing life on your own terms. Today we'll be talking about.
Without church. You can't be a good person. You'll want to listen to this episode. If you've left a high demand religion, but still want to live your life in a way you consider yourself to be a good person, it's often a very painful, conditioned link that we have between the concept of goodness and morality and church membership and whatever group we came from.
So today we're going to decouple those two ideas in our minds and. We're going to help ourselves see the ways that this concept is absurd so we can make decisions from our own conscience.

So many high control, high demand religions or cults teach this rule as a way to link morality directly to religious participation, and there'll be a few different justifications given for this. There'll be a logical structure sometimes where, if being good comes from God and in order to access God's will or to follow what he says we should do, then that comes through the church.
So, the logical chain is you follow what the church says to be good according to what God says, or there'll often be, an idea that. You have to be in community with other people and that that church attendance and participation keeps you accountable and that's what prevents,  moral decline and backsliding, which is what would happen if you stayed home and relaxed on Sunday.
It would be terrible. Ah, I hope that's what you're doing right now as this episode comes out. Actually, that would be amazing. Side note. And often there'll be. Sort of an explanation of that. You need spiritual authority. You know, only clergy or other religious leaders can interpret the divine truth, and so without them, oh my goodness, you're going to fall into error and sin and you'll just be completely unable to make your own moral determinations without having a spiritual leader to interpret God or to interpret your sacred texts and make decisions about your life.
And then often there's like an idea of a collective identity, where the definition of what is good is just, you're good if you align with our group's beliefs and you are obedient to its teachings and the idea of goodness is actually not seen as universal ethical principles or in response to how you interact with other humans or things like that.
And let's just be real. There are definitely some huge other motives that are not spoken, but that obviously have a lot to play. When we hear these types of teachings and the fear-mongering about becoming a bad person, if you don't follow this particular system of religious practice, it's such a lever of control and conformity.
And if people believe, Hey, moral goodness depends on. Participating in this church, then they're less likely to question the leaders. They're less likely to leave, they're more likely to stay and train their own children in this path. It increases membership, increases donations. It basically inserts this program of shame into our systems where every time we think about trying to leave or.
Some level of conflict comes up in our minds about the particular teachings. Then there's this other side of us that's programmed to want to be good and to sit down and not, not bring it up, not risk being bad.
It also can use family members and community members to enforce.
The behaviors of other people because they want you to be good. They don't want you to fall into badness, and so they will also police each other like it's some bad communist state, so what's the impact of a rule like this? In addition to just having people be afraid to leave this particular group or to speak up against it in any way, there's a ton of loss of autonomy and critical thinking. You might not feel capable of ethical decision making on your own without institutional approval, without mail approval, you might experience a lot of guilt and shame about leaving the church 
even when  it's not logical. When you have been programmed with that, it can be quite painful. For me personally, I'll say that over the, honestly, many years it took me to fully leave the group that I was a member of. I often, when I. Stepped out in a new way away from their teachings. I would just have periods of time where I felt waves and waves of like physical, like intense shame because it had just been, I had just been trained like a dog to follow this and it was it was, I, it was all I could do just to hold on and be I don't believe this and this is just the training.
I'm going to let these waves pass over me. Knowing. That I can choose something else. So anyway, you can too. We're going to talk about that today. Yay. Another impact we see of a rule like this is that it actually ironically stunts the moral development of people who are in these groups because there is no focus on consulting your personal conscience, critical thinking.
Moral reasoning, those skills get really underdeveloped because all of the moral reasoning is totally outsourced and just taken word by word,  concept by concept. There's no need to think through the nuances yourself and that muscle is just totally atrophied.
And like so many of these rules, it can create dependency, lack of self-protection. Failure to identify predators and take action when bad things happen inside the church because we think if people who are obedient in the church and our members are good people outside are bad, then the logic follows that if someone in the church harms you.
How could they be bad? Because they are good from being part of the church. And that's very confusing to children and even adults when you experience things like that. And it's difficult to know what to do when someone who the church has said is good, has harmed you significantly. How do you protect yourself?
How do you get that person out? How do you identify that person is actually taking this very bad action? That requires some response. When they are, by definition, good according to the group,
it also creates a ton of us versus them mentality, impacts like all of the wars ever in the history of the world. From thinking that you could only be good when you're inside your own group and that everyone else is bad. There has been a ton of violence between groups over the millennia.
Simply based on this concept that you can't be a good person or there can't be any rational thought from the other side because they don't follow our cultural traditions.
I think compassion, along with that compassion can get suppressed quite a bit too when what's ethical or moral is more about performing an obligation in a public way, like obediently instead of being empathetic, instead of having compassion for the suffering of non-members,  because they're bad people.
It actually harms your ability to have compassion for other humans too. And of course there's a generational impact because this is passed on to kids. They equate morality with compliance and not actual ethical integrity or care about other humans. And then, the cycle continues.
And as more of us break free, it's a beautiful thing because we break free, not just for ourselves, but for. The rest of our line for the people who come after us in the world, whether we have actual biological children or we're just impacting the people around us, like it makes such a difference when you break out of these concepts and do your own independent moral reasoning.
It's needed more than ever in the world. So thank you all for your interest in becoming that person.
So the logical fallacies that we see here, first of all, there's definitely a false dichotomy when it's,  a very black or white thing where it's like there are only two options. Either you're in church and you're a member and you're good, or you're outside and you're a non-member and you're bad.
And it's completely ignoring all of the nuance, all of the bad people that are in church, and all the good people that are outside of church. And all of the obvious contradictions to this rule, there's an appeal to authority because goodness is validated only by your institutional authority, not by your actual actions, your actual ethical reasoning, your actual empathy.
And then the reasoning is super circular too, where it's okay, well you have to attend church to be a good person because you can only be a good person if you attend church and only good people attend church. It's like that doesn't really, that's just a very circular logic. And there's a logical fallacy that we haven't discussed in other episodes yet called No True Scotsman.
And that logical fallacy is, that's the name of the logical fallacy for when. Basically you can't win either way. So if someone is outside of the church and they believe ethically you would dismiss it as well, they're not truly good because they're not in church and it's like basically impossible to meet the standard.
'cause you can always exempt the standard, which is just silly. So it ignores lots of examples of people committing extremely morally reprehensible acts in church. Um. Domestic violence and church member families,  priest molesting children, on and on and on. And then it ignores the good actions and benevolence and compassion loving people who are non-members.
There's a ton of hypocrisy in the selective application of these standards Also, where it's if you're a member and you're good, well then of course you're just going to be able to be forgiven because you're so sorry. Just certain people can be forgiven and other people can't.
And ironically, there's also a lot of conflict with a lot of the evangelism efforts of different groups. It's like you're saying outsiders are inherently bad, which undermines the whole premise of why you have these missions, why you have this outreach. And a lot of times , the outreach actually is contingent on that like.
We're looking for people who are bad, but they want to reform their ways by becoming a member. That's how we'll know that they're actually good. So it's very, it's very strange. And it's also in contradiction with a lot of the actual spiritual texts of many traditions. So, there are lots of places in the Bible, for example, where it talks about compassion and love and things like that.
Defining goodness. Instead of institutional affiliation,  your membership card, you're checking all the boxes in these certain practices. So 
even though I don't subscribe to those particular scriptures, it's internally inconsistent and hypocritical for those groups to have these texts and then basically not even follow those parts of it or to really strongly emphasize a certain part of their teaching.
And ignore all these ones that are about loving your neighbor, helping strangers being compassionate to others as the basis of your goodness rather than. Strict compliance, like you're a freaking Pharisee. You know? I'm just saying that comes up in the Bible a few times.
I have been through classes. I know all y'all have too. I'm so sorry.
Okay, so what are some alternative viewpoints that you could have about this as you're making these decisions for yourself and as always. It's totally your choice. I'm not trying to convince you, I'm just trying to stimulate a discussion amongst you and people you talk to or even just a thought processes in your own mind about what you could consider, what you could decide.
So for me, I'll say that I think that being a good person is defined by how the person. Impacts other people in the world and the world itself. So to me, a good person is one who, they do what they're going to do, but they do that without harming or taking away from other people's rights.
You know, they allow other people to live fully as themselves, and they also live fully as themselves. It would be interesting to think about what you think being good actually means. Because your entire logic on this whole topic is going to be based on your definition of goodness and what you're striving for.
I think that ethics come from empathy for other people,  support of humanity in general, and the environment and the world, and I think that. Moral integrity can really thrive in lots of different belief systems. I think there are a lot of examples of people being good and bad in different belief systems, religions, secular systems, governments, a lot of different systems where people have shown immoral and moral behavior.
So to reflect. When have you felt pressure to equate obedience with goodness? How did that shape your choices? What moral values are going to guide you? When religious authority isn't present? How do you align with who you want to be in this world now that you can be anything that you want to be? How do you want to show up?
Can you remember examples of people outside of your faith community who really were truly good people and can you remember examples of people in the group that really had some morally questionable activities, shall we say? It's a lot of deep questions, but I think it's totally worth thinking about, especially if you are still feeling a little bit of reflexive shame or guilt about your goodness as a person upon leaving the religious group that you were a member of.

Who do  who would appreciate having this podcast as part of her life? Send her a link to the show page at www. brainwashbegone.Com.

Topics: Religious trauma, spiritual abuse, deconstruction, exmormon, exmo, exvangelical, recovering catholic, excatholic, former jehovah's witness, women's empowerment, feminism, leaving religion, self-worth, high demand religions, high control groups, high control religion, cult, cult recovery, brainwashed, high demand religion, spiritual trauma, church abuse