You're listening to the place we find ourselves podcasts. I'm Adam Young and this is part two of my interview with my friend KJ Ramsey.

Today's episode looks more deeply at spiritual abuse because KJ shares parts of her story of abuse at the hands of Christian leaders.

If you want to hear more of this story, you may want to check out her recently published book which is titled The Lord Is My Courage and she shares a fair bit of her story of spiritual trauma, spiritual abuse in that book.

Thank you so much for listening. Here's part two of my conversation with KJ.

Let's transition a little bit to talk about Christians and their emotions.

So you've got a chapter called He leads me and you in this chapter you talk about the relationship that many Christians have to our emotions.

And this is what you say. If you grew up in church, chances are good that you've believed your emotions are the part of you that keep you from following God.

I can't tell you how many times I've seen Christians posting quotes on social media saying things like feelings aren't facts or your feelings are lying to you. Trust God.

Common Christian wisdom seems to lead us to think that our big feelings are what lead us far from God.

Now when I read that part of the book, I immediately thought back to when I was in high school and college, there was a real popular kind of illustration that they used in churches and college ministries.

And it was of a train with three train cars and the engine of the train was labeled facts. The middle car was labeled faith and the caboose was labeled feelings.

So facts, faith and the caboose is feelings and the point of the illustration was that as Christians were not to be led by our feelings, feelings are supposed to follow our faith.

So what's your reaction to that KJ? I mean, I'm trying not to cuss right now is what my reaction to that is.

It's just not how it works. It's just not how it works.

Like we can say your faith needs to be what leads your whole self.

But then we are being dishonest about the good bodies God created which are constantly guiding us every moment of every day with our emotions.

Let me interject something because what because what you said a really important sentence, it's not how it works.

Let me just share how true that sentence is. The way we know this, the way your brain works, you feel your emotions more quickly than your prefrontal cortex which is the part of you that thinks comes online.

So I want to be really clear about this as us human beings are going through our lives and you haven't experienced like maybe you you know you have a difficult interaction with a loved one.

Okay, you feel something about that. You have an emotion before your prefrontal cortex has even processed the interaction.

So the caboose is not the caboose. It is the engine neurobiologically speaking.

Yes. You can't think you can't think about the Bible. You can't think about Jesus. You can't think about anything related to you know your faith until you felt your emotion.

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