The first one that pops to mind is let go and let God.

And the other one is, it's not so much a phrase as a concept that I would call weaponizing forgiveness.

And this idea of if you would just forgive, then everything will be fine.

And what I have seen is we put a much greater burden on a victim or a survivor to forgive than we put on a

perpetrator to repent. And that is wildly unfair, right? To say, you need to forgive, you need to forgive,

and if you are refusing to forgive, well, now you're in unforgiveness, and now this is your problem.

And so I would suggest, are we investing as much time and as much energy in preaching and teaching genuine repentance as we are forgiveness?

Welcome to the Deconstructionist podcast. I'm your host John Williamson. And in part one of our

conversation with Dr. Michelle Keener, we explored how belief systems are formed and how the

Book of Job has often been weaponized in ways that silence pain rather than

honor it. In the second part, we go deeper into the heart of her book, Comfort in the Ashes,

and what it offers to those navigating trauma, faith, and deconstruction. And so without further ado,

I give you part two of my conversation with Dr. Michelle Keener.

Yeah, yeah, it's, I think a huge part of when you're going through something, you know, traumatic is the isolation that comes with it and sort of feeling disconnected and alone in that.

There's actually a documentary. I don't know if you've seen it. I think it just came out. I want to say it was on Netflix. I literally, literally just watched it.

Fascinated documentary about this group of Navy SEALs who had been through multiple tours and had just intense PTSD.

And ultimately, you know, they took everything the vet would give them in terms of, you know, medications and talk therapy.

They're all doing it all. And yet, you know, they're talking about how I think it was like some insane statistic like one in three, one four, one and five, something like that of their comrades had committed suicide because just nothing, nothing helped. And then ultimately the whole thing, you know, whole basis of the documentary is that they, they tried this unconventional treatment through psychedelics.

And almost all of them, interestingly, at the end, you know, came through this experience where they were forced to face things that had nothing to do with combat and the death around them.

Almost all of them, it had something to do with childhood trauma. Ultimately, when they were,

it allowed them to sort of let down their defenses and sort of just be together and acknowledge

to one another. And you see there's this scene that was just heartbreaking where the one gentleman who was sort of the last to go through it

...