Season 6: Episode 15 - Expert Contributor Dan Allender

Dr. Dan Allender joins Ann Maree to discuss trauma, faith, and the work of story. Together they wrestle with how believers can live in the tension between death and resurrection—where hope and heartache coexist.

SHOW NOTES:

• Episode 4 Self-Care
• Episode 6 Dr Heather Evans

Dr Allender’s Resources:

• The Wounded Heart: Hope for Adult Victims of Childhood Sexual Abuse
• The Healing Path: How the Hurts in Your Past Can Lead You to a More Abundant Life
• To Be Told: Know Your Story, Shape Your Future
• The Cry of the Soul (with Tremper Longman III)
• God Loves Sex (with Dr. Tremper Longman III)
• Bold Love (with Tremper Longman III)

• The Other Half of Church by Jim Wilder
• Self-Regulation for Daily Triggers
• Justice From the Victim’s Perspective by Judith Herman
• Honoring the Truth: A Response to the Backlash by Ellen Bass and Laura Davis
• Serving SRA Survivors: Satanic Ritual Abuse Recovery by Kay Elise Tolman
• On the Threshold of Hope by Diane Langberg

Safe To Hope is one of the resources offered through the ministry of Help[H]er, a 501C3 that provides training and resources for those ministering in one-another care, and advocacy for women in crisis in Christian organizations. Your donations make it possible for Help[H]er to serve as they navigate crises. All donations are tax-deductible.

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We value and respect conversations with all our guests. Opinions, viewpoints, and convictions may differ so we encourage our listeners to practice discernment. As well, guests do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of HelpHer. It is our hope that this podcast is a platform for hearing and learning rather than causing division or strife.

Please note, abuse situations have common patterns of behavior, responses, and environments. Any familiarity construed by the listener is of their own opinion and interpretation. Our podcast does not accuse individuals or organizations.

The podcast is for informational purposes and is not a substitute for professional care, diagnosis, or treatment.

Transcript

Ann Maree
The 2025 season is for mature audiences only. We advise listeners to apply an abundance of caution and discretion. This story includes childhood sexual abuse, rape, sex trafficking, and satanic, cultish, and ritualistic abuse. For more information about how to even process this story, please listen to episode 4 and episode 6 on the Safe to Hope podcast.

While this story is hard to listen to, living it was horrific. We bear witness as we listen. These stories are disturbing and may even be confusing. One of our goals throughout this series is to help the audience understand—specifically, knowing good from evil—but also to have compassion, exhibit empathy, and acquire the ability to minister to those in need. While this type of abuse is less common than others, we listen for two good reasons.

First, it is a reality that we need to be prepared to understand and respond to. Second, even if we never encounter a similar situation, this storyteller’s experience teaches us, in a concentrated way, about dynamics that are at work whenever people commit harm against others.

So today we’re going to be talking with Dr. Dan Allender, in reference to our storyteller, Carya.

Dr Allender is a pioneer of a unique and innovative approach to trauma and abuse therapy. For over thirty years, the Allender Theory has brought healing and transformation to hundreds of thousands of lives by bridging the story of the gospel and the stories of trauma and abuse that mark so many.

Dan earned his Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology from Michigan State University. Dan and a cadre of others founded The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology in order to train therapists, pastors, artists, and leaders to serve more effectively in the context of the twenty-first century. He also served as president of The Seattle School from 2002 to 2009.

Dan continues to serve as Professor of Counseling Psychology at The Seattle School. In addition, he is the author of The Wounded Heart, The Healing Path, To Be Told, and God Loves Sex, and he has co-authored several books with Dr. Tremper Longman, including Intimate Allies, The Cry of the Soul, Bold Love, Bold Purpose, and he co-authered Redeeming Heartache. Most recently, he co-authored the forthcoming book The Deep-Rooted Marriage: Cultivating Intimacy, Healing, and Delight with Steve Call, also Ph.D.

Dan also co-hosts The Allender Center’s weekly podcast with Rachael Clinton Chen, which has had more than three million downloads.

Dan is happily married to his wife Becky, they live on Bainbridge Island, where they enjoy time with their grandchildren and their three adult children—Annie, Amanda, and Andrew.

Ann Maree
I welcome you, Dan, and I would like to ask if there’s anything you’d like to share with our audience about who you are or your work that would help them get to know you better—if they don’t already know you, which, by the way, our audience should know you. Can you tell us anything about yourself?

Dr. Allender
Well, Ann Maree, first of all, thank you—what an honor to be with you and with Carya. So, what else to say?

Um … you know, what’s most important to me is that I’ve been married forty-eight years, and my wife is a very remarkable woman. I’ve helped her mature—I think I’ve helped her have a remarkable eternity because of being such a difficult man. Beyond that, six grandchildren, and I’m a fly-fisherman. I think I’ve covered the very most important elements.

Ann Maree
Okay, that’s good to know—yes, marriage, grandkids, and fly-fishing. Thank you for that little personal insight too; that helps.

So we are coming up on the end of this season—the last few episodes once people start listening to this particular one—and we’ve heard a lot about Carya’s story. This last episode was more surrounding her rescue. But since we’ve got you on the line, I have a variety of questions, not just about the rescue—although we will get to that—and specifically I’d like to start with narrative-focused trauma care. I know you’re very well known for story work. Could you explain this to us and what your theory is?

Dr. Allender
Well, the fact is, seventy percent of the Bible is story. So we ought to be, as followers of Jesus, people who love story—who are bound in the sense that we’ve got a capacity to engage story not as mere “principle.” Like, here’s the story of Samson, and here’s the principle: don’t have long hair.

You know what we do with the stories of the Bible—we often turn them into silly principles, sometimes very true, yet we don’t let stories shape who we are. In one sense, we are very in-storied and embodied people. To the degree that we begin to love story, it takes us into not just our own but other stories.

So we begin with the assumption that stories are the realm where the work of God brings the awareness of death—that is, Christ’s death—but that’s a story: Golgotha, Gethsemane, Resurrection, the forty days on earth, the Ascension.

When we begin to think about story in terms of the Bible and the life of Jesus, it compels us to look at what happens to each of us when there’s any degree of harm. We all live east of Eden, and no one escapes the reality of harm, of violation, of abuse. In that, there are consequences—neurological, relational, spiritual.

If we enter story, we have a framework for understanding not only redemption but, in one sense, the effects of living as a consequence of the Fall.

All that’s to say, the privilege of being able to enter into Carya’s story is again heartbreaking beyond words. And yet in the story of redemption, there’s something that brings a sense of marvel, awe, wonder, and incredible gratitude. So we’re left between, in some ways, what Paul talks about in 2 Corinthians 4:10 when he says, “I live every day in my body the death of Jesus, so that I might live every day in my body the life of Jesus.” We enter this interplay between death and resurrection—and that’s the realm, I think, of redemption.

Ann Maree
Now, I have benefited greatly from your wisdom about story work. Are there other ways that you— I don’t know—know of, or even use yourself, in addressing the types of trauma that Carya experienced, or other types of trauma as well?

Dr. Allender
Well, I think it’s important to note that trauma, like every other element of life, is on something of a bell-shaped curve. No one, as I said, escapes trauma. No one. Some of the effects of trauma are going to have a kind of universal reality because we’re made in the image of God. But when you begin to get into—you know, the third… there isn’t really a fourth standard deviation—but when you start looking at, say, the ninety-ninth percentile of trauma, which is true of Carya’s story, we have to begin with what’s universally true, and then move into a greater understanding of what that level of extremity brings that is different. So we move back and forth between what is true for us all and what’s true for someone who has been even more—again, language breaks down as we talk, because we’re in a realm we’re not meant to have full understanding of. We’re not meant to have a full grasp of the kind of evil that Carya suffered and still has to wrestle with. So we go back and forth between what’s true that we can all understand, and then what takes us into a realm vastly beyond what human language can bear.

Ann Maree
One thing we talk about often on this podcast—particularly with the Safe to Hope audience—is this idea of trauma. In some circles, there’s even denial that it exists. Maybe just briefly, could you share how you define trauma?

Dr. Allender
Yes, absolutely. Any violation of human dignity—right there. Whenever you, as an image-bearer, bear an assault, a violation that you were never meant to experience, you have the beginning of trauma.

And yet trauma always fragments. We’ll talk a little about the brain. The left frontal lobe—particularly what’s called Broca’s area—goes offline when you experience violation, when the normative structure of how God meant for us to be collapses.

Let’s take something really small. You’ve got a very important appointment, and you can’t find your keys. Your brain begins to fragment a little. So when you’ve got that sense of threat—and that’s always core to trauma, a threat to your body, your heart, your mind—there’s a loss of capacity to think reasonably, deductively, logically. And that brings a second component: numbness. We go numb. “I can’t find my keys, I feel panic,” and yet I begin to shut down. That’s related to what we call the vagus nerve, which runs from our occipital lobe down through the brain into our viscera, into our stomach and below into our legs. It’s the super-highway of our neurological process, and it goes offline as well.

We call that dissociation, or numbing. So two things are huge: we fragment and we go numb. And then, ultimately, we begin to pull away from others—we isolate. When we look at trauma, when we have that violation of dignity and a heightened threat, we have that component of dissociation, fragmentation, and isolation—all combined with a sense of shame. It’s, shall we say, a severe internal and relational consequence. It’s important to hear that it can be as small as losing your keys. It could be that you get a phone call that someone very dear to you has just been diagnosed with cancer. It can be the reality, again, of what we’ll step into regarding Carya’s story. But the reality of trauma is simply this: if you cut yourself with a knife, you will bleed. So for somebody to say, “I don’t believe in trauma,” is like saying, “I don’t believe that cutting yourself with a knife makes you bleed.” It’s just the biological, relational, psychological process of living east of Eden.

Ann Maree
What a rich, full definition—thank you. I’m going to write that down and use it from here on out.

I also want to say thank you for recognizing “numb” as a feeling. It’s part of the process. I appreciate that addition.

Okay, so—we aren’t in the business of fixing trauma. We can’t. So what then does healing look like?

Dr. Allender
Oh boy, are we in a large realm. But that’s a brilliant statement, Ann Maree: we don’t fix it any more than we fix sin or dying. These are realities of a fallen world. What we can begin to address is this: we cannot change what we don’t name. And here’s the paradox— for somebody who’s fragmented, naming is nearly impossible because we lose language and therefore lose memory. Memory, in essence, is the ability to tell oneself the story that one’s in.

So we remember—re-member. We bring things back together in order to recall. Even the word recall—“call again”—is this invitation: “Hey, you all, come on back.” If you were to ask me about dinner last night, and then ask my wife Becky about dinner last night, you’d get two different stories. That’s the nature of remembering and recalling. It doesn’t mean she’s wrong and I’m right—it’s just two different experiences of the same event. If you’re looking for a kind of videotape so that every detail is exactly as I said—no. There’s no videotape. We can’t recall or remember 100 percent accurately because we can’t restate it 100 percent accurately. So we condense, or make connective links that didn’t quite occur that way but make sense to tell. The naming process, therefore, is always guided by the Spirit of God to the details that are most important.

At the end of the Gospel of John, John says that if everything Jesus did were recorded, there wouldn’t be enough space in the world for all the books. What he’s saying is, “I gave you the salient events, but there’s a whole lot more.” That’s how we begin: “What do you want me to know, Jesus? What is it about what occurred that you want me to engage?” We don’t plunge into memory; we let kindness guide the process.

I believe repentance is key to our healing—but be very careful. Carya wasn’t repenting of doing something wrong. Repentance is turning from death to life. In Romans 2:4, it says, “It is the kindness of God that leads to repentance.” That’s the invitation—to hear that each of us is moving from a path of death to a path of life. And in Carya’s story—what a phenomenal story of turning from death that was set before her. Again, how do we find language for the level of evil she endured? But nonetheless, from the structure of evil to, in many ways, the bright light of love—in that process the human heart changes.

So naming in the context of kindness opens our hearts to the work of the Spirit and the repair, the restoration, in many ways where repentance brings us into the sense that we really are the delight and honor of God.

Ann Maree
Beautiful way to think about it. I love that statement—process guided by the Holy Spirit for what’s most important regarding the details. That’s a beautiful framework for how to even sit down and, as we call this series, “bear witness” to her story.

I’m going to veer off for a moment. In your work, you don’t shy away from talking about everyone’s fallenness. You bring up repentance for both perpetrators of evil and their victims. You don’t shy away from talking about both, and forgiveness as one of our greatest needs. In our communities and advocacy work, these topics seem to be off-limits, and I appreciate that you continue to talk about them. So—could you share how you balance this truth, because it is truth, without coming off like it’s a mutualization of the abuse?

Dr. Allender
Oh, gosh. I just want to underscore what an important question.

The way forgiveness is often spoken of is a form of whitewashing—a kind of “Oh, it wasn’t that bad,” or “We forgive you.” Essentially, “Let’s just let bygones be bygones.” That kind of “forgiveness” lives out the lie that there’s no real harm and no necessity—here’s the key word—for justice. Micah 6:8 says, “Act justly, love mercy, walk humbly.” Notice—all three have to be there for deep change to occur. No one changes without a deepened desire to see all things restored, which is another word for righteousness. Righteousness and justice are almost intersecting Hebrew words.

So when we talk about someone who has done you incomprehensible harm, the notion of “forgiving” without the presence of justice is impossible. One can release the debt while simultaneously knowing that to engage an evil person would be not just to risk harm but to give that evil person access to do more harm. That’s fundamental. No more than you would take a rattlesnake into your bed as a companion should you be in direct contact with an evil person.

On the other hand, turning them over to God—releasing the harm perpetrated against you—saying, “Vengeance is not mine but God’s,” is a framework that honors that truth. We no longer hold them in hatred, because hatred bonds you to the perpetrator as much as so-called love does.

So it’s crucial to understand that forgiveness of someone who’s perpetrated evil is a relinquishing of them to the justice of God—and, in that, no longer holding hatred, because hatred bonds you to them. That’s ultimately what evil wants: it wants communion with you. It wants to bind you so there is no other life, no other love, no other goodness, no other relationship but what evil has offered. Forgiveness, then, is relinquishing the right to justice—which you do have—but not now. Later. That’s where Paul, at the end of Romans 16, says, “May the God of peace be with you soon.” I love that—“May the God of peace be with you soon”—“when he will crush evil under your feet.” Oh baby, there will be a day! And again, I’ve never asked Carya what size foot she has—but let’s just say she has a size six or seven. Her petite foot will one day be on the neck of evil, and it will be a grand day.

So we are left to anticipate vengeance—we are not meant to take it today. Don’t relinquish the desire, but wait patiently for the day in which all evil will be crushed and all will be restored.

Ann Maree
Remembering the promise—it will happen. And I think that’s where our hope is, right? It’s not in what we see; it’s in that promise.

So how does the Church—or how do believers—help survivors in doing this? I mean, of course having solid doctrine, as you’re giving us right now, but any other thoughts?

Dr. Allender
Well, again, I don’t know if I’ll ever have the privilege on this side of eternity to meet Lynn and Joy —again, the Body of Christ—God lived well, God lived so well. So in that sense, we’re talking about the Church. If we’re talking about the actual ecclesial, you know, the building down the street—blah, blah, blah—at one level, I just want to say: I hope part of what we’re doing through this process is inviting the particularity of individuals, who happen to be part of a collective, to open their hearts to certain realities that for the most part either get grotesquely addressed through, like, QAnon, or get utterly ignored or denied by “Oh, there are a few probably terrible things that happen to people, but overall we’re all good-hearted; we want good.” The idea that you don’t know the story of the person sitting next to you—as you hold a hymnal with another human being—you don’t know their heartache. And because most of us, probably appropriately, are moderately well-dressed, moderately well-behaved, somewhat articulate, and somewhat pleasant, we never scratch the surface of the kind of trauma everyone in the building carries. So part of this is: we need folks who will tell the truth—both individually and corporately. Pastors and leaders need to be willing to name that nobody living east of Eden isn’t fragmented, isn’t numb, isn’t isolated. In other words, the effects of trauma are part of what it means to be human today.

Back to that notion of the bell-shaped curve: nobody escapes. “Normal” is still traumatized. And those in the first, second, and third standard deviations have various and sundry complications that may not be quite the same as a person who’s quote-unquote normal. I don’t know what normal is—I think it’s a small city in Illinois—but whatever normal is, it’s still broken, still beautiful. And that interplay—death and resurrection, broken and beautiful—we need more language in the Body of Christ to normalize the reality that we’re all traumatized. Once that becomes more available to folks, we won’t be as shocked. Oh, we’ll be horrified, but we won’t be surprised. It will be: “I am horrified, but I also know that when you are in that third—or, as I said, beyond the pale of what most people consider to be normal—we have language because of our own experience, and yet we have openness to what we don’t know.” That’s what I hope for the Church.

Ann Maree
I’ve said it in this series, and I’ve said it before, but I’m convinced that if we have a doctrine of the Fall—which we do—then we recognize trauma as the human condition. Like you’re saying, it’s everyone’s battle—to play on the title of a book.

Dr. Allender
Well—and your daughter’s term, “big-bow theology”—I’ve not heard that before, but I thought, I could steal that! It’s just so true. We want a big, happy bow at the end. We’ve been conditioned by thirty minutes of sitcoms and other forms of entertainment to want a quick solution and to say, “Here’s the solution: when you see Him, then you’ll be as He is.” Until then, it’s all a kind of circular but progressive movement toward maturity. Yet the paradox—and this is not said often enough—the more I mature, the more I’m aware of how much I need to mature. The more I see of God, the more I realize how little I see of God. It doesn’t become despairing or awful—it’s more like, “Oh my gosh, there’s so much more of God for me to receive and hold in a way that changes me.”

People sometimes ask—because they don’t know much of my story—“When did you become a Christian?” And I say, yesterday and tomorrow. I believe the ongoing work is such that my knowing of God yesterday felt different than the day before, and I anticipate that knowing Him tomorrow will make me realize how little I actually knew Him at all. To me—even though that may sound trivial, especially with what we’re addressing in Carya’s story—it’s an adventure, a dark, harsh adventure. But that’s why we love C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien, why we love those epic stories—whether they’re for children or for children our age. It’s a dangerous journey, and indeed redemption comes—but at a cost. In some ways, the cure feels worse than the disease. But on the other hand, there’s nothing I want more.

Ann Maree
Amen. So, thinking a bit about what you started out discussing—and something Dr. Ingrid Faro said in our first episode—but also something you’ve written before: “Denial is a denial of God.” When we talked with Dr. Faro, she called us “the great pretenders who despise reality.” Perhaps you could expand on your thought a little more—about denial being a denial of God?

Dr. Allender
Well, none of us is fond of reality, because it leaves us with such deep questions. I am so honored to have access to Carya’s story, and yet I can’t hear or read what she has suffered without something in my own being crying out, “Where were You, God? How can You let a little one suffer at that level?” And again, do you see the language problem? Cruelty—it’s not a strong enough word. Evil cruelty? Very evil? What modifiers do we bring that actually access the level of harm she endured?

The point being—the Psalms. There are, broadly speaking, three kinds of Psalms: psalms of praise, psalms of lament and complaint, and psalms of thanksgiving. And there are more psalms of complaint and lament than praise and thanksgiving combined. Our God has given us what we might call “song” or “prayer-poetry” to begin the process of grappling with what our hearts do in the context of living in a fallen world. So when you deny—let’s put it this way—when you deny the Psalms, you’re denying reality. When you deny your own questions, your own lament, your own struggle with God—when you say, “I just trust God”—well, that’s fantastic, but…

You don’t struggle with those kinds of heartaches? Really?

Well, you know Jesus, in Gethsemane, cried out, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” So—are you more mature than Jesus? That’s kind of a difficult stance to take. The reality is: when we deny reality—when we deny the harsh, cruel, brutal realities of life—we’re denying the reality that Jesus suffered as well. And that’s a problem. The openness to facing death is what creates the potential for hungering and leaning into the gift of life. This is not depressing—it sounds like it might be—but it’s holding reality in a way that increases your desire for what only heaven, only the full restoration of heaven and earth, can bring. Yet, we pray the Lord’s Prayer and say, “On earth as it is in heaven.” What a beautiful phrase—on earth as it is in heaven. We get today—and this is why I’m so honored to be with you—we get today to proclaim a reality that’s already true. Now—but not yet. That’s the theological frame: the “already” and the “not yet.” Which is truer? Sorry—it’s both. Death and resurrection are both true. It’s already and not yet. And living in that tension—that’s what’s called maturity. Unfortunately, for many of us, we’ve heard that maturity is a kind of trust that tries to escape the already-and-not-yet tension. But nothing could be further from the truth.

Ann Maree
I appreciate that perspective of that phrase.

I’d kind of like to take a little bit of a turn here. The story we listened to—the one we’re interacting with—is about Carya’s rescue. I want to play something she said, and then I’ll have a question for you. So, let me play that real quick.

Carya recording
My escape was sharp and sudden and unexpected, but also slow and agonizing and full of waiting. Just as I can’t truly pinpoint when my rescue started, I can’t precisely identify when it ended. Getting out of a system like the one I was trapped in is not easy, linear, nor quick.

Groups of abusers like mine—who invest so much time in developing and programming their victims, and who use DID to control them—do not let them go without a fight. Indeed, they do everything they can to make escape impossible, both before a victim ever tries and then after.

Ann Maree
So, in your experience—in your opinion—how hard is it to get out of abusive systems or networks?

Dr. Allender
So hard that it’s beyond heartbreaking to say that many do not get out. Here’s the intersection: the perpetrators often have long histories of knowing how to use mind control and therefore shape part of the structure of DID. But the other side of that coin is that there’s a certain genius in the person who allows their imagination to be part of what enables them to rescue—or be rescued—in the context of that level of harm. Do you see the complexity? Is the perpetrator the cause of the DID? In one sense, yes. But on the other hand, DID is a brilliant protective mechanism to escape levels of evil. And for many people, that’s virtually impossible to even imagine. What I’ve encountered is this: generally, those with DID have suffered levels of abuse that are incomprehensible. You have, often, perpetrators—cultic or individual—who are trained, or who naturally fall into using mind control to structure different sets of sensations bound into a sense of personhood or personality. But I hardly ever work with folks who have DID who aren’t brilliant. I mean brilliant. Not just IQ-test brilliant—though that too—but brilliant in imagination, creativity, and survival. Levels of imagination that are out of this world. So in one sense, it’s both the horror of what was done and the glory of the person who learned how to survive through that differentiation into different kinds of alters or parts. I don’t have one language that suffices—but it’s an incredibly brilliant way to disperse something of the horror of what’s been experienced, so that the Self doesn’t have to bear it all alone. Brilliant. Unbelievably brilliant.

Ann Maree
Yes—thank you for acknowledging that. I’ve thought that all the way through with Carya: simply brilliant. But then connecting it to the DID—which, as she said, makes her feel “not normal.” In the beginning, discovering it made her feel crazy. What a much better perspective—to see it as a brilliant remedy, if you will, from the Lord. But also a brilliant-making of the person.

Dr. Allender
Exactly. If you begin with Psalm 42 and Psalm 43—and some Bibles actually join them as one psalm—we hear the refrain: “O my soul, why are you downcast within me?” The psalmist is talking to himself, but he’s differentiating himself from his soul. Now, I don’t want to make too much of that, but I don’t want to make too little either. The notion that we are all “parts”—we are all parts. When Becky says, “Do you want Thai tonight? Do you want to go to an Italian restaurant?”—I might say, “Oh, part of me does.” We use that phrase because there is, quite literally, a part of me that likes Italian, and another part that would rather stay home. It’s too easy for people to dismiss that and say, “That’s just a way of talking.” And I say, “Yes—but then why is the psalmist talking to his soul?” The importance of communion with different parts of ourselves—that’s “normal.”

Now, when we begin to talk about the kind of force that shatters, there are more parts—more differentiated parts—and some that come to hold certain realities another part can’t bear. So you have functional differentiation on the basis of survival. It’s both intended by the perpetrator and, in another sense, redemptively allowed—a kind of protective mercy built into our design—to hold memories and experiences that no one could bear entirely within themselves.

Ann Maree
Excellent—masterclass here again.

So, back a few moments ago, you said something that was chilling, in my opinion. You said, “Many don’t get out of this type of abuse.” Help us, then—the layperson in the church, the member, the one sitting next to them. How do we help?

Dr. Allender
Oh my. Again, such good and honorable question. I think our first step is to engage the truth that evil exists in the world. When I condemn QAnon, it isn’t because they aren’t addressing realities that actually occur; it’s that they distort them. When you start taking the notion that “Hollywood elites are perpetrating X, Y, and Z”—is it possible they are? Of course. But so might a sheriff in a small rural county—let’s pick a state, and I don’t mean this critically—say, South Carolina—where the sheriff and a handful of others are operating a cultic structure where phenomenal, inconceivable harm is being perpetrated. When you speak that reality aloud—when you actually name it and say, evil exists—you realize something sobering: evil has no conscience. It delights in harm. It plans and sets up inconceivable cruelty for human beings to suffer. And it’s happening all over the world. The dilemma is that if you start really believing that’s true, it’s natural to become afraid—perhaps even paranoid. But then we remember the truth: He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world. We live in a world at war, but most of us don’t want to know it. We don’t want to go to Kmart or Costco and see it as a war zone. We want the war zones to stay in Sudan, or Gaza, or “over there”—but not here. The reality is, this has always been true—today, a hundred years ago, a hundred years from now. America itself could collapse into a structure comparable to Nazi Germany. Of course that’s possible. But owning that reality feels too terrifying, so because of our fear—and because we’ve spent much of our lives escaping the reality of our own heartache—we create a pretend world. In that world, evil does “certain things,” but it’s usually far away. Yet the truth is that human trafficking, for example, is in every neighborhood and every city and every country. Now, human trafficking isn’t identical to cultic violation, but these are overlapping worlds. If you open your eyes, you’ll see it. In most cities there are places where prostituted women—and men, and boys, and girls—are located. Then you have to ask, who’s buying? Pastors, lawyers, doctors, truck drivers. It’s all there. When you open your eyes to the horror of living in a fallen world, the next question is: will you, in the midst of admitting what’s true, live for justice, for mercy, and do so humbly? For most people, that feels impossible. “How do I do that and still go to work eight hours a day, come home, feed my kids, go on a little vacation, have a picnic in the backyard?”

And the answer is: you do all that while being aware that this is a war zone—and you are meant to fight evil by how you love.

By how you love your spouse.
By how you love your children.
By how you love your neighbor—and even your enemy.

We don’t start by creating a campaign to “stop human trafficking.” We start by creating laws, awareness, and repentance. Because the first battle is always within. We tackle our own lust and anger, our own adultery and murder. We deal with the log in our own eye. And as we do that work, it can’t help but take us the next step, and the next, and the next—into being part of redemption in our community. But it’s built on our own repentance.

Ann Maree
That is actually the perfect segue to the big question I have after reading Bold Love, and then also hearing you talk about this particular situation.

Early in The Wounded Heart you write:

“The assumption taught in many Christian groups is that emotions will follow in accord with your choice of will. So if you feel angry, then do good—because in doing good, you will eventually not be angry. Even better, if you do good long enough, you will actually feel loving emotions toward the person who did you harm.”

Okay—so that was my training as a biblical or lay counselor. Why must more be done than just shouting commands to love?

Dr. Allender

When Paul talks about the transformation of the mind in Romans 12:2 and following, the dilemma is this: we’ve been taught for thousands of years—Aristotle, Plato, and let’s just say a whole lot of boys after them—have essentially told us that the left hemisphere is where all change occurs. That is logic. That is language. That is “Do the right thing. Think the right thing. Do the right thing.” And emotions? Well, they’re like the tail of the dog—where the head goes, the tail will eventually follow. It’s a nice metaphor. It’s just not true. Why? Because the right hemisphere—and again, this is pretty simplistic—but the right hemisphere, which holds sensations, images, and “feelings,” operates at about 0.005 versus 0.05 —so much more rapidly than our thinking. So, we’ve got to tend to the whole mind, meaning both the left and the right hemispheres.

The left hemisphere, as we’ve discovered—and I think Paul understood—has to be engaged with what one great theologian called affection, our affect, our affections. And so, when we begin to deal with our body—the sensations our body holds, our emotional state—it’s actually the exact opposite of what we’ve been told. As we tend to our emotions and our body, we begin to gain more clarity about our thinking. And in that sense, we change our thinking by tending to our body first. The more we tend to our body and our ability to think and have language, the more we discover it’s an intersecting reality. But I understand—for many people that’s so counterintuitive, counter to reality, and counter to what they’ve heard in Scripture. Yet we’re right back to this: Scripture is story. Seventy percent of it is story. And story is not trying to teach you three or four principles per chapter. It’s invoking things within our body and mind in a way that makes us grapple with it. 

Take, for example, the story of Jacob wrestling with the angel. You don’t come out of that with a principle. You come out with this: “They wrestled until the break of dawn, and then the angel of the Lord—which is the presence of the Trinity, in one sense—had to flee.” Already your brain should be shaking—What?! That’s how we should be reading much of Scripture: What?! And in that what, we’re beginning to sense something. I can’t tell you how, when, or why, but something’s been transformed. God wrestles. And then Jacob demands a blessing—What?!—and then he gets a blessing. But he also gets his hip touched, and he walks with a limp. What am I to do with this? What am I to do with this?

That’s where, shall we say, the whole mind—the whole body—begins to encounter a story. And now, how do I make sense of that story in relation to my story? I just breathe and go, “I’m not really sure.” But it compels me to grapple with who God is, who I am, and who the characters of the story require me to become—to rethink, relive, and re-feel much of my own life.

Ann Maree
It’s interesting you bring up that story. I’ve been thinking about it a lot these last few days—especially the fact that it was okay that he wrestled with God. Again, this has been—

Dr. Allender
I just shake my head. I don’t know about you, but I believe this to be the Word of God—the God-word—for me to engage my own and others’ lives. And yet, as much as I’ve pondered it, it’s not like I can now say, “Here are the three principles you’re to operate from.” I think there are principles, but the story itself exceeds my ability to make sense of it.

Ann Maree
Yes—that’s, in my mind, sufficiency. That’s the sufficiency of Scripture.

This has been wonderful—truly wonderful. I could talk to you all day. I appreciate leaning on your wisdom and understanding of such things.

So, my final question—one I typically ask at the end of an interview with an expert—is: What are the questions that we should be asking?

Dr. Allender
Ah, well. Let me just start by saying—the word “expert.” At one point earlier, Ann Maree, you said that Lynn is the true expert. I think your phrase was something like, “Not to disparage the other so-called experts.” I’m very fond of Carya, but as I said, someday I’d like to meet Lynn—probably in eternity—and I’ll say, “Who are you, woman? What would prompt you? What would cause you to do what you did?” I’ve met people who literally ran across a battlefield, where many had been killed, risking their lives to bring a companion back in the midst of a fire fight. When I tell them, “That was so courageous,” they look at me and say, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I just did what anybody would do.”

And I think, “Really? Most wouldn’t.” The people who do the most remarkable work don’t see it as remarkable. They simply do what love calls them to do. So, in that sense, I’d say: let’s talk about what real love is. Nothing is more important. I’ve worked with many folks, and I’ve learned a lot—but they’re the experts. I’m just a privileged companion, given access to walk with people who hold far more brilliance, maturity, and goodness than I do. I may have degrees—more degrees than intelligence, as my wife says—but what truly matters is this: we get involved. When we do, we’re taken into domains where we don’t know what to do. I don’t have a list of ten skills or twenty tricks. All I know is I’m willing to walk into darkness.

Am I terrified? Of course. But I’ve seen something of the goodness of God in the land of the living, and therefore I don’t despair. I’m willing to hold heartache, and I’m willing to hold hope. Hope doesn’t erase heartache, and heartache doesn’t erase hope. If we can live in that interplay—death and resurrection, already and not yet, broken and beautiful—amazing things can happen.

In our friendships.
In our marriages.
With our children.

Frankly, that’s where redemption shows up. That’s what I want.

Ann Maree
And by the way—you nailed Lynn. That’s exactly how she is. She would say those exact words. We’ll look forward to hearing from her in a future episode as well.

Again, I know you’ve said it’s an honor for you to be here, and I always say it right back. It’s been an honor for me to sit in your presence, to glean from you, to hear your heart—which is so evident. I appreciate how much attention you pay—to the story, to the person, to what you hear beyond the words. I’m saying that because I think these are wonderful ways we can imitate how you’ve worked with victims and survivors, and how we can approach those in our own worlds as well. So—I appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you.

Dr. Allender
Thank you again. This is where I truly believe the nature of all good relationships lies—in that sense of, “I bear more honor for being with you than you for being with me.” And yet the mutuality is, “Thank you.”
 “No, thank you.”
 “No, thank you for thanking me.”
 “No, thank you for thanking me for thanking you.”

Which is ultimately the echo of gratitude in which we all say, “Thank you, Jesus. Thank you.”

Ann Maree
Yes—He has privileged us.

Please join us again on October 28, when we wrap up this season of Carya’s story.

In that episode, Carya and I will sift through many of the thoughts and feelings she processed and struggled with throughout her story—but also within her relationship with the Lord. This is the episode in which we see God so very clearly. Carya’s relationship with the Lord is awe-inspiring, and given what we’ve heard this season, it’s nothing short of a miracle. You’ll be inspired to listen in as we discuss these final reflections on her ongoing journey.

Safe to Hope is a production of HelpHer. Our Executive Producer is Ann Maree Goudzwaard. Safe to Hope is written and mixed by Ann Maree and edited by Ann Maree and Helen Weigt. Music in this season is ‘Cinematic Slow Sad Piano | Soundtrack’ by OpenMusicList, licensed via Pixabay. We hope you enjoyed this episode in the Safe to Hope podcast series.