Out Here Tryna Survive
This podcast is a trauma-informed, hope-oriented, safe space. It is a warm hug of solidarity for Black women 35+. It is a celebration of our resilience thus far & our determination to not only survive but THRIVE.
Join me, Grace Sandra, a Mama, author, advocate/activist, storyteller, for some good ole self-love shenanigans.
We are braver than we believe✨
Out Here Tryna Survive
Ep 22: Divesting from Evangelicalism to Law of Attraction 'Ish? Reversing the Influencer to Evangelical Pipeline
What happens when you walk the opposite path of the "influencer to evangelical pipeline"? As someone who spent 16 years as a minister with a nearly-completed Master's of Divinity, my journey away from evangelicalism toward a more liberated spirituality offers a powerful counternarrative to what we often see in today's culture.
The evangelical world I inhabited taught me I was fundamentally flawed—a "worm" in need of constant redemption. This theology created an environment where shame, guilt, and hopelessness flourished despite my genuine love for God. I felt trapped in a system where my happiness depended entirely on divine whim rather than my own agency or choices. The breaking point came when I realized I couldn't sustain the weight of perpetual inadequacy, especially within a troubled marriage and restrictive ministry.
My spiritual evolution didn't mean abandoning faith—rather, it meant expanding it. I discovered that principles of manifestation and the law of attraction could coexist beautifully with my Christian beliefs. God created natural laws like gravity; why not also laws governing how our thoughts shape reality? This revelation transformed how I approach gratitude, sexuality, and hope itself. Instead of deferring joy to some heavenly future, I began experiencing divine love and abundance in the present moment.
The contrast between my former and current spiritual understanding is perhaps most evident in my relationship with my body and sexuality. Evangelical purity culture created unbearable shame around natural desires, while my current understanding celebrates sexuality as a divine gift meant for pleasure and connection within contexts of safety and consent. This liberation hasn't made me "apostate" as some might claim—it's brought me closer to the God who created pleasure itself.
For anyone navigating their own spiritual deconstruction or questioning rigid religious frameworks, know that curiosity is sacred.
Ready to explore more? Follow my Substack "Out Here Thriving" where I continue unpacking these themes, and check out my book "Grace Actually: Memoirs of Love, Faith, Loss, and Black Womanhood."
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So I saw this YouTube video the other day that popped up on my feed and it said the influencer to evangelical pipeline is real and it had a picture of Kelly Stamps. So not sure if you guys follow her. She has like the stampede. She was a very fast growing YouTuber many years ago and as of the last I guess, couple years maybe I haven't followed her as closely. She started like really talking about becoming an evangelical Christian. So I clicked on the video and I'll see if I can find the link. I'll link it if you're interested and it showed like basically a bunch of examples of a lot of influencers who who become like increasingly evangelical as their fan base has grown and as their platform has grown.
Speaker 1:And I just thought it was kind of funny and interesting because I feel like I've done the opposite. I was very, very evangelical at one point in my life, like I was actually a minister and I was getting a degree, a master's of divinity, just to show you how like ingrained in that world I was. And now I have since walked away from that in some ways. It's what people call an ex-evangelical, evangelical proximate, a decolonized Christian. There's people who have walked away completely. Some Christians would call me apostate, which is frankly, ridiculous, but that's a term that evangelicals use to describe people who have kind of walked away from their faith, which I have not walked away from my faith, I've only walked away from evangelicalism. But anyway, I just thought it was an interesting dynamic and so I wanted to talk a little bit about that and my journey with that, because maybe that's the journey you're on. There's a ton of people decolonizing their faith and just going in a completely different direction, frankly. And then I also wanted to talk a little bit about the differences and the similarities and the overlap between, kind of some of the new age spiritual movements and where I land on that, because I have definitely become increasingly more open to all types of spirituality as I've decolonized my face in the last not my face, my face in the last few years. So, yeah, that's what today is going to be talking about. So, if you're interested in this or have thought about, like, for example, learning more about the law of attraction, or wondering if it's okay as a Christian, someone who believes, who has been raised in the church and still has some level of belief, if it's even okay. I'm not the guru on any of this, of course, but I have had a lifetime of experience with at least evangelicalism and I think I have something to offer. That's what I'm trying to say.
Speaker 1:But first let me introduce myself and the podcast to you. My name is Grace Sandra. I'm an author, an advocate and an activist, and a mom. This podcast is a hope-oriented storytelling space. It is a warm hug of solidarity from me to you. It is a celebration of our resilience Come on somebody. And our determination to not only survive but thrive. Welcome to episode 22. Welcome to episode 22. But first let me tell y'all a story.
Speaker 1:I realized at some point that evangelicalism, at least the way that it is taught in a very conservative manner. Now I realized that right now, the evangelicals have lost their ever-loving goddamn mind. Okay, they have lost their mind. Right now, the christian nationalists have lost it. So try to, as you listen to this episode, try to separate people who are consider themselves to be evangelical but not part of, like, the cult movement of christian nationalists that have elected the orange demon orangutan and who have who who spew all sorts of hate. Now, of course, there are evangelicals who do the same thing too, but I'm talking about, like, a more moderate evangelical, as I kind of pose this. So, for example, when I was doing ministry for 16 years combined I was probably part of that moderate evangelical crowd where we preached, you know, pro-life, but it wasn't like we were going to BOMB an abortion clinic, you know.
Speaker 1:And I was very much about purity culture when I was in that evangelical movement and really firmly believed that no one should have sex outside of marriage ever for any reason. Now I'm so far from that it's actually crazy. But it was also about justice. So we believed. And when I say we, this is like part of the campus ministry I was a part of, I was also married to another minister, so we were teaching and training and doing that kind of work together. So that's kind of, when I say we, I'm talking about both mine and his marriage, and also that the ministry I was working with and what I was teaching myself. I had been raised Baptist, which is very strict, you know, girls shouldn't show their knees, kind of thing. That's the church I was raised in and I also went to a private Christian school where that kind of stuff was taught. But when I got to campus ministry it was much more liberal than when I was going to like in Baptist spaces like I could actually wear pants and you know, and at least the campus ministry I was a part of was really about racial reconciliation and kind of was doing like BLM kind of stuff before BLM was BLM. So that's the kind of like moderate evangelical I'm talking of just as a preface.
Speaker 1:Okay, I just had to start over for the third time, so I feel like this episode needs to get out. Whenever there's problems, I'm like it's important, so anyway. So what interested me about people going from influencer to evangelical was that you know, these people have found Jesus, they've, they say they're, they're finding hope and joy and love and I'm, you know, honestly, really happy for them and I hope that the faith journey makes them very happy. But for me, going from evangelical to influencer which I'm using that phrase kind of ironically but for me reversing that I wanted to talk about the benefits that I've experienced from leaving moderate evangelical world to kind of where I am now and then maybe some of that compare and contrast.
Speaker 1:But one of the things that I remember feeling a lot when I was in the moderate evangelical spaces was just a lot of guilt and shame. There's just a ton of guilt and shame around, particularly sex and sexuality, but almost everything else too. Because you know, one of the premises of modern day evangelicalism is that you are a worm. You know there's songs like CS Lewis used to say that, but there are songs that talk about you know, woe is me, like I'm a sinner and I need to repent. But that kind of thinking and I'm not going to go into any sort of theological anything about a lot of this stuff, I'm just going to do a basic overview because that kind of thinking can really lead you to feel like you are a horrible person most of the time and that the only time you are ever a good person is when you are literally like on your knees asking for repentance.
Speaker 1:Different people have different views about what that looked like for me and how I was kind of raised up in this world to be an evangelical. Basically, once you confessed your sins and believed in your heart that Jesus forgave you, that you were, you're forgiven by the blood of Jesus on the cross, that he died for your sins, so you could always experience redemption. By the blood of Jesus on the cross, that he died for your sins, so you could always experience redemption. You know I was taught and I both. I was taught and I taught there's redemption possible at all points, but there is still that underlying feeling that you are a bad, a very bad person.
Speaker 1:So for me, one of the ways that I thought was very interesting among many, many, many other ways that I feel like a more happy, at peace, evolved person since leaving evangelicalism, is that, as I've mentioned before here on my podcast, I struggled really bad, and evangelicalism fueled this. I struggled very, very, very badly with negative self-talk, telling myself all the time that I was a horrible sinner and that I was blankety, blankety, blankety, blankety, blank piece of shit, and the messaging was constant. The messaging of that was constant no matter where I was, whether it was with the campus ministry I was with or whether I was at church, and also when I was at home. That was an issue that I had in my marriage to my evangelical minister husband was just always feeling like you are a pile of shit. And one of the ways that I feel like moving away from that and into like manifestation, what some would call like more new age teaching, is this idea that we are all good, that we're born good, that we are born with love, that we are love and we are capable of love and that we gasp deserve love. Now you know, christianity would also say, yes, you deserve it, but it's only through the lens of if you fully believe everything. It's only through the lens of if you believe that you know God's creation is perfect and it was, to me, always at odds with, but you're telling me I'm like a nasty sinner and I deserve nothing. So I just kind of want to list off to you the things that have changed in my life since moving to that. One is is that I stopped talking negatively to myself.
Speaker 1:Once I started to believe that I deserve good things, and when I was in moderate evangelicalism and when I was in moderate evangelicalism, I did not believe that I deserved good things it took quite a bit of re-brainwashing. I was going to say rebranding yeah, that's not probably the right word Rebrainwashing myself into just believing like, okay, yeah, I am a good person. Before it just didn't hit. People would say, oh, you're made in the image of God. It just didn't hit because I felt like, frankly, sir, you're gaslighting me because you're telling me that I'm made in the image of God, but I'm also an evil worm because I want to have sex before I am gasped in a marriage.
Speaker 1:I didn't get around a whole lot when I was younger, but I knew that it was a lot of horny motherfuckers out here and a lot of people want to have sex and I understood that that felt like an unreasonable thing to do, to make people feel like shit for such a basic need and drive and, almost in a bodily intuition, to create people. Honestly, I could stop there in terms of what's been the most like healing for me. But, girl, going from believing that you don't deserve any good thing and that any good thing you ask for you have to beg for mercy to get and it's always outside of your control, like that's how I felt. Like it's up to God whether or not I get this really good thing that I want and it's really on a whim. Maybe maybe he'll give it to me, maybe he won't, but it's really completely out of my hands. All I can do is pray. And then where I'm at now is that I believe that we have some manner, scientifically speaking, of control about what we bring into our field, what we bring into our vortex, that it is literally scientifically possible for us to manifest the life and attract the life that we want through how we process our thoughts and the importance of our thoughts and our brain, and there are scientific reasons behind it. It's not woo-woo like I thought it was at one point, but it's also not at just the whim of God, because I still believe in God.
Speaker 1:But it's also a another aspect that really changed for me when I was in my evangelical days was this idea of gratitude. So I did keep a great. I did write five things that I was thankful for every day. Way back when I started that practice like in like 2009 or something like that so it's been a long time and I was doing spiritual direction at that point and I was meeting with the spiritual director once a month and she encouraged me to start writing down five things I was thankful for every day to thank God for. It was more kind of like a rote practice. The practice for me was about building my relationship with God and making sure that God knows that I appreciated everything he had done for me. It didn't, it was. It was good, like I really do. I feel like it helped a little bit in some ways and I don't think there's ever a wrong way to do a gratitude practice.
Speaker 1:But now, what I've learned from new age teachers, when I do gratitude it's actually more about getting into the feeling of really processing why I'm so thankful for the good things that I have. I'm so thankful, for example, like that, I have my cat on my lap. I don't know if you can see his little head right there. There you go. Hey, harley, You're so cute. You might even be able to hear him purring. It's like really appreciating, like the feeling of him on my lap and him purring just feels very calming. Or when I went out for a walk yesterday and the sun was shining and I was getting the dopamine from the sun and from the walk and from being outside and I was listening to a good book, and I'm thankful and I'm trying to express like the gratitude for the feeling of being outside in the air and the sunshine. And the difference is is that before everything I was doing, it always felt like it was for a purpose to serve God, to make God happy and to be sure that we're not triggering some sort of anger or frustration with us about what we're doing.
Speaker 1:The focus is so behavioral. When you get into like evangelical worlds, it's such. It's so behavioral, almost like you're constantly a horse that needs to be bridled. That's actually a verse in Proverbs somewhere, like don't be like the horse that has to be, like led by bit and bridle everywhere it goes, and it's kind of like you have to stay in control at all times. Now, I'm not saying that the ways that moderate or crazy evangelicals or anyone in between, that the way they're teaching it is biblical. But I think that a lot of what people live through, have lived through in evangelicalism, is not biblical. It's just someone's random interpretation. That's a wrong interpretation, frankly, of the Bible and I don't think it's necessarily right. But I'm just trying to explain that's the way that I lived it that it was so such a behavioral thing.
Speaker 1:So even that writing of gratitude initially for me was more about like that will make God happy, and it was very difficult to get to where I am now, where, when I'm writing out the things I'm grateful for, it's really not about like pleasing God, for it's really not about like pleasing God. It's more about like trying to help myself really feel the fullness of the blessings that God has given me, the fullness of being able to walk and use my legs and get outside and get the sunshine and the fullness of having like a living sentient being sitting on my lap right now or having like a hot cup of coffee in front of me and thanking God like that's a blessing that you gave me. Thank you, and I'm telling God that I'm feeling it and it's lifting my vibration and it's not to get like a pat on the back and there's just a different motivation I'm finding and it's much more peaceful on this side than it was on that side. Another area that's been huge for me actually is the sex and sexuality piece, because before I really firmly believed and I do not peace-filled on this side than it was on that side Another area that's been huge for me actually is the sex and sexuality piece, because before I really firmly believed and I do not think there is any other I do not think anymore that there is a actual biblical mandate that states that you cannot and should not have sex outside of marriage. I also don't believe that there's any sort of biblical mandate that being a drag queen is a sin or being trans is a sin or being gay is a sin, and I think a lot of those scriptures have been taken out of context, by people who wanted to use the scripture to control people in the same way that they tried to use the Bible to, and that they did use the Bible to prove to black people that we should be slaves. Ok, so we know that people will pick and choose, pick and cherry, pick what passages of scripture they want to say, what they want to say, and now there's just a lot more voices and a lot more helpful interpretations of scripture, and I do not believe anywhere biblically that that is a mandate for here, now and for all time.
Speaker 1:Actually, a lot of the things that are mandates are people, are things that people, especially Christian nationalists, don't want to talk about. The fact that the Bible says that we should love the poor like 2000 times, that we should welcome the immigrant like a million times I mean not a million, but you know what I'm saying that we should care about the oppressed, that we should care about marginalized communities and that we should give a lot of our money away. Those are four big things in scripture that are brought up over and over and over and over and over again, ad nauseum. But what does everyone want to focus on? Who's somebody having sex with? How will they identify? What are their pronouns? It's just so ridiculous. It's such a ridiculous abuse of power, anyway.
Speaker 1:So one of the things that I realized as I divested from evangelicalism is that I am going to live openly and freely with my sexuality and not hold any sort of guilt and shame about this very natural thing by our desires as well, and I firmly believe that we should, as adults, consenting adults, practice safe and consensual sex when we want to, but who, what gender, what parts that show business, and marriage should not have anything to do with it. That's where I'm at now and before, whereas anything and everything that had anything to do with sexuality while I was living as a evangelical was layered with guilt and shame, so many layers and even while I was married, it just became such a huge thing. So, for example, if I had a desire to sleep with someone else while I was married, now go with me, go with me, go with me, just keep riding with me. On this point, that was seen as so evil and I felt so evil. As opposed to where I'm at now, I think desire is very natural and normal, and it would be very difficult for anyone anyone on this planet, no matter the gender or non-binary, to not have any desire because you're with a partner.
Speaker 1:So, whereas now whereas before that was seen as evil now what I see it as is, oh, this is a natural part of who I am. I don't need to reject it. I can listen to it, I can talk it through, like we can always make decisions that are different than our desires. Right, we can always make decisions that are different than our desires, right? We can always make decisions that are different than our feelings. We don't have to let our feelings or our desires have power over us, right? So I'm not in a committed relationship. But if I were in a committed relationship and I had a desire and, depending on how it was with my partner, I would love if I was in a long term exclusive partnership, if we could just talk to each other about it, like hey, yeah, I have, I was looking at so-and-so and he was looking good, I'm not going to do anything about that. But I also don't have to feel like this heavy amount of shame that is like literally unbearable to carry, because you feel like you've already betrayed someone just by having you know that desire and those desires are part of our humanity and part of our sexuality, just in general.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, becoming a evolved, a sexually evolved woman who is, you know, taking ownership of my sexuality, who is following my desire, allowing myself to do kind of what I want to do again, as long as it's safe, consensual consenting adults, I'm kind of allowing myself to really just like relish in the freedom of that, in that, like, I am perfectly normal, healthy woman who is experiencing all of the beauty and fullness of what it means to go through womanhood and go through, you know, puberty, have a period, have my babies what's happened since? Be in perimenopause, have sexual peaks and you know all of the different things that hormones are doing to my body. That's a whole other subject. Child, but girl, you know what I'm saying Like there's a very full, there's a big fullness to a woman's sexual experience and I feel like it's so sad to me this is why the influencer to evangelical pipeline is sad to me Like, yeah, even the thing with Kelly Stamps, it's just kind of sad to me. It's always really sad to me to see a woman who's owned her sexuality I'm not talking about Kelly right now, I'm just talking about in general to all of a sudden be like, yeah, I decided to follow this faith and now I have to cover up every part of my body, that, the body that God gave me. Now I have to see sex as a bad thing. Now I have to stop having sex, stop these desires and completely go hermit mode and probably going to end up feeling shit when they don't do it.
Speaker 1:Because there's another influencer type who just recently declared that she found Jesus. She was on Netflix Too Hot to Handle. Her name was Christine, something I actually like. Her, followed her like, loved her journey on Too Hot to Handle and then she went on the Perfect Match and I follow her online because she gives good like mixed girl, curly hair Not necessarily mixed girl, but like curly hair tutorials. And then she starts talking about Jesus and I was like another one bites the dust, like now she's about to repress her sexuality, essentially because that's what the evangelical to influence her pipeline.
Speaker 1:It seems like what it's doing to women is just like yep, now go ahead and repress your sexuality, and I kind of hate to see it. I really hate to see it Like you don't have to do that, you don't have to be celibate in order to follow Jesus. You just really don't. So I kind of hate to see it and so yeah, and so now I'm at this place where I feel like there is no need to even repress. Why would I repress something that God gave me? That's good.
Speaker 1:I actually just saw the other day I must have put it on Facebook or something. I hope I can find it, because it was like months ago that I put it on Facebook, but it was a whole article that someone wrote about the clitoris and how the clitoris literally has no other point but to be pleasured. It is there for nothing else. There's nothing else. It's good for it does not have a purpose other than woman's pleasure, and it was just talking about how, of all the changes a woman's body makes once we become women women you know what I'm saying the clitoris does not change. It is unchanging honey. It is like God. The clitoris does not change. It is unchanging honey. It is like God. The clitoris is unchanging. And other things change down there as we age and we go through perimenopause. But, baby, that clitoris is going to be there when you're 99. And it's still going to work. I mean if your partner knows what they're doing, or if you know what you're doing or you got the right toys, the clitoris will still work. And so you cannot tell me. There is nobody that can tell me that we're supposed to repress that clitoris. Maybe we're not repressing the clitoris? No, no, no, no, no.
Speaker 1:Another big area where I'm just feeling like I'm in so much of a better place is hope. I just can't tell you how much, you know, I felt hope, of course, when I was evangelical, but a lot of Christianity is about you experiencing something really good in the afterlife, like, yeah, in the afterlife you'll be really happy, you'll be completely at peace, you'll be with people you love, you'll get to be with Jesus and with God and the Holy Spirit, and you will experience joy and liberation. You know, and the more that I have learned about what the Bible is actually saying and learned from other faith teachers who have decolonized their faith. I'm a Christian, I still do follow Jesus, but what I can see now is that that's just a way of controlling us. Like, liberation is really about Christianity, really is, and should be, about liberation right here, right now, and I think for me that just I don't know.
Speaker 1:There was definitely hope. You know, I always had hope about the afterlife, but I had really lost hope that I would ever be really happy truly on earth. In some ways I understood that. I felt a level of peace because I felt loved by God, but I felt very hopeless. I think also, you know, this has to do with the stage of life. You know, I had a mom who had schizophrenia and it was really stressful and I was in a very stressful marriage and you know, there came a point where I felt like I don't know if I'm ever going to be happy in this marriage or if I'm just going to feel miserable all the time. It wasn't all miserable, but you know, when it, when it starts getting bad, it starts getting bad. And we were also struggling financially, really bad, because we were both in campus ministry and we weren't making a lot and it just it was just, yeah, there was a lot of life that just felt like a shit show that I didn't know how to change. And so I started trying to do extra things, like that's really why I got like so into mommy blogging, because I really wanted to make extra money, and I got like so into photography for a while because I wanted to make extra money and I just didn't have any hope or belief.
Speaker 1:It was kind of like again at God's whims, whether or not I was able to get out of the situation I was in and, as a result for me, I left the marriage I was in and left ministry. Did that with terror, with shaking, because to me that was like, based on things people were saying to me as well. It was kind of like you're doing the wrong thing by pursuing your freedom, you're clearly doing the wrong thing by divorcing someone who doesn't want to divorce you back. You're clearly doing the wrong thing by walking away from ministry. And so it was kind of like it was just I don't know, that was in some ways, when I look back on that time because that was 2013 when I left ministry, and 2014 when I left my ex-husband, and I felt like I had to go behind God's back. I felt like just to pursue freedom and try to have the life that I wanted, and I just knew like this life I'm living is not one that I can sustain or maintain.
Speaker 1:There was something that I felt that I've never told anyone ever and never wrote down. The way my cat is in the frame right now is actually hilarious to me. He's just big, chilling, but anyway, one of the things that I thought was hold on. Now it has slipped my mind. Oh my God, I can't even remember now. I forgot what it was. I literally would tell y'all and I can't remember. It's going to come back to me, but I cannot remember right now what I was going to say because I got distracted by Harley, clearly still on me you can probably hear him purring even more now.
Speaker 1:But in any case, I just didn't think my life could get better and I felt like I have to betray God and leave God and go off and be the prodigal son in order to find any freedom whatsoever. And so that's what I did, and I realized later that that's not really what I was doing. I was just having like a brave moment where I was willing to fight for myself and I was willing to believe that something more was possible that the life I lived. I felt very trapped, very, very trapped in ministry. I felt very trapped with my ex-husband. I just felt like a caged animal that had to get out and I had a weird sense of hope.
Speaker 1:Now, where I'm at now is so much different. Now I feel a sense of control, like I actually feel like there are ways that I can manifest different realities into my life. There's ways that I can have hope in the here and now. There's ways now that I believe that God does desire for us all to have hope, healing, peace, freedom, like right now, not just in the afterlife, not just as a future thinking thing. Now I believe that I can have a healthy partnership and because I'm not in one, that's because I haven't found one, and that's cool With me.
Speaker 1:I would rather be single Than be in the kind of marriages that I was in before, because I was married twice. I would so much rather be single and at peace than be in the situations that I was in before. Now, you know, as I look at Money and all these other things, it's not like I'm doing so much better than I was before, but I do have a sense of I can pursue what makes me feel good and what makes me feel happy, and I can pursue and go after my dreams. And before it was kind of like you have to pray for 5000 years and that might not be God's will for your life and then you have to sacrifice it, because if it's not God's will, then you know, because you want it. It's probably not the thing you're going to get and you just have to learn to be happy with the secondary thing that you can.
Speaker 1:I don't know y'all, when I just I look back and I just feel like what the hell was going on? What the hell was going on Like what was going on. It was just such a clusterfuck and if you had asked me then I'd have felt like everything was totally fine. But it really wasn't. And I can see that now that I'm out of it and have some distance, because it's been at least 10 years since I've been like really wrapped up in an evangelical Christian environment and I'm looking at kind of this modern day spirituality or new age spirituality or whatever you want to call it, following the laws of attraction, have actually brought me so much more peace and hope and joy and happiness than I had before. And maybe that makes me apostate, but I don't think it is. I don't think it does. Apostate is leaving your faith fully, and actually I've embraced my faith. I've embraced the fact that Jesus wants me and calls me to love and advocate for the marginalized. Love and advocate for and give to the poor. Love and take care of my family. Love and take care of myself. It literally all starts with love and that's what I'm trying to do. It's just really discouraging to see people what feels like on my end, what feels like progression at least personally, I won't speak for anyone else but divesting from evangelical Christianity has felt like progression and hope. But for the people going from influencer to evangelical I fear that they are going to repression and lack of hope and I really hope for a lot of them that it doesn't backfire.
Speaker 1:I do want to talk for a minute about the relationship between the two, because I do think it is a very interesting relationship, just the relationship between, like the manifestation movement and Christianity, because they are two seemingly disparate worlds that have a lot of overlapping principles and you probably maybe have confused, been even hearing me talk about the differences between then and now and then and now and then and now. So I want to look at that just a little bit Basically. The law of attraction in its simplest form it's basically that you believe that you can attract things to your life, into your field, into your vortex, through your thoughts. The important thing to know about that in a real, simple form is that manifestation teach you that you can bring things into your reality through your thoughts and beliefs okay, into your physical reality.
Speaker 1:Christianity, on the other hand, is focused on Jesus being God's son and the teachings of Jesus and really emphasize, like God's sovereignty, grace, faith, prayer and the importance of divine intervention in general. So there is the overlap because both believe in the power of belief and in faith you got to have. If you want a new house and you're following evangelical Christian teachings, you got to have faith that when you ask God for it you're going to get it, that he's going to give it to you. But there's a little bit more of like well, maybe he will, maybe he won't. Have you been a good boy? A little bit.
Speaker 1:Whereas in the manifestation, law of attraction, teaching, the idea is you have faith, that you are going to believe that into your reality, you visualize it, you see it and you believe that, if you fully believe that that house is what you want, that you can have it. And there is a sense that you feel a little bit more in control, just in general, because both Christianity and the law of attraction both highlight and celebrate and encourage positive thinking, encourage walks of faith, acts of faith and both in some ways really do believe that intentionality is really important for outcomes. You know, for example, proverbs 23, 7 says as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. So that verse can be interpreted in both ways, in both belief systems, I think. But, like I said, this is where a great divide happens, because a fundamental difference is that in the law of attraction, the individual is at the center, and that suggestion is that you are the primary driver of your reality. Versus in Christianity, you are surrendering, you're just surrendering to this higher power and you almost have no control whatsoever. And I think when you take away someone's ability to think about themselves as like a self-actualized individual who can live and walk through this world with a sense of self-empowerment and a control over their own reality, I feel like you're stripping like an important part of our personhood.
Speaker 1:And I think that's what made growing up in Christianity to me feel so oppressive in some way is that I never quite felt like I could get out, have access to other kids who had, who had the nice houses and the nice cars and just a better situation in general, and it was just like, well, what am I doing different that they're not doing? Like, why do my prayers lead to us, you know, not having heat and not having nice things and sometimes not even having food. Like I grew up very food insecure, but like my friends who lived in like Livonia and West Bloomfield and Westland, like they were, god was answering their prayers. They were able to always eat and have heat and hot water, to take a bath every night and a TV that worked. I'm like, literally that was my reality, seeing that and thinking about that as a kid, like in fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth grade, because I was around so many white kids who are just living kind of like normal middle class lives, and I was living in fucking chaos, unbelievable chaos, and just wondering, like I don't have really any control, like I've asked God for help, I've asked God to do something different and I just think about, you know, in my last, a couple of my last episodes, I was talking about how, when I was in high school, when I was in high school, I was having sex with someone who I didn't want to be having sex with and I felt so out of control and I just wonder, like if I had been privy to like law of attraction, manifestation techniques, I actually think I could have got out of that situation so much sooner because I had no sense of self and evangelicalism, just no sense of nothing.
Speaker 1:It's really sad. I do think there is something so tragic and sad about a religion that would teach you to surrender your empowerment, your own self-empowerment. That does not seem like something a loving God would even want for you, would even want for you. Like you don't feel like you have power to get out of this other than asking me. That's your only source of hope. Just ask me. Maybe I will, maybe I won't. And I feel like now, like where I'm at is like no, there is a sense of like, of God empowering me, like, if you want to be a better person in a certain area, go be that better person. If you want to make more money, like, go after that. If you want to, you know, change the world through writing books, then go write books, because that's what I've gifted you with. You know what I mean. You see the little difference there.
Speaker 1:Control is another key form of departure, because the law of attraction definitely promotes like a sense of control over your own destiny, like I just said, while Christianity is encouraging you to surrender in God's plan fully, like I just said, but this is also with the caveat that God's plan for you might not be fully understood, but just go ahead and do it anyway. And this comes up a lot in marriages, because people love to throw around that verse in Malachi. That's like God hates divorce. And people will say over and over again that you should stay married no matter what. And you might not understand it, but you got to stay married and that was something that really harmed me because I stayed like five or six, maybe even yeah, I'll just say five or six years too long in a marriage that I was miserable in and then ended up blowing up at the end, and I just I don't think that's how it should have went. I really don't. And that's what everyone in evangelical Christianity was counseling me to do, and they were still trying to stop me. There were people who I worked with, and my ex-husband and some of his friends who were trying to stop me. While I was leaving him, like literally, while I was leaving, while I was trying to get out, they were still trying to stop me. Like maybe you could still put this on hold, like I just want to be like y'all, please, please, leave me the fuck alone, please.
Speaker 1:Another big difference is prayer, you know, in Christianity, like I said, is used as a way to seek guidance and to intercede and, you know, have requests for different things, whether it's a new Lamborghini, or, you know, world peace and everything in between, or you know your mom to get better, your cough to go away Whereas in manifestation, affirmations and visualizations are used to align with very specific desired outcomes. You're feeling dependent on yourself and what you can produce in the energetic field. On the manifestation side and on the prayer side, it's just again just comes down to whether God wants you to have it or not. That feels very weird to me now, and I do see how people are trying to like integrate these two belief systems, and I get it, I really do get it. And there are some Christians who talk a lot about like how you can use law of attraction as a way to like align your thoughts with God's will, which I get it, and that's also totally fine. I do think there is an interesting dynamic if you're trying to live in surrender of one thing while also trying to live in the idea of personal control and personal choice.
Speaker 1:Now that I know a little bit more about both. It's definitely harder to bridge that gap, and so where I've landed is that I think it's a very deeply personal journey. Obviously, I think there's no one size fits all answer. I think that some of you might find a very harmonious balance, and good for you. Good for you if you have. Some of us might feel a sense of dissonance and I definitely, like I have explained to you in my personal examples, feel that sense of dissonance, like where I land now is that I see all of the very scientific, very scientifically backed explanations of why the law of attraction works and why manifestation works, and what I believe is that God put that all into motion, that there is an intelligent creator and that, just like God created our earth to have something called the law of gravity which keeps all of our bodies stuck to this earth, I believe that the law of attraction is like one of the laws that God created that we can fully take advantage of and still honor and respect God as creator.
Speaker 1:Obviously, I think that when you're looking at self-empowerment, you should still have humility. I think that humbleness is something that God gave us that we should try to have. I think that we can explore, you know, what is the difference between like wishful thinking and like faith-filled hope. They're very different. Either way, I think it's important to say that this is a very complex topic with a lot of nuance, so please don't come from my throat. I do think it's worth exploring our beliefs and our assumptions, and exploring and relearning things that we have learned growing up, and especially ways that we have a bigger, broader understanding of Christianity. Now, no matter where you land whether it's one side, both sides, any of the sides I just want to encourage you to continue learning.
Speaker 1:I am one of those people that, like, really values curiosity curiosity about life, about spirituality, about God, about all of this stuff and I think that it's possible for us to continue to learn more, reflect on these beliefs and respectfully share them with each other in respectful dialogue, as we should be able to do as grown as adults and from diverse sources. So one of the sources that I love that I have really taken advantage of. So, number one, I do still have a Bible. I read it occasionally. I went from reading it every day of my life for over a decade to slowing down, and now I read it much less frequently. In terms of learning about the law of attraction and manifestation. One of the main kind of gurus that I've learned from is Dr Joe Dispenza, primarily because he is the one who talks about the most about how science backs this way of life and this way of thinking, and even he delves a little bit into the spirituality of it as well, too.
Speaker 1:My curiosity has led me to try to learn more about people who practice the laws of attraction and manifestation techniques through the lens of spirituality. I saw on Lewis Howell's podcast someone who was talking about how depression, anxiety, is really healed through spirituality. That's kind of how our body is set up, and it's a more scientifically based explanation than I've ever heard, and it just makes a lot of sense to me. I've always thought that. I've always thought that, because I know that people will call different kinds of people in the evangelical world or Christian nationalism world, will call different mental illnesses demonic, I'm like, is it demonic though? And that's a whole other. The presence of the demonic is a whole other subject, so I'm not going to go there, but I will say that I think that we should have a curiosity about this very big world, and if we can decide that we are going to love ourselves and that we are not bad people or evil people for exploring or like asking questions, for wanting to know more, for wanting to understand more. I think that we'll be in such a better place.
Speaker 1:But anyway, what I was saying that I got distracted from was that Dr Joe Dispenza he was one of the first books I read. The first exposure I ever had to the Law of Attraction was through the Secret, when it came on Netflix, and that was kind of how this movement really blew up in some ways again, because it's been around for hundreds and like maybe even thousands of years. But I watched the Secret and then that got me wanting to learn a little bit more. And then I met a friend. We're no longer friends, but I'm thankful that she introduced me to it even more. And then the what really changed things for me was when I read a book and I'll post it here called you Are the Placebo from Dr Joe Dispenza, and that book blew my motherfucking mind Like, if you want to be blown away by his story, the other stories he tells in that book, get that book.
Speaker 1:And I used it right away because at that time I had very low left arm mobility and it had been over a year that I was having trouble moving my left arm, to the point that I couldn't do this. I couldn't do this. I could barely put my hand behind my neck I mean behind my back to remove a bra. And that book changed my life. I used it to heal my arm. It's completely healed, it's totally fine. And that's when I started manifesting money. And I have manifested so much money in the past few years, and not to the point that I'm wealthy. I mean, I'm still out here trying to survive, but I'm just saying I wouldn't be surviving if it hadn't been for that. Oh, my battery's dying. So let me wrap this up because I've been long winded.
Speaker 1:Anyway, please follow me on Substack. I have a new Substack called Out here Thriving, and it's going to be. It's going to cover six areas, including some of the things I mentioned here resources. It's just going to be lots of fun. So please sign up for that. I have a book called Grace Actually Memoirs of Love, faith, loss and Black Womanhood. This is a very memoirish book of some of my best blog posts from the past and I appreciate you being here. You could be anywhere but here with me, so thank you. This episode was so disjointed, I had so many interruptions, so I hope it turned out okay. But thank you for being here. I will see y'all in the next episode. Bye.
