"Scars That Speak Series: Brent McCay" Ep#34

In this moving installment of the Scars That Speak series, host Chris Jones sits down with Brent McCay to explore a profound journey from the suffocating weight of religious legalism to the liberating power of authentic grace. Brent shares his harrowing path of navigating childhood trauma and the exhausting demands of ministry, which eventually culminated in an existential breaking point during his young son’s aggressive battle with stage 3 cancer. After years of feeling like an "imposter" and subsequently walking away from faith into a decade of agnosticism, Brent describes a spiritual awakening characterized by visions of light and interconnectedness that replaced rigid dogma with a direct, peaceful connection to the Divine. His story serves as a powerful testament to finding hope in the midst of life's "storms," urging listeners to shed life-killing religious patterns in favor of a personal relationship built on unconditional love.

Contact for Brent McCay

bmac3130@gmail.com

This episode of “Spiritual Hot Sauce” by Chris Jones is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.  

Transcript

Chris Jones 0:00

Scars That Speak is a series of people sharing their real life stories, of going through adversity and trauma, the storms in life that strips us of our identity, where the path ends. But yet they find life where there should be no life. These are stories of hope.

Brent McCay 0:18

My name is Brent McKay, and I have Scars That Speak.

Chris Jones 0:22

Welcome. I'm Chris Jones. This is spiritual hot sauce. Brent, welcome to the sauce. Thank you. Happy to be here. We have talked previously, and you had shared with me your story. And when I heard your story, I knew immediately that this is a story that needed to be heard by others, that other people that may be going through a similar trauma, that this would help them and give them hope. So, first of all, thank you for agreeing to come on and share this with everyone.

Brent McCay 1:02

If I can at least take that and have it help other people, then you know there's some good that comes out of all of it.

Chris Jones 1:10

So tell us a little bit about yourself. Tell us about your background, who you are.

Brent McCay 1:14

Who I am is a child of God. And but it took a long time for me to really get that and understand it. Who I was was, you know, somebody who was raised in deeply in religion, deeply in legalism, have the scars that came from that, you know, of feeling like you're never good enough. You're always having to improve and become and become more. Every sermon I ever heard growing up was l about all the things that we need to do to be better for God. And in the midst of that, I was in a family that was, you know, broken. My parents had divorced when I was very young, and I was left to be raised mostly by my older brothers. And one of them was a very kind and caring person as much as he could be with his own scars and anger, and then one of them was not so much, and sexual abuse ensued, and I became convinced because of the type of abuse that I was unacceptable to God because of the messages I had heard about sexual orientation growing up from the pulpits and how those people cannot be pleasing to God. And so, anyways, I I was just a young kid who with a lot of shame who figured God didn't care about me and wasn't interested in me because I had committed some sort of unforgivable act, which I didn't ever even do anything. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

Chris Jones 2:41

That's what victims of sexual abuse like that go through, though. They the victim sometimes feels like they are responsible.

Brent McCay 2:49

Yes. Yes, and that is that is exactly what happened. And so I kind of just lived in that state of I don't know, I just didn't even think much about God because I didn't think God much cared for me. And then in high school, I met a youth minister who was from a different type of denomination, talked, started talking to me about things up like grace and unconditional love and things that I hadn't ever heard of.

Chris Jones 3:17

Yeah.

Brent McCay 3:17

He challenged me to sit down and read the gospels. And so one Saturday I did. I just read the entirety of the gospels. In the midst of that, I was like, there is something there that I want to know. Like there's something there in Jesus that I want to know. Through that process, I ended up getting saved, and I gave myself to Christ. And there were changes that started to take place in me, and God started to speak to me in ways that he hadn't ever before, but it was still really mixed with a religious-based theology where I'm doing the work to get myself right with God. And I had these very conflicting views of Jesus as being really kind of awesome and trustworthy, and God being kind of terrifying. And excuse me. Once I graduated high school, I thought, you know, I want to go to Bible college and I want to do for another child what that youth minister had done for me and tell me about a Jesus that loves unconditionally and that has grace, even though my theology was still kind of bad. So I went to Bible school and my bad theology was re reaffirmed and retaught. And I even kind of went deeper into it because I thought, you know, I can figure this out. And I'd learned all the Greek and I was like, I can I can do this. And I still had very much this mentality of like I'm gonna chase God down, basically.

Chris Jones 4:49

I do have a question. Sure. What's going on internally uh deep? Because you are still a victim of sexual abuse as a as a child. You're still carrying this baggage with you. And now you're hearing a theology, which is what kind of made you feel estranged from God, that you wasn't acceptable. What's going on internally with that fight and that battle?

Brent McCay 5:12

When James talks about a double-minded man is unstable in all his ways, that's what I was. That's what's going on internally at that time is I this weird double-mindedness of going, Jesus is good and Jesus is love, and Jesus wants me to love, and I am, and I was doing things that were very loving, and I was experiencing things that were very good. But deep with inside me, there was this other voice that was saying, I'm I'm not okay. I'm unacceptable, I I make mistakes, I anytime I struggled with anything that is labeled as sin, would figuratively beat myself up, and sometimes even literally, like I would, I would just get to the point where I would, I would be like, I've got to figure out a way to conquer this. I was I was a mess, to be perfectly honest, Chris. I just was kind of a nightmare inside because I was carrying this really, really deep shame at the same time knowing that there is a Jesus that is love and that he's kindness and that he's goodness. But I I hadn't been able to really deal with that stuff and put it together. And so I really was pretty unstable. Like some days I was really good and like, God's awesome, this is great. And then other days I was like, I'm a worthless piece of shit, to be perfectly honest.

Chris Jones 6:32

To me, if I'm putting myself in your place, I would feel like I'm carrying almost a secret, and I would almost feel like an imposter while I was there.

Brent McCay 6:41

I I did feel uh imposter syndrome, without a doubt. Like, but it wasn't as much about like the abuse itself, but it all tied into the the effects of the abuse and the effects of the religious and bad theology that I was carrying was that like You were in constant confusion and turmoil. Yes, okay, and yes, constantly, all the time, all the time. And I but I did honestly feel like an imposter because I thought that like I was supposed to be perfect. I thought that I was supposed to achieve this level of righteousness, like I took sin seriously. Very condemning, very condemning, so condemning, yeah, so condemning, so harsh on myself. You know, we're just worthless sinners who are saved by grace, and Jesus stepped in to to save us from a God who mostly is really just really angry at us, and yeah, and I just I carried that guilt and that shame with me all the time, all the time.

Chris Jones 7:44

This carried on through, I guess you were in seminary. This went all through seminary that you were going through, and it's being reinforced from what they're teaching you. What happens after then? What what's the progression here?

Brent McCay 7:59

So I mean I met my wife there. We had three kids. How long ago is this that you're you've got married, you're having kids, about roughly what's your age? Oh man, gotten married was 28 years ago, started having kids, my first kid a year into the marriage. Okay. But in the midst of that, all that, I started a ministry that was a homeless outreach ministry in the town that my college was in. I did it in conjunction with one of the professors there from the college, and we started a church that was designed specifically for homeless and fringe people, for those who don't normally get feel safe or comfortable in a regular church. We created an environment where we made them feel safe and acceptable and loved. It started out in a soup kitchen, and we just did a little meeting in the foyer every Sunday morning before they did the meal. And people started coming more and more and more, and we ended up having 70 or 80 people meeting in that little foyer. And then a church that was dying that had a really big building was like, we've got this building, we can't keep up with it. We've only got five members left. Would you like to have our building? So they gave us the building, and we went in there and we ripped out all the pews and put in couches and tried to make it a place where people just encountered God and we talked about God and we shared together and we found Jesus. And so I ran that ministry for 11 years, but I was having terrible marital problems. And my theology was still very confused and conflicted, and at the core of it was still this core of shame and this still this religious belief that it was on my shoulders to go out and chase God down. Now I had even more responsibility to to help these people find life. But I did start to just get frustrated with like, why is God not here more? And why am I not experiencing the rest that he promised when he said, Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. And I was like, I I'm I'm heavy laden and I am I labor all the time and I'm not finding rest. And the crazy thing is, is I just couldn't see that you can't labor yourself into rest. Right. Yeah.

Chris Jones 10:29

You can labor yourself into collapse, but collapse is not rest.

Brent McCay 10:34

And so that's what I was doing, though. I was working, you know, 40, 50, 60 hour weeks sometimes. I would on nights it was was cold, I would go up there and sleep all night in the church so that the you know people weren't out on the streets, you know, and and right. I I just gave and gave and gave and gave and gave and gave. And I started looking, still efforting to find what's what would actually work and what would actually help. But what's funny is in the midst of that, I did find some books that were starting to point to a different path with God that I had ever seen before. Books like The Shack and books like So You Don't Want to Go to Church anymore, The Final Word and the Word After That by Brian McLaren, which made me start questioning eternal conscious torment and this belief that everybody goes, I mean, most people go to hell and God sends them there and they stay there forever and ever and are punished for eternity. And while those books are beautiful books, they actually caused this horrible turmoil in me because my my entire identity was in wrapped up in being this good Christian pastor boy who worked so hard to please God, and it really kind of attacked that foundation that I had built my life on to try and deal with all the shame from childhood. And I I started to kind of spin out of control a little bit. In what way? I don't know. My my marriage was awful. I was desperate to do anything to try and like please her and figure out a way to make it work because I like I could not deal with the shame of a possible failed marriage and my identity separation, like I just started to kind of fall apart and and I existential crisis, would you say? Yes, existential crisis, truly. Yeah, and I started to even doubt like some of the core things I had always believed about Christianity, and so I didn't even know what I was supposed to preach anymore. I got to where I I could only talk about just Jesus, and actually in the end, that's really not a bad thing. Yeah, but I didn't get it actually. Like I was just such a mess. And so I stepped down. I stepped down from the ministry, I left that ministry behind. How long ago was that that you stepped down? Oh boy, that must have been 16 years ago now. 16 years ago.

Chris Jones 13:10

Okay.

Brent McCay 13:10

Yeah. My wife and I stepped away, sold our house, moved to a different state, and I kind of left like confused and shamed and just not knowing who I was. Not I I at this point I had no identity at all because I wasn't Pastor Brent anymore. I wasn't, I was nobody. In the midst of that, my son got diagnosed with cancer, like a year after we left the church. Which son is this? His name is Noah, my middle son, my oldest of my boys.

Chris Jones 13:45

Hold was Noah at the time when he was diagnosed with cancer.

Brent McCay 13:49

He was 10. 10. Yeah, he was ten. He was yeah, he was 10 years old. And yeah. So I was my marriage is already in like not great. My self-identity is basically gone. And then my my son is diagnosed with a rare cancer that's hardly ever seen in the United States. How aggressive is this cancer? Is it easily treated or no? At the time it was somewhat easily treated. It's gotten better since then. It's it's actually the most aggressive, one of the most aggressive forms of cancer that exists, though. You can literally go from two months ago not having cancer to being stage four in months. It just takes over and it invades really quickly. And the the danger of it is like if they they have to treat it pretty aggressively because it's such an aggressive cancer. And so it's an easy cancer to kill, but the treatment is really the danger.

Chris Jones 14:54

And he's 10 years old. Wow. Yeah. So how did you find out that your 10-year-old son Noah has this cancer?

Brent McCay 15:03

Uh it was kind of one of those weird things. He fell, he got pushed by a girl at school, and he fell on a chunk of ice and came home saying, My side hurts. For like three or four weeks, I was like, You might have some bruised ribs or maybe even a broken rib, but there's not much you can do about that. But as time went on, he his breathing and things like that got worse. And he started to say, I'm having a little bit of a hard time breathing. And then one day I was taking him up to school and he was walking up the stairs with me to go to a parent teacher conference. And I was like, Is this what you've been talking about? Because he he couldn't, he had to stop after like 10 steps and was really struggling to breathe. I was like, Is this what you mean? I meant and he was like, Well, no, that's it's getting worse, even worse. Something's wrong. Something's really wrong. So I took him to emergency care, and they were like, We think maybe the rib broke and punctured a lung, or maybe he punctured his liver, something's not right, and his blood levels are wrong. It seems like he might be bleeding internally. We need to get him to the hospital immediately. And so we got him to the hospital and they ran an MRI to try and figure out what's going on inside, and his chest was just full of cancer. It had started in his abdomen and had gone up and it spread all the way up to his heart, and it looked weirdly like a Christmas tree, actually, because it came up and spread out across his diaphragm and then went so it was like you said, super aggressive.

Chris Jones 16:47

It was already going to the vitals, it was there. Yeah.

Brent McCay 16:51

Um yeah, it was uh it was it was already stage three. Within a few hours, like we set up at the hospital and they were doing all their tests for I don't know, 10, 12 hours. But as time, as that went on, he just kept getting sicker, he kept having problems breathing, and they finally had to life flight him from the city we were living into into Albuquerque. And by the time he got to Albuquerque, they had to put him on a respirator because he wasn't breathing anymore. And what was going on was the fluid that this cancer was producing was collapsing both of his lungs, and one of them had collapsed 40% his right lung, and the left one was 70% collapsed. And by the time he got there, he could he basically couldn't breathe, and they had to put him on a respirator and take a tube in and pull off all that fluid. They put him in a medically induced coma for the first several days, and it was just a nightmare scenario. Wow.

Chris Jones 17:49

Yeah, just so everything right there must seem so incredibly surreal because you were just taking your son to parent teacher conference. Next thing you know, he's being induced in a coma. He's got stage three cancer, and it's up through his stomach to his heart, and he can barely breathe, his lungs are collapsing. They're trying to drain this fluid off that's produced by this cancer. Holy moly. Yeah. As a parent, I can't imagine.

Brent McCay 18:17

It's about as bad as it gets as a parent. Like it just doesn't it, it doesn't get much worse. I can't think of anything. I I just kept hearing the question why when when my son, when we had to go in and tell my son what the diagnosis was before they life flighted him out, we were like, they're telling us you have cancer. And he How do you tell your 10-year-old son that? How what's how do you do that? I don't know. Yeah, I just we were just like, Noah, we need to talk to you, we need to tell you. They know what's going on with you, and it's not good. And he was like, Well, what does that mean? And we were like, You have cancer. And it's just he starts weeping and he looks at me and he says, Why? And that's where I was actually at with God is I was the weeping child looking at God, going, Why? Why? And I I just I just went into survival mode to be perfectly honest, and I just tried to get through that first because he was in the hospital the first time for like three and a half weeks, almost a month. They got him, you know, well enough and stable enough that what happened after that was we would go home for three weeks, and then we would have to drive back to Albuquerque and spend a week in the hospital once a month for eight months. Eight months minimum, depending on how it went. And thankfully it only ended up being eight months. So he he came home and we would then have to travel back and spend an entire week in the hospital as because the chemotherapy was so aggressive that they needed him there and monitoring him for a week. Because it was so dangerous.

Chris Jones 20:14

So who was going and staying with him?

Brent McCay 20:19

I was. So my wife is working and teaching, dealing with things on the home front with my daughter and my other son. I am 24-hour care for my son with cancer, and I'm driving him down to Albuquerque and spending every moment with him just trying to help him get through and survive. I think the second trip down there, three months in, my son is feeling the full brunt of them poisoning every cell in his body to try and kill all the bad cells, but it indiscriminately kills everything. And so he's losing all his hair and he's um puffy and he's got edema, and his throat, the lining of his throat is like falling apart, and it's like he's got strep throat constantly. I mean he's just in so much pain. And they give him a new medication that's supposed to start at the third month, and he's allergic to it. And so he starts having horrible anxiety, and so it's just you and your son. Just me and my son, yeah. And so I'm there, I'm there by myself, and he's falling apart, and they come in and they give him Ada van or something to calm him down. He finally falls asleep about one o'clock in the morning, and he's he had been crying all day, and it had been an awful, just an awful day. I hadn't slept in a week or two. I was falling apart and I can hear around me all the rooms of kids ranging from eight months to seventeen years who all have childhood cancer and they're crying for their parents and they're they're alone, many of them. Oh you know, and their parents aren't with them and I I hit a breaking point. Like I I like I'm trying to sleep and all the the kids are crying and the nurses and the beeping and the blood pressure cuffs going off and I'm just like I I can't do this. I literally hit a breaking point. It was I didn't you've heard people talk about like just like being so in a such emotional turmoil that they thought they would like explode and die or maybe have a heart attack or something. And I I that's the point I hit. I I was like, I can't do this. And so I got on my knees and I started praying, and I was asking God to show up, and I was asking him to help me, and I was asking him like what the hell was happening, and where was he? And like if he was so good and he was so loving, why was the world like this? And I was just experiencing the very worst that the world has to offer.

Chris Jones 23:32

You were seeing suffering up close and personal of humanity.

Brent McCay 23:36

Yes, and in suffering of the innocent. And I mean, I know we can justify suffering for other people, and even my own suffering, I had justified. Like somehow I deserved this. But I looked at my son, who I knew was something special. And I looked at these other, like literally infant babies, you know, eight-month-old babies. And I'm like, what is this? What is this mess? What is this nightmare? Why is it this way? And I'm sitting there praying and I'm trying to beg God to just do something because I'm gonna break. And at least if he's not gonna do something for me, then damn it, do something for these kids. And then all of a sudden, I just got angry, and I was just like, you know what? Screw this. I am done. I'm done jumping through the hoops because it's not working. I've spent my life trying to seek you and find you and please you. I've read all these theological books and all this intellectual stuff, and I've studied the Greek and I've given to the poor and I've sacrificed myself, and I've done everything to hold together a bad marriage, and I I've I've given everything I can possibly give, and I'm not getting anything back, and I'm done. I'm done, I'm done. And I said as much, and the wild thing is, in the midst of that, like almost literally, as I said the words, I'm done, this overwhelming peace, like I've never felt before or since came over me. And I don't like at the time I couldn't explain it. I thought it was because I had given up completely on God. But I was so confused and so lost. And looking at back at it now, I'm like, well, that doesn't even really make sense. Like, how could just letting go of God like release this inner turmoil? Like, nothing in my situation around me had changed. The babies are still crying, my son is still laying there, possibly dying, just going through the worst kind of hell. I still haven't slept in basically two weeks, and and all of a sudden I was just like, I feel good, I feel peaceful. And I crawled into the you know, little sofa bed that they provided me, and I fell asleep and I slept for eight hours for the first time in months. And I woke up the next day and I just felt good. And I was like, oh, well, I guess I'm a non-believer now. And I felt at peace with that.

Chris Jones 26:42

Something changed when you just said, Here, God, take it back. I don't want it anymore.

Brent McCay 26:48

Yep. I don't want I don't want your I don't want your religion, I don't want all the fasting, I don't want all the prayer, I don't want to, I don't mind, I'm not doing all the studying. I'm just not doing this anymore. I'm not jumping through any of the hoops anymore. And even as I say it now, I still kind of shake my head because I don't know how I missed it st still, but he he gave me in the midst of that a great sense of peace. And I had stumbled into that very thing that I was talking about without even realizing it. Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. You take my yoke upon you, which means you lay down your yoke, you stop trying to carry all those burdens, you stop trying to earn everything, you stop trying to chase me down, and you just be. But I didn't get it at the time. And so I was like, well, I guess being an atheist or agnostic at least, because I kind of vacillated from then on between just full-on atheism to agnosticism, and I just kind of lived that way for 14 years. But in the midst of that, God would I would have these events that I would just like, oh, that's really weird. I can't really explain that. But I just I was like, I'm not taking up Christianity again, like that didn't work for me. And so I just kind of lived a godless life in a messed up marriage and did my best to kind of love my kids and took up a new career and got education and became started working in physical therapy about 12 or 13 years after all of that. My son recovered from cancer, was doing well, but everything else, nothing about all my internal stuff really had ever changed. My marriage was still a nightmare. Just kind of lived. I went into survival mode and just existing mode, and I didn't really think a lot about those kind of stuff.

Chris Jones 28:54

And then I'm just trying to make sure I I I understand kind of where you're at. So your life, this this crisis has ended. And now you're kind of living consistently in a place that seems to be free from anything positive or good, and it's just kind of in a stagnant water, and that's just kind of your existence.

Speaker 1 29:19

That's a really pretty good description of it. Is it was just kind of this stagnant water existence. There was no, I my kind of became like the Dead Sea a little bit. There was no, there was no outflow there. Like I just No life. I no, no real life, I just existed.

Chris Jones 29:38

Yeah.

Brent McCay 29:39

When I shut down, and a lot of like what had made me me, I just kind of stopped. But about 12 years into all that, something started to shift in me. I started having dreams, I started having visions, I started just having these internal feelings that there was something more, and something was calling to me. For example, one time I was walking around, I was teaching physical therapy at the college where I had gotten my second degree from. As I'm walking around the campus one day, I just get this vision of honestly God, but not this high, lifted up, sitting on a throne, God that John saw, but this white, whitish blue light at the center of all things. And then I saw, like I just don't even know how to explain it really, I saw these tendrils of light that went out from this source of all, held every planet and every star and every atom and every everything together. And it literally, like even every photon of light was controlled in a sense by this thing, that it was part of this greater whole. And then the vision narrowed down and it brought me to Earth. Like I kind of traveled throughout the cosmos seeing how everything was a part of this greater source. I could see that every rock, every tree contained to some extent a part of this greater source, but then people, I saw people, and some people carried so much of that source within them, and it flowed out of them and it poured everywhere. And then others had just slivers of it, and they were desperate to get more. And these were the people that were walking around trying to get other people to fix them and heal them and help them, and they were trying to do all the right things to get more of that light, and they had weirdly kind of cut themselves off from it, and then there were others that were just living in it, and it was just pouring out of them. And this and other dreams and other visions I started having was the beginning of this waking awakening within me of going, oh, there's there is something more. Like, I just can't deny it. I I didn't I don't even know how to explain the the entirety of the shift, but just something in my heart was like, There is a God. I may not really understand it, I may not know how to relate to it, it may not have anything to do with Christianity at the time, is what I thought. But I was like, there is something, and I can't deny that. I started like I would have dreams about something that was gonna happen, and it would happen. Like things that I just couldn't explain. I was like, there's no way this is like my materialistic mindset that I had kind of adopted, just couldn't explain away the miraculous things I was experiencing. And so I was like, I guess there is a God. And that was the beginning of the journey of God going, I'd like to show you who I really am.

Chris Jones 32:57

I mean, it sounds like in what you perceived as these visions and these dreams, was it that sounds like it was completely outside of what the theology had taught and what you traditionally had perceived of a dogmatic God that is so punishing.

Brent McCay 33:14

Oh, yeah. And what's funny is I at the time I didn't even like I did not connect it to Christianity at all. And he brought me back there eventually, but it very much was what Paul talked about on Mars Hill in the book of Acts, when he says, You don't know him, but he's not far from you. And in him we live and we move and we have our very being. That's what he was showing me. I just hadn't ever heard the, I had heard all those words through such a religious mindset that I just didn't see it. And so he like all that 14 years was just unlearning all of the things I had been taught. And now him starting to teach me, I just started kind of hearing the voice of God. And like he would, he would speak to me about a scripture, he would speak to me about something in my past or my hurt or my pain, and he would just, he would just bring me to these places, and I would wake up like I woke up one morning and and I heard a verse, and it was the verse that said, I praise you, Father, that you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned, but you have revealed them to little children. And I was like, that's interesting. Why would God hide things from the wise and the learned and give them to little children? So I went into the Bible and I looked at what the context of all that was, and it literally was the context of John the Baptist starting to question who Jesus was, going, Are you really the person that we are should have been expecting? Because you're not acting like I expected you to, because John in the beginning of Matthew had said, He's gonna bring a winnowing fork, he's gonna set the wheat apart from the chaff, he's gonna bring a fire, he's coming to clean house, basically. And then when Jesus doesn't come to clean house, he actually is like having meals with you know tax collectors and hanging out with prostitutes, and John is like, I don't understand who you are or what you're doing. Of of the religious people, none has been born, whoever did the religion thing better than John. And so all of a sudden I was like, Well, wait a second, John was on the path that I was on. And then what's crazy about it, that verse that had has haunted me so much of my life, come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. That's where that verse, directly after that. I praise you, Father, that you've hidden these things from the wise and the learned, is the verse where he goes on to say, just come to me. I will teach you, take my yoke upon you, and just learn from me, and you will find rest for your soul.

Chris Jones 36:09

You know, there's what you're saying, you know. I think when we're in religion, which is where you were initially, we are given of an image of God, a one-dimensional image of God, that we come together in community, and that's God. And that's what we are taught to assimilate to God. Kind of like what you're saying, John, how he was expecting to see God was this how we're shown. However, we all need to see God differently because we all have different needs. As you're like what you were seeing in your dreams and stuff, where God is giving to us to help us and what we need, which we can't get from that one-dimensional God in community. Not that there's something wrong with it, but it's in the individual relationship like you're describing, which is where you get what you need in order for you to have a fulfilled life.

Brent McCay 37:02

Yes. The problem with religion and the problem even with God experiences is I have a God experience, and I start telling people about my God experience, and then I build a church based on my God experience, and then people hear about my God experience, and they think my experience is how God moves, right? And they never get their own God experience.

Chris Jones 37:29

Do you think that's what you were experiencing? That you were pushing into that religious idea of someone else's truth that didn't work for you. Yeah. And you had done it so long until frustration where you finally broke and said, Here, God, I can't use this. And God said, Good. Yes. Because you can't use that. That was never for you anyway.

Brent McCay 37:49

That was never for you, anyways. You were never meant to labor and be heavy laden. You you took on Calvin's stuff, you took on Luther's stuff, you took on the Wesley Brothers stuff, you took on all these different people you studied and and all their own confusion about who I was, and you never really came to me. Wow.

Chris Jones 38:12

Yeah. And we don't even know it because that's what we've been trained to do.

Brent McCay 38:17

Yes. Yeah.

Chris Jones 38:20

And it's not done maliciously because you yourself were training other people to do that. Yeah. Because that's how we believe it's done. Yes. Man, I think sometimes we don't need to reimagine the church. We need to rediscover it. You know, because I think the original church was just people coming together to encourage one another to go find God in that way.

Brent McCay 38:44

Yes. And even when they came together, like one of the things when when Paul says, when you come together, each one of you has something to offer, whether it be a song, a hymn, a spiritual song, or a word of knowledge, like every single one of you. And what has happened though is we went from obviously every single person of the in there was having some type of personal interaction with a living, active God who loved them and they were experiencing God. And as we they went throughout their weeks, God was speaking to them and they were experiencing God. And then somehow we hit this like we twisted it and confused it. And now we've got one person who maybe or maybe not hears from God, or probably doesn't. And they've just they're just hearing different versions of people who did hear from God, like Luther or Saint Francis or whoever, and they're telling other people, and it's so removed, and it's like this fading glory that it talked about with Moses, and it's so far away and so removed that nobody's actually experiencing God themselves. They're experiencing doctrine and they're experiencing religion and they're experiencing rules and they're experiencing regulations and they're not experiencing freedom. Yeah, no freedom whatsoever. And Jesus comes along and blows all that up. And that's eventually where God got me do you want to know what I look like, Brent? I want you to start looking at Jesus.

Chris Jones 40:20

So where are you now? How do you see God? What's going on you with internally with all of that conflict that was in you and all of that trauma? Where's everything at now?

Brent McCay 40:31

Like it's it's still an active process. I don't want to sit here and go like it's just gone. But I I live in a relationship with a living, active, real God who, when I struggle, he says, Brent, I love you. Your weakness is not something I hate or despise. My love for you is unconditional.

Chris Jones 40:53

It would have been the equivalent of you being there with your son that night and telling him, I can't be here. You get better. Yes. And when you get better, I'll come back and I'll love you. And that's not the father's love. That's not what a father does. No. That's powerful. So, what would you tell other people that are going through this kind of trauma, that are fighting with the storm right now? What advice would you give them?

Brent McCay 41:25

Just ask God to show you who He is and to show you who you are. Because that's what really matters. Don't jump through hoops. I don't have a pattern for you. In fact, if somebody starts offering you a pattern, please reject that pattern. Because patterns are life-killing, they're burdens, and Jesus didn't come to offer that. The message I have for you is the message that Jesus had is the guy who said 2,000 years ago, come to me, all of you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. There really is rest to be found. You really can lay down all those burdens and all that hurt and all that trauma and let him carry it. And you can hit a place where he will take that off of you. And all you have to be is just a child of God. There really is that opportunity. And I don't have the like three-step pattern for you or the different things for you, but there is a living, loving God who wants to meet you in that place. If you're willing to just kind of let it go and say, I don't want to know religion, I don't want to know what Calvin taught or Wesley or anybody else or James Dobson. I want to know you. And if you will just ask him, I promise you, he will start showing up. He will start speaking to you. He will, you will have your own experience with God that will lead you into life, just like he is starting to lead me into life.

Chris Jones 43:07

How's Noah doing now? I mean, what's the percent of people who's had this kind of cancer?

Brent McCay 43:13

Well, really high. With this particular type of cancer, if you don't, if it doesn't come back, it's so aggressive that if it doesn't come back within a a year or two, the chances of the that cancer coming back are almost none. Noah's in good shape.

Chris Jones 43:29

Noah's in good shape. Awesome. If people have questions for you or they want to reach out and they want to talk to you, how can they get in touch with you?

Brent McCay 43:38

I'm on Facebook, Brent McKay, find me there. I'm on Twitter under Brent McKay. You can find me there, or X, I guess it's called now. My email is B Mac, so B as in boy, M is in mother, A is in Apple, C is in cat, three one three zero at gmail.com. And if you just need somebody to talk. Talk to. If you're going through these kind of things and you just need somebody to vent to, or you want to yell and scream at God or me or anything, like I can offer that. I get it. I've been there. And I can't, I can't give you a path to get where you need to go, but I can point you to the path.

Chris Jones 44:18

Well, Brent, thank you so much for coming on and sharing so much. This was so good and so rich and deep. Your scars are definitely speaking in in a divine way. And uh thank you so much for sharing that. And thank you for agreeing to come on and uh do this. So thank you.

Brent McCay 44:39

Thank you, Chris. Thank you for the opportunity. If if it helps people, then in the end it will be it will have been worth it. It's already worth it, honestly. But man, if I can help people find life, then it's doubly worth it.

Chris Jones 44:53

Thank you, Brent. I appreciate it. And we'll talk again soon, okay? All right, thank you so much, Chris. Thanks for joining me here on Spiritual Hot Sauce. I'd love to hear from you. So please reach out with questions, comments, andor concerns. And don't forget to like, subscribe, and review us. You can follow us on Facebook for updates and information. And if you enjoy the flavor of the sauce, then please share it with others. I would appreciate that. We'll see you next time.