Talking about my family’s involvement in ATI & IBLP is something that is so incredibly difficult for me, mostly because my family refuses to talk about and would like to pretend that it never happened.

It wasn’t until I was 25 years old and found myself having panic attacks, intense feelings of shame, and anxiety, that I knew I needed to start talking and get support. I started meeting with a counselor and digging into the layers of spiritual and emotional abuse that the teachings of ATI helped propagate.

The panic attacks, shame, and anxiety seemingly came out of nowhere. I had been out of ATI for 10 years and had, as far as I knew, completely forgotten about it. In the years following ATI I had “rebelled” against Gothard as much as I knew how–I had toured and recorded with a rock band, I had grown out my hair and beard, I had gotten some tattoos and a liberal arts education. I had done the partying, the drinking, the smoking, the drugs, and the girls. I had traveled the world, been to the big cities, read all the books, seen all the movies, and tasted all the fares the world had to offer.

And then I met Jesus. Not the Jesus ATI, IBLP, and Gothard had described. The real Jesus. The Jesus from the Bible that hung out with prostitutes and tax collectors. The Jesus who loved the demoniacs and the crazies. The Jesus who confronted the Pharisees and comforted the widows. The Jesus who truly loved me–even with my tattoos and my long hair. The Jesus who knew the depths of my heart and the extent of my rebellion before I was even born and still stretched out His arms on a cross to die in my place.

I truly met Jesus in 2009 right after my parents (former devout ATI’ers) got divorced. In the years following, I got back in church, met my wife, started my career teaching high school, and playing church music. God was doing incredible things in my heart and in my life; opening up His Word and teaching me who He was.

And yet, there was a quiet belief underneath it all–a small but powerful remnant of the abusive teachings of ATI & IBLP.

The belief was this: “There is something HORRIBLY wrong with you. If people really knew who you were, they would NEVER love you. You should feel nothing but shame for every immoral thought and every rebellious act you have every committed. You’re working for a church, and you think you can possibly stand the chance of ever having a successful marriage? Just who do you think you are?”

These thoughts started a few months after my wife and I got married, and they became increasingly louder as I began volunteering doing youth work and teaching a class at my church. I felt so incredibly alone and so helpless. Whenever I would try to express how I was feeling to my wife or a close friend, I found myself unable to do it justice. Speaking these thoughts out loud sounded so ridiculous. But I honestly believed that they were right, and it was crippling me.

I struggled just going to sleep at night. I would often isolate myself emotionally from my wife and friends–insisting I was fine even when they knew something was up. I found myself wanting to turn back to a vice I had in my life before Christ: alcohol. Some nights it was all I could do to just keep my car from venturing off course and into the liquor store parking lot.

My response to the voices of shame and inadequacy was to somehow prove them wrong by doing more. I told myself that if I just read more scripture, got up earlier to pray, studied harder for the lessons to teach to the youth, and volunteered more of my time and energy that I would prove to myself and to God that I was worth something. That I was worthy of love and of the title “Christian” or even “Church Leader.”

And that’s when it began: heart palpitations that started small but grew increasingly stronger, a feeling that my chest was going to collapse and that my throat was closing up.

That’s when I broke down and finally told my wife, my pastor, and my friends what was going on. They were shocked but incredibly supportive, gentle, and compassionate. They recommended that I start seeing a counselor to work out some of the issues that were causing these false beliefs.

As God has led me on this journey of healing from wounds that were too deep for anyone but the Holy Spirit to reveal, I’ve had to do the very painful act of looking back at the false beliefs ATI instilled in me and confronting them with the freeing realities of the Jesus of the Bible.

Looking back as an adult, I understand why my parents joined ATI. Their life was a wreck, and there was a network of seemingly perfect families that offered them easy answers to some complicated issues. There was a very charismatic and manipulative leader that boiled all of life’s problems down to a few core causes and promised that if you followed those religiously, your life would be perfect.

When I was born, my dad was a seminary student home in Georgia on Christmas break. My mother was a former beauty queen from Louisiana that had fallen for my dad when she had come to buy a car from him. They dated long distance for three months before they got engaged and were pregnant with my brother by their honeymoon. Needless to say, they didn’t know each other very well before they were married, and all twenty six years of their dysfunctional marriage reminded us of that fact.

After seminary, my parents moved back to my dad’s hometown. Despite my mother’s dream of him pursuing the pastorate, my dad took the easy way out and starting selling cars again with the family business to support his wife and kids. My sister was born, and then there were three of us.

We were raised in church–my dad putting his seminary degree to use in some fashion as an elder and my mom coordinating the music. Church was like a second home to me as a child. We were there every time the doors were open and spent hours there during the week with both parents as they served. I was baptized when I was four and told my mother that I wanted to be a preacher someday. I would sit and listen to her sing and write my own hymns on the back of the church bulletins during service.

When I was eight, the idyllic world of church and hymns and Sunday school came crashing down around me because of a new word I had never heard before: adultery.

She was an advertising rep from Atlanta that my dad had worked with once. We were out of town with my mom visiting her family in Louisiana for Thanksgiving. It happened once I think, in my parent’s bed. I was eight, so I didn’t really know what sex was, but my mom was so irrational she told my brother and me through tears and clenched teeth on the living room sofa one morning in January.

After that, everything was different. Once our pastor caught wind of my dad’s affair, he asked us to leave the church. Friends, families, and the entire town–it seemed like everyone was in on our family’s shame. At eight, I didn’t understand how or why something so minor could absolutely destroy everything I had ever known. But it did.

My parents decided to stay together. And through some twisted logic spurned on by my mother’s hurt and my father’s shame, they decided the real problem with my father’s infidelity was that we weren’t religious enough. Enter the ever so convenient teachings of IBLP. The real root of my father’s problem was the television, so we sold it. Another root was the blatantly sexual rock n’ roll drum beats found in most popular music, even if it was “Christian.” So the tapes were burned. Our dress as a family communicated that we were “worldly,” due to our sinful shorts and sloppy jeans. So the dress code was changed in our household to include navy and white, plenty of khakis, skirts for the girls, and lots of collared shirts.

School became an evil place that would taint the innocence of my parent’s beloved children, leading them down the path of destruction towards sexual misconduct and debauchery (I was 8, my brother was 10), so the decision was made that we would be homeschooled, safe from the demonic influences of rock music and immoral living.

This continued on for the next seven years. My parents found a church in Atlanta that supported everything they believed (about an hour commute one way), and we joined ATI so that we could be provided with literature, materials, conferences, and events that would reinforce three core beliefs:

(1) The world was a terrible, evil, wicked place, and we were horrible people. Our only hope was to separate ourselves and create our own communities with our own standards and rules.

(2) We were the only true followers of God, and we had an edge on how He worked. If anything bad happened in our lives, it was probably because of something bad we had done. If anything good happened in our lives, it was probably because of something we had done. God was a power superstition. (NOTE: looking back, I have realized this is not Christianity at ALL. This is Moralistic Deism.)

(3) Since we were the world’s only hope, we should have as many children as possible and teach them to adhere to the same standards. My parents followed this last tenet by getting my mom a reversal surgery and having my two youngest siblings twelve years after they first had my brother.

Reading my story typed out on a computer screen makes it seem absolutely ridiculous. But the powerful, crippling effects of these teachings is something that I have had to work through as an adult, and I have had to continually seek out guidance from Godly men and women who have helped me walk through this.

Something I realize now is that the true Gospel teaches we can NEVER be good enough, and that’s the point. Christ does it all–drawing us closer to Himself, redeeming us through His blood, and regenerating our hearts through His Holy Spirit. Our shame has no place.

My counselor recently helped me define the difference between shame and guilt in this way:

Guilt says, “I’ve done something wrong.”

Shame says, “I am something wrong.” OR “There’s something wrong with me.”

To feel shame over who I am in Christ is to miss the glory of His all sufficient sacrifice. He paid it ALL. He has redeemed me and made me into something new. I can never make Him love me any more or any less than He already does. My works can never earn his affection.

I don’t know why God led me down this path. But I do know this: even when it’s hurt a lot and I couldn’t understand why, He never left me alone. His grace is all I need. Shame has no place. Fear has no place. At my redemption, the gates of Heaven were swung wide open and His sacrifice was all sufficient.