Ann Maree
This particular season of the Safe to Hope podcast is extremely difficult to hear. The 2025 season is for mature audiences only. We advise listeners to apply an abundance of caution and discretion, and we warn those who might be significantly triggered. This story includes childhood sexual abuse, rape, sex trafficking, satanic cultish and ritualistic abuse. Throughout the 2025 season, we will occasionally insert breaks between segments of the story to provide our listeners with an opportunity to come up for air. At other times, we will offer the audience an opportunity to skip over difficult subject matter. For more information about how to even process these stories, please listen to Episode Four and Episode Six on the Safe to Hope podcast.

I’ve asked our storyteller to describe the details she thinks will be helpful so the audience will understand the terror she endured. While this story is hard to listen to, living it was unbelievably hard and horrific, We bear witness as we listen. These stories are disturbing and may even be confusing. One of our goals throughout this series is to help the audience understand, specifically knowing good from evil, but also to have compassion, exhibit empathy and acquire the ability to minister to those in need. 

While this type of abuse is less common than others, we listen for two good reasons. First, it is a reality that we need to be prepared to understand and respond to this kind of abuse. Second, even if we never encounter a similar situation of this storyteller’s experience, it teaches us, in a concentrated way about dynamics that are at work whenever people commit harm against others. 

In this episode, I will be speaking with Dr James Wilder. Dr Wilder is an author and speaker specializing in the life model and neuropsychology. Dr Wilder refers to himself as a neuro theologian. He’s also, perhaps not as known for his expertise and work helping the church help those who have been victimized by communities whose lives revolve around Satan. His work is non sensational, and it helps encourage finding positive answers to some of the most difficult questions surrounding this type of evil. 

Welcome to you, Dr Wilder.

Dr Wilder
Thank you for having me and on your program, and it’s an honor to be here so we can help people understand.

Ann Maree
Thank you. It’s our honor as well, and we are excited to hear your wisdom and expertise. Is there anything else you would like to say that would help our audience get to know you better?

Dr Wilder
Well, at one point in our clinic, which was called shepherd’s house, we were seeing quite a bit of this, and as there were some local cults working in the Los Angeles area as well, and so the staff would decide we need to write about what we’re seeing. And they asked one of the books to be about dissociation, and that was given to Dr Friesen, another staff member, and they assigned me the writing about the cult side. And so I more or less got drafted by the staff to, you know, to write something in the area, but it was sort of situation is handled by a community of counselors and a few pastors that were helping us as well. So the first thing that and the last thing I’ll say about this, is that cult abuse happens in community. And recovery for it has to happen in community as well, and so that means community for the people who are helping, community for the people who are recovering. And of course, there’s always the community that’s causing the trouble.

Ann Maree
That’s an excellent point. And thank you. Thanks also for just the inclusion of the lay ministry as a helper in the context of something like this, I think they may be sometimes afraid to jump in and help, but I think you’re mentioning it is a affirmation that they can.

Dr Wilder
Well, we found that the people who were sustaining their recovery all had a some kind of community around them. Those function essentially like a healthy family. It was never officially created, you know? It just happened from people, usually that they met in a church, but you know the sustain your recovery means that I am able to participate and engage with the community the way I’m supposed to, and create belonging around me. Because the first thing that trauma does is stops people from creating belonging. 

Ann Maree
Hmm, yeah. Also good point, yes. On that note, healing. Can you talk about you’ve mentioned community about what else is needed for someone who’s coming out of this type of ritualistic satanic abuse?

Dr Wilder
Well, yes, first of all, there is a lot that’s known about it, and probably the most chronic mistake I see is people discover it and go about reinventing the wheel over and over and over again. So, you know, I think you have Dr Heather Gingrich on one of your other programs. You know, I’d start with knowing somebody that knows everything that she does, you know, that sort of thing. Don’t, don’t just try to rediscover everything but the most central thing seems to be the people who get to know Jesus by well, well enough that they will let him manage their internal systems. Are the ones that start to have a stable life. The problem that happens with dissociation, which is one of the problems with, you know, this, this evil is that the different parts of your system pop up essentially because they’re scared. And often they pop up without knowing what’s going on. So it’s basically a fear-based, you know, who do we push out in front to handle this one. But if you actually can have Jesus develop enough trust with him that he can help match the person who can handle it best with the situation, then instead of just being pushed out there, it’s like you’re being called for like, come here what you’ve got to offer is would be really helpful right now, that’s and it’s a gentle process that keeps life from being chaotic. And it sounds easier to do than it actually is to achieve. And as a matter of fact, it’s the great commonality of all people, whether or not they’re dissociative or whether they’re not, they’ve been abused in rituals. Have trouble letting Jesus manage their life with them.

Ann Maree
It’s all individuals, right? 

Dr Wilder
Yeah, everybody does that. So it’s, it’s sort of a very, what will you say makes you feel like you’re, you’re facing the problems that are common to all human beings. How do we engage God in every situation and part of our life and and really, that’s the goal of the recovery is. And it’s a basically, whether you’re been abused or not, it’s still the goal of life. How do I engage Jesus and God in a helpful way in every part of my life, and not leave any parts out? So it’s, it’s great human project, right there.

Ann Maree
You said it sounds easier. Is there any other like, can you expand on that? Like, practically, what does it look like? Should those of us who aren’t trained even enter into something like that?

Dr Wilder
Well, that all depends on what you mean by being trained. I think most Christians are terribly untrained at getting Jesus involved in their life. And so training and what we came to call the Emmanuel lifestyle, God’s actually with us at all times, only, most of the time we don’t notice it. And you know the Last Supper, what Jesus said to His disciples was, from down the world won’t be able to see me, but you will be able to see me if you love me. And that is training we actually have to go through. So we don’t think of it in that way, but learning to notice where Jesus is right now. So what is he thinking? You know, what? What is his opinion about that? You know, even as we’re, you know, doing this recording right here. You know, where is he? Right now, if we can’t notice that, we’re lost trying to guide anybody else. 

But if you have that training, actually, it works much better than professional training at guiding you through the situation, because you’ll say, I think maybe Jesus wants us to notice something here. But what makes it hard, of course, is that if you’re actually talking about satanic type ritual abuse, there will always have been deliberate attempts to make sure you don’t trust Jesus and so and even the name Jesus is typically, you know, trigger material. 

So one of the reasons why we went with the Emmanuel lifestyle is that that’s another way to talk about him. He happens to have a lot of different names, so you can always find a non triggering name around the place, but you have to actually get to know him before you trust him to manage your life. And you know, that’s the thing that takes all of us some time. You know, can we trust him when he is not keeping life from being painful? That’s basically the human problem from one end to the other. So and for reasons that go way beyond my capacity to understand, he doesn’t keep things from being painful.

Ann Maree
Yeah, good point. What would you recommend our audience get to know better as it relates to ritual abuse or satanic abuse. 

Dr Wilder
Well, let’s see. I guess the, you know, the logic behind it is what I would probably recommend people understand. You know, the think it’s Saint Paul that says, I don’t want you to be ignorant of the enemy’s devices. So, you know, how, how does he think? How does this, how does this rascal work? Because that’s what, actually, how I ended up being in charge of it was, you know, at our clinic, dealing with the problem was that I’d grown up in South America, and I can remember being maybe seven, eight years old, and being told by my friends, here’s how you make a contract with the devil, and here’s what you have to do as well, well known and openly discussed in those cultures and the practices that are used by cults to intimidate people, basically, the same ones that are used by drug cartels or by Putin in governments and stuff like that. And Satan isn’t basically a poor man’s version of Putin. You know, what can I do that I can hide because he can do it publicly, you know, and I get away with it. Or, you know, drug cartels the same way, you know. How do I be the lead predator around here, so that everybody’s afraid of me, and, you know, nobody crosses me, and no one talks about anything I don’t want talked about. And, you know, it’s Apex Predator System, but for poor people, you know, who can’t afford to go public. 

And so once you start understanding that there’s certain logic that goes with it, and then when you hear about it, and that’s, again, how I got involved. Like people would say, I can’t believe what I just heard in this counseling session. I said, Oh yeah, they used to do that publicly where I grew up. I’m not surprised that people do that, and I even know the reasons why they would. I bet they’re trying to get some kind of power and control here, and, you know, lower everyone else’s status, so their’s goes higher, and, oh yeah, that’s what they’re doing. And but it’s really, you know, gruesome stuff that people are capable of doing to each other. And so once we understand why people do gruesome stuff, it doesn’t really help us to hear all of the possible ways of being gruesome, you know, the horrible things, all the details of what people do. That’s not what we really need to know. We just need to know the motivations behind it and not be surprised when they show up.

Ann Maree
And that’s interesting. As you’re talking, we do this a lot during this season, we’re identifying that what the storyteller is telling us is a very concentrated version of abuses, but I can hear echoes of even describing the narcissist who maybe not doing gruesome things, but has the same mind, I guess.

Dr Wilder
Yeah, they have a, sort of a different system of being the apex predator, and, you know, less that they can get away with. And that’s sort of the secret ingredient right there, there’s a, you know, what are you able to get away with? And for that, you have to have a certain degree of social standing and power. And so, you know, the, yeah, it. But either way we’re looking at it, it’s that predatory human nature that comes from not trusting God, which I could say more about. And I, you know, you’ll probably want to know more about, you know what the mechanisms are, but we’ll, we’ll go into that as we go along. 

Ann Maree
Okay, yes, I do want to know. And so I have so many questions, because I just didn’t, you know, I was blown away from the whole story from the get go. But what kind of church is going to be able to foster this type of abuse happening without it being like, like, what you’re saying? What can we get away with and not be found out? 

Dr Wilder
Well, this is the simplest part of the whole picture, but it’s, again, an odd sort of logic. And maybe the person we should talk about is Charles Manson. Everybody knows about Charles Manson, right? He was raised in the Nazarene church, and so he most of his early abuse came from church people, and the basic logic was that who you are is essentially bad, and the rules that God creates are basically to keep bad people from getting into, back into Eden or anything good. So rules, God’s laws are all his ways of keeping good things from you because you’re bad. So, and by the way, that’s very close to Satan’s approach to Adam and Eve. You know, there’s a knowledge of good and evil. You see, God really is got his rules so that you don’t get any good things. And if life seems unfair and painful to you, then the thing you begin to use your intelligence for is to figure out, well, how do I get the good things. Well, you do that by breaking all the rules that God set up. So anything God sets as a rule is a way of keeping you from the good stuff. Fact, most rapists think this way that women are basically cruelly keeping all the good stuff from them. And all these rules that are set up are just so that these vicious women can lord it over them and keep them from any good things. And so, of course, you know, you hate people who do things like that to you, and so you grab the good stuff. And that’s the logic that’s sort of in one form or another, informs all pornography and all that other sorts of stuff. Someone is keeping the good things away from me, and I’ve got to be a bad boy or bad girl in order to get them. 

So once you do that, you can look at all the church practices, rituals, everything in the in the church, and say, If I flip that, just do the opposite of what it was intended to do, that’s how I will get power. And of course, since God’s rules are actually set up to protect life, that means that you will show an indifference to life and protecting it. That freaks everybody else out, and that does make you an apex predator, because you’re not afraid to do what everybody else is afraid to do. And churches that basically have a sort of an anti identity theology, who you are is just basically bad, and God has made all these rules to try to keep you from getting any of the good things. That’s the kind of mindset that makes people want to flip it on God and go, “Well, I’m going to take it anyway.” And then, of course, what you have to do is to have be a church that’s interested in keeping up appearances, the narcissist side of it right there. So regardless of what happens inside here. We gotta look good to everybody else on the outside, and now you have a perfect environment for that, like, because they’re somebody inside is going to cover up whatever’s going on. And the best way to do that is always blame the victim for whatever is happening, you know. And have I got 1000 stories I could tell about that, you know, which I won’t, because we don’t all want to puke right on the spot. But that’s you know, again, once you do that, now you’ve got to intimidate people, but a apex predator likes doing that. You got to keep up appearances. And it’s also, you know, you can’t lure new prey, and by looking dangerous, you have to lure new prey, and by by looking as desirable as possible. So again, people who have this hidden self and that they consider bad, and that’s basically Charles Manson’s situation, is his real internal self, who Charlie really was, was considered bad by all the Christians. He can’t get the good things. No one’s fair. Everyone wants to look good on the outside. So how do you play that game? Well, that’s where you start getting good at doing bad things while looking good on the outside. It’s a, basically, also the structure of almost any dysfunctional family, abusive family systems. So it’s, it’s, you know, basically making a religion out of dysfunctional and abusive family systems. Because why does, why should the devil actually care about the things that they’re doing? I mean, what’s in it for him, right? Other than, you know, mayhem and destruction. 

But what happens if you’re trying to get into a abusive system is you have to impress the chief abuser by being as mean as they are. And if that’s the logic of spiritual life, then that’s what these leaders do. And these things are always sort of a quicksand too, because once you’re into it just a little bit, and someone’s got evidence on you, or someone’s watched you do it, it’s really hard to back out. It’s like getting into a gang, you know, it’s like, and so, you know, I do suspect many people get sucked in that way. The most common way seems to have been offering them something sexual that they could do, and then once they were caught doing that, then you know, you had to perform. Because sexual attacks on people is predatory, and if you got nice evidence, witnesses, film, whatever else of somebody doing that, then you can make them be a more and more and more impressive predator. And of course, once you’re in that trap, you can’t get out of it without having something bad happen to you. And that’s where the narcissism comes in and says, “Well, I’m going to make sure that all bad things happen to somebody else.” And you know, with a few people who want to look good around you, you can actually sustain that in the community, but you need those people that are providing you that respectability, and there’s, unfortunately, quite a bit of that in the church.

Ann Maree
Yeah, I think about that celebrity culture you’re describing. I was just reading a book called Armies of Enablers. It’s not a Christian book. Talks a lot about the different cases that have come to light recently, like Michigan State University, the gymnastics Olympics, and also Sandusky and Penn State and all that, and so yes, what you’re describing to me just echoes that enabler. But also, they’re not just enabler, they’re a bystander, but they’re a predator as well.

Dr Wilder
Yeah, they’re, they’re enabling predators for their own, you know, predatory advantage.

Ann Maree
Yeah, it’s interesting. Nothing new under the sun right?

Dr Wilder
No. Some of the people involved, usually the ones that get very, very good at it, are psychopathic, and they appear to have a genetic defect in them to they are not afraid of most anything. They basically lack a fear response. And so where most people would be afraid of what would happen or who would get hurt or who would catch them, the most audacious ones basically seem to have a little genetic advantage that says I’m just not afraid of what’s going to happen. And most serial killers and rapists and that sort of thing are in that category. And in fact, when they’re caught, the most common report seems to be they go, Oh, you caught me. And they go to sleep, like the game’s over. You know, I don’t care very, you know, non bothered by things that would bother anybody else. So people with that kind of advantage will very quickly get to the top of a predatory game. Because they go like, Oh, well, if I just do you one better than this over here, without any particular fear of what will happen. And but they still understand how fear works for other people, and they sort of get off on it. It’s like I feel more alive, more energized, like I’m more participating if I if people around me are terrified and doing that sort of that weird thing people do, and it’s like, yeah, I can get my way doing that. So they actually, you know, get off on it. And so those are the people that get into the mix, and all of a sudden, you’ve got the game that’s running way out of any range of that, what normal people would think of doing.

Ann Maree
Yeah, I think you’re answering my next question is, why would church leaders do this? But yeah, if you have any more to say about that, I’d love to hear it.

Dr Wilder
Well, the situation is, is changing quite a bit in terms of who’s doing what. Church leaders when they have a let’s see some sense of a group of the thing that’s happening right now is everything’s going virtual, with internets and all that sort of stuff like that, and it’s really hard to run a cult virtually, because you just don’t have that kind of influence and control, watching over everybody. So I think the the game is shifting right now quite a bit. But church leaders, when there were small communities and it was way to your advantage to, you know, be the dominant, you know, the highest status person and your system was okay, How do I get the good stuff for myself, the narcissistic predator? Then there was a real advantage to have your own little cult running if you had a secret self. And this is the thing you know some branches of Christianity really foster the idea that you know your your real self is a bad one inside, and that you’ve kind of got to hide it. Others believe that you transform. And then there’s all other groups that are, you know, quite happy with being the head predator. I mean, there’s whole cultures and religions that just promote that, and they do these things openly, rather than privately. 

So if you’re, if you have that sort of sense, that I have to look good on the outside, but I really am rotten on the inside, and I’ve got to feed my rottenness sooner or later. This, you know, how do I get the good stuff that God’s keeping away from me creeps into the system? And then, if you encounter anybody who already has a, like, a whole package. Here’s, you know, here’s the books, here’s the literature, here’s the practices, here’s, here’s the way you really, you can really make this work. It’s like going from being sort of larceny to meeting a good bank robber and go like, yeah, we get away with this. 

Then once that happens, the other thing we notice is that it seems to gets passed on generationally. So if your pastor, your family, your Church, has been doing this for a while, trying to get the next generation involved, is going to be the first thing they’ll do. And so systems that got started quite a while ago are still sort of being passed down in some church circles, but even those are all tending to fall apart now, because communities are disintegrating, people are moving. You can’t keep a cult going very well if people are running all over the place and have other resources. 

So this ability to keep people trapped became a problem, mostly around World War Two on, and that’s when the mind control people came in. So the advantage of Satanism for many other groups, was that they already had, you know, you’re keeping people quiet and not, you know, doing stuff that they’re not supposed to be doing, that would be perfect for Mind Control slaves. And so that’s actually how Charlie Manson got into the whole thing. He was trying to create mind control slaves so you could have a whole bunch of he could be a pimp, basically, and control all these people. And the government’s like doing the same thing. And so for a little was dabbling in that, at least we caught them at it for a little while. They actually had to the American Psychiatric Association had to publish a book apologizing for working with the CIA, because the head of the American Psychiatric Association was doing mind control experience for them on unsuspecting Canadians, and we had to pay them a bunch of money. But various governments have been like doing this sort of thing, and and the drug cartels really liked it, not for religious purposes, but just because this is a good way to control a bunch of people and we can make more money. And, you know, it’s fun so selling drugs, I suppose. But you know, if we can have a whole prostitution line and they’re all under mind control, you know, you don’t, you know, we can expand our control and influence. And so the, you know, much of what ended up happening was that anybody who wanted criminal control of something incorporated some Satanism with it, because they had the mind control technology, let’s might say, not because they had any particular interest in in the religious side of it. 

And so that, you know, these things all get very confusing. And at that point, when they started selling that that mind control technology is when it actually came out in counseling, because it didn’t work all that well. The Mind Control was breaking down while people were going in to get counseling for other things, and they’d start talking about stuff they weren’t supposed to talk about. And, you know, and then the church started waking up to the active presence of Jesus and saying, well, let’s just invite Jesus into everything. And once that happened, that was something that the mind control people weren’t prepared for. So systems started breaking down and but again, since people are doing this, basically, are gaslighting everybody that they bring in. When you’re gaslighting, you can’t put your finger very much on what’s the truth around here. So, you know, big narcissist head predators. They’re all massive gaslighters that are, you know, creating this false sense of reality, and then they blame the victim, like, well, you’re just making this stuff up and and then it becomes very difficult to find out what what actually happened. And that’s where therapy started running into trouble, because it was real hard to establish what actually happened. In fact, I went and studied crime scene profiling under an FBI person to see if it was possible to establish what actually happened at crime scenes and who had done it and stuff like that. Very helpful stuff to learn, but very hard to actually establish in these kinds of situations. And the answer didn’t turn out to be figuring out everything that had happened to me. 

The answer came from figuring out who I was really created to be, and that’s a very interesting shift in the whole thing. If I can encounter Jesus and a community that helps me discover who I was really meant to be, I began to recover from the things that happened to me. And if the community is not going to be shocked when you hear I’m capable of participating in things that horrify me. That’s the little part we have to get over. Yeah, the evil is actually a lot worse and a lot more widespread than we would hope. Now that we know that the evil that you are caused to do is not the real you. When Paul is writing to Titus, for instance. He says, talk to the old older women, teach them not to be devils. What he’s talking about there. And he’s got the same advice for old men as well. But in this particular case, uh, devils are ones that say that the bad things that you did is the real you. And from Paul’s perspective and a new creation perspective, the bad things we do are the things we do when we’re not acting like our true selves, not we’re not the person that God was created us to be. So the answer to getting out of that mess isn’t to discover all the things that people could do when they’re not being their true selves. The thing we have to discover is who did God create us to be? And that’s where all the different parts of a dissociative identity all have some element of who God created them to be. And it’s reconnecting you with that purpose. That’s why putting Jesus in the center of running a dissociative system is has such a good power. It’s like, oh, here’s what I contribute, oh, here’s what I contribute, oh, here’s what I contribute. Not what can I do when I’m not acting like myself and I’m under duress? But what was I who was I meant to be? And the nice thing about it is that whenever we’re being somebody we weren’t meant to be, it inevitably bothers us.

 So the fact that the very fact that these things bothered you is the evidence you weren’t acting like yourself. Where that gets confusing, of course, is when you get the psychopath in there who’s not bothered by anything because they’re not afraid. And then you think, well, but are they acting like them, true, like their true selves? No, they’re just deceived. And that’s what Romans tells us in verse chapter. If you’re not thankful to God, he will let you deceive yourself. And so it goes back to the most important practice of all, which is learning to be thankful for the life and good things that God gives us as the alternative to self deception, and so at the core of this becoming who I am, I’m a thankful relational person, and all this pain has kept me from being thankful. But how do I discover myself buried underneath of all of that stuff? And that’s where the whole Christian community is involved. There’s some things that a professional can understand, you know, let’s say about how dissociation works in the brain. And, you know, little things like that, sort of like going to a cardiologist. But anybody can do a workout to strengthen their heart, right? So we’ve got the whole thing. We can all exercise together every all so often, we should probably talk to cardiologist about something that isn’t working right.

Ann Maree
Interesting. Just getting a peek inside that brain of yours. And so I’m wondering, I read parts of a book that you wrote called The Red Dragon Cast Down. I think that was your, that was your project.

Dr Wilder
That was, that was my book. Wasn’t, wasn’t my title for the book, I wanted to call it Merry Christmas, Red Dragon. But the publishers wouldn’t let me. So that was the Red Dragon Cast Down, yeah.

Ann Maree
Just mind blowing again. One of the things that I highlighted that you said, you said examining the road in and out of Satanism. Oh, by examining the road in and out of Satanism, we might participate more fully in the preventative and restorative work of the king. Now that just kind of goes against everything I thought before, you know, knowing truth, knowing God, that’s how you participate. But you’re kind of saying the opposite there. Can you? Can you share us more about that?

Dr Wilder
Yeah, I think at the bottom of the pile is that we don’t usually discriminate very much between the things we do out of fear and the things we do out of love and attachment to God. And so knowing God’s ways doesn’t actually motivate us very much to live God’s ways, and that’s been a perennial problem in the church. But what brings you into Satanism is a life based on fear, based on a Harvard belief that at the bottom, God won’t let you have the good things, which is basically a fear, and the basic fear that I must be bad. Now, the funny thing is, we are bad, but we’re bad because we’re not being ourselves, as opposed to being bad because we’re being ourselves. So Ephesians, 2:10, you know that we would do this good works that God prepared ahead of time, that we should walk in them. So if we’re actually doing what God made us for, we would be doing good works. When we don’t know that, right? There’s a pattern that you can detect. And you know, this is how we actually diagnose the diseases. You say, Oh, you’ve got a fever, uh huh. You’ve got a cough, okay, you’ve got, do you have a sore throat? Yes. And as you go looking at these patterns, you go, Oh, well, you might have strep throat or whatever it is you have. And so that’s how we need to know that the weaknesses that are common for all of us can lead to some pretty remarkable failures of to be human with with one another. And it’s the disbelief that can’t possibly happen that covers the Satanist activities. You know, it’s like, well, that’s too outrageous. No one would do that. So, you know, that gives them jaw all the protection you need to keep doing it. If we go, Whoa, no, this is a path that leads that way, you know, goes to destruction all the way. And we know how, how that would happen. We also by that we know how to prevent it. So, you know, we, we want to teach little kids that God created you to be the source of good things and joy and belonging to other people and evil will keep you living some other pattern that will keep you miserable all your life. And it isn’t that you won’t hurt by being good, but the reason for that is that it hurts to be alive in a life full of death. Death doesn’t hurt. That’s the first thing I noticed. Things that are dead don’t hurt. Things that are alive hurt in the presence of things that are deadly. So pain is actually a sign of being alive, not a sign of being dead. Most people think the pain they feel as a result of their being bad, as opposed to there’s life still in me. So where did it come from? Well, it came from God. How do I be thankful for God giving me life? And now we’ve got a real, you know, reason to not cover up anything that’s bad or painful. 

You know, understanding how all that works is different than than learning everything you can about it. The thing about the occult mind is that occult thoughts are always not quite true, and the capacity for cult thinking to capture your mind with this unsolvable problem, like, I’ve almost got it, I’ve almost got it, will take over your mind in thinking in just a terrible way. So I really don’t study the occult at all. I’m not recommending that. I’m saying we need to understand what motivated people to get into it, because those are common motivations for all human beings. And then if we can actually deal with those motivations, what did you need? Well, I needed to find out who I really was and get somebody to be with me. And the first thing that you’ll find that cults will say is, well, we know how bad you really are, and we’re the only ones who are willing to be with you. So if you leave us, you got nobody. And you know, this is something the church actually has to be able to look at and go like, well, I know how bad you can be, or I can be, but you still need me to be with you so that we can find where Jesus is the middle of this and help, you know, find the way out of this, this swamp we keep getting into. That’s the dynamic I’m thinking we need to all understand so that we don’t flip out when we hear something that seems too bad to deal with.

Ann Maree
Yeah, I like the story. I think you’ve talked about this a little, and I’m just curious if there’s anything else you’d like to say. You have said that we think, if we will some simply think correctly, like solid doctrine, for example, all will be well. But obviously we see that’s not true. What else are we missing with this line of thinking? 

Dr Wilder
The idea of if I knew all the right things to do is helpful for us to basically find out how far off we are. So Paul says about the law that’s God’s perfect will for everything, and it will manage to condemn you, but you won’t be able to do it. And so there’s the problem, if we’re, no matter how much we know about God, it will manage to condemn us for not having reached that as opposed to helping us actually do it. What do we actually need for change? Turns out, in the human brain, we need somebody who cares about us right the way we are, right wherever we are. That’s what actually cults claim to do. We’re the ones who actually know you and will actually stay with you. And the hardest thing for people coming out of cults is that when they go back to the church, people don’t know them, and if they find out anything bad about them, they dump them like, oh, well, we don’t want to be around you. You know, that’s you know, you’re going to contaminate us somehow or another. The weird thing about Jesus, you know, with the lepers, is that everybody else says, you touch a leper, you get contaminated. And Jesus said. No, the flow goes the other way. If I touch a leper, the health goes out of me and goes into the leper, because the health that I have in me is stronger than the problem they have in them. And he did this all across the board, and kept freaking people out because everyone was afraid of being contaminated. Well, we need a church that’s that way, like the love of God in me is stronger than whatever the devil has told you. So we’re going to let that flow go into you. And you know, so we’re not worried about where you are. We’re interested in discovering who you are, meant to be, and to that, I have to be able to see who God how God sees me. Because here’s the bottom line for human beings, if I can’t see that God loves anything in me, I’m not going to believe he loves anything in you. I may think that’s what he says, but when I look at you, I won’t be able to see anything other than your annoying characteristics. But if I can look at me and go look, yeah, a lot of things about me must annoy God crazy, but he he sees this, and this is what he’s growing in me. So we’re the kind of community that looks within each other, readily admits to the things that God doesn’t like and say, but now we’re going to find the things that God is growing in the middle of this. That’s where I would go with trying to answer the question that you posed. I don’t know if I did it to your satisfaction or not.

Ann Maree
Yes, absolutely. And I love too that you’re touching on the writing that you did in The Other Half of Church, which is one of my favorite all time books. So yes, and that whole idea of seeing one another and having joy when you see each other, as opposed to, I try that now so often, and I find how often it’s easier to do the opposite. 

Dr Wilder
Yeah, yeah, we’re, we’re wired for that by the world the devil, and, you know, just the flesh. Yep. So overcoming that is why we can only see dimly, as Paul says, you know, but it’s so worth seeing.

Ann Maree
Yes, amen and amen. What is the biggest deterrent to Satanism? 

Dr Wilder
Gratitude. 

Ann Maree
I love it.

Dr Wilder
No, thankful, grateful life. You know that it attaches us to God. It helps us look for the goodness that’s available to us in the middle of the mess that we’re in. And it, you know, it’s the attitude that also prevents us from being tempted by the idea that God’s keeping good things away from me, like, you know, when Jesus asked, “Are you his disciples are going to leave me too?” And, and they said, “Well, who else has the words of life?” You know, that’s the deterrent, you know, to to Satanism. And, yeah, it helps, of course, if we do understand that humans can do some pretty horrible things. But still, that’s the part that really has to grow in all of us. How do we stay grateful to God when we’re feeling upset. And the difference between an unhealthy family and a healthy family is that, in a healthy family, when we’re upset, we use the upset to guide us back into better relationships. And in an unhealthy family, we use the upset to try to control other people and get our way. So we try to win. 

Another way to describe the church that’s very attracted to Satanism is it’s a church of winners, because winning is the objective that Satan goes after this. You know you want to be a winner? I’ll show you how to win if you want to be grateful, we don’t have to win. We’re just glad to be here. So gratitude, gratitude, in fact, when we start teaching people about gratitude in our center, up until that point, everybody who came in with with big trauma got hospitalized at some point, by looking at their trauma, they’d eventually get so depressed we’d have to hospitalize them so they wouldn’t kill themselves. When we started teaching you, well, we’ll look at the things that happened to you, but first of all, we’re going to teach you how to feel appreciation, gratitude, thankfulness, build joy. From that point on, the hospitalizations essentially ended. You know, it was like, well, we’re going to build this and as we can, we’ll deal with the other stuff. Well, we’re actually building a life. So gratitude. That’s the ticket. And that’s first chapter Romans as well, if you want to go read about.

Ann Maree
And from what I understand, it also encourage. Is the right brain chemistries? 

Dr Wilder
Oh yes, yes, that’s where actually, it’s much easier to form relationships with people who are grateful than it is with people who are cantankerous and upset all the time. And so trying to build relationships where glad to be together built around that sort of thing. And it does build all of the brain, building chemistry for the right brain that has our resilience and capacity to handle things. So, yeah, we’re building a more stable brain, which, by the way, you might want to know in the brain that when you do a brain scan of dissociative identities, they’re all scattered in different parts of the brain. The little clumps of the brain are doing this. And when the traumas are removed, all those parts of the brain are still active. They just work with the rest of them, so they’re synchronized, and they’re working together. And so the actual resolution isn’t that you lose any part of your brain, it’s just that each part can work together with the other parts the way it was intended to, and that’s what you have to if you want to create dissociation, you have to get a brain that’s young enough that it hasn’t started working together yet, and traumatize it so it never learns to do that. If you get a brain that’s already learned how to work together, you can’t do it because it’s already wired to work together, and trauma just makes you feel lousy. Suffering is what it is. So we need all of those parts. It’s just so much better when they’re harmonized than when they can’t get along. 

Ann Maree
Yeah, you’re describing that shattered word that Carya uses, but also, even Dr Gingrich has named a couple of her books with such a good that’s such a great picture of what’s happening. 

I have something that Carya said in this episode that I kind of want to interact on. One of the things that she told us was that any ritual, whether good or bad, is a deliberate, planned activity designed to symbolize, express and reinforce beliefs. So now we’re even talking a little bit more into the training that happened with her, but I’m going to play something off of what I just said. She continues to say, and then I have a question for you.

Carya recording
A so called ritual that you do entirely alone is more like a habit or a practice or a discipline. So organized ritual abuse is simply that- a planned event in which a group of people come together to use sex and other forms of abuse to symbolize, express, and reinforce certain beliefs or values, both for themselves and for their victims. Not all ritual abuse is religious in nature. Abusive rituals can symbolize, express and reinforce beliefs that are not based on religion. Just think about how a gang could create abusive rituals to keep members loyal, or a pimp could create rituals to keep his prostitutes under his control. But in my case, most of the ritual abuse I experienced was religious in nature.

Ann Maree
So this is carias explanation from her perspective as a victim. And so one of the things she and I talked about was hearing from the experts on this. So what does the research say? What else is helpful for us to understand as the listeners in the audience about ritualistic abuse.

Dr Wilder
For the group that believes that gods have power, the rituals are a form of magic. So if you believe the rule that God set down is to keep you from good things, then you break that by specific procedures. You repeat what God said in a, you know, in a way that violates the purpose for it, and that’s how you extract power. The other part of it is back to the mind control. And all kinds of people can use rituals to make your mind predict what’s going to happen next. Part of the rituals even could be, we’re going to create confusion for a while. We’re going to contradict what’s going to happen, and then after that, we win. So, you know, the objective is, you know, some magic formula for winning, and to get people to do it together, you have to put a format that they understand and can repeat, especially if you want to keep recharging that same source of power, whatever it is. But they’re all designed to create power, and power sometimes is in the, you know, the sex, money and control side of things. Status raising for the leaders and stuff like that, humiliating for other people. And, you know, showing who has those sorts of things. But those are all ways of generating power. And the ritual has a nice thing, because it just makes your brain predict the outcome before it actually happens. And people become more and more and more compliant when they know for sure it’ll turn out this way anyway. Yeah, I think she’s right about that. The religious rituals have to involve the power being stolen, shall we say, from someone of the gods. Doesn’t have to be the Christian sense of God. Juju, for instance, in Africa, is using different gods than that for their magic. I’ll call it magic because it that’s what most of the occultists call. They’ll call it not slight of hand magic. It’s, it’s special ways to get power for the people who are smarter than the average dummy who follows the rules.

Ann Maree
Okay, so now I’m your average church goer. I’m a member of a church that perhaps something like this is happening and or there are, there are children that are being impacted. How would I know what are the warning signs or red flags that I might be looking for? 

Dr Wilder
This is a very tricky question, in that one of the ways we got started in all of this was by compiling a list. I think we had about 30 different things that were signs. And so we talked to one group, and they were involved in spiritual warfare. And they said, “Oh, those are all signs of demonization.” And another group said, “those are all signs of trauma.” And another group said, you know, “that’s a sign of ritual abuse.” And so the problem is, most of the signs are signs of lack of joy to be together with other people and some kind of, you know, I’m I’m hiding something. But what is being hidden? No one knows. So is it ritual? Well, if your group is always about looking good and winning, you know, and God’s there to help you win. You’re already in a dangerous environment, whether it turns all the way to ritual abuse or just pastoral failure and stuff like that, because God didn’t call winners. And you know he doesn’t need us to make him look good to the world in order for things to work, and God is not our great assistant in the sky to get what we want. Those are the sort of the most common danger things. 

But frankly, the best path out of this is start an interactive relationship with God, where he can talk to you about things, and then you’ll notice that when there’s ritual abuse around, there is a reaction against letting God in to talk to you about things. Whether it’s all the way to satanic ritual abuse or some kind of other religious oriented abuse, and there’s plenty of legalistic religious abuse that, you know, doesn’t go all the way to what we call satanic worship. But you know, the reaction against letting Jesus in to talk to us about what’s going on in our lives is pretty strong, and in all of those environments, that’s the safest path in and then God actually direct you. You’ll say, “Well, look, we got a demon here. We really ought to deal with that.” Or, “look, there’s a an abusive situation here. We really ought to deal with that.” Or, “listen, this person is deceived. We should have a look at that.” And that’s, that’s the path I just recommend for everyone to build.

And then what we end up finding is that people who have good attachments to others are always the ones who detect something is wrong. I go, “Wait a minute. Someone just isn’t responding the way they would.” Something happened to my child and they stopped responding the way my child always does. You know, where’s the person I know and love? That is actually the way that most of these things have been discovered along the way. When there’s been an organization or something that’s doing things in the background, people with healthy attachments just smelled a rat, and the best place to have a healthy attachment is with Jesus and share it with the people around you. I think that’s where we should focus our attention, and it’s also the best way to prevent false leads.

Ann Maree
So can you share a little bit on that note, I guess, about spiritual adoption and its place in the healing process? 

Dr Wilder  

Oh yes. Well, that’s also another highly misused concept. And so the idea is that God is creating a family. And so as we’re looking into that, we’re trying to figure out, you know, what kind of relationship is he building between you and me. Is it like a brother and sister? Is it like a mother and daughter? Father and daughter? You know, what an uncle? You know? What kind of relationships are we building? What kind of attachments he’s using, the normal human patterns, the way they were meant to be, not the way we necessarily had him in the family. So when spiritual adoption comes down to an individual saying, “Oh, I’m going to adopt you and I’ll be your father,” that’s what Jesus warns us against. Says, Don’t seek to be fathers in Israel, don’t call anybody father. Don’t look for that. You know, if I declare this is the relationship that’s developing, I’m just trying to get my way and, you know, build my status as whatever it is. But when Paul talks around and says, “Well, yeah, you have many guides in the faith, but you don’t have very many fathers. I’m your father,” he’s talking about what God is actually created, and the community acknowledges, and that’s the difference of a community says, “ah, when we look at you, this is what we see God is building this between the two of you,” you now have how God is building a people out of people that were not once a people. Otherwise you get sort of a borderline personality thing where, well, since you’re my this, then I you have to do this and this and this. It’s a way of controlling other people. And most leaders know exactly what that feels like. “Well, you’re the pastor, so you should do this and this and this,” like, oh, that doesn’t feel like, you know, a good relationship. It just feels like a way of guilting me into a, you know, a response. And so there’s this extremely unhealthy pattern that emerges when people going around trying to name it and claim it with with relationships. There’s this other very healthy pattern that develops when a community looks at each other and goes like, what are we doing here? You know, who are we becoming to each other? 

So the very short example was, I was in Korea for the first time, and they asked me to do a presentation to this very large church, and right in the middle of it, because I was using PowerPoint to show brain slides and all that sort of stuff right in the middle of it. My computer thought it was the middle of the night, so it went into an update. You know, don’t turn this off until it’s over. And it’s like, no, my presentation is starting. And it’s like, how am I going to show that? I have no idea what’s going on here. So I asked God on the spot, you know, what do you want me to do? He said, “Well, you are here to meet your family that you’ve never met before.” Now that, to me, is a totally different concept from I’m there to make a good brain presentation. And so I thought to myself, Okay, if I was meeting my family, how would I talk to them? What would be my attitude? And this is, this is actually what God wants us to learn to do with each other, like, well, your family, I’m not sure exactly what, but let’s get to know each other. And the one thing I know families are for is to help each other become the person that God created them to be. So whatever else that might turn out to be, this is, this is who I am. 

And then, then there’s the people that God didn’t put in our life, that Satan puts into our life. And when we’re talking with an addiction recovery group, I remember like, well, the people I hang out with the most are the people I shouldn’t be around. They’re the ones that I’ve found to sort of nurture my dark self, you know, the one that I think is the real me, but nobody else wants. So if we’re talking about this deceptive pattern, then I just create this image of myself that I want other people to support, and that’s what the average church does. You know, it’s not my true self, it’s not my dark self, it’s just an image of me. It’s, you know, that that we support each other and we keep each other all in our comfort zone so that doesn’t form a spiritual family. Going to the dark side creates a spiritual family, all right, but it’s a wicked one. We need this the other god sides. 

Who does God see in each of us? And let’s bring that out, and before long, we will start feeling like we’re family to each other. Maybe you won’t be able to name the the relationship exactly for a while, but the community eventually will say, “Yeah, you know what? You’re like a spiritual mother to so many people here,” or whatever it might be, that’s that’s what we’re actually aiming for. And it’s not a way of controlling others. It’s a way of bringing out who God meant them to be. And when that happens, those are the people sustain their recovery, because they’re becoming who God meant them to be.

Ann Maree
It’s a beautiful picture, too, and a beautiful way of saying what God is doing. He is bringing calling together our family, his family, his body. 

Well. Dr Wilder, I have bunches of questions more than I wanted to ask you. This has been thrilling to hear from you, and so thank you. Thanks for participating on this episode and for this season.

Dr Wilder
It’s been good to be here with you, and I hope you continue to bring blessing to all of your listeners. 

Ann Maree
Thank you, and I think you’ve been a part of that. So grateful for having you today.

Dr Wilder
Well, it’s good to be with you, and thank you for being diligent and careful with all of this. And since you’re doing both.

Ann Maree
That’s a huge compliment. Thank you. 

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

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