Sarah Nyhan

I wrote: I didn’t see you today at [church]. I saw S. I was wondering if you could pass this on to him also and thank him for his welcome today.

I’ve been on a journey. I miss you all so much. But I feel like I’m in danger of losing what I’ve gained if I listen to the current teaching at [church].

I know R and you all love God. That is not in question.

I happened to run across this video tonight. It is the best explanation I’ve heard so far of what I’ve been learning and my journey. Especially the part about the priest and sacrifice. I’d love your opinion if you listen.
https://youtu.be/to4axvow9YM

She wrote: I’m so sad that I missed you yesterday. HUGS!

I could only listen to half of your link. My advice would be to stop listening to this guy. He’s a false teacher. He is taking scripture out of context and is twisting it to make it say what he wants his listeners to hear. It’s sad, but he does not have the heart of Jesus, and he is leading people astray. Keep coming to [church] and if you don’t like our church, go to a church who teaches the Word verse by verse, getting the proper context. It’s vitally important. We love you and miss you!!!

I wrote: Thanks for replying. Good to hear from you. Love you and miss you all very much. I don’t know this guy like you seem to. But I’ve listened to him a few times and didn’t come away with the conclusion you did. But no problems disagreeing. However, if you’re interested in sharing more about what you theological points you disagreed with, I’d be interested.

She wrote: Well, I don’t have time to go into details on a false teacher, but clearly this guy is a universalist. He believes that all beliefs go toward heaven. This would make the Bible out to be a liar. All scripture is given by God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.

All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. All throughout the Bible men and women were given a choice…choose you this day whom you will serve. It’s a choice. We have to choose Jesus…not Mohammad, or any other god. It’s all about Jesus.

I wrote: Thank you for responding, D. I respect your decision not to watch, but I don’t think it is fair to judge what he is saying without hearing him out completely. It’s like the same in writing a paper: you introduce your thesis, then you flesh it out, then you tell them what you told them. If you only listen to the thesis, then is it fair to judge the content of the whole paper without reading it?

Are you familiar with the chiastic structure? I am learning that there are chiasms in the Bible. Maybe the whole Bible is a chiasm? They used it back in the day to help people remember without the luxury of the technology we have today.

All to say it’s difficult to explain and understand what he is saying without the complete context. The meat of what he is saying is in the second half.

But if you want a taste of the part that I find most interesting, you can skip to around 26:13 where he talks about the day of atonement and who the sacrifice was for and how it worked. And that it was a picture of Jesus. I’d be interested in your thoughts on that part.

Many have already dismissed me and this guy as a universalist. R says I am contaminating people. Others have said this is from the devil. So I’ve been getting my beating.

But nobody is willing to discuss the individual theological points such as the one I referenced.

My question to them is could our God not be so loving? So good? So big? Does He limit His love or do we?

And what exactly secures your eternal future? Something you do? If so, what exactly? I could never figure that out. Any explanation that held me responsible, when pushed to the limit, I couldn’t measure up.

That’s when I believe God brought me to the end of myself and when I threw myself down on NOTHING except His love and mercy, that’s when I believe He opened my eyes to a whole bunch of stuff.

So are we saved by serving Jesus, like you said? If so, how do you define who is in and who is out?

She wrote: I did not say we were saved by serving Jesus. It’s by grace we have been saved through faith.

“For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him, will not perish, but have eternal life.”

I choose not to listen to a false teacher…they are wolves in sheep clothing seeking to destroy.

I’m sad that it has affected you. I am praying for you.

Instead of listening to people, maybe you should just read the Bible from cover to cover and ask God to show you Himself and His amazing love.

I wrote: I agree completely, but the same applies to people listening to R.

There is so much more to what I could tell you. I regret not yet being able to communicate my own thoughts on everything. But I am working on it. Still learning, still digging.

My only point in even sending you the link was just to show you where my head is at in attempts to explain my absence from CCSA. I miss you all very much so it isn’t personal. I just wanted to offer an explanation instead of ghosting on you with no word.

I clearly understand what I am up against. But I trust God to sort everything out. For sure after our time on earth, but hopefully before.

Thank you for prayers. I’ll take all I can get. Again, I ask: if it depends on you believing in Jesus, how do you define the limits of who is in and who is out? I could never figure that out for myself or others. Every time I thought I had it figured out, I would fail my own measure.

And what about the people who don’t know Jesus? They are out of luck? That’s the God that is being preached?

This man that you call a false teacher, he believes in Jesus. Does he have eternal life?

My point is that I believe my understanding of the Scriptures may have been limited. Not to argue with you. Just as a friendly challenge to really take your thinking to its full limit and see if it can hold the full weight of what it is saying. I am doing the same with what I believe.

She wrote: R preaches the Bible verse by verse in context. That is vitally important. Before ever hearing R, I had already read through the Bible several times. The reason I respect R is that he preaches the Bible word for word, verse by verse.

God knows those who have chosen Him. Once saved by God’s grace, we are given the gift of the Holy Spirit and His fruit is then displayed in the lives of those who truly have accepted Him. Also, know that Jesus reveals Himself in many ways. He will reach that person you talked about because He is omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient. His love is perfect.

I wrote: Chosen Him. Truly accepted Him. Fruit.

All those things. Those are the things I used as my measures also. And I failed each one. When pushed to the full limits of their logic.

That’s when I started to find true freedom. When I tried my very best and failed at everything. Even in my belief. And then gave up. Ironically. Jesus was right there and picked me up. Felt like He said, “Finally.” ALL glory to Him. ☺ And the adventure I’ve been on since has been amazing.

I hope you never have to endure the humiliations, failures, and heartaches that I’ve had to go through in the past few years. They have been can’t-get-out-of-bed painful at times. But I was just thanking God yesterday for letting me fall so hard. I don’t think I ever would have known Him and His love like I do now.

She wrote: We have to rely on Jesus…we all fall short…all have sinned . We fall when we do things in our own strength. We need to fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. He leads us.

I wrote: Agreed!

This is the day that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.

I have no idea what I am doing.

I have dreams. I have hopes. I have what seems like an infinite number of ideas. But I really don’t know what this is going to be. All I know is that I feel like I need to start.

Nothing else is working out. It seems like my life has been on hold for seven to eight years. And will continue to be until I write this book. The story of my life. Of what happened to me. Of what I learned along the way.

I don’t feel like I’m anybody. Like, who am I? But maybe that’s the point. I’m not special. I’m as common as the next man. Something, someone, people can relate to.

I think that’s why Jesus came down to a single, unwed mother. Specifically born into a broken family. Specifically rejected. Specifically an outcast. More people can relate to that than can relate to royalty.

Is this Jesus for the common man? Or is this Jesus only for kings? Only for the religious elite (self-proclaimed or otherwise)? Only for the “perfect” people? The ones who have a curated social-media feed?

Or is this Jesus for the real niggers? The real bitches? The real po’? The real hustling-ass survivors? Just trying to make it through another day without completely losing it all?

I used to be that chick. That teen. That fucking heartless bitch.

I used to ride around in the back seat of my mother’s car maybe even on her way to church. Dragging me there. Most of my childhood no choice. And for awhile I would have a tennis ball that I’d opened up. With a rag inside. Soaked in gasoline. Trying to light it and throw it out the window. On my way to church.

I set the trash cans on fire at my high school. Three of them. Over two days. The administration on the loud speaker warning the other kids that someone was trying to burn down the school. I was that kid.

I thought they were dumb. Couldn’t they see that I lit the fires in the trashcans specifically so that the fires would NOT burn down the school?!

I would carry gasoline around in my backpack. In a sports water bottle that I took off my bike. My goal was to somehow get it into the plumbing system so that it would blow up the whole school. But I ironically didn’t want anyone to get hurt. That’s why I never went through with it.

But if I could have figured out a way to do it, I would have. I just never thought about it long enough to figure out a plan to make sure I could guarantee nobody was in the buildings before I set the whole damn place to explode.

My father is lucky. I would think for hours about how to kill him. I just could never figure out a way to do it without getting caught.

And then he has the nerve to later in life call my writings “Bible Babble”. Like, BITCH – if you only knew how close you were to being killed!

But what leads a kid who was literally burning her arms with lighters. With heating up metal objects and pressing them into my skin? I took lit cigarettes and put them out on my arms. I would take a hammer and swing it against my arms to try to break my bones. Before I was even fifteen. I swallowed an entire bottle of pills to try to take myself out.

How do I go from that to then this? To this woman who just wants people to know the Love that found me?

This isn’t your typical emotional testimony. This isn’t me saying I am a horrible person. And thank God for saving a wretch like me from an eternal barbeque pit. No, that WAS the old me. But that’s not the me now. That’s not the one writing THIS story. I have changed. Or rather I have been changed, been freed from that false religion. From that origin story. I am now Living a completely different narrative.

What happened? And does it matter at all? To anyone else but me?

I hated the word forgiveness. For good reason. When you get abused, most people prefer that you don’t talk about it. Don’t make anyone else uncomfortable by acknowledging what they don’t want to admit. What they don’t want to deal with. The world is hard enough. Can’t you just shut up about what happened to you? Like, goddamn it bitch! Do you want a fucking medal or something? Do you want us all to take our tissues out and run up to you so you can cry it out? How fucking long do you think you need? Because my show that I binge watch is about to be on. So I don’t have much fucking time for your little stupid-ass feelings.

My mother told me that she was going to warn HER family about me. Not OUR family. No, HER family. About me. Because I dared to directly confront her one day. I told her that I thought that not only did she know I was being abused, but she permitted it. She handed me over. She didn’t do anything to stop him.

There was one time. Where I thought maybe she was finally stepping up. When I had been remanded to the psychiatric hospital after the fires. After I turned myself in. And who knows what the fuck my father had been spitting to all their ears, but unbelievably there was a conversation happening about whether I should be discharged to my father’s residence after the hospital. I couldn’t even believe anyone was considering this an option! I was kinda in shock. And therefore somewhat relieved when my mother stepped up for once. To say I shouldn’t go to my father’s.

I thought for years that maybe that meant she could finally admit who he was. And finally try to protect me.

But then I realized in my 40s that, seeing as she had never stepped up for me before, she was probably just trying to make sure that her child support didn’t get cut by having my father take me. She probably was just keeping me around for the little itty bitty few more dollars I was worth to her in the form of that child support money.

When I was discharged from the psychiatric hospital, she made me pay back all the money that hospital stay cost her. There was no time to recuperate. There was no time or space to heal. She was not supportive.

In fact, once we got back to the house, she started literally pacing around the house dramatically having a meltdown about how they were going to put her in jail if she refused to fill my prescription they gave me for psychiatric medications.

Here I am, not two hours out of the psychiatric hospital, and having to call them back to try to calm her down. To tell her she wouldn’t go to jail if she didn’t buy the medicine.

Oh she had money for other things. I remember that was the time when she started buying silver jewelry. And going square dancing. Those were important.

But your daughter not completely losing her mind – nope, just an annoyance. Just an inconvenience. An irritation. Just an afront to your perfect choices and perfect parenting.

How dare I be so fucking ungrateful? To have any feelings! To have any thoughts! To dare to express them!! The fucking audacity!! You ungrateful twerp! You fat fucking bitch! Don’t you know?! Didn’t you get the fucking memo, you stupid bitch!?! You’re here to suck dick and keep everyone’s fragile-ass egos in check! That’s all you’re good for you whore. You stupid fat pig. Shut the FUCK up! Go know your place. Go back to your room. Spend your time looking good. Then we might throw you a bone every now and then. If you do your job. If you bend over and suck ALLLL the dicks. Just fucking take it you lazy loser bitch.

Make us look good. Never bring up anything that ever happened except the times where we get the credit. For doing something other people value. Versus actually having a real relationship with you. Yeah, that’s too much work.

Everybody’s doing it. Everybody’s the same. Who the fuck do you think you are for bucking the system?! For going against the grain?! For thinking anything worthwhile could come from this? From your stupid ass mouth. You have nothing to show for yourself. You’re a nobody. A lazy loser. A fat fucking pig. Except nobody even wants to fuck you now that you’re so goddamn big. You’re not even worth the little that was. Nobody wants you. You could go die and we’d consider it selfish of you to force us to acknowledge you even in your death.

It’s the same every day, you stupid bitch. Look around. Nothing is going to change.

Just shut your mouth, do you time, and die. Like everyone else.

Yeah, this was not the book I thought I was going to write before. Back in 2017. When I thought that all I needed to do was explain theology. In the academic sense. No, this is definitely not that book.

You have been warned. This is all the shit.

Buckle up. Or deboard.

You are forewarned.

As an abused person, you are ALWAYS looking for safety. You think there is someone out there that will never hurt you. You call only THAT Love.

And I don’t blame you. I never will.

But I don’t think it exists like that. Like the global collective conscience currently promotes.

I’ve met probably easily over 20,000 people so far in the past 15-20 years. That’s probably a pretty good dataset. And I haven’t yet met someone safe enough to meet my standards.

I pushed them all away. All I have is myself left now. And turns out even I am pretty shitty company many days.

You’ll need people someday. I promise you. Just think about that at least.

I know it hurts. I just don’t have any other answer.

Unfortunately it’s like they told us all along, for better or for worse: What would you want someone to do for you if you were in their shoes? If the roles were reversed?

It might not be fair, but it just might be true. What we’re actually working with. Outside of the completely reasonable ideal.

Sorry.

You can keep looking, but I’ve been at this decades.

I don’t think Jesus is coming the way y’all been sold.

Unfortunately I think it’s up to us. The complete opposite of what you were promised.

Right or wrong, I think we’re all stuck here until we get it literally together. Not even one little lamb lost.

I wager our souls don’t get relief when the physical body gives out. How else am I supposed to understand Jesus talking about spirits roaming around and looking for a body to possess?

That’s the worst kind of karma. To not even get relief with death.

What if the next time you get sent back, you return as a recipient of and to the exact world you created before? All you worked to prepare, or didn’t work to prepare, the last time you were here before.

In other words, y’all ain’t living now like you gotta come back to exactly this. But, what if that’s facts?

I don’t think heaven is a place. I think it’s a state of mind.

And we got HELLLLLLLLL enough right now. Unless y’all are dying for more?

So, what we gonna do about it?

You risking fate again? You risking rollin’ the die of Life and thinking you’ll get better “luck” next time?

I don’t like those odds now.

House always wins. And by House, I mean Father God. Mother Holy Spirit. And Jesus.

If They went to all the trouble to come down and do the whole Virgin birth, be murdered on The Cross thing… then what makes you so sure all you have to do is dodge and wait out the chaos here in order to reach nirvana on the other side?

What if the Truth is much more reasonable? And intellectually honest.

That a God who goes to all the trouble documented in a book that has survived millennia might just be concerned with your healing more than your comfort?

And if not even one little lamb will be left behind, then what makes you think an about-face would happen in terms of God accepting leaving ANY part of you behind?

I now don’t think it works like that.

I now don’t think the answer is you, or ANY one of us, gets to coast on our laurels and get off easy, get off scott-free.

I fear we come right back round again to the world just as we personally left it. Over and over as long as it takes. Until complete healing for and of ALL is achieved.

Even beyond humans. The WHOLE Earth, including ALL in it. Every breath, every being, every tree, every cell, every atom.

I think that’s the definition of Justice they didn’t teach us, conveniently: setting things right. As in making straight the way. Putting the broken bones back together. Everyone. And so on.

Versus punishment and destruction.

You think Hitler, and all the other flagrant abusers, escaped retribution?

I don’t anymore think so at all. I think they got re-shuffled. I think their spirits got recycled. I think they came all the way back around here in a different form. And exist amongst us even now.

Maybe Hitler is even right now existing as an infant in a mother’s arms. What if Hitler even got sent back as a little Jewish baby this time? To the exact world he created. Wouldn’t that be some shit?!

But what if it’s true? What if the people shooting the guns come back as the babies of the victims they did dirty?

What if that’s all the luck and deliverance we can expect?

Would you Live differently then?

Any one of the people alive right now could have been someone else in a past life. And will continue to be. Over and over. As long as it takes until every last one of us completely gets it.

That’s what I now believe. That we are all literally one.

No soft landings, buddy. Only real, real Life.

Until we ALL, every last one, completely get it. That just might be real actual Love.

What if you never get to escape your consequences? What if you only come back as the grandbaby, or something similar, of the person you treated the worst? What if THAT is the best you can expect?

Wouldn’t that be some shit?

I don’t think it’s too far fetched or crazy of an idea.

And if I’m not wrong, I definitely think the majority missed the memo.

What would you do differently right now if there’s even a chance that what I am saying is true?

You willing to keep chancing God letting you off the hook scott-free eternally?

Or is something in your soul whispering I just might be correct enough to warrant some more serious self-reflection?

Just sayin’.