This week’s guest is Benjamin Faye, also known as @heytherebenji.

Benji was adopted when he was young and during middle school, his adoptive parents suddenly “wanted a spiritual life” and started going to church. 

His life as an adoptee was difficult. Benji questioned whether he belonged in the family and things only got worse as he got older. His adoptive parent became abusive and in his early twenties, he had to leave. 

He hoped the church could be the place he could question and process his grief and uncertainty but it wasn’t. 

“…on some level, I knew that…there would be no room for me to process [my questions]. It would just begin and end with Jesus, and it’s very, very difficult to have a conversation when there’s a preset ending to it.”

Benji and his partner moved from church to church, hoping to find where they could fully belong. Skip ahead to 2020 and all the covert racism that has always been in the background of white evangelicalism became blindingly obvious. They both had to get out. 

Today, Benji is using his online platform to share his own story and to be a place of find empathy and compassion. His work is a great example of living out secular grace.

Links

Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/heytherebenji/

TikTok
https://www.tiktok.com/@heytherebenji

Important Things with Ben and Carole

Patreon
https://www.patreon.com/important_things

Quotes

“It’s varying states of uncertainty in oneself.”

“…on some level, I knew that…there would be no room for me to process [my questions]. It would just begin and end with Jesus, and it’s very, very difficult to have a conversation when there’s a preset ending to it.”

“I’m an eternal optimist…if somebody’s going to find the silver lining, it’s going to be me.” 

“It was that Genesis 50:20 thing where, like, ‘What the enemy meant for evil, God meant for good,’ and that’s the thing I told myself for the next five years…”

“On some level, you grow up understanding the power dynamic, and so if you’re the only Black person calling out racism in a white space, they will turn on you—and this is true in both liberal and conservative spaces.”

“I eventually began to shut down and was basically reliving my teenage years in my late twenties because I wasn’t safe anymore. I really wasn’t safe at all. I was told that I could be…but I couldn’t.”

“Looking back now…it’s a cult. I know that now just because of how it functioned, the way there was this, almost-deification of the leader and that the leader couldn’t really do anything wrong, wasn’t really held accountable for anything.” 

“It was survival mode all the time; fight or flight all the time.”

“What started to become clear: our pastor was, in effect, gaslighting our friend using our words. That’s when I knew that I was done.” 

“That following Sunday…was just another day, and there was such a relief to that. It was almost as if my body was like, Thank you. This is what we’ve been needing for a really long time…” 

“The more I listened and the more I watched [stories of deconstruction], the more I was like, Oh! So there is a name I can attach to this in-between place. There is this space that exists where people just aren’t sure about stuff.” 

“The more digging into it I did, the more I began to detangle things—the more I became ashamed for how I’d treated the LGBTQ community, the more I realized how functionally racist a lot of the theology was, and that it really wasn’t just one church.” 

“I got to a point where deconstruction meant letting some things fall apart, really letting everything fall apart and try to figure out who I am while in the wreckage.” 

Interact

Join the Deconversion Anonymous Facebook group!

Deconversion
https://gracefulatheist.com/2017/12/03/deconversion-how-to/

Secular Grace
https://gracefulatheist.com/2016/10/21/secular-grace/

Support the podcast
Patreon https://www.patreon.com/gracefulatheist
Paypal: paypal.me/gracefulatheist

Attribution

“Waves” track written and produced by Makaih Beats

David Ames  0:11  
This is the graceful atheist podcast United studios Podcast Network. Welcome, welcome. Welcome to the graceful atheist podcast. My name is David and I am trying to be the graceful atheist. Please consider rating and reviewing the podcast on the Apple podcast store, rate the podcast on Spotify, and subscribe to the podcast wherever you are listening to. If you find yourself in the middle of doubt, deconstruction, the dark night of the soul, you do not have to go through it alone. Join our private Facebook group deconversion anonymous, you can find us at facebook.com/groups/deconversion Special thanks to Mike T for editing today's show. onto today's show. Our lien interviews today's guest Benji of Hey there Benji fame on Instagram. Benji was adopted, his adopted parents became religious, he found himself in the middle of a religious context that he threw himself into, he became a worship leader. But as time went on, things were not good with his adoptive parents. And things were not great within the church as well. Things like the inherent racism within the church became obvious to Benji over time. Now Benji uses his online presence to help people who are also going through the deconstruction process, you can find him on Instagram at Hey there, Benji, here is our Lean interviewing Benji.

Arline  1:53  
Hi, Ben, do welcome to the graceful atheists podcast.

Benjamin Faye  1:55  
Thank you for having me.

Arline  1:57  
I'm super excited you and I connected often on last year, and then recently we are living vaguely near one another. And so this is this is exciting. I'm excited to hear your story in a few weeks, I'll be able to hear your partner story. And this is great, I'm glad you're gonna be able to be on. So usually how we start is just tell us about the religious environment you grew up in.

Benjamin Faye  2:22  
Sure. So I'm, I'm strange in the sense that I didn't get into a religious environment until I was, you know, in my tween adolescent years into my teenage years. And so in some ways, I came into it with a real understanding of what was going on. I know a lot of people probably, you know, they grew up in it. And that's all they know. But I still remember life before it. So, and I think it happened because of my adoptive parent was starting to get back into church themselves. They were sensing a need for spirituality in their life. And they started bringing me and my younger brother to church. And yeah, so that's kind of how it started. It was a really weird start. Because like I mentioned, I didn't come from that. I came from kind of an a religious thing. And then was kind of dropped in the middle of this world with its own contexts with its own kind of, you know, reference points and didn't really understand it. I came to understand that later, certainly. But it was very strange in the very beginning.

Arline  3:33  
I did too, I did not become a Christian or become really acquainted. Well, in high school, my mom started taking us to church or taking me to church, I say us it was my she forced my dad to come to. So she started making us go to church. But college was when for me it became like a real thing that I cared about and everything. It was kind of an A religious background. Like I knew God created things or believed that but like, it was just kind of this vague thing that it wasn't important. So your tween and teen years did you get involved in like a youth group? Or how did you end up going into church?

Benjamin Faye  4:07  
Well, so initially, it started with like a boys mentoring program. I I didn't grow up with a male figure in the home. So my adoptive parents thought maybe this will be the thing to kind of put him in this. And plus I was having some struggles at that time. Just with school and with just I guess we can call it behaviorally. In my head there are air quotes around it simply because a lot of it comes back to stuff that was happening in the environment that I was living in. So it was something that was kind of feeding on itself and but I was sort of being outsourced to other people rather than it was almost as though the issue was me rather than the environment. And really that's what the Vichy was the environment. Of course, I wouldn't find that out in for another 10 or 20 yours but as you do, but But yeah, so it started off as boys mentoring. And then you know, getting involved with the worship team, that kind of thing. That's how I got involved. So it wasn't like a youth group thing necessarily.

Arline  5:16  
It's amazing what you learn in your like 20s and 30s, that it wouldn't have been really helpful a decade before to have understood that. It isn't your fault or behaviors, responding to the environment that you're in, you're doing the best you can with the resources you have as a kid. Exactly. Yeah. So then what? So how was high school after high school?

Benjamin Faye  5:37  
High school years were hard. Emotionally because of that, because it was like, I thought I was a Christian, I was never fully sure. I think Christianity has this way of making you like, re up every week. And I don't know what it's rededicate yourself so and then you know, the goalpost keeps moving all the time. So you're never really sure if you're a real Christian or not, because it's like you're getting this part, right. But then I saw you live in like this when you're bla bla, bla bla, you know, and so there's always this kind of like looking over your shoulder, which shouldn't happen in a loving relationship. But it's what we were sold was the loving way to spur each other on and good works as it were. Yep. So teachers were hard, because you're just trying to figure out who you are. And in the middle of trying to figure out who you are, you're still wrestling with, am I enough to be considered a Christian? So it's varying states of unsure varying states of uncertainty within oneself. And so my, my teachers were tough ones, because I felt myself always on the fence, wanting to be committed, because I want to belong somewhere, as you know, I'm an adoptee. So you really, like few things in the world matter more than belonging somewhere. And it's very easily to become destabilized in that way. Because you started off on really shaky ground by virtue of the fact that you came to, you know, cognizance away from what was your birth parents? Or what was your birth reference? You know, you're starting off on shaky ground, you know, you. You don't come to realize it fully until you get older. But all that trauma starts to come to bear, the older you get. And so a lot of my teenage years and really into my 20s was trying to prove myself, trying to figure out, you know, where I belong to proving I belonged in the places I was already in, and being put in positions and a lot of ways to where I had to prove that I'd want where I was always in. So that was very, very difficult for me. But I always had music. I was a musician. So I was able to speak that language. And that's kind of how I got through. And that's how I was able to prove my worth. It would eventually become very tiring, because it was based on what I did, rather than where it was. But I was happy for the 10% of belonging where I could find it.

Arline  8:09  
Yeah, if that's the way that you can get that belonging and feel like you're part of something that's a human need. And then you put adoption on top of that, where like you said, you're starting off with, do I belong? Because I didn't, did not belong before. And now I'm here and do I belong here, plus, the church. And as a church, you know, this is an extremely diverse, the whole entire world's version of churches is so different, but like, there's a lot of using people for their gifts, until you are just completely burned out. You don't have anything to give. And yeah, finding your worth in that. That's hard. Because I mean, how else are you finding your worth? If that's what they value, right?

So did you go into college? Did you start work? Like, what what were your 20s? Like? Yeah, so

Benjamin Faye  9:03  
I went into college, still playing on worship teams, playing in a gospel group, that kind of thing. playing concerts, playing shows, doing all that kind of thing while I was still in school. And it was interesting time vary up and down. It's like you start to figure some things out. But other things still kind of elude you. You're still not sure who you are, you're still not really settled in that. And in my early 20s, I actually was contacted by my biological family, and I hadn't really been connected with them in years, and that caused a lot of excitement, also a lot of conflict. Conflict, not only within but also conflict, I believe, within my adoptive family. I think they wanted to be supportive of it, but it's almost like it was almost kind of weird. And I don't think they know they knew a whole lot about my adoptive family and If they did, they didn't tell me. So I'm trying to figure out who I am, I'm in this in between place. Um, at the time, things are starting to come very, very strained with my adoptive parent. So all of what little comfort that I come to cultivate was starting to become stripped away at that time, and I was looking for it somewhere else. But now I'm being bombarded with this new family, you know, where some of them look like me. Some of them have my last name, some of them, you know, have stories about things that I was involved in that I don't remember. I remember getting a letter from my brother, who was in the army at the time it was in Afghanistan, and was like asking me what my interests were. And I'm like, Oh, wow, like, it's a weird thing to meet your brother. It's a weird thing to have all these experiences that you know, 2324 years old, however old I was. So if I had to put a word to it, my 20s, at least the early part of my 20s, were extremely chaotic. Just because I couldn't make heads or tails of anything. But this is a point in the time in time in your life where, you know, in a capitalistic sense, you're supposed to figure out what you want to do with the rest of your life,

Arline  11:15  
for the rest of your life, not just now like, for when ever and ever.

Benjamin Faye  11:20  
When I was in high school, one of the gym teachers would say, what you do the next four years determines the next 40. Which I mean for high school is a bit intense. Because, you know, just in terms of relationships, my graduating class was 593. I don't know if I still talk to anyone from high school. with any regularity. I barely remember not right, I barely remember what I learned in high school, and even college to some extent. So but you're supposed to have all that stuff sorted out. But it's like, I don't even know who my family is. Yeah. You know, and then what is the role of God and all this? Did God orchestrate this? And if so, then why is it feel so unsettled? Like where is the goodness of God and all this confusion? So yeah, it was it was a lot.

Arline  12:15  
It is a lot. Did you have church people around you? Did you have friends, any college ministry any kind of support

Benjamin Faye  12:23  
during this time, so I was in church, but I don't. I didn't really tell anybody about this type of stuff. Okay, mainly because I didn't trust a lot of the people around me, it doesn't mean that we're bad people. It's just, you know, who you can go to certain places with, and you know, who you can't. And the people I could go to go to for this type of stuff. Were out of church, there were people I met at college, people who I'm still friends with to this day, you know, 1015 years after the fact. People who I could say, Yeah, this is really hard, or blah, blah, blah. But I, but on some level, and I've always been more emotional, I've always been more on the sensitive side. And a lot of the men in my life were not, they just didn't function in that way. And so it made things very hard, because there was always an expectation of me, where I felt like there was to function like the other men. And if I didn't, then you know, you just don't, necessarily. And that was in family that wasn't church, it was just, you know, there was all these things about being manly men in church, but it never really felt right to me. I knew I was a man. And I knew that's how I saw myself. But the characterizations surrounding that manliness never really fit to me. So most of my friends, you know, as I got older, were women. And that's still true, actually. Because they cut a lot of them can kind of go to those places a lot more easily than a lot of men can, in a general sense.

I knew that I couldn't go to a lot of church people, really any church people with what I was dealing with. Because even though I didn't have a language for it, then I knew that they would find some way to spiritualize it. And on some level, I knew that that would water it down and make it more confusing. Like there would there would be no room for me to process it. It would just begin and end with Jesus. And it's very, very difficult to have a conversation that way. When there's a preset ending to it. You know, there's a lot of churches that will tell you that they have an open door policy or they're or they'll say, you can talk about anything as it but the understanding is as long as it begins and ends with Jesus. You know, so if it comes to A situation where you're questioning theology. You know, if you, if the end result is always going to be Jesus, then you're not free to ask questions, because questions mean you can land anywhere. And so I think on some level intrinsically, I knew I couldn't go there, because I knew that they would try to tie some bow on it. And that would make it feel inauthentic. Of course, I didn't know that. And so I just thought I was being quiet and shy and in a way sinful, because you should be able to share this is family. But if the thing about family in that context is it's kind of thrust upon you rather than it more so than it is felt in a lot of ways, and a lot of ways. Something that's preset for you relevant, something that's allowed to kind of exist organically. So while there were ways in which I felt accepted, it felt like it was based on what I do more than who I am.

Arline  16:02  
You can have built in community, which can work out wonderfully in church, and you can have thrust upon you community where it's like, you just need to trust these people and tell them all your business and it's like, I can't our bodies know, something's not right about this situation. This is not a safe place. Like, and I don't know that. We know those words, you know, years ago, these are, these are newer vocabulary, safe places and things like that, but your body knows, like, you know, something's not right. So, so what happened next? Yeah.

Benjamin Faye  16:34  
Um, so I mean, the early 20s were kind of a crazy time, I was still involved in church. I met my partner, Carol, we met at a church service. And, you know, we started dating really quickly got engaged really quickly. Yep. And, but it was, it wasn't because the church forced that on us. We just really, really fell for each other really quickly. And it was, it was interesting, because we were long distance. So she was in school, she was at art school in San Francisco. And I was back on the East Coast. And we grew up two hours from each other. So she's from New York, I grew up just outside of Philadelphia. So we're, you know, Northeastern people. But that was another relationship that really was helpful in having a place to go with a lot of these emotions, because when things were getting really bad, with my adoptive parent, that was one person who I could talk to about it. And to that point, my adoptive parents, I don't really know what happened. Little things would upset them. I was living at home during the time I was in college, because I went to a community school nearby, because it was what could be afforded. And little things like brooms not being clean, you know, or, you know, things like that became huge things. And suddenly, you know, I was being away from home, going out doing things that you normally do in your early 20s. And that was causing friction for some reason. And, you know, the phrase, the refrain I hear the most one time, when I went out for my birthday, I came back to grab some stuff to hang out. I think I'm sleeping over at a friend's place or something like that. And they just kind of went off on me. They didn't know where I was going. They didn't know what my plans were anything like that. Which again, I was in my 20s not sure why there needed to be a whole lot of that. But the thing they said was you're changing and I don't think it's for the better. And it felt like I was shifting and evolving as a person. And maybe they were struggling to have a handle on it because they had control all that time. Or I don't know, I have no clue what that was about. But it was a really, really difficult time. And, like just random outbursts that were really hard to take and it made the environment even more unsafe than it already had been because it was never really safe in an emotional way.

It never was but it got even less so progressively as time went on.

So I remember being the evangelical that I was praying after an outburst saying okay, God, if I'm not supposed to be here anymore, then my next then the next outburst will be my assigned to go didn't really have a whole lot of recourse, just a whole list of maybe a friend with an apartment, you know, nothing like that. And so a few days later, sure enough, another outburst happens. So I gather maybe two days worth of clothes, and I put it into the The front pouch of my guitar case, I go to class that morning, throw my stuff down at my friend's place. And I never slept another day in the house again. I crashed at my friend's place. And I said, I texted my adoptive parent. I said, Hey, I can't come back. I just can't do it. They called me I didn't answer. The rest of the family kind of was very concerned. And they were like, what, what's going on? And so some of them were like, Yo, what's happening? And I was able to speak to them, you know, to tell them what was going on. And then I had a cousin who was nearby where I was staying, and they came to see me. And I told them what was going on and what I experienced. And there were a lot of statements from that conversation that stay with me, but the one that stayed with me the longest was, to be honest, I'm amazed, she stayed that long.

Arline  20:55  
So family knew that your home life was not safe.

Benjamin Faye  21:01  
I don't know what they knew. But I knew that. But what I understood after that conversation, was that I wasn't the only family member to have some sort of friction. And so what they told me, they told me about some incidents that had happened. And they told me about how the family really felt about my adoptive parent about how they weren't as close as they seemed. And that there was just a lot of stuff, a lot of water under the bridge that lived there for 3540 years. And I was just kind of in the middle of it, meaning that I was being raised in the home. Nobody said anything. And I don't know if that was to maintain normalcy for me. Or for what but it's a hell of a way to find out that you're not on an island. Yeah, so that was going on

I was still serving you still on a worship team still. Yeah, every so all that's happening, sort of recap, meet and get engaged to my partner. Meet my biological family for the first time as an adult. Like really meet them. I had kind of seen them when I was about six years old, but didn't really remember have any memories. So this was the first time I really getting the skinny on things. I spoke on the phone with my biological mother for the first time in years. All this stuff was going on in college, still expected to get grades of some sort. And then also serving every Sunday. And eventually, all of it just became too much. And one night, when we were the worship team that I was playing on was playing at another person's birthday service type of thing. I started feeling really strange, like almost disembodied, strange. And they said they took home early. And the following morning, I began experiencing what are known as anxiety shakes, which is where the stress becomes so much that your body can't take it. And you literally start, you literally lose control of your body. And I shook for probably WV anywhere from 24 to 36 hours. I don't remember the exact, but it was somewhere in between that time. So I went to the hospital the next day and went there twice in the same day, because they gave me Ativan to settle me and even with the Ativan, I was still shaking. So it was the confluence. It was the confluence of not only what had happened very immediately, but all the things I had felt all those years before and didn't have an outlet for it. And eventually, my body just couldn't take it. And so that so that night when I went to the for the second time. Most of my family was out of town. There's just Thanksgiving weekend. So they were out of town doing something different. But my adoptive parent was still in town. And I didn't tell them what was going on. Because I don't think anybody did. This, none of my friends did I don't think I think I may have told the family member or something like that. I didn't tell my adoptive parent. Because on in a lot of ways they were the reason I was in the hospital to begin with. So I'm like I'm not going to you know, I'm not going to make the situation worse for me. Someone contacted them however. And once they had my friends were there they finally got a calm, they tell They tore into the room like a bat out of hell basically like, Hi, what's wrong with you? Those are the first, you know, first couple of words. Hi, what is wrong with you, like angrily. And my theory is that I think they were angry that they weren't told, because they felt entitled to that information. Entitlement is a big theme. And, and they went and talked to my doctors and just kind of made a bit of a scene and did exactly like they basically proved exactly why I didn't want to tell them what's going on. Eventually, my cousin asked me to have a meeting with my adoptive parent, which I realized now was not a good idea. Because there have been some situations in my past that I now understand as abuse. And so it was essentially asking me to face my abuser, and it didn't go well. And they ended up kind of taking my adoptive parents side and waterways. And so it kind of was a visceral confirmation of what I'd already always kind of known, which is that I can trust you, but to a point. So eventually, I was, you know, still at that friend's place, me and that friend had a falling out, had to jump to another friend's place, but I only had a little bit of time to be there. And so one of my biological sister who I just connected with, offered a place down in Florida. And so and it was, it was an opportunity that made sense, but at the same time, it was very scary, because I'd never lived anywhere else. I'd never been on my own really. And I was engaged to this person that was in the Northeast. And I didn't know when I'd be able to see them again, it was just kind of a mess, but ended up going anyway. And that was a whole situation. Just because what I was told was going to happen when I got to Florida didn't really happen. I was told that there'll be a place for me to stay at least read asleep. But what I wasn't told was that while they were sleeping, they were going to be evicted from that place. And they didn't tell me. So three days into being in Florida, I'm in a hotel with like six other people. But all the while, I was still looking for a church.

Arline  27:26  
So you're still leaving, hoping you're asking, I'm still

Benjamin Faye  27:29  
help. I'm an eternal optimist. So I'm just like, you know, there has to be some, if anybody's gonna find a silver lining, it's going to be me. So I'm like, I'm trying to find you know where God is. And this, maybe you're doing something in me, maybe you're testing me for something, maybe something bigger is coming down the line that I need to be prepared for. Trying to just reframe it and make it different things in my head. And so when I got there, I started working. And this was the beginning of my classroom teaching life. I was working with the Boys and Girls Club, teaching fourth grade and doing music teaching and things like that. And one of the teachers that worked there was a worship pastor at old at another church. And so they invited me to come play at their church at that time. And so I went did it went really well. And they offered me a room in their in their house still just basically run out. And it really ended up working out really nicely because it was down the street from I was working so did that. But I would come to find out that the church was not didn't have the most savory practices. And what I mean is that they were running a scam, essentially. Okay, like a very obvious one. The worship pastor sat me down when I was telling me about how their father who was the pastor of the church, we rarely ever saw had made friends with a prince from the Middle East. And on that Prince's deathbed, they gave them the certificates of deposit. And that they were worth billions and billions of dollars that needed to be released at a certain time. And what they did was they wrote to people in and they said, Hey, we have access to all of this money the President knows about and all these people know about it. That's supposed to be released at a certain time. We want to give you that money. But before we give you that money to do the things you want to do, whether that be start a business or start a nonprofit or whatever. You have to come every month and take these almost like courses. You know, to kind of train you for this kind of thing. And, of course, these things cost money naturally. So again, we every month, so on any given Sunday, our church wouldn't have more than 20 people in it. At the end of the month, we would fill to capacity. So it will be like people flying in from out of town, this will be like, you know, 850 people, all of them paying 100 $200 per person. And you add that up after a while, you know, to put it up, put it this way, they were I went to their house once they were living in Ronald Reagan's old house. So they, yeah, it was a huge house. So, and I tried to reframe it in my mind of like, okay, maybe God can still move through this. But you know, I would look up articles and see like, Oh, you were your, your pastor is being investigated in Texas for doing the same thing they're doing here. And I'm pretty sure they shut down not long, you know, like, not long after I left.

And somewhere in the middle of that, Carol, my partner wanted to come down and be with me because they were just over school and things like that. And I was trying to prepare for them. And I've been saving money and was putting money away and was like, looking for apartments and things like that. I ended up losing all of that money. Because the teacher that I moved in with, they didn't own their home. And I can't find out that they were only a substitute teacher, which meant that they didn't have a settle settle thing in the summer. And so all of my money went to just keeping the lights on and keeping the refrigerator running and all that stuff. And so, but now my partner's coming. Yeah. And so you know, it, we come down, we get married, and you know, but it's really, really rocky. Jumping from place to place, staying with family in town, that kind of thing. But still serving, we end up going to, like, that's one of the things that is consistent about that period of time is that we always served. Like, it didn't really matter when it came to Sunday morning, we were at church. Like there's almost there almost wasn't another possibility our minds. Yeah. And so, you know, we found a local church began serving on the worship team there. Did that for a long time, there were ups and downs. ended up homeless for a while. And that has to do a lot with like, you know, my paperwork growing up, my birth certificate and muscle security cards, didn't have the same names on them.

Arline  33:06  
Paperwork dictates being able to get a place to live and being able to get jobs and everything.

Benjamin Faye  33:11  
So I was out of work for like two years, just trying to sort that out. And so And of course, that raises questions about you know, your, your, you know, adoption and things like that. And so, I was trying to sort all that out, still serving in between all that I get an opportunity to surprise my biological mother who hadn't seen me since I was a child. So, my sister and I and our family drive up to Philly to go see her. Of course, she's like crying. And it's a whole big moment. And some of my siblings who hadn't seen me since I was really little. I mean, they look to me like, they'd seen a ghost. And I come to find out come to see their side of the story of what a life had been like without me. Part of the reason they looked at me that way, was because they weren't completely convinced I was alive. For a lot of my life. I kind of just disappeared, and they didn't really some of them didn't really know. My biological mother would send up balloons on my birthday every year, because like, almost like a memorial because they thought I was dead.

Arline  34:15  
Oh, wow. Do you know why like what the story was, that's where

Benjamin Faye  34:19  
things really got interesting. So at this point, I am in my mid 20s at this point. And so I remember sitting at a table and my bio mom, she just starts pouring out, basically all the stuff she's essentially wanted to tell me for years. So that's when I find that out. That's when I find out about how I came to be in my adoptive parents care. I was told the story that you know, my biological mother was too sick to take care of me. And so I had to come With my daughter parent, which I mean, you know, when it comes to having a biological parent with issues of substance abuse, that's about as softly as you're gonna land the plane. But there was no update to that story. And when I spoke to my bio mother, I told her basically that that was the explanation. And I was expecting for that sir story to match with what I've heard. And then I started watching her face as I told the story. And it changed like, there was an excitement, she was happy to see me. But there was a frustration that started to come over her face. And she asked me to repeat it. And so I did, and she mentioned is that that's not what happened. And so come to find out that, number one, my adoption was not legal. I was never supposed to be taken across state lines. But I was raised across state lines. Nobody had given my biological mother was high during a lot of the pregnancy and during the birth, and had left the hospital briefly like me for a day or so. Just in that stupor. But no, but when she came back, her child was gone. And nobody explained to me why,

Arline  36:20  
Oh, wow. Oh, Vinci.

Benjamin Faye  36:23  
And apparently, there was a confrontation between my bio and adoptive mother, where my bio mother found her, and basically said, Where is my child, and they came to this agreement, where my biological mother would be a part of my life. And so there was a meeting when I was very, very young. And where I got to meet her, but I don't have a whole lot of memories about it. I was five or six years old at the time. And so I didn't really have a lot of memories of it. And that was supposed to be an ongoing thing. But when my biological mother tried to make good on it, she she was met with lawyers, basically saying, if you tried to contact him, we will see you. Oh, wow. So we didn't have to be separated. Obviously, it wouldn't have meant the same thing. Because she wouldn't have been my mother. And there's a lot of arguments to be made that she probably couldn't show up for me in that way. Because she was still sorting herself out. However, what she told me was that the guilt of not handling my situation, exacerbated her drug use, because she couldn't deal with and other tools for it. So either way, it wasn't my adopted mother's call to make or not depends for call to make. And so I'm sitting there, just like, you know, my entire life history, like 2526 years of history is undone in 45 minutes to an hour. Not knowing how to make heads or tails of any of it. And to be honest, you know, it's been almost 10 years, I still don't really make heads or tails of it. It's just a lot still. I remember growing up, I remember after that conversation, I just went up to a bedroom nearby, I just cried. Because I'm like, What, Where do I come? What does any of this mean? Yeah, because you're now having to start to entertain some possibilities about the reality of the relationships of the people that you grew up around. And it was one of those moments where it's like, I don't see God in this. But there, it was that sort of Genesis 5020 thing of like, what the enemy meant for evil, God meant for good thing. And that's kind of the thing I told myself for the next, you know, five years, or whatever. And I just kind of tried to push it away, tried to push away the fact that it all hurts. And there were other things on that trip that really, like I understood the degree to which my biological father did not want me around. I understood and even my half siblings, like his kids, kind of resent my existence. For a lot of reasons, I was I was their dad's kid that was born out of wedlock, basically. And that, like my existence was a signal for the end of their parents marriage basically. And so like, whether it's fair or not, I'm a symbol for that. So being in an environment where they're in the house, and they don't even look at me, knowing full well who I am, you know. So that stuff, you know, really, really shook me up

As soon thereafter, we started going to a new church. And this was the last church, we would end up going to. Because this is where the churches were was really where the crap hit the fan for us. And it was really where we began to question openly things about church. Because the thing about it is that we had been, since we've gone to forgotten Florida, we had been in predominantly white spaces.

Arline  40:32  
So like, what we think of white Evangelical, like mega churches, small churches, traditional, well, you said your worship team, so it was more.

Benjamin Faye  40:40  
So it was one of those multicampus churches. So like, the way that elevation functions, were they have, you know, one shirt for many campuses, there was one of those in Florida. And so we did that for a long time portable church. So it was like a church campus, essentially, that we were serving. And then the next trip we went to was one church that was a part of multiple churches, like a network of churches all over the United States and across the world. They were very, very mission focused, they were very much about, you know, reaching the lost and doing short term impact teams and things like that going around the world. That was their whole bag. And so eventually, you know, we started going there. And it was out of need, because of the homelessness issue. We've been bouncing around for so long. And you know, it had benefits being there. And we were able to get back on our feet. And, you know, I was able to get my problems sorted out with my documentation and was able to get started, started working a lot and nonprofit serving people serving homeless communities. And so there were things that were starting to be redeemed in my life. And so I thought, okay, yeah, this is where it turns around, this is what God's getting the redemption, this is all starting to spin. And there were things that really did change for for the better in that space. But it was there that I really started to understand. Or maybe it fully admit that there was a lot of racism in white, even though it was basis. And I think on some level, you know, because because when you're black, like are really when you're a person who functions as a person of color, you're, it's just kind of background information. You It's, I explained it in another podcast, I explained it as almost like, seeing McDonald's, when you're on a road trip, it registers as like, that kind of background information. You've seen it before, but it just flies by you. Because it has to because you're outnumbered. And on some level, you grow up understanding the power dynamic. And so like, if you call it if you're the only black person calling out racism in a white space, they will turn on you. It can be dangerous very quickly, can be dangerous very quickly. And this is both in conservative and liberal spaces. Because with within conservative spaces, they don't like talking about racism in some liberal spaces, they feel like they've done enough. So you calling them out is like, you know, basically, like I'm trying Isn't this enough, you know, like, like they feel like they like. So it's very different. But it's two extremes of the same white supremacy. It's two extremes of the same power dynamic in the hierarchy. So you kind of understand when and where you cannot speak about certain things. But certainly, in one church, I had heard the parent of the pastor say, while I was in the car that Barack Obama didn't have the real black experience because he went to Harvard. But then, in this new church, when I would explain my fears about being outside after dark, because of all the unarmed killings of black men, by police, the thing I was told was, well, if you're doing the right thing, you shouldn't have a problem. Or being told, or being subjected to a diatribe about Black Lives Matter, and how evil it is and how black people don't actually experience racism, unprovoked while being driven home from worship practice, stuff like that. But you push it away because this is your family. And now since people have helped you get out of homelessness now you like almost like owe them somehow. And so there's all these

Arline  44:33  
entitlement. You mentioned earlier, this feeling of entitlement. Exactly, exactly.

Benjamin Faye  44:37  
And so, you know, there's a lot of suppression and a lot of things that happen. There was one moment when we when I lost my job, got in a car accident, and Carol got really sick, like hospitalized sick in a really short amount of time. And we were on the verge of losing our apartment and so we went to our church leaders and said, Hey, this is what's going on. And they basically rebuked us for not being fiscally responsible. And basically allowed us to lose our apartment. Because they felt they said that God was teaching us a lesson. To this day, it's difficult for us, it's all

Arline  45:19  
about individual. Your personal thing that you did, yes, I understand

Benjamin Faye  45:24  
more, certainly from from from a conservative standpoint, a lot of conservatives don't like, actually have this belief that people of color, specifically black people aren't working hard enough, or aren't trying hard enough or so right. After dealing all this stuff I was being essentially told, Well, you know, because you're not getting a W job immediately. You're not, you know, you're not trying hard enough, basically saying, like, have you tried, and I told them, like, McDonald's told me, No, I'm trying to do all these things to you know, and be like, we get it, but you're still not trying hard enough. And there was always hammered. Like, you know, if you don't work, you don't eat, if you don't work, you don't eat, they were saying I was lazy. That's what they were saying. And it was me just trying to adjust to everything that was around me. But being told no, you have to, like do this, do this, do this, do this. And it was all based on what their assumptions were about black people going into it. And they didn't really know me. Um, so I spent a lot of time living with that tension. But trying to pretend like it wasn't there. For the, for just the betterment of our experience there. Because I've talked too much about it, then people would tell me, like, you know, we'll go ahead and hash it out with him, you know, Matthew 18, handled like a brother, and I'm thinking to myself, but they're not going to listen to me, because this is what the assumption is, this is the assumption that they're making while having all the information. So, you know, but it was like, being subjected to gaslighting on the other side of it, too. So, you know, eventually I began to shut down, and just was basically reliving my, my teenage years, you know, in my late 20s, because I wasn't safe anymore. And I never, I really wasn't safe at all. I was told that I could be, I was told, like, you know, open door policy, and this is church, and you should be able to share with my family, but I couldn't. And that I would get penalized for that, too. That Oh, he wouldn't show up to share this or wouldn't share that. It would just it felt like everything was being legislated.

Fast forward now to 2020 Everybody's inside. And the pastor, you know, looking back now, there's an extreme, it's a cult. And I know that now just because of the way things functioned, the way there was this almost deification of the leader, and that the leader really couldn't do anything wrong, the leader was never really held accountable for things. Didn't know that then. But, uh, yeah. I always thought it was rare that they kind of held the leader on this pedestal all the time, and treated them almost like they were right in that aisle seat at the right hand of God. And the leader is really, really, really pushed living really close together, everybody lives really close together. So the entire Church lived within three to five miles of each other. Anything more than that, then somebody might say something to you.

Arline  48:35  
Wow. Yeah, that's a little bit guilty gather,

Benjamin Faye  48:39  
like gathering randomly, or sometimes, you know, with very little notice, if you're not there, or if you don't show up to a couple of gatherings. Somebody might call you. Okay, what's going on? You know, having finances meetings to see how if your finances are in order, that kind of stuff. So, yeah, they they sold it as though like, you know, nobody else is doing church like this. We have, like, we're doing it better. We're doing it differently than everybody else, you know, always comparing themselves to Bethel and opera room and, you know, saying like, you know, they have this special thing, but we have like it way more holistically than they do you know, that kind of thing. So 2020 rolls around, and we're all home. And the pastor's not doing well handling it with Emily well, because they like it when everybody's together. They just a very big on that. But for me having such a resume was a break you

Arline  49:36  
to say that so many people were like, this was this. It was nice. I didn't expect it to be so nice to not be a break

Benjamin Faye  49:43  
is so nice, because, you know, by that point, I was on the worship team. I had risen to the level to where I was a music director on that worship team. Oh, wow. So you know, I was always guiding the songs, telling people where to go on stage, you know, just just doing that type of stuff. And it was nice because it felt like some part of you was getting recognized. But it was like the most obvious part of me, like, you didn't have to work very hard to get to that place, you know, and so, but hey, it kept me involved, and it kept me It kept people off my back. So, you know, I was like, you know, this is how I survive fine. Again, didn't know that then I just thought that this was my calling. But, you know, it was survival mode all the time, fight or flight all the time. So to be in a situation where I woke up in a Sunday morning, didn't have to wake up super early, didn't have to plug stuff in. You didn't have to fake mingle with everybody, you go outside and be sociable. When you didn't want to. I didn't have to, you know, during worship time, I could go get coffee. And nobody would say anything to me about it. You know, it was it was just nice. And so I was like, okay, I can do this. I can handle this. Even though the situation that NIST that necessitated, this is awful. I can, you know,

I can get down with this, basically. And then we started hearing about ahmaud, arbery. And George Floyd, and breonna, and all these names. And it was a really interesting time in American history, because nobody could say they didn't see it. Everybody was home.

Arline  51:31  
Everybody's saw it, everybody, so many people who would not have paid attention. Otherwise, yeah, we're forced to finally see it. Yeah.

Benjamin Faye  51:39  
And a lot of churches begin speaking about it. Churches within our network began speaking about it passionately, well, about the frustrations of black and brown people and why they shouldn't have to keep doing this over and over and over and over again. Of course, that momentum would not last. But it's what it's what I commonly referred to as black square energy, where you put it up for a little bit, and then forget about it. And that was the summer of black square. But there was a noticeable silence from our leadership. And our church was relatively small, this was maybe 300 people. But Carol and I represented, I don't know, 20% of the black population, just by ourselves. So just the two of us. So there were maybe 10. And one of the one of the other people who were there we became we were fairly good friends with who was black. And they remember that they hadn't this up and they were like, Hey, is it weird to talk to any of y'all that like, our Leadership isn't talking about this? I said, it's, it's not weird, but it's a problem. And so, like, we formulated a plan to talk to leadership about it, and but we said, Okay, we'll give them one more Sunday's grace. And we'll say if they don't deal with it at all, yeah, then we'll say something that Sunday rolls around, don't stay at work. And so we said, Okay, we're going to talk to the worship director, who was kind of the passionate right hand man. And we're going to talk to them because they're a lot easier to talk to and deal with. So that night, we were going to do that, and just kind of gearing our minds up for it. And then the pastor calls us out of the blue. And they say, Hey, you know, I heard that there's this thing going, there are these things going on? Apparently, they they didn't know that all these shootings have happened. They said they didn't own a TV. And I've been I was in their house once and or a couple of times, and they don't own TV for real. But even if you don't own a TV, someone you know, does. So it feels like there's there's very little reason why you shouldn't know about this. Unless you're no one they tried to push it away.

Arline  54:15  
And yes, exactly.

Benjamin Faye  54:18  
And so there was a little bit back and forth about that. And they said basically, we're not going to address it. We're not going to talk about it at all. And their rationale was if we start talking about this, then everybody's gonna expect us to talk about everything if in their words, if we talk about this thing that we're gonna have start start talking about the gay thing. And we don't want to do that. What what they said was what will allow you to do we'll release you to have a prayer knights about it. Which is basically them giving us power without any power at all. They want you to have the feeling of like, you know, doing that, but they're not I'm going to back it in any way, shape or form. And I knew that was a cop out. And the more they talked, the more enraged, enraged I became. And my wife had it on speaker and we just, I had to walk out of the room a couple of times, because I was fuming. And he literally told them, like, look, we don't feel safe to talk about these things. In this space. We just don't. It's a real thing affecting our lives, and we can't talk about it. And they appeared to hear that and we said, Okay, now we said, our piece, hung up the phone, and I was ready to leave. I was done. I was, you know, I was not having it. And Carol had to kind of calm me down and say, Hey, why don't we just try this? You know, let's not do anything drastic. Let's just, let's, let's just see what happens. You know, let's try this. And so, like, you know, begrudgingly, I was like, Okay, fine. Whatever, we'll try it. But I don't like it. I think it's BS.

45 minutes later. That friend, I was I told you that I, they called us and they said,

the pastor just was just yelling at me for an hour. And that about the same thing about because apparently earlier that night, there had been a meeting. And some folks had spoken up about the shootings, and why there was a discussion about them. And he went off and all of them. The pastor basically accused them of having a spirit of accusation. And just, you know, it's always the devil has always demonstrated accusation, that kind of thing. And so, he then called again, and then just went off about it. But in doing so, he told our friend that we said that it was safe to talk about these things. Oh, which is in direct contrast to what we just told them. Yeah. So this, what started to becoming clear, as our friend was talking was that our pastor was in effect, gaslighting our friend using our words. And that's what I knew I was done. I was willing to give a try for another couple of for like, for like, you know, for about an hour. And then I got that phone conversation that was done. And it took Carroll a little bit more convincing. But the next day, like they'd had a dream that night, and they were like, yeah, it's time to go.

So within the next couple of weeks, we had begun talking to other friends who were wrestling with leaving.

Because of what had happened, they were people who were at that meeting where he went off and called, you know, on the whole spirit of accusation tangent. And they were all we were all kind of just our support group for each other. Just trying to sort out our feelings, not knowing what any of this means, because it feels like we're in this in between space. hadn't even really gotten into a theological discussion, as of yet, you know, about whether or not we'd stay in church or what, but we were just sort of all trying to sort it out together. The following Sunday, the pastor starts saying things about how having side conversations breaks down family. And it became clear, oh, my God, he's taking a shot at us. Yeah. And so it was a thing of like, how the hell do you know we're talking to each other? Eventually, we all all those of us who are kind of on the fence about leaving, or we're about to leave how to dinner. And that's when I found out that the pastor has a lot of dairy, say, flying monkeys, meaning. So Flying Monkeys is a term when a narcissist, or somebody like that has a bunch of people doing the work for them in a way. That's a very loose term, but it can be interpreted a few different ways. But basically, you have like these discipleship moments with other people in your church, where you share things with them, and then you pray through them and things like that.

None of those things are ever private. All of those things get fed back to the pastor.

And so on Sunday mornings, when it seems like wow, like, you must really be hearing from the Lord because I've talked about this in my discipleship meetings are blah, blah, blah, really, they were being fed that information all week. So they can kind of build an aggregate from all of that information. Didn't know that And so somebody was telling them that we were all talking. Eventually, we all left at different times Carol and I left first. And I would get text messages from people being like, you know, please reconsider leaving, you know, we're reading wide awake, please. Blah, blah, blah, blah, we need you. And, you know, my I never answered back because I think was like, you know, if you've, if you wanted to treat me, well, you would have and it shouldn't have taken my walking away for you to realize, like, yeah, like, You're not mad, it happened, you're mad, you got caught in a really obvious way. And so we ended up leaving that following Sunday was very interesting, because it was the first time in 20, some odd years that either of us just got up on a Sunday. And that's what it was, it was just another day. And there was such a relief about that. It was almost as if my body was like, thank you. This is what we've been needing. for a really long time, we can just say it now. And eventually, the pastor would go on the following week, the pastor would go on a tirade. After a few of us left, and like, all lives matter on screen yelling really loud. They would later destroy that footage when we tried to bring it up to their leadership. So the church we're going to as part of a bunch of churches, and the major church was the one we spoke to you. And the major church basically said, we can't do anything about it, because we're really not their leadership. They just pay for the name and the rights to the name. And you know, we don't have any real oversight over

Arline  1:01:58  
them. Gotcha. So already, they're just enforcing their their name.

Benjamin Faye  1:02:04  
So, okay, we basically creek without a paddle, we, I told them these horrifying things that have happened to us over the years and everybody a different story, but very, very sick, but like flavors of the same thing. And they just kind of said, Oh, well. And it really rattled me, because it was like, this isn't the way it's supposed to be done. And for a while there, I was willing to believe that maybe someday down the road, I'd find a church that was healthy. But at that moment, I just needed to be done. That was that. And that was just my thing. Carol has a whole different thing venture she'll tell you about. But, you know, I just needed to be done, I needed to kind of just turn things off for a while. Because I had been just bled dry. For years and years and years for my talents. For my vulnerability, being told it was on me to fix everything. Only for it to become very obvious that I wasn't the problem. But that it didn't matter. All while fighting for social justice online. But not seeing any of it in my real life. And so that back half of 2020 It was a I was in a really dark place. Emotionally, I just felt used and unsupported and all of these things. To the point where it's a minor miracle that I got to 2021 Honestly. Like, like sending rambling messages to my friends in the middle of the night because I don't have to tell them goodbye. Like that kind of thing. Yeah, and right when it was on that line of I don't know what anything means anymore. Because I defined my life by this one thing for so long, and it doesn't feel like any of that matters anymore. That's when I started stumbling across, you know, as if, by serendipity I started stumbling across a lot of accounts that were discussing this thing called deconstruction.

The more I listened in the more I watched, the more I was like, oh, so there is a name I can attach to this in between place. Yeah, like there is this space that exists where people just aren't sure about stuff. And so I like I just kind of soaked it all in. And I think just the discovery of that, and just wanting to see, like pulling it that just the pulling on that thread literally kept me alive. And the more digging into it, I did, the more that I began to detangle things, you know, the more ashamed I had been for the way I treated the LGBTQ community, the more I had realized how functionally racist a lot of the theology is, not just, and that it really wasn't just one church. Because I began to see the way that Bethel responded. And how many of them, were convinced that Trump was the guy and that they were saying this, while a black girl was leading worship, without understanding while singing songs and making albums, with, you know, black artists to almost offset the idea that they might be racist, only to hear stories of people of color who had left that space, who were like, Oh, my God, you know, and then Sean Foyt doing, what he was doing, and all like, and just recognizing that a lot of churches whether obviously, or not ascribe to this thinking, yes. But this was all I've ever known. And so I had gotten to a point where I was like,

I could try to figure this out. I could try to sort out a way to make this work.

But I'm so tired. That it almost doesn't even make sense anymore. Like there's almost more life and letting it go. And so I just decided that I was like, You know what, I can do all the digging, I want to I can learn how to read things in Aramaic, and listen to all these scholars and all these people talk about it. None of this changes the fact that the gospel is no longer simple. It's not an open as shut as this person died for you. And now you need to be gracious for this thing that you didn't even know is happening. Which began to see more and more abusive as I unpacked it, because you already get enough of that, as an adoptee. This situation that you didn't ask to be in, you were thrust into and now you need to be thankful. Because you have a roof over your head and you have food. And I'm thinking to myself, in what healthy situation is that ever shakey was not feeding me on the table for any of you. Yeah, like, like, we need to, let's unpack that. And I just gotten to a point where deconstruction meant just letting some things fall apart. really letting everything fall apart. And try to figure out who I am. Whilst in the wreckage. And as I was doing that, I was thinking through my story and how much I lived through while at that church, and I started to write down my experiences. And I was going to share it, but I was scared. And I didn't want people to come after me and things like that. Because there had been situations where other people who had left have been getting messages from people and we're trying to meet with other people and being in like yelling at people. And it was just it was a bad situation. Like people were very, very angry about people leaving. So I was scared. But after a while, I was like, You know what, I don't have anything to lose. So, in 2021, I put out a thread on Instagram, called, you know, why I left my church and it was supposed to be a series of three threads. I put the first one out. And it got this really enormous reaction. And suddenly I started being contacted by people who had left that church way before I got there and said, Oh my God, you are speaking to something that I've not been able to talk about. And then people who had left while I was there people who you know, I was told left because they were bitter and just couldn't you know, all this other stuff. have, you know, we're like, yeah, that's what happened to me. Yeah, that's what happened to me. Yeah. Or oh, man, that didn't happen to me specifically, but I underst. I know exactly, you're talking about blah, blah, blah, because I would use code names for the people that I was referring to. And they were like, I know this person. And they played along and kept the anonymity going. And what started as three threads became eight. And I told my told the whole story, basically, and people who hadn't talked in a while, because some of them were told to lie about the other person. And they had been friends before that. We're reconnecting in the comment sections. And sharing stories. And it became this really open space for people to share. What I didn't know was that people at the church got wind of it. And were like, and people who I blocked. And so they were literally, like, people who were still connected to me, were like taking screenshots and sending it to them. And they were talking about it in their small groups, and like it started some stuff. Oh, wow. So it caused like a minor ripple over there. And is led to some conversations, amongst other people. One of my friends, I'm fairly certain still uses it as a reference. Now, when I put that thing out two years ago, yeah. So I think that was the introduction of me beginning to heal from that specific situation, but really to take an honest look at evangelicalism from an outside lens from from relented, who's been in it, but now it's sitting on on the other side and saying, Okay, well, what is life like, now, for me, What is life like, you know, really examining those things, and it opened the door for me to examine that publicly. And a lot of people started to come to my page, you know, from that, and just reach kind of processing this stuff in real time. So at the time, I put that out, I think I had maybe 600 followers on Instagram. As of now, it just after that, it just started growing really fast. So as of now we're at somewhere around 5500 followers. Just really organically just by word of mouth. And like people began hearing about what I was doing. And really, it's like me just processing through this stuff, and writing it and posting and sharing thoughts about that objectively, but also talking about other things. So my page had become a resource for a lot of, you know, anti racist commentary. Because that would be I would do reels about how the word woke came to be, and what it actually means Yeah, or, I did one about Christian academies and how it was founded on the back of segregation, and how that dovetails within, you know, so and then I became friends with people in the space, I became friends with Tim from New Haven jungles. And, you know, he and I did a whole post on work. And that drew a lot of people to my page as well. So I kind of found myself in this space of creating, you know, post Christianity, if you will, about what it's like to be in this space now. Not just as a person who was even as an Evangelical, but also as a black person. Because Christianity is so much a part of the black experience, like just culturally, to not to actively choose to not be a part of that, is there's a certain degree of sacrilege that, you know, that that kind of taps into? Because like, What do you mean, it's like, that's what we do. But it it just kind of becomes unhealthy for me. So I find I function in a really strange space where I'm not limited to just talking about religious stuff, I can talk about racism, I can talk about, you know, the political systems within that. And sometimes I can have a lot of fun. You know, within those spaces, too, I do something on my page called 90 minutes of never getting back where I literally just, you know, watch a terrible movie and like, live Instagram story through it. And sometimes that dovetails with, you know, Christianity. I did, I did a Kirk Cameron movie, like a month or two ago. So, you know, we're actually I did another movie called I'm in love with the church girl, which kind of taps at that kind of theology as well. So sometimes it's a fun look at you know, just as a measure of healing, like if we like, we spend too much time crying over this stuff, maybe let's laugh about it sometimes, too. And that kind of leads me to present day where I've kind of stumbled into being a content creator. I didn't think I would be doing this. This way. I always liked the idea and thought it'd be fun and could be a way to engage myself creatively, but I certainly didn't think it was a thing where people will be asking about podcasts or asking about like my expertise on things that are I never saw coming at all

Arline  1:15:18  
as someone who has like learned a lot from your page on my said retweeted What is it when you share Instagram postings, repost it there you go okay, repost but um yeah, I've learned a lot. I've laughed. I've loved I loved the stuff that you did with Tim Whitaker. That was a good like, it's just people are learning and those of us who are willing to like sit and take it in and learn and share it with others and yes, like you said, you're an eternal optimist like the future can look very different. The future can look very different. So I am thankful work that you're doing how can people connect with you online Benji, like how can they find you and and see all the great stuff you're posting?

Benjamin Faye  1:16:01  
So I would say the front door is Instagram. I am over there at Hey there, Benji.

Arline  1:16:07  
All this in the notes? Yes.

Benjamin Faye  1:16:09  
Hey, there, Benji there. I'm also here. They're binging on Tik Tok. I'm on Twitter at underscore Heather Benji, Carol and I do a podcast called important things I've been in Carroll. So you can find that on, on wherever you get podcasts, Apple, Spotify, that kind of thing. But we also do a Patreon version of it as well. So that's at patreon.com/important_things. And that helps us out a whole lot. Especially now. We've been it's been a really interesting season for us. I'm just coming off of being really sick with long COVID For about two months, and had to literally forfeit my job because of it. So it really helps when people join. And so yeah, those are really the main places you can find me.

Arline  1:16:55  
Ben, do you thank you so much for doing this. I am I am honored that you would share your story. And I know our audience will not just learn a lot, but empathize with a lot of things that you talked about. So thank you again for being on the show. Absolutely. Thank you for having me.

My final thoughts on the episode. I feel like the word family was just weaponized. In Bingi situation, it just seemed like whether at home, having been adopted and being expected to be thankful that you have been put into this wonderful situation and don't question it. Don't expect anything different. Like weaponizing the word family there and then or the concept of family weaponizing family at church like this is your family. We wouldn't do that. Like trust us. You belong here you fit in here. family and belonging and love and relationships are all things that humans absolutely need. And when they're used against us like that is just, I don't know the epitome of of harmful for children, for adults for any of us. Like I'm so honored that Bindu would would share his story. And it's amazing to watch as he called himself an eternal optimist. So watch him be able to tell his story with authenticity and grace toward the people who've been in his life. And at the same time seeing the things that were harmful. And it's beautiful to see someone who's been through so much consciously move into spaces where he can help others grow and become better people. Like it's humanism at its finest. And I personally am thankful for the the content that Benji creates. Thanks again, Benji for being on the podcast. This was really good for me and really honored that you would share your story.

David Ames  1:19:04  
The second leg race Thought of the Week, inspired by Benji is humanism as anti racism. First, we obviously have to acknowledge that throughout history, both humanists and atheists have had their fair share of racism, but the core ideas within humanism. And the secular grace that we're trying to espouse here on this podcast is the opposite of that. It is the embracing of our humanity and the humanity of others. Much of the civil rights era and beyond time period, the black community was saying, I am a man, I'm a human being something that should not need to be said, but must be acknowledged. The idea of secular grace is embracing the humanity of others. It also requires acknowledging that my experience is not universal, that someone with different color of skin may experience the world in a different way. As Benji knocked about it was the background noise that just was always there. I think this goes beyond just racism as well to discrimination in general. As we get to know people who have a different life experience a different cultural background, sexuality, gender orientation as we know them as a human being, it is very, very difficult to hate a person. It is as we keep people as others, that we are able to hate them. While embracing your own humanity, embrace the humanity of others, and love them with secular grace. Next week, we have Christian Loms Dahlan who is the president of the Norwegian Humanist Association. I think you're really going to enjoy this conversation. The differences between the United States and Norway are pretty dramatic. And they have things like coming of age rituals within humanism. It's a really interesting conversation. Check that out next week. Until then, my name is David. And I am trying to be the graceful atheist join me and be graceful, human. The beat is called waves by MCI beats. If you want to get in touch with me to be a guest on the show, email me at graceful atheist@gmail.com for blog posts, quotes, recommendations and full episode transcripts head over to graceful atheists.com This restful atheist podcast part of the atheists United studios Podcast Network

Transcribed by https://otter.ai