Ann Maree
Please, let me start out this quote, unquote introduction episode by welcoming you to the 2025 Safe to Hope season. We had no idea what we were doing when we first started this podcast. We may not have any idea what we’re doing still today, and we had no idea if anyone would even listen. We are stunned to still be here podcasting. With over 21k downloads in our first full year, I think we can safely say people are listening. In fact, the platform we use, which is Buzzsprout, one of the largest podcasting hosts, suggests that our release numbers over a period of seven days falls within the top 25% of podcasts. I love to hear feedback from listeners who reach out to Help[H]er to share. Their takeaways from an episode are usually surprising, but it’s encouraging to hear that those who provide one-another care are hearing something useful from our storytellers and expert contributors, something that will enhance their care. Recently, one such friend of this ministry connected me with our 2025 storyteller, Carya. Our friend has blessed the helper ministry over the years with wisdom, information that enhances what we do, and even participating in many of our initiatives. So when this friend mentioned that they knew someone I really needed to meet, I was anxious to do so. From the moment I first began speaking to Carya, I knew her story needed to be told. I’ll say more about that in a minute, but the Help[H]er, board agreed. What struck me immediately in Cary’s story was who was at the center of it. God is the star of her story. That’s not to say he isn’t predominant in previous storyteller episodes. It is to say that only God could have paved the way in a story like Cary’s. A story which began before she can even remember, and ended up leading to him, nothing in our human understanding will be able to help us make sense of how that happened once you hear her, it had to have been something or someone supernatural. I mentioned a moment ago that I immediately knew Carya’s story needed to be told. The content that I first learned would be included was childhood sexual abuse, rape and sex trafficking. We’ve not touched on those topics yet on this podcast, but the prevalence of those circumstances in the church is staggering. So we knew the subject matter would be helpful for our audience. It wasn’t just the subject matter, though, as I mentioned a moment ago, the shining light in this dark story is God. We will begin this series in a few weeks, and we are going to start with the end of the story. I believe the only way we will be able to listen to the evil in Cary’s story is to first hear the good, the good of the God she loves, and how even in the midst of unspeakable evil he cared for her. What I didn’t know, what I couldn’t have predicted, would be how the Lord would move Carya to share a whole other level of the specific details related to her circumstances. I watched in awe as she wrestled with this tension before God, this next level of revealing herself was, to say the least, triggering. Yet she not only carefully prepared herself to tell but also conscientiously prepared her word choices so the audience could listen and not be harmed. Still, this particular season of the Safe to Hope podcast is extremely difficult to hear. Carya’s story is not for minor ears, nor those who might be significantly triggered by the difficult topics. This season includes discussions regarding, as mentioned, childhood sexual abuse, rape and sex trafficking, but also cultish, satanic, sadistic and ritualistic abuse. We advise listeners of the podcast or those reading the transcripts to apply an abundance of caution and discretion. 

The original structure of the Safe to Hope podcast included hosting two to three storytellers each year, in between each story episode, three experts in their field interact on the experience in the storyteller’s story. This season will be a little different. For the entirety of season six, Carya will be our only one storyteller, and then we will engage with six experts. Season Six will span the entire 2025 year. We are structuring it this way for several reasons. When we first began chatting with Carya, it quickly became obvious that we would need to take a step back, slow down, and build the season to fit her stories. To be honest, each crisis she will share likely deserves a season of its own, and we wanted to make sure to give Carya enough space so she could safely share and protect her mental and physical well being throughout the workshops and recording process. But we also want to protect the audience so that you can all breathe, pace, how much you listen, and safely process the details you’ll be hearing. Throughout this season, we’ll be positioning irregularly scheduled programming into the episodes. Sometimes we’ll be taking a break between segments of Carya’s story. Other times, we’ll offer the audience the opportunity to skip over difficult subject matter. For more information about how to even process these stories you’ll hear, please listen specifically to season six, episode 4 and episode 6 on the Safe to Hope podcast.

You might now be wondering why we chose to air Carya’s story. Our goal at Help[H]er is to help people-helpers care for women in crisis. The purpose for the Safe to Hope podcast is twofold. One, it is to educate in one-another care regarding difficult topics. And two, we simultaneously provide a space for storytellers to tell their story. As far as it relates to education, lay counselors, pastors, church leadership are generally untrained and carefully handling women’s crises. Our seminary education did not cover topics such as those we discuss on Safe to Hope. So the podcast provides basic education regarding the difficulties many women encounter. As for women in crisis or those progressing on the path toward healing in the process of storytelling, they find a safe place, both in the process and in the workshops, they’re encouraged to accurately voice what happened, and then we help them find the appropriate language for their circumstances. An additional benefit occurs when a woman in crisis listens – our audience. In listening to these stories, someone might hear similarities to their own. So the listener too is blessed in feeling seen and known, she is affirmed and she realizes she is not crazy. We want to recognize that stories like these have the potential to inflict harm. Scripture itself does not shy away from telling difficult stories. Many of the narratives we read about in the Bible frequently chronicle horrific circumstances. Lot offered his daughters to the quote, sexually disordered townspeople in Sodom. Israelite princes murdered their siblings. Queen Athalia killed almost all her offspring so that she alone could rule. In fact, numerous instances of cannibalism of the Israelites own children and parents are recorded in God’s Holy Word. As I’m confident our audience realizes the Bible itself is very clear about good and evil. 

So for this introduction episode, I’ve asked Old Testament professor and author Ingrid Faro to join me and to help us all understand a bit better the doctrine of evil. I think this will be a helpful way for us to gain an awareness and to provide a framework for the importance in telling and in hearing a story such as Carya’s. As mentioned. Dr Faro is professor of Old Testament and the coordinator of the MA in Old Testament Jerusalem University College program at Northern Seminary in Lyle, Illinois.

She has previously served as Dean of Academic Affairs at Northern; Dean of Theology at the Scandinavian School of Theology, and Director of master’s programs at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, where she also taught Hebrew and Old Testament. Dr Faro is an international speaker and the author of Evil in Genesis, Demystifying Evil, co-author of Honest Answers, and author of the forthcoming Redeeming Eden: How Women in the Bible Advance the Story of Salvation, as well as numerous other articles, chapters and reviews. Dr Faro, as you will learn and as you will read in her books, has a very personal style of writing. She also has encountered a fair amount of evil in her lifetime, which makes her expertise extremely informed, but also very practical. 

Welcome, Dr Faro., 

Dr Faro
Thank you. 

Ann Maree
Is there anything else besides what I’ve already shared in our introduction that you can tell the audience about yourself that will help them get to know you a little better?

Dr Faro
I think we’ll learn a lot more together as we as we talk, but certainly, as you have said in your intro, that many scholars, intellectuals don’t want to believe in the unseen realm, and especially malevolent evil, and it’s just something that we don’t talk much about but that was what led me to start my scholarly studies in the first place, because I wanted to find out what God had to say about it, even though there weren’t many scholars talking about it at all.

Ann Maree 
Yeah, that’s important, and make sure your work important as well. One of the other experts we asked about, why? Why aren’t we talking about this very often? And I guess that that actually leads into the first question. But before I say that, I think I want to just kind of emphasize for our audience to kind of the framework of what we’re trying to accomplish in this episode. And I think this is actually Dr Faro’s phrase, “We’re dragging evil into the light.” So we want to really share what we can about what Dr Faro knows about evil in her studies, the reasons, the benefits of doing that and the ways to do so. But like I mentioned, my first question off of what we’re just saying is, why do we ignore evil?

Dr Faro
I think so many people feel overwhelmed by life circumstances, and you have to have a capacity to think about evil, but also people just don’t want to think about it, and so trying to ignore it. It’s it’s we become, in a way, like children. If we cover our eyes, we think we won’t see it. And there’s something internally about that we don’t want to open, that box we’re afraid of what’s inside. But it is that fear that keeps us captive to it, and that is the reason that I wrote the book, was because it was part of my own journey in overcoming evil, which is a daily process, but overcoming the evil abuses and traumas that I had experienced in my own life and had seen around me, and I came to realize it wasn’t until I was willing to face it, and thankfully, as a follower of Jesus, I could face it with Jesus. I could face it with God, which gave me the ability to be able to stand up and face it, because I know the one who overcame. But as long as I hid from it, I was making bad decisions. I was trying to escape it or deal with it in my own way. So I think I’ll add to that also, that I had come to a place where I did not believe God was good. I did not believe God loved me, and I did not believe God was just because of the things that had happened. And so that also kept me from wanting to tackle those questions because I did not know where to turn. So it becomes such a multi faceted reason. There’s so many reasons why we don’t want to face evil. But the important thing is, is for us to say, Okay, this horrific thing, this bad thing, no matter what the degree of badness is, this has happened. This is in my life, and if I don’t face it, it will win. It will take over. It will triumph. And I cannot. I will not allow that to happen. So that means we have to face it. We have to take that even the tiniest step forward to grab hold and say whatever it takes. I cannot let this evil win in my life or in the life of those that I love.

Ann Maree
Yeah, thank you for bringing that up, keeping the end in sight, keeping God as the ultimate winner, if you will, in sight. I think that’s a helpful, helpful reminder. And so build on that a little bit. You said, when we do ignore or refuse to face evil, it’s unproductive. So how so?

Dr Faro
Yes, it’s, it’s my first career was as a dietitian. I worked in hospitals and public health, and I was an associate professor of nutrition, and one of my biggest frustrations was that I found that people just they want what tastes good to them. They want what feels comfortable, what they like. And when they needed to make a change, they would say, you know, but if I give you know, I’d rather die than give up, you know? And I would tell them, sometimes that’s a choice. You can make that choice, but the change of any kind, whether it’s food or lifestyle or anything, is a choice. And we don’t like changes. We’re afraid of changes, so it’s so much easier to stay with what’s comfortable. And especially, I think, Westerners, you know, we we want what’s comfortable, and so we want painkillers. We don’t want to sometimes we need to change the underlying behavior, but we would rather just take the painkillers. So we tend toward what is easiest, but what’s is easiest in the short run is what’s going to become hardest in the long run, if we face the thing that’s hard difficult in front of us, then we have the opportunity to turn things around. But again, it’s just that human propensity to want to take the easy road, take what seems simple, take what feels comfortable. And that’s people in abusive situations, even in my own, it’s what they’re comfortable with. They know it, and taking a chance to leave it seems risky, and it is. But if they don’t leave it, we know it only gets worse. So if abuse only gets worse, so does every evil in our life will only get worse if we continue to hide from it.

Ann Maree 
Yeah. Wow. Thank you. Putting dots together for myself, even in my own situation. And so, okay, so you have written quite a bit on evil, and I was wondering if you could share what your goals were for writing, particularly the last book that was released, Demystifying Evil.

Dr Faro
Yes, well, I love the quote, and we’ve talked about the quote by N T Wright in his book Evil and the Justice of God. And he says people tend to approach evil in three ways. First, they ignore it. They don’t think it’s going to happen. So second, when evil happens, it slaps it in the face, and then 3rd said, therefore they tend to respond in immature and dangerous ways, and that I find consistently true. And it’s that responding in immature and dangerous ways that I saw that’s what I had been doing in my life, and I was hobbled. I was crippled because of that, because I kept making bad choices, because I kept thinking, Well, you know, I’m smart, I can, I can get over this, you know, or I’m strong enough to take this, you know. Sometimes we’re, we’re stronger than we should be, in a sense, you know, we we take things that we really shouldn’t just because we think we can, but it’s taking a toll, and it’s also doing no good to especially if it’s a person involved doing the evil or whatever the situation is, we’re just perpetuating evil when we’re silent toward it. But I had been talking to groups and speaking to many groups and individuals about evil and about my own story, and I found that it gave people hope. And so I felt very the writing the book was an assignment for God, because I realized God had shown me and given me so much he had brought me from a place of being somebody who I wouldn’t go to funerals because I was too jealous that I had to stay and live. I did not want to live, and I spent years just I wasn’t going to take my life. But I had no joy in life. I saw no bright light in front of me, other than another oncoming train. And I had come to believe in what I call a whack a mole theology. You know, the the carnival game with the little moles pop their head up, you’ve got the mallet, bam, bam. Your job is to make sure you hit the head of each mole. And that was that had become my view of God, because I felt like every time I popped my head up, bam, I get knocked back down again. And so when God, as God, took me through the process of of change, the processes, I began to face the things that had happened and face them with God, and give God just a beginning, a tiniest chance, just the smallest chance. And began to search the Scripture, then I saw how God was able to change my mind, change my thinking, reframe the traumas that I had been through, and rediscover my relationship with God to the place where now I have no doubt of God’s goodness. I have no doubt that he loves me and everyone, and I have no doubt in God’s justice, which is a whole nother topic as well. And as I would share my own story of things that I’d been through, I consistently saw that there were frequently people who had come forward for the first time, who were an abuse or had never spoken about their abuse or their trauma, and they were coming forward and confiding because they thought they were alone. And so often we feel we think we’re alone. I’ve many times had people say, Do you know anybody who suffers like I do, or has experienced something that I have and and sometimes they want to feel that way, because it does make them feel special, but it’s not going to help them get better, so it’s going to keep them trapped there. And so I found that as I shared my story and shared the things about my journey, as well as the things that God had taught me out of the world, that people would find freedom. And so I knew that I needed to write, write the books I said, I don’t have enough time to meet everybody one on one. So it was that opportunity. And you know, what’s so beautiful is that as we begin to share our stories, as we start going through our healing journeys, and as we start to reach out to others, it creates community. And even that, there’s this spreading of good, rather than hiding evil under a blanket, keeping it hidden, exposing it to the light. So, yeah, so writing the book and speaking about it every time is an opportunity to give somebody hope that they can heal, that life can be different, that they can actually be happy. I remember this great experiment. I felt it was this huge experiment when I dared to say, maybe God wants me happy, and I was afraid to even think that. And so now, where I have I have so much joy and so much reason to live, and it doesn’t mean I don’t face challenges daily and carry burdens and have things happen to me, but now when they happen to me, I face them completely different. Now it’s one of one of my sayings is, Satan, you’re going to regret laying a hand on me, and those that I love and those that I’m praying for, you are going to pay. And so I went from being complete victim mentality of being a mole under the whack a mole hammer to now it’s, it’s, Lord, let me Adam, you know you and me, God, we’re going to partner. And what can we do to take this evil and see good come out of it? Whatever it takes. Lord, you lead the way. You show us what to do. Because I refuse to let evil win in any situation that I am involved. So it’s so radically transformed by life and my meaning and seeing God do so much, because so many people tend to think that God is a puppet master, that he’s orchestrating everything that happens and so and it’s it, God is the easiest one to blame. And I understand that because I did that too for many, many years, and saying, you know, God, why did you do this to me? But it was my lack of understanding of, where does evil come from? Why does it happen? What are the dynamics and God is a God of order. And so everything, just like the universe is, works in order. There’s there’s physical laws of the universe. There’s also laws for things that happen the way that things work. And so as I begin and continue to understand how God has orchestrated the universe as a just and loving God, then it reframes so that I’m approaching everything from the perspective of Lord, what is the goodness that can come out of this? Because some evil came in here somewhere. And so in my book Demystifying Evil, I look at the different ways that evil comes in. And so it just very practically.

But God, it begins so much of it begins with the responsibility and authority that God gave us as humanity in creation, in Genesis 1. And so it begins with who did God create us as human beings to be? He created us as his royal children. To rule in this universe according to his ways, which is his ways. God is never an abuser. He never manipulates, he never intimidates, he never dominates. God’s way of ruling is to come under, to come alongside, to try to God’s intention for humanity was to spread his goodness, to partner with him and spreading his goodness to all the corners of the earth. But we begin with where we live. And so there were so many things in Scripture that became so alive to me that transformed my worldview, which is what’s what Scripture is supposed to do. It’s supposed to help us see things God’s way. And so even in beginning my studies on evil, it was What does Scripture have to say? Because moral philosophers and so forth, all the readings that I’ve, that I’ve done on different views of evil, philosophical, sociological, anthropological and so forth, they all agree that there’s no definition of evil in any particular culture. Each culture has its own definition of evil, and it changes as culture changes. So they say, there’s no, you can’t go to any book and find a definite definition of evil, except I found, for example, Google, when they started their CEO, they had their moral code was simply don’t be evil or no, don’t do evil. And I heard an interview of him that that’s they, of course, now changed that code, but for I think, about 14 years, that was their code, don’t do evil. And I heard him interviewed on NPR, and he said, Well, you know, there’s no real definition of evil anywhere except maybe in the Bible or something. I thought, Well, see, even he knows that. So yeah, so again, that was my study. What is God’s perspective of evil? Because that’s what I want to know. But in order to know God’s perspective of evil, I discovered that we have to start with what is good and who is good. And that is where Scripture starts. It starts with a creation with that seven fold repetition. And it was God saw that it was good. He saw what he made which was consistent with what he thought, which was consistent with what he said. And it was good, it was good, it was good. And that is a reflection of who God is, because God is the only one who is completely good. What God thinks is consistent with what he says, which is consistent with what he does, which is not like us as humans. We think one thing, we say another, we do something entirely different. We’re inconsistent, but God is consistent, and he’s never changed who he is, and he’s never changed his plan, his plan for his goodness to spread throughout his creation, has not changed. And his plan to partner with humanity, for us to be the ones to carry his goodness, has never changed. And so I trace that throughout Scripture, how God has shown that, and how he consistently shows that, and that gives me the purpose that God wants me to have. I love the Jewish every Sabbath, when they’re celebrating the Sabbath, there’s a concept of they’re taking rest to think about God so that they can become the repairers of the world. And I love that to see ourselves, we as those who follow God. We’re supposed to be the repairers of the world, and we can’t do it if we hide. We can’t do it if we let evil win, if we’re silent in the face of it.

Ann Maree
Wow. Again, wow. That was packed with so much, and I was going to ask how that empowers us. But I think you, you didn’t necessarily answer that per se, but you answered it by sharing with us all about how it empowered you and how it has the potential of very specific ways of empowering us as well. And I have to say, I have a very hard time thinking that you were at one point not joyful, because you just have this aura of smile. It’s just joy is on your face, so I can’t imagine it without and so too, also thinking about the knowing of good, so that we know evil, not the only reason, of course, but it is the good that tells us what’s evil and that, you know, that’s probably what that CEO was having a hard time recognizing. You know, he’s looking for just one specific thing, whereas we as Christians know the way into knowing good and evil, as Scripture tells us, is to start with the good. Yes, I think just a little kind of turn here, because I just mentioned your, you know, face and your demeanor and what does what do you say? The body tells us when our ear refuses to hear or our inner manner. Or our inner man or woman refuses to acknowledge that evil and the subsequent suffering. Does our body play into that? Or how?

Dr Faro
Yeah, and that is so beautiful, how science and secular psychologist, you know,  Bessel van der Kolk, you know, The Body Keeps the Score. You know, was and that understanding that that if we ignore the pain, if we ignore the abuse, if we ignore the trauma, it does take a toll, and just like pain for if you touch a hot stove, you know you have pain so that you draw away. So pain is not bad. Pain is intended to be a signal that something is wrong. Same with anger. Anger is not bad. It can be just like pain can be bad, but it’s intended to be a signal that there’s something off. And so our emotions, our body, our whole being is interwired and the beautiful, the Hebrew understanding of the word soul, we tend in the West, I was always given a very Greek philosophical understanding of soul as mind, will and emotions. But in the Hebrew in the in the ancient world, so and in the Hebrew Bible, the world’s the word soul is a very holistic term. It refers to us, to our life. So our body, as well as the way we think and feel and so forth, is all part of our soul. It’s part of our life. So it’s a more of a connected view, and even our modern medicine that divides us into our heart and our mind and our stomach and our different body parts, we tend to have a very disjointed view of ourselves, and it is important for us to pay attention. So when I start to feel anger, I then I learn to stop and say, what is it that’s wrong? Or if I start to feel very sad or depressed or something, it’s like I go and say, Jesus, show me what do I need to know what’s happening here? Or if I feel a pain in my gut, you know, interestingly, the Hebrew also like the the the kidneys are a word that they associate with your emotions, pancreas with sweetness. And you know, so body parts are associated with different emotions as well. And you know, we have terminology like that. You know, a chip on my shoulder and you know they’re a pain in my neck. And so we use that as well, and we need to pay more attention to those things. And when we know something is off. And I like the way, both secular philosophers as well as you know, Cornelius planting a Christian philosophers, they say, you know, when things are not the way they’re supposed to be. When we know something is not the way it’s supposed to be, we’re not, we know we’re entering into the problem of evil. And so we so often have a sense whether it’s a pain. And again, some pain is sickness. So when there’s pain, it’s like, okay, is this physical? Is this psychological? Is the spiritual? Is it? You know, we can ask those questions, but we need to approach all of it more holistically, because God wants us whole. So I went from a whack a mole theology to a Shalom theology, and the word shalom, in the Hebrew, means wholeness. It refers to our well being when everything is just the way it’s supposed to be. And we have those moments in life, hopefully everyone listening has had at least those moments in life where even for a moment, things felt like it was supposed to be, even if it was a fleeting moment, that is shalom and so and we also, and you’re more familiar with this, yeah, I learned about family systems and parts. We have our parts and when we’re disjointed and how God wants to bring all of our parts together. That’s his goal. And so as we learn to listen even to our own thoughts and feelings and just pay attention to our whole being and say, Okay, God, something seems off here. Is there something I need to know? And to go to God, go to the spirit, go to Scripture and say, Is there something that I need to know here? What is it that needs to be made whole? What is it that is off? And in my book, I tell a story of I had become a workaholic. My first husband had been training to be a pastor, had a third of the New Testament memorized, but he was unfaithful and violent. And, you know, so the he had, in the end, he tried to kill me, which was when I lived through it, but that’s when I knew I needed to escape. And but again, by that time, I was, I was, I didn’t even know I had PTSD. I wasn’t, you know, I hadn’t that term wasn’t in popular use, as it is now, and so forth and so basically, I went through a divorce, and I thought, now I’ll never have anything to do in ministry. And so I just poured myself into work. I just became a workaholic. My drug of choice became my own adrenaline. I could not slow down, would not slow down. And as long as I was working and seeing success, I was in the business. So I was doing insurance in nutrition, and then I had to pay off my first husband’s debt. So I was also working full time, both in nutrition and in insurance to earn money to pay off his debt. And that took five years doing both. And so again, I was just working, working, but as long as I was working, I didn’t have to feel what I felt or hear my own thoughts, and I worked myself into a disability, and that was the one time then I began. I heard, I felt. I heard the spirit saying to me, sit in that comfy chair for an hour every day and do nothing. And I remember one minute, two minutes, I’m watching my watch. I had not done something like sit still for many, many, many years, which is why I had a disability and but after but I forced myself to sit in the chair and stare out the window, and I remember one day I felt this weird feeling for my feet and hands creeping up, and it scared me. I said, what is that? And I just heard this relaxation. But it was during that time that I began to feel what I felt, and when I felt the deep, deep pain of what I had been through, and it was just this searing pain. And I know so often people say I don’t even want to start to talk, because if I start to cry, I think I might never stop. But as I felt this horrific, dreadful pain. This, this, the thought was given to me, if I can feel this much pain, it means I’m capable of feeling even more joy. And I remember the words of Corrie ten Boom, who wrote The Hiding Place, you know, based on World War II and the horrors that she went through. And she said, “No, pit is so deep that God is not deeper still”. And so in, in facing, finally, facing my pain. And of course, I began going to a trauma counselor and started, you know, processing what I had been through. But it was, it was a long process, but boy, was it, is it? Is it? Was it and is it worth it? Because I  had to learn to have the courage to face the pain, which meant face even the people, face the circumstances. But God only led me to do that as I gained capacity and as I so It’s one small step at a time, but as we go through that process, the more whole we become, the more we’re able to take the hand of somebody else to help them. But there’s always somebody ahead of us whose hand we’re holding. So I see this as we’re always holding on to somebody who’s a step ahead of us, and then we have the capacity to hold on to somebody who’s that step behind us, and that way we all help each other move in the direction of wholeness. And it’s it’s wholeness where we can find joy, where we can discover love, where we can begin to trust God and others. I was a complete loner. I even had a whole song to go with it, with choruses and everything about, you know, me being alone. And, I mean, I, I remember when God told me I needed to make friends, and I was quite upset about it. I did not want to open up my life to anybody. And God told me, If you don’t, you won’t be able to heal. And I was quite upset, but I had to go through this process of, how do I make a friend? I was terrified of speaking in front of people. My knees would shake, my throat would close up, and I would have to even in classes, my knees would and I would have to read off the page. And so I, I know what God has done in my life to transform me. So that’s why I have faith that God can transform anyone and I, I meet more and more people, get to know people, where I see their journeys. And it just begins take the little step. What can I face today, and what can I do to trust God? Just a tiny bit. It might be a teeny, teeny sliver of light, but what can I do to trust and what can I do to trust one person, and, you know, just a little bit, who can I go to that I can open up to just a little bit? Let’s start with that. And that begins the journey begins, the journey of healing, like the one that that you tell in this episode. You know, that journey of healing, it takes time, but it’s so worth it. The alternative was death.

Ann Maree
Oh, yeah, good point, yes, yeah, that was very carefully expressed. I like that the way you shared your story. Thank you for sharing your story. Part of it anyway to help us understand that whole person connection. And I was hearing too, it’s not just a whole person healing, it’s a whole body. And I use the term body, as in Christ’s body, healing and and too. I just think this, I could be wrong, but I think this is what God meant when he was talking about the one another’s what it looked like to be the body for each other, more so than some of the programs that we institute in the church, or anyway those could lead that direction. But I think your picture, and I wish I had the video of you with the pulling and the dragging in the pulling, kind of with your arms, not dragging, but yeah, being pulled and pulling at the same time. And that’s also just the way I think God has positioned it for our care. And that’s Paul saying comfort those with the comfort you’ve been given. Yeah, that’s the picture.

Dr Faro
Yeah. And even the word that Jesus uses in John 14 and 16, you know, I will send a helper, some, some helper counselor. We use different terms. And it’s used in 2 Corinthians chapter 1, the God of all comfort and but, and in the Greek, it, it, it means the one, one who is who comes alongside. So the Holy Spirit is the one who comes alongside us, and that’s what we’re supposed to be for one another, simply coming alongside, not having all the answers, not thinking that we do, or trying to not having all the solutions, because that’s when sometimes we say the stupidest things, but but simply coming alongside, our presence. The importance of presence with one another, and even for those that are rejecting Jesus right now, if they will even accept my presence, I know that in my presence is also the presence of Jesus. So if they’re accepting my presence, it’s giving Jesus that a little opportunity, because he’s the only one who can truly bind the brokenhearted. That’s his mission. That’s what he says in Luke 4, as he’s quoting Isaiah 61 the Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for He’s anointed me to preach the good news. And then the Hebrew, it says, To bind up the brokenhearted. We can heal heart attacks, but only God can truly bind up. And in the Hebrew, it’s a shattered heart, you know it you can, you could divide it as to bind up like, like a wound, a shattered heart. God can do that and that is the good news. That’s what we’re to be bringing to set captives free. And we’re captive by so many things. You know, we’re captive by our fears, by our anger, you know, by our past, by our present. We’re captive by so many things, and in prisoners, you know, like I was addicted to my own adrenaline. You know, people have various… we all find some drug of choice, so to speak, to numb ourselves, whether it’s, you know, TV or porn or or alcohol or something, you know, when we’re trying to simply kill the pain. And what I found, is invite God into that place of pain. So when, so even, like with me, it was, it was adrenaline. I had to invite God into that place. But people I, you know, I, I’ve learned and and I’ve heard others share this as well, is that, invite God into your addiction, invite God into your prison cell, you know. And invite God, you know, if you drink, say, Okay, Lord Jesus, come and join me. I’m drinking right now, or I’m going to take some, you know, whatever a drug or something it is, and invite Jesus in and say, I need you to sit here with me, because I can’t get out of this on my own. And we want to hide it. We want to hide it from God, but that doesn’t work either. Invite, just invite God into our mess. We can’t clean it up and come to him. He wants to enter into our mess because he loves us. He, you know, Jesus, he was criticized. He hung out with sinners and drunkards. And you know it’s he comes into our mess. That’s what he wants to do. And so we’re not trying to clean ourselves up. We’re not fighting the evil on our own. We can’t. We do not have the capacity. Jesus was the one who is above every power, principality, spiritual might. He’s the name above every name. And so we invite him in to the mess, and we invite him in with us into other people’s mess. One of my favorite sermons, just from the beginning of it that I it’s the one that I quote most often, the person got up and and so I want you to open with me the Gospel of John, chapter one, and read with me verse 20 B. And so we all read, I am not the Christ. I am not the Christ. I can’t solve your. Problem you can’t solve mine. I can’t solve my own. On my own, I am not the Christ. The Christ is the one that I need, the one who enters into our mess, who.. the God who made himself humanity, nothing, no other religion, nothing else like that God made himself flesh. He tabernacled among us so that we could see the grace and mercy of God, because he wants us to, he wants our shattered hearts to be, to be healed and and that is, that is the gospel. Can I just share one other beautiful thing about that passage? 

Ann Maree
Oh, please, yeah. 

Dr Faro
Okay, so Jesus is quoting from Isaiah 61 and and in his day, people knew the Scripture well. That was, you know, in general. So in Isaiah 61 he’s pretty much quoting from that but, but the he’s quoting from one and two. But then in verse three, where it says, depending on the translation where he says, God comes to comfort those who mourn, and all of us are more… all of us have grief, and he’s come to comfort us in our grief. And then it says, to give us beauty for ashes and and Hebrew does something. Hebrew plays with words in order to make stories. So it’ll take words and turn them around in order to give meaning to them. And the word in the Hebrew for for beauty and the word for ashes are the same three letters, but the first two letters are turned around, and so ashes is what is put on your head. Ashes is what Job sat in after he lost everything. Ashes is what’s left when there’s nothing left. Ashes what is what Tamar put on her head, the King David’s daughter after she was raped by her step brother. So ashes is just that’s the symbol, and it put it on your head, and everyone understands there’s nothing left. But the word beauty is used in that same chapter in Isaiah for the headdress of the bridegroom. It’s used earlier in the book of Isaiah for the fancy headdress of the wealthy women of Jerusalem, and it’s also used of the turban of the priests. So it’s something that’s beautiful on your head, something very special for a very special time. And so the message that Isaiah is giving there, God wants to take the very ashes of our life. And when we give those ashes to him, which seems like nothing that have been put on our head, he is going to turn them around and turn that very… the thing that our deepest shame, our greatest pain, our biggest guilt. He wants to take that, turn it around into something that is beautiful in our head. And at the end of that verse, it says that we might become oaks of the Lord, that he might be glorified. And that word glorified, same three root letters, so God is glorified when we trust God enough to give him our ashes and say, God, I can’t handle this grief. Take it. Here it is. I give it to you. I can’t. Yeah, I remember throwing, throwing my anger and my hurt at God and I and receiving, actually miraculous healing in that moment from that, the very disability that I’d had because I threw God my pain, and he has turned that into something that is beautiful on my head. So the so the and I love one way a pastor said it once the place where the serpent has bitten you, or the place of your greatest pain, is to become the place of our greatest authority and the thing of the greatest beauty and honor where God is glorified. Because we say, look what God has done. He’s taken me from the ash heap, and he has put my feet upon a rock, and now I’m dressed in garments of praise. That’s the good news. That is the good news. That’s Jesus’ manifesto in Luke 4. That’s what he came to do.

Ann Maree
And you’re drawing a picture of what you said a little earlier, of being that presence for the person, as you are bringing Jesus with you, the Holy Spirit’s inside you and you, you, you bear witness with him, as your guide, as your strength, as your as your leader. And I think too, possibly, that’s another position of the listener of a story that’s kind of not talked about. Not only that we don’t want to hear evil, we don’t want to face evil, we don’t want to recognize evil, but I guess, too just not wanting to be bear witness in such a way that we remember we aren’t doing it. God is doing it. A. Um, I, you know what I would love to take when your classes on the Hebrew language, because I did not know that. And also that’s a beautiful word picture for us, and the replacement beauty for ashes, I know. So in our podcast, the the tagline is, all suffering is loss, and there’s more to it, but that, but we say that every time. And you kind of quoted Eleanor Stump in a similar vein, as she said, that suffering implies a loss, an unwanted, unwilling, unwelcomed taking away of something valued, needed or wanted. And then I loved how you followed up her quote by sharing about a good type of suffering, can you share a little bit more about the different types of suffering you’ve identified?

Dr Faro
Yes, and that it ties in with a point that you just made, which is so important about you said that we come along when we come along others, when we are when we hear the stories, when we listen to the stories of those who are suffering. And so this is where that, what you just said, which is so important to be listeners with, with some of the things I learned from suffering Eleonore Stump and my other readings is that I see three kinds of suffering. There’s external suffering, so there’s the suffering that comes from living in a broken world, from the hardships that we face, from the things that come at us from the outside that make life so hard. And so that is external suffering, which is certainly associated with evil. Then there’s internal suffering, and that is frequently related to the external, but it’s, but it’s a different kind. It’s our own griefs, our own pains, our the ways that we anguish in in the and, and sometimes it can just be our own mental the depressions, the anxieties, the suicidal thoughts. It’s, it’s that internal suffering, which also can be so devastating and but again, recognizing that the external and the internal are different. You know, I’ve heard people talk about, you know, don’t let the ocean into your boat. So the waves may be going but, you know, try not to let …but sometimes that can be really hard not to let them in. But again, you know, it’s to try to… So, at any rate, separating those two, but recognizing those are very real. But then the the there’s a third kind of suffering, which is intentional suffering, sometimes that can be misused. You know, where we could just say, Oh, I’m suffering for God, where we’re conflating that with external and internal suffering. But when there’s an intentional suffering, which is exemplified by what Jesus did, Jesus was never tainted by he, he walked into the external suffering. He wept at the loss, at the death of Lazarus, he groaned at the hard hearts of the people around him. So he did experience those but yet he was never taken under by them. So he would enter into he entered into those suffering with the presence and the hope and the power and the love, the loving power of God, in order to transform every circumstance that he walked into, and when we can, as we get more and more whole and healthy and and we can’t wait till we’re perfect, because that’s never going to happen on this side, you know. So we walk in the degree of wholeness, but when we listen to other people’s stories, and we help carry the burden of their stories, but we recognize we’re carrying it with Jesus. Jesus, who’s says, Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, you know, to put we take the burden, we place it on Jesus. I have this. Lord told me this, this gave me this great picture. My late husband was a Vietnam veteran, and so I, you know, I donate to different organizations, Wounded Warriors and so forth. And one of them has this, this image of a of a soldier who’s he’s carrying another soldier on his shoulder away from the battlefield to the the medic tent and and so the Lord showed me, when you come across the wounded, you can’t you don’t have the the capacity to heal them yourself that is not within you. Your job is to pick them up, carry them to me so that I can heal them and not beat yourself up. Oh, why can’t I? You know, it’s it’s not me, it’s Christ in me. And so my job is simply to lift up the wounded and lay them at Jesus’ feet. Because I can do a lot of that, but if I try to stop and do what I’m not capable of. So Lord showed me when I’m exhausted I’m trying to do something. That he hasn’t given me to do, and I need to learn to lay the burdens, including my own, at his feet. Again, I am not the Christ. So it helps me just to have that visual, because sometimes I feel so overburdened at the stories that I hear. And as I my job is that you know every day, and Lord Jesus hears that person, show me what I can do, but you do it only you can do, but show me what I can do. And my job is to I can listen, I can hear, and then I can speak, as the Lord leads me to and gives me capacity to but if I you know, we know we if we try to carry more than we can, can it’s, you know, the whole oxygen mask in the airplane thing, you know, it’s trying to save the drowning person. It’s like, I have to learn to lay the people down. And Jesus is the one who carries that burden. He does the heavy lifting. My job is to bring the person to him, and that’s the intentional suffering. So I carry that weight, but I do it as a follower, trusting that God loves the person more than I ever can, and only he has the tools to heal them. And so I’m that is how I am carrying my cross. Is by participating. Paul talks about participating in his sufferings and and that can be misused, you know, we can have a wrong idea about that. Oh, I’m suffering for Jesus. I used to have that language too, you know? I tried that one, and it’s like, no, you know, you bring you come and bring my presence and let my presence do the work.

Ann Maree 
Yeah, I’m drawing it together with everything else that you’re saying, you have to be okay being in the presence of their of their evil, because suffering is because of evil, right? I mean, yes, yes. And that’s what you, again, drew us a picture of when you were talking about what Jesus did in his time on Earth, and how he ministered and entered in to… and we’ve talked about, I mean, in lay counseling situations, we talk a lot about entering into people’s pain and suffering, but, but that includes these, these great sources of evil. Can you tell me, where does evil get its power anyway?

Dr Faro
That’s such a great question. And as I’ve studied it and recognizing that everything that God made is good, everything in creation is good, relationships, he made good, Genesis, two and so evil… I do not see evil as the absence of good, nor do I see evil as having an existence independent on its own, as if it was, as if it was also pre existent. God alone is pre existent. That means goodness alone is pre existent. So that means that evil gets its power from the twisting and corruption of what is good. That is where it gets its power. So a couple of examples that I’ve found very helpful. One is when we think of cancer. Cancer is a cell that has mutated, something has gone wrong in that cell and so I describe evil. I define evil as the corruption of creational and relational goodness. So if we see from Scripture that that evil is taking what God intended for good and corrupting it, twisting it, polluting it, turning it into something that it’s not. And so, like a cancer cell, it takes a healthy cell, and it takes the life-giving power of healthy cells, which are replicating all the time. You know, our skin and every part of our body is continually being renewed. And so when cancer corrupts, that’s that healthy cell, then it uses the power of that cell to multiply itself. So it uses the power of good. And love is, of course, the most powerful example in the world, you know, God is love. Also love is the greatest power on earth, it’s something that no evil can replicate. And love is giving. We look at God, who Jesus shows us love by giving his life, by washing the feet of the disciple, by taking the lowest position in any household at the time, by washing their feet. And if, and he says, If I your Lord and Master, do this, wash your feet. So are you to do with one another. So love comes and lifts up. That’s what God’s love does. Wants to heal, wants to bring wholeness. And so if we meet, if, if we meet someone, we love them. We want to, we want to see their wholeness. That’s what love does. That’s God’s kind of love. But if a corruption of love is seeing something beautiful or someone beautiful, and saying, I want that for myself, rather than I want to see that beauty flourish, that person flourish, I want it for myself and so on a human level, then begins to try to take that person for themselves for their own benefit, rather than loving them for that person’s own beauty. And so as soon as they start to take for themselves, now it’s corrupted. Now it’s twisting, and then that begins the whole process of manipulation. And what can I do to get that person so the whole concept of taking is a really important word in Scripture. It’s often associated with rape and things like that, where you just taking something that has not been that is not yours, but it’s thinking something or someone should be yours, when everybody and everything is God’s, and that’s how that but it gets the power that corrupted love gets the power from the purity of love, which is the most powerful force in the world. And so again, anytime we corrupt something, or like a river, that’s a river that’s flowing, just flowing beautifully, if we want to divert that river, you know, got to throw rocks in it, or, you know, do some building project or something and and if that goes wrong, it can flood a city, it can destroy lives and so forth. But it gets the power from the force of the water itself. So evil has no authority on its own. Satan has no authority on his own. He gets his authority by convincing us humans to do his work. So he takes what is intended as good, he twists our minds, corrupts our thoughts. We see that in Genesis 3, corrupts our thoughts to want something that that God has, that that God knows is not good for us, or that God has told us stay away from that it’s like, Nope. That’s the one thing I have to have, I’m going to get that. And if God isn’t giving it to me, God must not be good, so I better go take it for myself. Just as the woman took of the fruit, because she saw that it was what it was good instead of, and God said it was not good for her to eat. But she decided, the serpent convinced her that’s the one thing of all the trees in the garden I’ve given you. I’ve given you everything you need. The first time the word command is used is in Genesis, two of all the trees in the garden, God commanded eat freely, but just the one tree. And so that evil comes in when we want to take something that is not sanctioned by God, something that is not good for us, something that God has said, that’s going to hurt you. This is not good. Stay away from this. It will cause damage. And we become convinced that’s the one thing I have to have. I have to have that job. I have to have that person. I have to have that house. I have to have that property, whatever the I have to have. And God, if you’re not giving me, giving it to me, I better take it for myself. And so evil, that’s where the evil comes in. It’s now corrupted the goodness. It’s destroyed the harmony. It’s destroyed the well being, because harmony and well being only functions when there is the love for the beauty of every thing of creation and every person and their and their relationship with God, their wholeness. I love one scholar describes… defines wholeness as a covenant commitment to the well being of another, and I love that definition of love, wanting the other’s well being, and sometimes that requires intentional suffering on our part, stepping back, you know, we can see that with, you know, I had to learn that with, with my children, that I want to manipulate them, you know, you know, oh, you know, when they’re young, Oh, you’re breaking your mother’s heart, or, you know, trying to get them to do what I want them to, because I know what’s best for you, and if you just listen to me, everything would be fine. And but yet, if I try to manipulate them or intimidate or dominate them, now I’m doing harm to them. I have to come. I have to lean from behind, so to speak, which is what shepherds do lead from behind. You know, especially when they’re adults, children again, there’s the different stages. But as adults, as adult children, you know, loving them with God’s kind of love God gives us. He lets us make choices, but he’s always there trying to teach us, saying, This is the way. He’s always trying to show us the way. So evil, again, is taking that which God has not sanctioned, desiring things, something that is not going to be good for us, or another that’s going to do harm, and that introduces evil.

Ann Maree
Thank you. Yeah, master class on Paul statement to know good from evil. Yeah, the two are important to the other’s understanding for sure. And just as a reminder for our audience, and I’ve underlined this several times in in your book, Dr Faro, is the corruption of good evil is the corruption of good? So very important to know both. So you talked about, I think it was in Demystifying Evil, but you talked about how turning the other cheek, which I know we’ve heard so often, especially when it comes to domestic abuse. But how can you…you’ve got a great twist on this. How can that ultimate ultimately be an act of defiance and a restraint for evil?

Dr Faro
Yeah, and you bring up a good point, we have to make sure it’s not spoken of. You know that we use this in the wrong context. Because, you know, obviously, if there’s physical or emotional abuse that’s gotta get away from it. Gotta be able to get healing, but, but when it comes, I’ve seen that in work circumstances, in governmental circumstances, in different situations, sometimes turning the other cheek, you know, as I describe it, can be the ultimate act of defiance, and it’s when you have, you have to be strong and healed enough in order to recognize somebody’s coming against you to do evil. And instead of fighting back or running away, you just, you know, sometimes, sometimes, like, for example, I had a there was a person that was a boss and, and turned out there were, you know, at least 50 other people who eventually came forward with the abuse, the abuses this person had been… It wasn’t sexual abuse, but it was verbal, financial, emotional abuses and and by the time, you know, it didn’t take too long to recognize that this was one of those kind of people who was in a position of authority and but, you know, for me, it was like, Oh, this is, you know, it was nothing new for me. So when I, when I encountered it, and he would try to put me down in a meeting or something, you know, I could just look at him and be completely silent and think, Is that all you’ve got, you know, and be completely unmoved, you know, whereas he, you know, he would delight if he could, you know, get someone totally frustrated or in tears or to quit or something, and instead be like, is that that all You’ve got? So you want to try another shot right here. I’m not going anywhere. You’re not going to chase me away. You know your evil is not going to chase away the goodness and power and love of God in me. So I still pray that person will be healed, that that person will face their own traumas and in the meanwhile, there was a determination, no, I’m not going anywhere. You’re not going to chase me away. So I’m standing here for those who don’t have the strength to take this and but God is going to deal with this. So it was, you know, it was also a very prayerful standing kind of Jesus before Pilate, when he just became silent, was like, we’re done. I’m done. Nothing more to say to you, I’m right here. Not afraid of anything you can dish out, because I know what’s behind you.

Ann Maree 
Oh, that’s a great picture of restraint. Yeah, yeah. Well, thank you. This is all rich, rich understanding. But I do have just one final question I like to ask all my experts, and that is, are there any questions that we should be asking you? But I haven’t asked.

Dr Faro
Well, we, we didn’t talk a lot about the unseen realm, malevolent forces. And of course, in my book, and when I’m speaking with people, you know, I look at the different ways that evil comes in, and sometimes it’s simply action – consequence, cause and effect. And which is that’s an understanding that all religions have karma, you know, New Age, science, atheism, they all understand cause and effect. But that is in Scripture too. But that’s not all there is as Job. The Book of Job shows there’s 30 chapters. I’m arguing Job you must have sinned for this thing to happen. And Job said, but I’m innocent. It really so. And we recognize there’s more. We recognize there is judgment, there is justice. God is a God of justice. So action consequence does work, but God is, most importantly, a God of mercy and grace. God always seeks to give mercy and grace rather than judgment. But you cannot have mercy and grace without a system of justice, because mercy and grace are the…not giving the consequences of what somebody justly deserves. And so that’s the mercy, and then the grace is covering paying the price, paying the debt, for that justice that you deserve. So God knows that we all deserve justice. But he took the justice of humanity’s rebellion upon himself. He took the justice of all the evil of all the world, of all time in all history upon himself, for anyone who will receive the price that he paid for it, so that we can receive mercy and grace. So for anyone who repents and says, Lord, I have been trying to be my own boss. I have been taking what I want. I have not understood, and I still, you know, I might still not understand your goodness and that you love me, But Lord, I’m going to turn around, I’m going to turn to you, and Lord, I’m going to, I want you to forgive me for my wrong and so, but that is, you know, so that’s, that first step is being able to turn back and give God a chance and come in whatever state that we are to him, but then also recognizing our culpability, which we’ve talked a lot about, our responsibility in evil, but then also recognizing that there are spiritual forces. And so in my book, I talk about all of the terms that are used in the Old and New Testament for these spiritual forces, and especially in our, you know, enlightenment era, since, you know the 1700s you know we we people tend to not want to believe that they’re demons or spiritual forces. And you know, they might believe in angels, but then they don’t even really understand what the Bible describes as angels, you know, cherubim are not little, chubby babies with tiny wings. They’re actually guarding… throne guardians. So very, very different picture than the you know. So there are these so many different kinds of spiritual entities in Scripture that and there are those that are enemies of God and enemies of human. And since they can’t deface God, since we as humans are made in God’s image, their greatest joy is to mar and deface humans in any way they can. And that’s why there is that spiritual warfare, spiritual conflict taking place. And that’s why Paul in Ephesians 6 says we are not wrestling flesh and blood, but powers and principalities, spiritual, wicked in earthly places and evil in the heavenly realms. And so again, these different levels and authority of different ungodly, godless, anti God, authorities that are trying to destroy humanity as their only revenge against God. So it is important that we’re aware of those. And we are not, as followers of Jesus, we are not to be afraid, because Jesus said All authority has been given to me. He says that right before we are all familiar with the Great Commission, Go therefore, but then therefore, Go therefore into all the nations make disciples and baptizing and teaching, but it before that is all authority has been given to me. So if all authority has been given to Jesus, how much authority does Satan actually have? The only authority Satan and demonic forces have is what we as humans give them. And so that’s why our mental health is so important, because where they battle is in our mind, you know this, the Satan didn’t come as a mammoth, you know, big, scary, you know, or as a dinosaur. He came as a little slicer, but with words a liar. So, yeah, a liar. Yep, he’s a liar. And so recognizing the lies in our head is one of the greatest ways. So, you know, we I talked about, you know, pain and the different ways that we can feel things, but identifying those, the lies that we believed, and many of them were placed in our head from the time we were born, or early on, you’re not good enough. You’re never going to be anything. Who do you think you are? You know, all of these, you can’t do what, all of these words that are lies. And then we we pick them up as we go along. You know, we have a situation where something goes really bad, and we say, I’m never going to be, you know, I’m never going to be able to do this. I’ve never, you know, all the nevers and all the vows that we make and the lies that we believe, and so paying attention. So I’ve discovered that anytime I have a an overreaction in a situation, something happens and and if I can recognize, you know, I it may take me, it won’t happen in the moment, but when I recognized I got really angry or really hurt or really devastated or really, you know, you know, things would sit in my mind. I would beat myself up, sometimes for months over one thing that I’d said. Why did I say that? So anytime I can recognize when I overreacted to this situation? Question, I’ve learned to take a step back once I recognize it’s like, I’m overreacting. If somebody says you’re overreacting, oh yeah, I’m not, you know, but take a step back and go and say, what is the lie behind that, that has a long route that has set me off, because it’s you know, and trigger courses used so often, but that long explosive cord. What does that go back? And I’ll say, Lord Jesus, would you show me? What is this emotional response that is over the top? What is it that goes way back? What is the lie that I believed? And Lord Jesus help me to uproot that lie so that I’m never held captive by this emotional response again. And I have found that to be tremendously helpful in my healing journey. Is to Jesus… show me and then ask Jesus, where were you when I heard these words and and to see where Jesus was in that moment of… and I might not have even recognized it as trauma. I might. But to go back, what is the lie I believed, you know, like there was a lie. Believed I will never be loved. And, of course, that had some, you know, devastating maybe take really bad decisions. You know, for years of my life, you know, and I’d had a major financial, you know, somebody that I trusted completely had betrayed me, and take ended up costing me everything, and and I had, and I did, and it took me a good decade to recognize, I believed a lie, I’m never going to be a leader, you know, because I failed, even though I successful fora couple of decades in that role once that the betrayal and the hurt, and it took me a decade to recognize that I had buried part of who I was under the lie because of the hurt that I had experienced. And so God wants us… I call it. I’m in the process of becoming who I am. So God has who he created us to be, and each of us he created good with good purposes, good intentions, and the more we can recognize and walk with Jesus and say, show me the things that are keeping me from being who I am. Where has, where have the lies marred me so that I don’t to keep me from being who you made me to be as your image bearer. So that has been one of the really valuable tools toward healing. Is just to invite Jesus into my circumstance and say, show me what I need to know. Show me what I need to know.

Ann Maree
Yeah, I mean, if he tells us, and he does, that I will never leave you. I will never forsake you. He’s there. Yes, we need to look for him, right? Yeah. And two, you’re repeating one of my favorite biblical counseling authors, Elise Fitzpatrick, be who you are. Be who you are. And actually, Dr Wilder said it on his episode too. So thank you, Dr Faro, for helping our safe to help safe to hope. Audience, enter the space of Carya’s story prepared more prepared to hear you’ve you’ve been an incredible help for us as we listen to this difficult story, and helped us develop a better understanding of the subject matter. I think what you’ve talked about here is just an incredible framework for how to hear this particular story, this particular season. So again, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Dr Faro
Thank you for your work and for this, this series is so important. Thank you so much for having me.

Ann Maree 
Absolutely my pleasure. We’ll do this again sometime. 

Great, but that’s all for this episode, and we will include Dr Faro’s wonderful resources in our show notes. And I might suggest you may even want to consider reading Demystifying Evil as you process this season and with what you hear.