You’re not broken.

But a lot of us were taught to believe we were.

Hi, I’m Lauren Howard. You can call me L2. Like other people do. And in this episode of Different, Not Broken, I’m talking with Libby Alders, a pastoral chaplain who works at the intersection of faith, trauma, and identity, about what happens when religion stops being a source of comfort and starts quietly doing damage.

We get into how harmful theology gets lodged in your nervous system, why so many neurodivergent and LGBTQIA people grow up feeling fundamentally wrong, and how community can heal or harm depending on who’s allowed to show up fully.

This isn’t a debate about belief. It’s a conversation about safety. About moral injury. About certainty being weaponised. And about finding ways to make meaning without being told who you’re allowed to be.

There’s swearing. There’s honesty. There’s a surprising amount of warmth for a conversation that doesn’t pull its punches.

Once you’ve been inspired to brag, here’s where you can do it!

https://differentnotbrokenpodcast.com/voicemail

Useful stuff

Stuff that helps you become awesome even if you’re different: https://stan.store/elletwo

My grown up job: https://lbeehealth.com/

Timestamped summary

00:00 “You’re Not Broken. You Were Taught Harmful Theology”

04:18 Certainty, faith, and why curiosity matters

09:32 Religion, trauma, and moral injury

14:41 Neurodivergence, queerness, and conditional belonging

20:06 Losing faith without losing yourself

26:55 Finding safer community and meaning

Mentioned in this episode:

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I mean, my entire academic career is based around this idea of,

like, fighting against spirituality being, like, this harmless

panacea of, like, it won't hurt you.

I kind of grew up watching seeing my LGBT friends struggling with

mental health issues, with suicide. Certainty is the

enemy of any faith and belief system. Because you want to leave open

curiosity and room to grow someone else believing or living

differently from you does not mean you get to be a fucking asshole. All right,

here we go. I'm going to pretend I'm pushing record, because that feels right. Okay,

pressing record. Boop. Hi, everybody.

I'm Lauren Howard. Welcome to Different Not Broken,

which is our podcast on exactly that. That there are a lot of

people in this world walking around feeling broken, and the reality is you're just different,

and that's fine. You know this. If you're here, you know this. I'm

Jewish, and everybody who's listening hears me say that, like, 700

times an episode. So, hi, guys. Surprise. I'm Jewish. The reason

that I'm bringing that up, though, is that I'm not, like. I don't like to

use the term good Jew and bad Jew, because I think that's

not a judgment that anybody gets to make, even me, about myself. But I will

say I eat a lot of bacon and I'm not exactly observant,

but, like, the fundamentals of it, the things that I learned in Sunday school as

a kid, like, those kind of stick with me. I did the whole

bat mitzvah process and actually really enjoyed it. I can still read Hebrew

if. If you want me to. Don't want me to. It's been a long time.

But anyway, the point being is that definitely born Jewish,

also, bizarrely, is the word we're looking for. Raised in an

evangelical cult. That's another episode for another day. But I do

have this very bizarre intersection of faith in my background. And by the

way, I was Jewish the whole time, so it's just very confusing.

Anyway, the reason I bring that up is I sit in this weird

place between not exactly being

agnostic, not exactly being involved in any particular

faith, believing that faith is important for a lot of people

to a certain extent, needing to believe that there is

some plan, that somebody is up to something, and that this

is not all chaos because I will just become despondent and not get out of

bed. Which sounds kind of nice, but anyway, so it's a

thing that comes up regularly of, like, how do we navigate

this world as people who have a kind of very typical millennial aversion

to all things structured, all things that

were impressed upon us by boomers, but also

kind of a draw to the comfort that that could potentially provide

regardless whether we have found that place for ourselves or

not. So I'm very excited to have

somebody who I absolutely adore, Libby Alders, with

us here today. Libby is a

pastoral chaplain, you tell me.

So I am working on becoming a fee based pastoral counselor

in North Carolina, which I will explain later. Sounds

very like ah, it's not as as it sounds, but my

background, I'm an ordained reverend, so technically I do have the

fancy reverend title which is real fun to throw out. But I have an

ordained reverend with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, which is an

oxymoron if you know anything about Baptist history. Like we throw down and create

a new denomination every Sunday. It's our thing. Occasionally a new country

too, but that's like a whole other podcast

entirely like anyways, so that's a little bit of a background

and I have training in what we call clinical pastoral education. So what

a lot of people don't know is in the US chaplains are in

every major like especially trauma centers in your major research

hospitals like typically funded through Medicaid, Medicare, but they're part of

and I think still even a J code requirement. So they're like

essential staff. So I am trained to kind of work in a variety of

settings meeting people where they're at on like oh no, you're having a

big life event Q existential crisis. Well it's not really convenient to

have in the middle of an er, but guess what, you're going to have it.

So that's kind of my background and specialty is working with people in it

was very inconvenient, but it's going to happen anyway in life

situations kind of asking those big existential questions

or learning like hey, what's some of that like computer programming running in the

back of my brain of like maybe that childhood

religious experience I had is more formative than I thought and it's, it's

running some systems in the background. So I work with people to help them kind

of unpack what's going on. Is it helpful? Is it kind of a

harmful theology running in the background? Anyways, that's my long

spiel is I am ordained Reverend, working on becoming

a fee based pastoral counselor and working on my board certification

to become a clinical chaplain. So you're based out of North

Carolina? Yes. How many

other women or non binary

people are there in your field in North Carolina? I actually know the

answer to this Because I checked. But now it'll look like a really

horrible subject matter. Actually. No,

just guess a really low number. Like, especially

on the binary, like the non binary folks.

If we're over 50, I would be shocked. I

like, I would probably, like, fall. Out of the ones who are actually

credentialed and can provide supervision in your field. It's

like five. Yeah, that's what I was like. I was being very generous with the

50, because I'm thinking some of my friends who are like, in that gray area

of like, yeah, I can operate. I'm like, can you?

Okay, Let me take it a step further, though. How many

people who have your

perspective on religion, but

also like, religion's place in trauma,

how many of those do you think exist in your

community and. Or your state? So I'm gonna. I'm

gonna kind of define the community as a little bit of the profession. Cause it's

such a tiny profession that we. We cling to each other. Like, Fred,

I don't care what time zone you're in, but as far as I'm thinking of

some of my friends who are chaplain researchers, things like that, I can

personally think of about 40 people I've connected with, and I'm. I'm

talking globally. Like, 40 people who really want

to explore a deep dive, this intersection of

trauma and religion, and particularly explore some of the negative impact.

So you'll find a lot of people. Pet peeve of mine. And we

can go into it later. Like it. By pet peeve, I mean my entire

academic career is based around this idea of, like, fighting

against spirituality being like, this harmless panacea

of, like, it won't hurt you. Try a little bit of this.

And I'm like, no. Spirituality and religion can be incredibly

dangerous and harmful. So I jokingly call myself the

Sith Lord of resilience. Because I'm just like, no, you don't need to be resilient.

Sometimes you just need to crash all the way out. But as far as sharing

that perspective, maybe 40 people in the globe in North Carolina.

It's like me and one of my besties, and we're just like,

trauma bonding. White knuckling it

through. Yeah.

It'S weekly brag time. Hi,

I'm Stacy, and my brag is. That

I made dinner for my kids. Which I haven't done in a

million, billion years, with a recipe I never tried before

and techniques I never tried before, and they all thought it was

delicious. So it feels good to know I still got it.

If you want to leave us A note, you can do

it@differentnotbrokenpodcast.com

voicemail. Leave a message of the cool thing that you did. Leave your first

name last. Initial the cool thing that you did, and

we might feature you on a later episode.

You know, we have a very large queer, non binary

following or listener base. We also have, just in general,

obviously, people who come to listen because they feel

like they have never fit in anywhere. And a lot of that

is not a lot of that. But I think a very common theme is

people who grew up in very faith based communities who

realize they, for whatever reason, are not accepted within that community,

but really liked the aspect of community that they have now lost.

And I know you do a lot of work in that and also helping people

find their way back to faith in a way that is safe and

welcoming to them. So I'd love to hear a little bit more about kind of

how you ended up there and what

the, let's say, the safe intersection between faith

and identity is. So just to provide a little bit of context,

the church I was a part of, I think I'm either the fourth or fifth

generation in my family to be a member of this church. And

so. And a lot of people, when they hear Baptist and American, they

kind of immediately go to righteous gemstones. Which one? An amazing

TV show too. Way more accurate than it.

People realize, like, I can't watch it in chunks because it like, rigs

out a trauma response. But I preface that by saying, like,

the Baptist church and tradition has a lot of rich diversity.

And unfortunately, the more progressive kind of LGBTQ side and

friendly side of it is smaller. But my tradition

kind of sat in the moderate, especially the early 2000s. So I grew up

in a church that was way more liturgical. Like, we didn't have like

the shows, the fancy lights and mega church

vibes. It was much more like, you'd walk in and almost think it was United

Methodist because we have the similar vestments. We follow a

liturgical calendar, which is not usual for Baptist. But also you'd walk in

and there'd be women. Like, women were all on staff. We had

female deaconesses, which was since the 40s. And so I just kind of

grew up seeing women in leadership. One of the areas where they weren't as

progressive was on the LGBT community. So there was a lot of, you know,

I apologize for listeners. I don't mean to be traumatic, but like, for the next

two seconds, I might say trigger word. There was a lot of accept people with

grace. So that's a very strong Code word for don't bring

your full self, and that's being polite. There was a lot of hate in that

phrase, and I want to honor it. Okay, so trigger part done for listeners,

hopefully. So growing up, I saw a lot of examples of acceptance of, like,

you know, we'd coordinate with the black Protestant churches in town for joint

worship. We would do a lot of learning about black history. Like, we had

pastors who were very intentional, like, teach us Latin from the pulpit.

So a little bit different style, but that instilled in me kind

of this, no, be welcoming. Like, every little thing in my faith

tradition is hospitality and, like, disruptive

hospitality. So because people think it's cute and fluffy, like, be

nice and be open. Like, no. You can disrupt whole systems by refusing

to block people out and open up hospitality.

So I grew up with that mindset of, like, I don't care who you are,

how you got here. You are on the planet, and I am fortunate enough to

encounter you. What a blessing to me. So I somehow

missed the hate gay people part. Like, I don't know.

I grew up with family members who have been recently diagnosed autistic,

but by the rest of us were like, this is not a surprise. We lived

with you. Like, but with that, we also faced a lot of seeing

people not know how to deal with those individual family members. So I got a

preview of how mean the church could be through that neurodivergence hate a little

bit. And then I was like, no, I don't want to be that. So I'm

not going to apply that kind of hate to gay people because I've got a

little bit of that empathy developing of, like, oh, I saw y' all do that

to some family. That's not cool. So I ended up deciding to go to college

because I had a friend die by suicide when I was really young. And the

church response for me was very open and accepting. There was no

condemnation. It was understanding that, like, death by suicide is.

It is mental health concern is not a morality issue.

There is no sin involved. Like, this is very much. This was a person in

need. And we did not meet that. Like, our church was like, how can we

build community and mental health? The rest of the churches by hometown were like,

nope, lots of condemnation and judgment. And so I kind

of grew up watching, seeing my LGBT friends struggling with mental

health issues with suicide. So kind of seeing that intersection of neurodivergence,

LGBT suicide, and the church response was

failing. So I got mad about it was like, yeah, try not to cuss

I've been working with the military, so, like, the language is real strong. Oh, say

whatever you want. Okay. I was like, I don't know if this is an F

bomb friendly podcast, but I've been like, oh, yeah, no. We regularly have the

explicit rating. Go for it. Okay. So thank you.

Okay. Like, the Chaplet episode's gonna have the most F bombs. Which I'm like,

that's probably gonna be great. Like, as it should be. Like,

honestly, if we don't have a counter. And like, at the

end of the episode, it was like 16F bombs. Like,

oh, yeah, we need a chaplain counter.

This is the chaplain. How many

so far? So far, four.

So. But girl, I remember in high school getting really like, I was

pissed because I was seeing, like, all these opportunities for my church to live

in to this radical hospitality they preach. And they would do it really

well with certain sectors and then others. It was like, what the hell?

Like, I missed Jesus did not stutter. Like, I missed this part. And I got

mad in high school to the point where I, like, took Latin instead of French

because I wanted to go translate the original text. And then I was like,

well, I gotta learn Greek. And then I found out in university,

you know, the main school I wanted to go to, I didn't get in. So

went to my fallback school, which was Campbell University, to study

religion, philosophy and business. Because I was like,

okay, I'm gonna get money. I'm gonna figure out how to create a safe

haven. And also, like, where the hell is the shitty theology coming

from? Like, it's bad. Like, I'm missing the part where you say this

Harry Potter spell and you're magically saved for eternity without doing any good

work. Like, I feel like we had a whole reformation about that. And then the

Baptist, like, forgot, which makes me mad because I'm

like, we've. We've discussed this before.

This has come up. This has come up repeatedly.

Again. Pretty sure, like, the Anabaptist helped start the

US because of this. That is a very overgeneralization, but

not totally inaccurate. Anyways, so went to college, started deep diving studying,

started encountering more. And Campbell is a more conservative Baptist college. So that's when

I decided discovering the Righteous Gemst Baptist. And I was like, I

didn't. I feel like I grew up in an alternate dimension. Like, did I get

the Tardis and, like, land in a whole new world? I don't understand what's happening.

And studied a Campbell and I had a great campus minister

who was a woman and she was like, you need to go to a divinity

program. So to become a chaplain you have to have a master degree. And

it's really cool because it's called a Master of Divinity, which is a real fun

degree to throw around. Like I sound like a Jedi. It's great.

And so picked Vanderbilt University. Vanderbilt is one of the top

progressive and more forward thinking, interfaith and

interdenominational divinity schools. So I go from tiny Baptist College

in North Carolina to Vanderbilt Nashville, and I've got classmates who are

Sunni Muslim imams. I've got a female medical student,

LGBT students from across that population, which was

a huge blessing. And they had a lot of grace and patience with me because

I was coming from Southern Virginia, like had not

been to a drag show. And they quickly remedied that, thankfully. It was

amazing. Like, this is awesome. And so to kind of give you the

vibe, I went from tiny small Baptist college to Vanderbilt, where the Dean

would buy a keg on Friday and then tell everyone about the latest drag show

that'd be offered downtown. So very different vibes, but that just showed me

even more how important community is, especially for people trying to understand,

like, who they are, where they're at, what different community these offer. Then I

had every intention to become a professor of theology and teach people because again, I

was seeing the shitty theology and I was like, haha, I'll start failing people with

it and maybe we could correct it. Yeah, that didn't work because

then they were like, well, Ph.D. is six years. And I was like, that sounds

miserable. Ended up going on

a date with a really cute army dude because I was like, I'm about to

go in the middle of nowhere. I'm gonna date this guy with a really cute

ass and like, have some fun before my denomination ships me into rural

America. Well, that turned into a decade later,

we've got two dogs at a house. And like I kept him, like, he's pretty

awesome. But he is now retired from the US Army Special Forces.

So to give you vibes of the communities I sit in. Conservative

Baptist, moderate Baptist, Vanderbilt, LGBT

keggers, and then Special Forces. So

it's been a while. Okay, but where I need to know. I need to know

where the special forces drag show intersection is.

It is a lot stronger than you think it is. First of all,

let's get that straight. 2. And this is something I found really interesting,

especially for this. I, like we mentioned it earlier, like being your authentic self at

the intersection of faith. It's kind of wild to watch

the levels that my LGBT friends have to go to mask

and protect their identity in public and then watch the same level

done by my military friends. And then also there's LGBT in the

military. So I have seen and I don't want to out people, but

you'd be surprised at how many are in the military. I, I think a lot

of people would be, you know, we call it big army or like conventional forces

and special forces. So both of those have a larger population that

you'd think. And so sitting in those areas, I just really

saw like people were suffering and they still are. That's why I want to start

my business and fee based pastoral counseling because one like, why charge a fee? Well,

if you pay me, I have more freedom and I don't have to like listen

to my crazy denomination on some stuff. I love them, but like

need some freedom. But also to the intersection, especially

in like North Carolina military. But then I'm an hour away from

Raleigh, Durham, two hour, two to three hours from Charlotte, North Carolina, which

has made the news, kind of reminded people like, oh, North Carolina is very purple.

In all those intersections. You're seeing people really struggle with a term we use in

the chaplaincy field of moral injury. So it's this, these deep

betrayals of some core beliefs. You're not able to be your authentic self and

you will turn and like you will love your teammates in the military, but you

know, you can't be yourself 100% around them or for military

spouses. They will sit there and have dreams of careers

and they want to find an authentic faith community, but they're more

progressive and they keep getting assigned to military installations where

some of those religious traditions aren't available to spouses and to try

to build a career. And you can't do it when you're moving every two to

three years. Or in the case of the like the special operations community, you don't

move as much. But your spouse is gone six months out the year for

a decade. So you just build a routine. So that's kind of, to

answer your question, that's where I really found myself landing was like I just found

myself with like six different but sub

overlapping Venn diagrams of communities. And moral injury is

like one of the things tying them together. And people don't know how to figure

out what they believe. And they figure it out when trauma hits and the

value gets violated. So then they don't even have a positive

experience of their belief. They're just like, oh no, I believed in this thing. And

a person I really love just, like, completely undercut me by accident

because people don't know how to navigate anymore. So that's a super long

winded answer. So welcome to having a podcast with Chaplin.

So what's funny is I know nobody who's listening to this has ever heard this

before, but my dad was a psychiatrist, and he

always had a pastoral counselor who worked out of

his office. I don't think it was the same one. And mind you, he was

a Jewish psychiatrist, but he always

had a pastoral counselor who worked in his office because there was always a need

for it. But also, he used to say all the time. Because he, you know,

he did a lot of presentations, he presented a lot of papers. He was. He

was an academic for a long time. And so in theory,

he was a great speaker and he would get asked to speak a lot. But

he used to tell me all the time, never get up to

speak after a pastor.

That's very true. Don't stand a chance. No, it's

fucking civil if you follow us. He was like, nobody's

gonna listen to you. They just had the show. You are not the show.

This is the chaplain counter. How many

fucks so far? Now we're up to five fucks.

He picked up on it because, like, for context, the. The master of divinity

degree I did was, like, 84 credit hours. So, like, more than

most PhDs, right. I think at least 25 of those

credit hours were communication courses, preaching courses

publicly. So people don't realize is we're like a secret weapon for public

speaking. We're not sure. We're not terse people, though. So you got to build that

in presenting and, like, talking awkward, taboo subjects in front of people.

I'm like, we're literally trained to call people out for bad behavior and then be

like, hey, pay your tithe. Like, that's a really hard thing to

do, by the way of, like, y' all been foolish,

you know, to treat people nicely. Don't hate on the gays. Also, give me your

10% tithe. Like, thanks for listening. So, like,

us starting a substack with through subscription. Like, we're like, oh, yeah,

this is way easier to do. Yeah,

I'm just like, I apologize to all other professions that follow us at

conferences because, like, we have histories of how we get in the field.

We're not very boring people. Like, and chaplains and

pastors are different. I'll throw that out there. So, like, chaplains were typically more

pluralistic minded. I joke that the best chaplains are the worst

pastors. Like, I'm a Baptist reverend, but, like, I have strong

opinions on bourbon and judge people if they are, like, over

30 and still drinking Jack Daniels. I'm like, no, do better. Like,

you treat yourself well.

That's the distinction you make of what people are too old for.

Like, can you tell a deal with military where you could tell,

like, the rake and pay grade? And I'm like, I see Jack Daniels in the

cart. And I'm like, okay, I'm too old to hang out with you. Like,

I won't understand 90 things that come out of your mouth, which is fine, but

it's late. It's a good point. Jack Daniels in the cart is the

equivalent to 6, 7. I have no idea what that means. Oh, my God. It's.

I mean, the accuracy. But, yeah. And, you know, if I see.

If I see, like, McClellan, I'm like, okay, you are a person of taste

and sophistication. But then I'm. You have

stripes. Come, come, come hang out. You are at least an ea.

Excellent. Like, you can remember the

Internet when it made angry noises at you and screeched. Excellent

lit. You will catch my Dragon Ball Z references. Thank you. Okay. I'm like,

I'd be sorry. One piece is not the goat of anime. That's going to be

a hot take. That probably angers half your listeners, but I said it.

Yeah. So chaplains are just kind of like, we're all about being with people where

they're at. Pastors, understandably, are operating within their religious

traditions, so they're going to be much more focused on traditional rituals,

traditional processes, building their churches.

That sounds miserable to me. So I was like, n. I want to go hang

out with people who are super traumatized. Like, hi, I'm going to

meet you in the er and they, you know, you may be having the worst

day of your life, and that's fine. I'm here to walk with you through it.

Let's figure it out. So. So jumping off from that, I know you

do a ton of work in trauma space. I also imagine, like, trauma

work with you is probably really funny, and that sounds great.

So you sit at this fascinating intersection

of really, like, every aspect of people's lives. But I know you focus heavily on

trauma, and that might be kind of germane to your field.

Let's say somebody is looking for your services.

My suspicion is that they don't even know they're looking for your services

because they probably don't know that somebody like you exists. Who is it

that you outside of? Let's say an environment that you,

you get paid to make rounds in the hospital where you're going to interact with

a whole lot of people who ends up in front of you who

could benefit from what you do outside of those

acutely traumatic moments. Because that's really what you're folk you're kind of

transitioning toward. Right, right. So because like I started in that

trauma, like trauma ER, hospital sphere, the last

eight years have been more research. So like

hanging out with military, doing fieldwork, media where they're at

there. But if you're, if you're looking for somebody with my expertise, at least

how I'm building it up because I, I really have to build at the grassroots

level up. But I'm figuring it out as we go. But what I've been doing

lately is really partnering with social workers and mental

health master level providers. Not so much

psychiatry and psychology. There, there's a weird vibe. You know,

your dad was probably much the exception on this, which

rockstar and ballerina. But like psychiatrists and chaplains will

butt heads a lot. And it was weird to me because I like actually was

assigned to a psych team and they were like, ah, you're gonna

convert people like God? I hope not. My faith kind of sucks. Like,

like my nickname in divinity school was the D Evangelist. Like I'm like, you sure

you want to join my faith? Like it's expensive, you'll get annoyed, you get yelled

at. I mean there's cool people, but anyways, so if you try to find someone

like me, I go through like word of mouth. So like my fee based pastoral

counseling, I want to start up. I'm going to have to go through some local

therapists. I know some military chaplains, I know friends and family kind of build up

and do referral based because unfortunately if you're searching for

me in North Carolina, you're gonna have to use the term fee based

pastoral counselor, which is one like horrible

marketing. But it's like legal issues. So we have to make sure that

people know we're not like a licensure. We're going to be a certification

where I have different specialties. But even then the language is very much going

to sound evangelical. So for a lot of my ex vangelicals and my LGBTQ

folks, I understand like you may not even know how to find me.

So what I tell people is if you're wanting to kind of unpack, like you

say you grew up evangelical LGBT and now you're like,

I got a lot of self hate and I don't know where it's coming from.

And maybe I got some of that really harmful theology right out of the

back of my head, like, excel refusing to close on your computer,

that I would tell people, like, if you already have a therapist, see if they

know of a chaplain that they really trust. And so the

therapist could kind of find us because we do exist and a lot of us

partner with existing therapy offices. But that's the unfortunate part. Like,

if you're Googling, it's going to be really hard to find us. For me, I'm

trying to build up LinkedIn webpage that's going to have some more

subversive language to hint at people, have a safe space. Like, but,

you know, I'm also straight. So I was like, I don't know if I'm an

ally, but I'm trying. Like, that's up for the LGBT folks to decide.

What do you want the people who should find you to know? I would want

to tell them that I have no goal

or objective for you to find a specific

faith. Like, I have zero desire to guide you to any specific

endpoint. My goal is to help you figure that out and plot

your own course, but also be like, ah, stay away from this theology.

It's quicksand and it's bad. That's really what I want to get at, is like,

this is a space for you to wander. There's grace to make

mistakes. I have no agenda to make you Christian. And in fact, I'm going to

be like, why? Like, you can. I'm just going to be like, why? But as

if you want to become Buddhist. I got some great Buddhist chaplain friends. Like, let

me hook you up with some resources, you know? So I kind of think of

myself as the ultimate referral hub of like, let me

vet and give you some safe resources and referrals. Whatever you're

looking at, I don't even care. You want to go join the humanist local group

at your college, but you don't even know the words to search for. I'll help

you out and I'll connect you to a humanist chaplet. So that's my vibe. I'm

here to walk with people to help them figure out where they want to go,

and they're going to set the pace. I'm just providing a little bit of

bumper plate, said the bowling lade. Is there

a faith for everybody who. Wants one for me? And

this is where, like, I can already hear my Unitarian Universalist and

Humanist friends being like, join us, Libby. Join the Dark side. I think

there's a belief system for it, everyone. And I really want to

open and welcome and acknowledge our agnostic and humanist and

atheist friends because, like, that is a 100% valid

approach to life. And I want them to build their meaning

and purpose and belief set in such a way that supports them

and helps them build a life and doesn't leave them in this angry, traumatized place

where they think every person of faith is going to hate them. And then I

also want to look at my people's face and be like, no, stop it. Like

that whole, oh God, I hate the phrase there's no atheist in foxholes. I'm like,

no, it's a stupid phrase. Like, I, if I faced war, would probably

become atheist real quick because it's traumatizing. So I, I

would tell people there are healthy ways for you to have a belief system.

What might be healthy for you may not be healthy to someone else. And I

kind of expound on that a little bit. The last eight years or so, I've

been working in research with the military for something called Total

Force Fitness. It's not the best naming convention in the world. I didn't create

it, I inherited it. But spiritual fitness was the domain I worked in.

And the idea for that is you help people one, figure out what they believe.

Two, understand that it's totally healthy for those

beliefs to change throughout your life. Like, belief is not

certainty. Like, I tell people, if I could have one thing on my head stone,

it would be belief does not equal certainty. I would argue certainty

is the enemy of any faith or belief system because you want to leave

open curiosity and room to grow. And then three,

someone else believing or living differently from you does not mean you get to be

a fucking asshole. Like, no.

This is the chaplain fuck counter. How many

fucks? So far, we've now reached seven chaplain

fucks. So spiritually fit people understand and you can debate, you can

disagree and then turn around and you can still be good friends or interactions these

people in society. So there's kind of the three main pins of like, do you

even know what you believe? And I'll tell you right now, most people don't. Two,

do you understand that it's healthy for it to change with your faith? Like, if

you grew up evangelical and then you become wicked, which is a

strong pipeline. One, highly recommend it. Two, it is totally

healthy for you to do this. Like, let's get you in with some vetted

resources so we can avoid the, the red pill, pink pill,

because they do show up as well. For all faith traditions, we all got our

versions of those. Like, how can I safely get you to

what's your next destination? Essentially I'm like a stupidist, but a cool

one. A flight attendant. Sorry, 1950 term coming out. My bad.

One thing I really think is people need to be more intentional on kind of

building their own meeting systems and kind of getting the reps in on their own

spirituality. Because there's some research, I think it's by Dr.

Crystal Parks, where she looks at meaning and purpose and the trauma cycle, the

reciprocal model. It's really good work. But there was like a little

nugget where she cited and I need to go find it. But it's like that

citation you see, and then you're like, I should highlight it. And then your ADHD

kicks in and you don't highlight it. And a decade later you're like, what the

fuck is that citation? So it's that one for people listening.

But she talks about how for the average person in America,

especially after the age of 12, you really don't get any

formative belief building processes. Like the rituals disappear.

You're not actively attending your religious traditions as much. And you

think about it, a lot of religious traditions have some sort of like age of

reason. Welcome to puberty. Oh boy, hold on a bit.

But once people hit those, they quit actively developing. And with the

drop off of participating in church in America, which I think is a.

The church deserved it. I'm like, my pastor friends are like, why do people not

come? And I'm like, because you're dicks. Like, you hate

on gay people. And then wonder why people don't show up in your church. You

want women to not have equal rights and then you want wonder why people will

come to your church. Also, like Jesus would be very confused, not welcomed

in your church because spoiler alert, Jesus was brown. Like.

A brown immigrant. Like also

with the king tried to kill him. So it's like, feels a little

relevant. I don't. Yeah, so sorry, hold on, let me take. Let me take

that and count one for my team. A brown Jewish immigrant.

Yes. Probably illegal. Anyway. Continue. Oh yeah, it's

also like insert sidebar nativity scenes that have the

wise men showing up with the shepherds. Pissed me off. Because it's not how it

works. Like to the point where my husband does not let me comment.

When we're driving along and seeing the Tiffany displays and he's like, I know the

wise men weren't there. Don't comment. I'm like it's wrong. I mean, they also put

them up in December, so there's that continuing like. He'S a spring

baby. But yeah. Oh, people don't want to come to church because they hate. Yeah,

yeah. So when you don't have community where you can

explore and develop, like I grew up in a tradition that was more

moderate, progressive. They, like I explained earlier, they, they're still learning some

things, you know, good job, you're getting there, little guys. But

I had a community where growing up, if I attended a, like a

class, the pastor would be like, okay, like you're picking up on this one belief

that it gonna work. Here's the Greek. Keep exploring this

belief of, but find it in a way that, that lines up a little bit

better. But if you don't have those communities where you can grow, be weird,

you know, do the spiritual version of trying a new haircut

or clothing style. Like how you express your

beliefs because that's other pieces. People don't know what they believe then they don't even

know how to express it. So I'm like, are you really anti

abortion or have you not even thought about it? Because you're just parroting

things. But then in the moment, in a crisis, and I think this is why

you have that dissonance, what I call the white woman dissidence, essentially of like when

you're in the situation, oh, you're now thinking about it and

you're like, oh, wait a minute, I'm going to die if I don't

get this service or I will not have the money to provide for my other

two children if I do not get this medical care. Like, you're

having that room to explore that and we don't have those. Whereas I grew

up with a youth group that was like, okay, we're going to talk about this.

Like birth control is medicine, abortion is health care. And we

had the space to explore and be like, just because, like, if you don't want

one, okay, cool, don't block other people. Like, again

that learning, how do you interact with people who believe differently? Okay, well

if you don't want to do something, don't do it.

Like, you don't need to go and tell other people not to. But we don't

have those options now. And it kind of sounds like a cute little fuzzy problem,

but in the military in particular, like I was running into, we're having

like 38 year old people, male and female,

brilliant at their work, absolutely brilliant. Dealing with a high

stress situation, incredibly traumatic experiences, doing Some

work, it's gonna have ramifications for them. You know, they're navigating really

difficult things. And particularly I kept trying not to get in the special

operations world for research. And I like the new universe was like, haha, screw you,

you're going right back in. And I'm like, I want to teach theology in college

students. And they're like, go research special tactics

airmen. And I'm like, deity, what the fuck are you doing?

Oh. And then I learned there's not a lot of difference between the 18 year

old college student and a 38 year old special tactics airman when

it comes to having developed their spirituality or their belief

system. Because in America, nobody after at that age, anybody

after 12 hasn't really done it. But then you have somebody who's 38,

they've come out of a battle, they've had to do things and they have no

way to process it. And they're basically running a 12 year old's ethical

program on a 38 year old war fighter problem. And

you're like, oh no. And like, that's not fair to them, that's not fair to

anybody in the system. And we're not equipping, you know, it's not just a military

problem. You're going to have your doctor in the ER facing Covid,

you know, not like operating off of.

The last time I really thought about this kind of stuff, I was maybe

14. It's a huge disservice we're doing across the board.

And then when people are like, while working out in therapy, I love therapy.

Therapy is great, but we don't have spaces where people

can just exist without a diagnostic label. And we're losing

third spaces in our country as well. So you can't exist without pay to

play in our country. You don't have safe spaces to make mistakes. Try out your

new spiritual hairstyle, you know, whatever. And then you

don't have spaces to grow and develop. So you're

just like, you've got 45 year old problems on a 12 year

old's ethical system. And there's nothing wrong with the 12 year old's ethical system system.

It's great for a 12 year old developmentally, good job. But it's not

going to fly for things I faced in combat or things I faced

providing in Covid or I grew up hating lgbt. And then

I noticed the only people that took care of me during COVID were my LGBT

neighbors because my church did not step up. Like now what do I

do with the hospitality? I was taught would come from my faith. Tradition

has come from those that have my faith. Tradition has labeled the

enemy. It's almost weird. Like, we got a parable about that. The faith

tradition, you know, I won't go there. Not like the Good Samaritan parables.

Just hang it out. It's almost like there's some hypocrisy

layered in there somewhere. Maybe a teeny, tiny bit of it.

Shock. The female reverend who drinks bourbon rants about it

anyways. But only good

bourbon. I am snobbish, and that is not kind of me.

My hospitality and faith does not extend to your bourbon choices.

And it doesn't. And I don't think it has to. If you're 22

and still learning and have no money, it's fine. Get Jack Daniels. Put a

lot of Coke in it. Like Coca Cola, not the other Coke. Let me clarify.

On that unimaginably perfect note, Libby. If people want to find

you, where can they find you? Ah, so currently, the best way to find me

is going to be on my LinkedIn page, because I'm still in the process of

setting up my LLCs. But if you want to find me in which is Elizabeth

Libby Alders, feel free to message me on LinkedIn. I'm pretty responsive. I have

no life. I'm kind of always like that. Tells you I'm not cool. I'm like,

check out my link. Awesome. It was lovely,

lovely to speak with you and I thank you so, so much for

spending this time and telling us about what you do and have a great day,

everybody. Thanks for stopping by and love you. Mean it.

This is the chaplain counter. How many

fucks so far? We had 11 fucks in total.

We'll start actually doing this the legit way so that Neil has

the intros that he needs or supposedly he needs. Who knows?

It might be fun to just throw people into a podcast episode with no

context whatsoever. Anyways, I forgot

how to do my job. Give me a second, I'll get there. God damn

it. That's definitely gonna end up as the blurb at the end of

an episode. Need to remember that.

Okay.