The Dangers of Toxic Thought A Conversation with Caroline Leaf

You're big on this idea that we do have more

responsibility for our reactions than sometimes we act like. Do

you think sometimes religion and preaching has blamed the devil

too much or almost uses God as a cop-out not

to take control of our own responses?

Am I allowed to tell the truth?

I want it absolutely unfiltered today. This is Caroline Leaf unfiltered. Okay.

That's a good one. Okay. I like being unfiltered.

Okay. I definitely do. I think religion has killed our

respect for God. I think it has turned us into

very dependent on blaming. We've become victims and it's become,

and I often talk about pass the buck prayer, where

it's okay, well, I'll just say the little scripture. I'll

just say, I'll pray for you, but there's no real

responsibility involved. We've become a culture of just blame everyone

for everything and blame the devil. As you say, devil

on every doorknob. That has gone on way too long

in religion. So And I don't like religion at all.

I like God.

And I think that we need to look at what

love looks like. And yes, I think we've caused a

huge problem in the way that we've done church for

many years now and done religion and stuff. And I

say done for a reason because it's a relationship.

It's a way of being. It's being human. We've almost

forgot our humanity.

What really worries me is the disconnect between the beautiful

story of the scriptures and the beautiful way that we've

been created and the disconnect between the two. Because it's

like so illogical that we would voluntarily damage our brain.

But that's what we do every time we choose wrong.

It's so crazy that we would be judgmental or harsh

or unkind or anything in the toxic zone when we

realize that it's completely out of alignment with our natural nature.

It's causing brain damage. It's damaging the world around us.

And I think that's where the church has failed to

make us be aware of of that, to.

Be aware of our responsibility.

It's just so easy to say, oh, I'm being attacked

by the devil because I'm doing the right thing. It's

a big excuse to actually carry on behaving in a

bad way because it's not justification for, well, if I'm

being attacked, it means I'm doing the right thing. You know,

that teaching has been quite dominant and that's dangerous because

we can't use that as an excuse. If something, we

can't also say, well, I'm now rich and wealthy and

so now I'm doing the right thing and God's on

my side. You know, it's all illogical. We have to

look at The human side. What did Jesus model? What

does love look like? What does kindness really look like? That's,

for me, what we should be focusing on and not blaming.

You can't see it, but you got me on the

edge of my seat right now. Because I didn't plan

to go here this early. But since you went there,

I'm big on this idea that there are certain buttons

that we hit sometimes when we're preaching and teaching. And

you don't come from a background of a theological school.

You're coming at this from a completely different perspective.

Yes.

There are phrases that preachers say like breakthrough or destroying strongholds.

And we sing about these things and we talk about

these things, but they don't even get us out the

parking lot before we're right back into the same patterns,

before we're right back into the same predictable behaviors. We're

doing the same things Tuesday afternoon after the sermon on

Sunday that we were doing before we heard the sermon

that sounded so nice. So I wonder what are the

cliches that you hear that get on your nerves when

you hear Christians just saying these phrases, or maybe even

you've said some yourself that we really don't even understand

what we're talking about, but it just sounds nice. Do

you have some phrases like that?

I love what you've just said, and you've really now

hit also that this is just fantastic. You've triggered me

in the right way.

Okay, so the.

Christianese, I deliberately don't talk Christianese. I will use scripture

in a teaching sense. And if you notice when I

use a scripture, I always link it back to the

science because I'm trying to make people think. Because 25,

30 years ago, I remember driving to collect, no, it

was 25 years ago, I remember driving to collect my

oldest daughter who was two years old from her play

group and the one who's getting married. And I remember saying,

why am I so obsessed with understanding the mind and

the brain? Because it really is, I spend two, three

hours a day researching. If you see me on my phone,

I'm talking to my kids or I'm reading.

Research on the brain.

And I remember saying to God, why am I so obsessed?

And the clearest answer, and I'm not trying to say

I'm super spiritual and I heard some sounds from heaven

and I didn't hear any of that. I just knew

this answer was, if you teach people to think, they

will find God. So for me, that's been my life mission.

Christianese has blocked people's ability to renew the mind.

It's just overused.

Bring all thoughts into captivity. Well, are you doing it?

Don't say it if you're not going to do it.

You know, we need to realize the profound impact of

when you say something, you need to make sure that

you mean that. Otherwise, you have cognitive dissonance in your brain.

Break that down a little bit.

Okay, so you're saying what you know you should be

saying because that's the culture. So Christianese is a culture, right?

And it's a cultural trend. And this is how we speak.

And this is what the preachers say. So you listen

to the preachers and they all say the same thing.

But they just have their own styles. And I'm talking

in general now. Obviously, each preacher is going to have

a message that they deliver. But there's a certain language

that is spoken in Christianese. And we're so used to

hearing that that we don't think about it. And that

was my point that I was making earlier on. We

don't really think about it. We recognize the familiar term.

So we just repeat that. But then we don't actually

absorb and make that part of our thinking and spend

the 63 days, which is what it takes to build

a long-term memory that will actually cause change. We're just

saying those phrases over and over, but we don't really

build them. They're just kind of a surface thing that's

hovering around. Well, I should be saying this because I'm

in this cultural mindset. So it's actually toxic. It's a

toxic tree, this wiry thing, because this is what.

I should be saying. I've heard you talk about this before.

So that's a thought.

That's what thoughts look like in your brain.

Thoughts are real things.

Thoughts occupy mental real estate. A thought is a memory.

We build them. Every time we think, feel, and choose,

we build a thought. So we're designed to build healthy thoughts.

That's an unhealthy thought. So cognitive dissonance, if I say...

God shall meet all my needs, but then I'm whining

about everything or bring all thoughts to captivity and all

you do is spend all day gossiping and whining and

complaining and being a victim and judging others because they're.

Different to you.

Well, then you're actually speaking that language. So that scripture

actually is not, it's just, it's a cultural thing.

It's not something you believe. You're saying it.

Because it's expected of you, but actually this is where

you're operating from. So now we have a contradiction between

what you're saying because what you're saying is coming from

a toxic root. So it sounds good, but it's not

good because it's not a reality in your life. That

causes brain damage. So we're literally causing brain damage. That

will cause nagging worry, nagging anxiety because you're operating against

your natural nature.

Which is if I say something, I must mean it.

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