Bart Ehrman talking about his experience in the Moody Bible Institute from the age of 17 to 21: 

“I don’t feel I started to become fully human until I realized that they (Moody Bible Institute System of Education) were completely wrong and that their approach to education was, in fact, sinister.”

He recounts that he missed English, History, Philosophy, and Science classes since Moody was very restrictive in its area of education.

He adds: “I did not start learning how to think until I left Moody, and then it took me much longer to learn how to think than normal intelligent human beings take, since I had to drop so much baggage that I had been burdened with. And this was emotionally difficult, because Moody not only loaded me up with baggage, but the people loading the baggage insisted that the only way to have a happy life and blessed afterlife was to carry that baggage all the way to the end of the road.”

And “I resent that I underwent that kind of treatment from people that at the time I considered to be leaders and responsible adults.

I want to stress that there are things about Moody that I appreciate. But more than appreciation I really do feel resentment.”  (1)

Patrick Melrose is a Netflix drama and a miniseries starring Benedict Cumberbatch as the protagonist. The show is based on a series of semi-autobiographical novels by Edward St Aubyn. 

It starts with Patrick hearing of his father’s death. “Old bastard’s only gone and died,” he says. Maybe it’s time to giving up drugs, he tells another friend. Then he flies across the Atlantic, where he almost fails to pick up his father’s ashes. And fails spectacularly to kill himself and to give up drugs, a mixed-up of heroin, amphetamines, quaaludes, valium, and alcohol.

From his childhood, his father, David, ruled with considered cruelty, and Eleanor, his mother, retreated into drinking. Patrick was caught in an abusive relationship, and the trauma derived was instrumental in getting him mixed up with drugs.

Since Karl Marx, “Die Religion … ist das Opium des Volkes,” interpreted also as the struggle to be free from religion (kämpfen dagegen) it’s clear how to survive the trauma of abuse.

(1) ** you do not have permission to see this link **