FreedHearts Susan & Rob Cottrell, FreedHearts

Rules, laws, shoulds, shouldn’ts... the Bible is full of them. And the church has even added more to that list!The religious leaders approached Jesus and asked, “Hey Jesus, Uh, lot’s of rules here, lots of laws, what are the ones that are the most important?”And Jesus deconstructed ALL the law, ALL of those rules, ALL of the rules the church adds to it and answered… “Love. Love God, love others – and those two are really the same thing. EVERYTHING ELSE IS WRAPPED UP IN THAT.”So, what th...

We’ve been wanting to talk for a while about how the conservative evangelical church traps people. It is deliberate.They draw you in, telling you: God loves you just as you are — yes you’re a sinner, we’re all sinners, duh. But God loves you — just some minor tweaking here and there, and you’ll be good as new.They dismantle you, making you an enemy of your own heart, mind, body, and spirit - making you doubt yourself at every turn.Then they seal the exits, so you can’t leave… or think you can...

Today, we talk about how the church teaches us to have contempt for our own free will. And, in particular, how we have contempt for, interact with, and treat our children.This may sound harsh, but, based on their teachings and beliefs, it’s the truth: The religious, rules-based, behavior-focused, conservative church hates its children!One of the biggest brainwashing con jobs from the church is that our children are sinful and we need to break their will.Beloved... bullshit!Let’s break f...

We have started to ask the question: Who is God? It’s certainly NOT the old white man in the sky, with all the feminine aspects ripped out.Something has been stolen from us. Our sacred interior has been ransacked and we have lost the understanding of God who loves us, delights in us.This is vital because when we know God feels this way about us — we are free to feel this way about ourselves — and we were meant to feel this way about ourselves!Religion has stolen that God and replaced it with ...

Today, we talk all about an example of how gender plays out in real life. How masculinity and femininity are perceived and received, and the impact it has.When you reduce the feminine, you reduce all the feminine traits: of caring, healing, listening, loving—which are indispensable as a balance to the masculine. What happens when you do that is toxic masculinity—when masculinity is not balanced by the feminine, and so it runs amok. Beloved, in this episode we talk about how important it is th...

What is masculine and what is feminine? What is our understanding of what they mean? Why does it matter? And why is the culture, and especially the church, holding so hard to traditional definitions? Gender has been turned into a false binary that has assigned roles based on gender with very little tolerance for crossover—even though all of us have masculine and feminine in us, and both are necessary for balance. And we pull the rug out from under the whole thing and talk about God’s gender! ...