He Followed Jesus into a Cult — Paul Cooke's 9-Year Journey Back to Truth

Elisha's Space: Hello, audience of Elisha Space. I'd like to share today is a very special interview I have with me today, actor Paul Cook and his story is an amazing When he was twenty years old, he joined the Children of God, which was later known as the Family of Love. the leader was amazingly charismatic and his name was David Berg. And eventually left the cult I thought having him on and hearing his story will resonate with so many of you. if you recall, Hulu a ⁓ documentary on the children of God, I would recommend it you guys check that out just so that you could get an idea of what that was about. So let me ask you, Paul, if you could go back and speak to the nineteen year old version of yourself, the one who was about to join that group. What would you say to him?

Paul Cooke: I I th first of all, thanks very much for inviting me to be on your podcast. I consider it a privilege. That's very good question. ⁓ I I think I ⁓ the thing I would say was ⁓ it's important to look before you leap. even if you're not inclined to take advice, just taking the time to get some advice is ⁓ useful. I didn't t talk to anybody. I met the group and 24 hours later I joined them. ⁓ ⁓ I counseled ⁓ with no one else. I didn't speak to any friends. Of course I was isolated. I was living in apart from my family in Houston. but I still could have called somebody on the phone. so I d I went very hastily without looking, ⁓ the famous saying, look before you leave. And the the next thing is I I ⁓

Elisha's Space: Wow.

Paul Cooke: I think I was afraid to ask too many questions of the people that I was about to join. I liked them very much. As you said in your intro, they were amazingly charismatic. I didn't even meet the leader right away, but the people who were following him were so confident and positive and welcoming ⁓ ⁓ I just become a Christian a few months before and they all talked Christianly.

Elisha's Space: Mm.

Paul Cooke: And I thought that's great. You know, I I was that was very persuasive. They all carried further and furthermore, seemed to be more dedicated than most of the the people that I had met as a Christian were very nice people. but were not as almost fanatically committed as these people were. They were all busy memorizing scripture, they lived communally, they didn't have jobs, all they did was tell people about they were just living to tell people the gospel. And They said, This is how the early church lived. And ⁓ I said, Really? begun to read the Bible, I didn't know much. And they quoted me a few verses from the Bible ⁓ of context without pro properly ⁓ putting it that they didn't know any better because that's what they've been taught by the leader who I had not yet met. I didn't meet him for three weeks. But for example, well anyway, you d I should answer your question. ⁓ What would say to myself? The the main thing I would say is. Go so fast. Take it easy. Your your life is a precious thing. Don't throw it into something until you've had a good long look at it. it may look really good, but you know, we all are capable of being fooled, and you have to be careful. Something like that. ⁓ will quote one thing. John Bunyan, who wrote Pilgrim's Progress back in the 1600s. he was an early con just before his con just after his conversion, he met a a friend of his. Who had become a ranter, which was the name of a group which the later today we would call a cult. And the ranters believed that if you were in Christ, you were free from the law. You could do whatever you wanted, meaning, including sleep with whoever you wanted. And John Bunyan didn't know much to think about it. But he, after talking to his friend, he prayed. This is, he said, this is what is his prayer. This is in his autobiography, which is titled Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners. And he said in that autobiography, I prayed, Lord, I am very foolish. and ignorant. I don't know if this is of you or not. If this is of you, help me not criticize it. If it's not of you, help me not be deceived by it. But I need you to help me. it's something like that. I I don't remember the prayer. But if I had prayed a prayer like that, it would have been a good thing. Because ⁓ did not confess to myself, as Bunyan did, how foolish I could be. And how stupid I could be. I was just a kid. And ⁓ even people who aren't just kids can be stupid and make dumb decisions. So you need to give yourself a chance and the first thing you should do is ask him. Ask the Lord.

Elisha's Space: Right.

Paul Cooke: So that's my that's my question. Of course at the ⁓ I would have said that to me then because I was already cra I said, Paul, have you prayed? Did you seriously pray?

Elisha's Space: I think that protects you from so much praying, you know? Protects you from so much. You know, ⁓ from our past conversation you mentioned that you grew up in a Jewish household in Houston and that you ended up at Brown. Tell me about who Paul was before all of this. What were you looking for?

Paul Cooke: Yeah. Well, I came from a family which I have to say I love my mother and father, but my mother and father were both had troubled lives themselves ⁓ and were still dealing my they both grew up my father was an immigrant from Europe. My mother had a very troubled childhood. wasn't sure that her parents loved her.

Elisha's Space: Mm-hmm.

Paul Cooke: And so the two of them were still dealing with their own problems when they hadn't when they married and had me and my sister. And so we didn't really get we could have raised ourselves. We didn't get a whole lot of mothering and fathering. And so I was looking, though I didn't know it at the time, not so much for mothering, but for fathering. I was looking for a father figure who I could trust and believe and who would be my guide. And Judaism was important to me in as much as that was what I knew. And I was thirteen I wanted to have a bar mitzvah. My parents were nominally Jewish, that is they would grow up Jewish, but they they they didn't believe in ever having to do all the things that Jewish people normally do, like having bar mitzvah, which is a ⁓ a ceremony which teenage thirteen year old boys and now th girls in Judaism go through, in which you read from the ⁓ Bible. And ⁓ you ⁓ in some sense confirm that you believe this and you love this. And so I did that because it was the best I could do to get close to God. I was looking for God and I didn't know how to find him. I said, Well, if I'll become a bar mitzah, bar means son, mitzvah means commandment, the son of the commandment, then maybe something good would happen to me. so it was a step to ⁓ of I was trying to find God, ⁓ and ⁓ But I was looking so I guess, ⁓ what I'd say is I was looking for a father, looking for guidance, and unwittingly to realize unwittingly looking for my heavenly father, though I didn't know how to find him. ⁓

Elisha's Space: I'm gonna continue with the journey. Okay. So dropped out of brown and I know this because we talked about this, ⁓ dropped out of brown because of a book Herman has his Siddhartha to look for truth. What did truth feel like it was missing from? So what was that ape? What did truth feel like it was missing from? What what what what was missing?

Paul Cooke: Yes. Mm-hmm. Well, I first of all I I I understood that there was such a thing. You know, a lot of people tell you there is no truth. It's all relative, you know, like Oprah's show, What's your truth? Everybody's got a truth. But I I believe that there was actually an objective truth that ⁓ that made what was life about? Where do we come from? What w why were he we here? And that there's this one answer. I r but I didn't know what it was. I and so when I read Siddhartha, which is about Buddha.

Elisha's Space: Right. Right.

Paul Cooke: ⁓ this is this guy who leaves everything to look for the truth. It was a picture of something that I was looking in other words, if you really are serious about the truth, you you're gonna be willing to pay a price for it. I mean, what did Jesus say? He said, the kingdom of heaven is like a man who finds his treasure in a field and he sells everything he has to buy the whole field in which the treasure is hid. And so I had I knew that there was a field somewhere. I didn't know this whole thing was connected to Jesus yet. And so I was looking for that thing that I could give everything to. So I dropped out looking for it. And ⁓ that particular ⁓ I mean my bog my memoir, which I've finished now. I'm trying to find a publisher for it, is called A Hunger for Truth. ⁓ and I tried the sitting under a tree look waiting for the truth that this is what Siddhartha did, but Buddha did. Didn't work. Didn't work. I didn't I I sat under a tree for a while but I didn't find the truth. But I it I did know that Jesus had been a carpenter.

Elisha's Space: Right.

Paul Cooke: And I didn't know much about him, but I said, Well, if I become a carpenter, I'd already dropped out of college. if I become a carpenter, maybe something good'll happen to me. It's sort of the same ⁓ attitude I had about getting a bar mitzvah. You do this thing that seems good, that seems that's ⁓ on way to the truth, and if you do that, the truth, whatever it is, will help you. So I said, Jesus Is really attractive to me. I I didn't believe anything about him. I didn't know that he was the son of God or I didn't know much at all about him, but ⁓ there was something about Jesus that really appealed to me. And ⁓ I I ⁓ I remember Leonard Cohen, there's a singer-songwriter, he was a Jewish guy actually, who wrote this song called Suzanne. This was back in the in the late 60s. Z Suzanne takes you down to her place by the river. She feeds you tea and oranges. And it goes on like this, and says, and and then there's a a stanza that goes, And Jesus was a sailor when he sailed upon the waters, and he spent a long time watching from a lonely wooden tower. And when he knew for certain only drowning men could see him, he said, All men will be sailors then, until the sea shall free them. I said, What does that mean? What it means is to me was Jesus was special, and he did he was the one on that lonely wooden tower, on that cross. But why? I kept looking for that. And so I became a carpenter's apprentice. I went back to Houston from and I joined the Carpenters Union and I was and so one day after a few months after I started doing that, I a carpenter started talking to me about Jesus. You know, God is good. He honored my little step of faith, you know. Of course I didn't realize at the time that he was putting all this in my heart, you know. He he was giving me this desire. I thought it was just me looking for the truth, but actually he was drawing me to him all the time. And so

Elisha's Space: Mm-hmm.

Paul Cooke: Then I met a second carpenter and he talked to me too about Jesus. This is later, a f a few months later. and he said, What are you doing on Sunday? I said, I I'm not doing anything. He says, Well, why don't you come with me to church? I said, Well, I'm Jewish. Jewish people don't go to church. But he gently insisted and persuaded. I said, All right. So I went with him to church. And I don't remember anything about it, the sermon, but afterwards he took me up to meet the pastor. And the pastor was very nice. I said, Well, you I'm Jewish. I just came 'cause of my friend. It was nice. I appreciate that I you know. He said, just a second. And he ran to his office. There's all these other people waiting to talk to him after the ser sermon. And he kept them all waiting. He ran to his office and came back with a little tract. It's called Four Spiritual Laws. And he r he went through it with me for about three minutes while all these other people were waiting to talk to him. He he he didn't let it st rush him. And that little tract essentially presented the gospel. That's what it was. ⁓

Elisha's Space: Amen. Amen.

Paul Cooke: Lost. God lost because of our sins. God loves us anyway, but He ha ⁓ has to be paid for. So He sent His Son into the world to become a man, to live a perfect life, and then pay for our sins on the cross. And I I I thought about that for several days. And after a week, I decided I believed it. And I became a Christian. And so started going to this church. And they were very nice to me there. The pastor went away on a mission to India to preach the gospel in India, and he asked a young couple to look after me while he was away. And that young couple read about this group of hippies that were camped out in the park. And they they they were very interested in sharing of the gospel to others.

Elisha's Space: ⁓ So what Paul is describing, and I wanna name this for our listeners, is what we call a spiritual hunger. It's not a flaw. It's actually a sign of a healthy, meaning seeking nervous system. The tragedy is that cults are specifically designed to find people whose hunger is loudest. So as you can tell, Paul wasn't just Paul, you weren't just intellectually curious. You were willing to embody your beliefs just in the act of becoming a carpenter, you know? So all of those things, like you were hungry and you were willing to do whatever it is you need. needed to do and it's so cool to me because God met you where you were, you know. So in regards to the traveling Christians, ⁓ what did that first encounter feel like? What was it about them? Now this was December nineteen sixty nine, right?

Paul Cooke: Right. This was about four months after I became a believer. ⁓ my my friends unwittingly took me out there, not knowing they read about it in the Houston Chronicle and the Chronicle had covered these camping Christians. And and when I first met them, I I was really blown away. They they were living communally, everybody was working together, all for one and one for all. It was a picture of of of community life that really appealed to me.

Elisha's Space: Mm.

Paul Cooke: I I wanted to be part of it. And at the time I was I moved on to a new aspect ⁓ my apprenticeship. we were putting up ceilings in the Astro Hall, which was next to the Astrodome. It was dirty, tiring work with my hands above my head all day long. I was tired of it. I'd been doing it for a couple of months. So I was a little bit discouraged. And that I you know, and here is this opportunity to go off with all these happy hippies. ⁓ And parents were living in Louisiana. I'd it'd been a a year since I dropped out of college. I had you know I I was ready for something like that, ⁓ something that would and so my first impression was and also I was led to believe it interesting because I talked to a guy, ⁓ he ⁓ African American, he's actually from Canada. He joined in Canada. There's only about a hundred people in the group, and he was one of them. He joined one of the group that they'd been traveling around the country and they'd been in Montreal, and he he shared with me ⁓ from his New Testament, he said.

Elisha's Space: Mm.

Paul Cooke: ⁓ Luke 14 33, it says, So likewise, whosoever he be of you that forsakes not all that he has cannot be my disciple. And he he took his little Bible and he opened up and showed it to me. There it was in print. He said, Have you forsaken all? And I said, No. He says, Well, we have. Well, not really. They it looked like they had, but forsaking all doesn't mean just getting rid of your stuff.

Elisha's Space: Who Right.

Paul Cooke: It it has to do with i with this. But I didn't know that was Yeah.

Elisha's Space: It has to do with heart posture. Right. Right. I mean no. Right.

Paul Cooke: So ⁓ Ebed, his name everybody had taken a Bible name. He said his name was Ebed Melech, which is somebody in the book of Jeremiah. I said, that's a weird name. But he was a very friendly, nice guy. And ⁓ and so my my impression was that I could join them if I wanted to. And I I looked at them, was standing on the edge of the campus he talked to me and my my friend who brought me out there, and they looked like like something out of a a between Woodstock, ⁓ a bivouac.

Elisha's Space: Mm. Right.

Paul Cooke: Voice Scout camp out. was neat. and they a few of them had kids who were married with children, but everybody was young. Nobody was over five. It was it was beautiful. ⁓ So joined the next day.

Elisha's Space: Mm-hmm. It was a real community. Wow. So I want to pause here because I think people assume cults look scary from the outside. They don't. They look like belonging, which is what you're talking about. They look like finally being seen. And that's the seduction. And it's a sophisticated, intentional seduction. That scripture that you gave, whoo. Have you forsaken all? Wow. Wow. Wow. So I'm gonna jump a little bit ahead, right? From the time that you're there, 'cause you were there for nine years, right? as it grew from a little small community to eight thousand people, what was daily life like? What did you believe you were doing with your life during that time? What what was that like?

Paul Cooke: Yeah. This is a good another good question, Well, things evolved. ⁓ things were different. First of all, the leader became very apparent. ⁓ that there's this guy who was fifteen years old, he was different from everybody else. He knew the Bible very well. he had problems we didn't know about. He looked to us like our pastor.

Elisha's Space: Y

Paul Cooke: Anyway, we we finally found a place where we could ⁓ he had a an old friend or an old colleague or an old somebody used to work for who owned a ranch out in West Texas. So we moved there and we settled. And then people began joining us. more people and more reporters came out. NBC News did a special on us that was national news. And then before you knew it, there was a thousand of us. And we couldn't all live in one place. It was too many people. And we started breaking up into little groups. And meanwhile, the leader went to Europe to look for new for new ⁓ he went to Europe with his secretary, who later revit was turned out to be his mistress, but we we were very So to for new sites for new communes in other countries. And then he began writing us letters ⁓ pastoral ⁓ and realized that he could lead us much more effectively by doing that than having us all together in one place and making personal appearances. And so

Elisha's Space: Right.

Paul Cooke: We began being led by these letters, and these letters directed us as to what to do with our daily lives. For for the first year and a half, we would just go out in the streets with our guitars and our and our gospel tracts and our New Testaments and witness to people on the street about Jesus and say, Are you forsaking all? And people would join us, and we grew. We grew 2,000 of us then. ⁓ His letters began to be so general and wide that they would be of interest to people that weren't just in the group. And he said, Let's begin distributing my letters. And he so we began selling his letters for donations, but whether they were sell a quarter apiece. But when you get two thousand people on the street six days a week ⁓ out little flyers for a quarter a shot, after a while you got some real money coming in. And and that's how the group began to support itself. And we got used to having that income. Before that, it was just when someone joined, they gave what they had, and most of us didn't have much. So, me, ⁓ changed, and that was became a major form of support. And then, because of our zeal in handing them out, and because of the radicalness of some of the things we began to say in these letters.

Elisha's Space: Okay.

Paul Cooke: We found that we couldn't hand him out everywhere because we get in trouble for saying radical things, especially things to do with sex, which was his ⁓ turned out to be his obsession. So he he finally, ⁓ around ⁓ I guess 1975, which was ⁓ four and a half years in, five years in, he he became up with a doctrine called flirty fishing, in which the girls were supposed to sleep with with men, and as they slept with them, they were to tell them about Jesus. Which if you read the Bible at all with some some open-mindedness, you would realize this is not biblical at all. But Mo like the story that J John Bunyan tells in Yeah. Yeah. this is the notion, it's an old notion that in Christ we're free from the law. No, we're not free from the law. Jesus spent a lot of time telling people that

Elisha's Space: So I'm gonna Go ahead, I'm sorry. No, go ahead, tell me. Mm-hmm.

Paul Cooke: You're free from condemnation when you break the law, you ask God to forgive you. But the the Ten Commandments are still an act. not supposed to kill, you're not supposed to commit adultery, you're not supposed to ⁓ covet your neighbors. ⁓ these things are still in place. Jesus helps us fulfill the law by through his brother of the spirit. So anyway, we didn't know that. And we believed Moe's teaching. that's big question. Why do we keep believing why do we why were we so intent on believing this guy? when we had a Bible to read that told us something else because we were in reading the Bible through a lens that he provided.

Elisha's Space: So I'm gonna put in a a pin here and just kind of mention that what you're describing is classic cognitive dissonance. That's the psychological tension of holding two contradictory realities. So David was the man who spoke for God and he's hurting people. And so the mind is gonna protect itself from that tension for as long as it possibly can. And that's not weakness, that's neurobiology. That's your brain trying to protect itself. So when people ask the question or wonder why did you stay when those things were there, you were it was really your nervous system trying to protect itself and trying to figure out what was happening. Okay. So there's that yeah.

Paul Cooke: you know, he would sometimes say things in his letters 'cause now we I knew him in the beginning when he was still there. I saw him maybe a dozen times when he came down to speak on occasion, when he came to speak to us. He ⁓ he never lived with us, he always lived a little bit apart. Or I'd see him walking around our camp when we lived in West Texas. But mostly we knew him through his letters, and in the letters he could be very charming. He could be very appealing. ⁓ and some but sometimes in the letters he would say things that would give me pause. But as you're saying, I didn't if if you were to take that and and really run with it, you would destroy your ⁓ loyalty to the group. And there was something about being part of the group by this time, which was my life. I was married to it. I didn't want to divorce the group. I I l I had friends and and I

Elisha's Space: Mm.

Paul Cooke: And we there's something about about the approval of my friends, the approval of my colleagues in the group who were all for one and one for all. I I didn't want them to disapprove of me. the Bible somet calls this man pleasing, but I all of us, none of us wanted to be ⁓ in on the outs with the group. And we wanted everybody to approve of us, to think, yes, Paul is a good brother, he's a good disciple, he's a loyal follower of the Lord, and the Lord's Prophet, Moses David. See, Mo told us that he was God's prophet, and we believed it. Now, why did we believe it? Well, we wanted, and this is a very big issue for me and for for all of us. I think ⁓ to be part of something really important, really significant. Here, here, you know, part of this generation, the baby boob generation, so many of us.

Elisha's Space: Mm.

Paul Cooke: And it's so easy to feel like you're just ordinary and there's nothing special about you. You know, you haven't won any awards, you're not a didn't win a beauty kind or whatever it is. And here we're with this group of people who are following God's end time profit. Who's telling us the great truth that he gets from God? And we are telling people the coming of Jesus is coming back in a way that's more dedicated than anybody else. And there's a certain glory to that. And we didn't want to be on the outs with it. It's like this makes me feel important. And it contributes to my self-esteem. There's this great and and people want that. There's a hunger for being to be somebody significant. So you don't want to miss out. And so that that desire kept us from stumbling, so to speak, on something that he said that we didn't quite weren't weren't quite fully on board. There's just another some of the kids started writing songs. We all they were great songwriters. And a couple of the songs were overly praising of Mo. Now, I believed you respect your leaders and and honor them. The Bible says so, but you shouldn't worship them. And there's one thing I learned from Judaism that you don't worship a man. Jesus was not a man who became God.

Elisha's Space: Mm. Right.

Paul Cooke: Jesus was God who became a man. He was a worthy of worship. The only man who ever lived worthy of worship is Jesus Christ. You don't want to worship man. That's an idol. But we we

Elisha's Space: Right. Amen. So this this explains how this happened to you too. You know? And this explains how it happened. So I'm just kinda gonna go through it. It's like You weren't weak. Let me just say say this for survivors. You're not weak. You're not stupid because you fell for whatever it is they were giving you. But the answer almost always is you're human, you were hungry, and you were targeted by someone who is very, very good at what they're doing. If it you got caught up in the system of all it of it all. But the good news is that you were starting to get an understanding of that and and and leave that community. You were get beginning to see that he wasn't what he said he was. What was the moment for you that made you say, Okay, this is not this is not good for me or this is not a good situation?

Paul Cooke: Okay, that's a good question. Well, there were about a dozen things, little things, that I managed to put on a shelf on a back burner and say, I'm not gonna let that bother me because I believe I want to be with this outfit. I just was saying. So in my ninth year with the group, I was in Santiago, Chile, way down in South America, and the sexual thing was really out of the bag. This is how he kept people there was nothing boring about being with the group. And when things got boring, he would always invent something new.

Elisha's Space: Mm-hmm.

Paul Cooke: keep us going. Interesting. And so the sex thing was there and it was not boring, but after a while it began to be very confusing. And I saw it breaking up families and breaking up hurting children. I was continuing to say, No, ⁓ s that's not right. We're not I'm not gonna give up the ship. So then one day I walking in downtown of the city of Santiago. And on this chick ch on this ticker tape sort of news thing that came across that everybody could read in Spanish, it said, religious group commits mass suicide in Guyana, which is across the continent. You know, the n very northern edge of South America is Guyana. And that's where Jim Jones had taken his nine hundred and eighty some odd followers from America and created this big commune in northern Guyana on the on the near near the coast of the Caribbean. And he was a very questionable guy. And one day he had them ⁓ he they practiced this numerous times because they and and he was he he was a bad guy. He he was a evil man. They committed mass suicide and he killed himself at the end. And then they discovered this, and this was in the news, and ⁓ it was like November eighteenth, nineteen eighty nineteen seventy nine eight. Nineteen seventy eight. And I remembered that. I said, What is that? The next a few days later I bought a Newsweek magazine to read about it in English. the more I read about it, I said, Wow. They called him Dad. His followers called him Dad. Well, we called Moses David Dad. You know, and there were other similarities with a big commune. I lived in a big commune, not that big, but and other things. And they treated him like he was, you know, from above.

Elisha's Space: Whoa. Yeah.

Paul Cooke: So I said, well, th there's some similarities. That's really a cult. We're not like that. I know we're not like that. So about ten days later, we got the latest letter from Mo, from our leader. And ⁓ we always read them together in our house. We had a little communal house there in Santiago. There about eight of us. ⁓ so the guy who was the leader of the group read it to us. And that's what opened my eyes, because in that letter he defended Jim Jones.

Elisha's Space: Well

Paul Cooke: Yeah, that's exactly what I felt, Whoa. For the f it's like I and looked at him figuratively, because he wasn't there. He wrote it from Europe. And I said, That can't be right. He said the Americans ⁓ American officials had persecuted him and driven him and his group to South America. They had nowhere left to go except up. And so they committed suicide. And I thought, that's not right. That's first of all, it's unbiblical, and I I just couldn't believe it.

Elisha's Space: Mm.

Paul Cooke: And and so for about 24 hours after that letter was read in our little community, I was in like in a in a daze. I said, I can't, what am I gonna do? This is my life. But if if this is where Mo's at, I can't be part of this. But it was so hard to to digest. and so for about a day or two, I was just really in a strange place. And then I be I began sort of putting it away. I I I didn't want to look at it. I knew I was gonna have to look at it, but I just went about doing my business. I was teaching English to make money for our little commune. ⁓ I was also flirty fishing a lady. There was a lady I a doctor, physician who I was hanging around with, having a an affair with so to speak, to te tell her about Jesus. ⁓ I got all involved with that. And then I I ⁓ Mo wrote another letter saying, go home and show your parents we're not like Jonestown. And when that letter came, I said, that's exactly what I'm gonna do. And I called my parents. I hadn't seen them in three and a half years. And I said, if you'll send me a round trip ticket, I'll come home and visit. This was early December of ⁓ 1978. And you know, I knew ⁓ I wouldn't admit it to myself, but I thought, you know, I'm not sure I'm gonna come back. I had bought a round tip ticket so that it would look Like I was on the upper because he's he said, Get your parents to give you a round trip ticket so you can go home and tell ⁓ we're not like Jonestown. I know that Mo had condoned that he had said he had he had been sympathetic towards what Jones Jones you know, in fact the letter we had some really good artists and all each of his missives would have a c an illustration on the cover. And the cover of this particular one ⁓ what where where he defended you know, e exc excused Jones, had all these dead bodies lying on the ground, like the picture of news on the cover of Newsweek. But from each body was ascending a lightly drawn spirit, like a soul, with their arms outstretched, happily going to heaven. In other words, God had received them. God had blessed them. They were all his children who had been by ⁓ but had committed suicide as though they were all Christians. I don't know if they were Christians or not. Some of them may have been, but they were really deceived. But in other words, It was like the picture, it was like putting a blessing. It's like this is a blessed thing to do if you have to, 'cause God'll just you can just go straight to heaven if you kill yourself for your leader, for your group. And and so that really and then when the letter was actually read and he excused Jones, I I I I just I didn't know how to deal with that. And so I remember getting on the plane on January fourth or fifth, with my stuff and I told my friends there that I was gonna be coming back and I told the lady that I was hanging out with that I'd be back. But when I got on that plane, there was this sense of I'm getting free of this. And yet I couldn't admit it to myself because I felt like I was being disloyal. So I was sort of half happy and half confused. And then that's that's that's but anyway, the thing that I'll tell you one one one quick ⁓ parallel. There's another book, a a great book.

Elisha's Space: Mm.

Paul Cooke: ⁓ Edmund Spencer, an English poet from the 1500s, called The Fairy Queen. that book, there's a story of a young knight who ⁓ is is ⁓ persuaded that his true love is unfaithful to him. And then an evil magician ha has a wicked witch working with him who can make herself into a gorgeous woman. And so this knight turns away from his

Elisha's Space: Mm.

Paul Cooke: Truly loved the woman who really loved him and should have he should have been loyal to her. And he goes after this other woman who's who's actually a wicked witch, but she is made beautiful by magic. So he goes with her, and after a while, one day, accidentally, he sees her bathing, and when she takes off her clothes, she turns into this gnarled, ugly witch. So he realized who she was. He'd been deceived. Well, when I when that Mo letter was read, where Mo praised ⁓ Jones. It was like her name was Duessa. This she was of the false Duessa Duo two. His true love was named Una. She's just one. She's what you see is what you get, and she was pure and good. And Duessa was two faced one face was gorgeous and beautiful, the other was horrible and ugly. So when I saw when that letter was read, it was like I saw Duessa with her clothes off. You know, I saw that's who he really is. He's not who he pretends he's not beautiful and good and true. He's got this side he's not He's willing to condone what Jones did with 980 followers drinking the cyan the the cyanide laced Kool-Aid. I but at the same time I had nine years with this group following this guy and all, and it was really hard to sort of digest the whole thing, ⁓ you

Elisha's Space: Right. What did it cost you that you don't usually talk about very often? The nine years? Late you lost nine years?

Paul Cooke: Yeah. Wow. Wow. Wow. So many things. it was very hard on my mother and father.

Elisha's Space: Mm.

Paul Cooke: Very hard. and it was a test really. They what the they passed it with flying colors. They loved me through they never washed their hands of me. They could have. I gave them plenty of opportunity. I was really hard kid on ⁓ But I think also I I might have spent those nine years growing in grace in s serving the Lord truly in a in an outfit that was it just a church, you know, that maybe was not as glamorous and ⁓ charming and appealing and all those things as the children of God were when I first met them. guess I've learned that you know every group group of human beings, there's going to be trials and problems. There's no such thing as a perfect congregation of any kind. And not let that sort of discourage you. I mean the church that I first came to Christ in was a perfectly solid church and the pastor was a perfectly ⁓ good, honest, upright ⁓ pastor. he was not as, you know

Elisha's Space: Right.

Paul Cooke: glamorous and exciting and daring and all the things that the children of God were, which turned out to be deceptive. You know, the the thing the the warning of Jesus to beware of of ⁓ wolves in sheep's clothing, you know, a wolf doesn't to be a to to work put on sheep's clothing, he can't be careless. He can't leave a fang out, you know. He can't leave a you know, he has to really put on that sheep costume really, really well, with everything just right so that he really does look like a sheep.

Elisha's Space: Mm-hmm.

Paul Cooke: Jesus wasn't wasn't talking about bad act. He said, this guy's the the the the guy the the wolf who puts on a ⁓ a sheep costume, he has to be a cad ⁓ a a candidate for an Academy Award. He's gotta be really good at pretending to be a sheep. That's how you fool people. If he's not good at pretending he's not gonna fool anybody.

Elisha's Space: I just wanna put a pen in this and and state that what you're ⁓ describing, Paul, is cult exit grief and it's very real. It's invisible to people around you because from the outside you're looking like you're free, but your nervous system doesn't know yet. So it's still trying to figure out if it's safe again to trust, you know.

Paul Cooke: Yeah, that that's good. That's good. Yeah, and it took me, ⁓ at least ten years. You know, a friend of mine who was in the group too also left around the same time said, ⁓ know what we're like? We're like the kitty that was cold and jumped on a hot stove. And they got burned. And now we don't it we we don't want to get anywhere near a stove.

Elisha's Space: Mm.

Paul Cooke: 'Cause you don't want to get burned again. So it took me about ten years to realize that not all stoves are gonna burn ya. ⁓ and to get over some of the other bad things that I had I learned in the children of God.

Elisha's Space: Mm. Mm. So at at what point did you stop surviving your past and start actually pilgriming towards something? 'Cause I'm thinking about your memoir and you wrote it in the context of a spiritual pilgrimage. At what point did you find yourself going from one place to the other or moving towards that place?

Paul Cooke: Mm. Yeah. I think the first thing was ⁓ I didn't wanna go back to college. I had a very bad time when I first went to Brown. I I I i I thought I was gonna find all my answers there and it turned out I didn't. And I had it it was not what I expected. I thought I was gonna find friends who were all seeking the truth and that we were all gonna be d really dear friends and I was gonna meet wise teachers and It was not like that. I did have make a couple of good friends and I did have a couple of good teachers, but it in general it was sex, drugs and rock and roll. And I wasn't very good at any of those things. And ⁓ so dropped out and I was not eager to go back to school. And I was home for ⁓ two and a half years and I guess at one point I decided ⁓ being a car ⁓ you I I did all kind of things. I I refinished furniture, ⁓ I sold children's shoes, ⁓ kinda and I realized no d ⁓ this is not what I'm good at. And my dad kept saying, ⁓ You why don't you go back to college? And I said, No, I don't wanna do that. I had a girlfriend at the time and I went to her and complained, said, My parents keep wanting me to go back to college and you know, and she said, You should and I said, Y you're supposed to be on my side. She said, No

Elisha's Space: sí.

Paul Cooke: Go back to school. So I was writing articles for a local newspaper, little feature articles about different interesting people that I met, and the feature editor of the Houston Chronicle was buying them for a hundred and fifty bucks a pop. And I kept writing them and he kept buying them. And I said, Why don't you hire me full time? I'd love to be a newspaper writer. And he said, I've got kids coming to me from U of H with a degree, University of Houston with a degree in journalism. I can't hire you before them. They they've got a college degree and you don't even have one. I said, But you like my stuff. You like it, you're buying. He said, Yeah, but I can't hire you full time. He says, You go get yourself a college degree and then come back and see me. That made me really mad too. But I thought about that for a few months and finally I said, you know, all right, I'm gonna go get myself a college degree. And so when I decided to do that, I was starting to look ahead, you know.

Elisha's Space: I would have been mad about that too. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yes. I want to kind of name what you're describing because it's the difference between staying in a state of recovery and and survival. So recovery is when your story stops happening to you and it starts working through you for someone else. So you're starting you are beginning to move from a place of surviving to thriving, from recovery to moving forward. ⁓ at you weren't allowing that situation to navigate your story anymore. You weren't allowing that to keep you from there, you know.

Paul Cooke: Yeah, yeah, I think that's good. I think that's right. I think that's right. And and that was a process too, because I went from one school to another. I I I went I finally I I decided after one year at the University of Houston, I said, I I want to go back and finish where I started. And the dean, there was a dean named Brown who was a really nice lady, and she said, I went I flew up to Providence, Rhode Island and talked to her and she said

Elisha's Space: Mm. Yeah. Mm.

Paul Cooke: We have a program for people that have been out of school for over five years that were originally admitted here. It's called the Resumed Undergraduate Education Program. And if you want to join join it, you can. She said, you can come. You can come back. That's just simple as pie. Fill out an application and come back. And I said, really? She said, yeah. So I did. I had to borrow a little money. I did borrow some money, but they gave me some money too. And why should they? I'd they'd I'd but I I did and and I went back and I did well. I did really well. I ⁓ because I had a vision for what I wanted to do. And ⁓ and then I did so well that I went to grad school at Harvard. So

Elisha's Space: You know, ⁓ for someone who's listening right now who's in a high control group or just left one and they're asking, How did this happen to me, what do you want them to hear?

Paul Cooke: Yeah. Well, first of all, I've learned, and I think this is true, that it's not some specially weird person who's a candidate for joining a cult or being in a situation that's like. It can happen to anybody if the circumstances are right. You see you know, if something's fallen apart in your life, a relationship, a job, family, could be any number of things.

Elisha's Space: Right.

Paul Cooke: you can find that the rug is pulled out from underneath your feet and a cold comes along and it promising to be the love you and save you and help you. You're easy pickings or you can be. And so it can happen to anybody. ⁓ you shouldn't feel like you're somebody who's really ⁓ they're your hopeless case. There's no hope for you because you're so weird you jump you got into this situation. No, it can happen to anybody and and circumstances, tough circumstances can happen to anybody, really. So that's the first thing. And the second thing is hope, there is a hope. There is the tr there is something called the truth. The truth is not relative. You know, it's not my truth and your truth. There is something that's the the the world doesn't make sense. It comes from Us place. It didn't just happen by accident. We're not just thrown here. There's a famous European German philosopher called Heidegger who says we're just thrown here. Well, even that suggests it's a thrower, but he doesn't want to talk about that. He just wants to talk about you find yourself here all of sudden. No, the Bible says, and I believe the Bible is true, and I I know not all your audience may believe that, but that. We were created by God to know him and to love him and to love one another. And that's our purpose. And the world is really working hard not to believe that. And ⁓ it's so easy to get caught up in stories that make you think that's not true. That's we've outgrown that. We know that we've just evolved from other forms of life. It's just an accident that we're here. We have to make the best of it. But I found that unless you know your purpose, you know why you're here.

Elisha's Space: Right. Mm.

Paul Cooke: It's very hard to make life meaningful for yourself. Inventing meaning is not we're not real good at that. God gave us a meaning, and the meaning is to know him. But the whole world conspires against that, against knowing that. And so it's a battle.

Elisha's Space: You said that you spent nine years following someone who wasn't who he said he was, and then you spent the rest of your life in pursuit of what's actually true. What did you find?

Paul Cooke: Well, I came back, you know, when I first came to Christ, for that carpenter brought me to that pastor and he showed me that tract and the those first months as a believer when I was baptized. I I'll tell you, about a week after I believed it, you know, and I'd prayed with the pastor and everything. I was driving down the freeway in Houston listening to KY OK. Now KYLK was the black radio station in Houston in 1969. And if I was going to find some gospel music on a Sunday, where do you look? So I d I knew where that was around 1600. And sure enough, I found ⁓ a rec ⁓ gospel hour and there was this choir of about a hundred voices singing joyous praises to the Lord. I don't know what the hymn was, but I was driving down the freeway listening to that, and suddenly I felt like I can I'm with you. I believe it. I and I it this Holy Spirit just I started to cry and I pulled over the side of the road. I couldn't drive. And I just cried out to Jesus just like the choir was singing. And and and I felt like this is this is h this is it. God confirmed what I had already decided by sending this wonderful experience. Not that we chase experiences, but sometimes He blesses us with these. And and so I just returned to To that, to going back to believing in him, trusting in him. ⁓ God is our, you know, the Bible says God is our refuge and strength, the very present help in trouble. And and so that's I've come back to him. I I I never really left him, but I got deceived and burned, and I was not in a good way, and my disposition was not as loving and open. I was a little testy. And the Lord has showed me slowly over the years that you can trust him.

Elisha's Space: Amen.

Paul Cooke: And then he'll give you the right attitude that you can ⁓ his glory and be ⁓ someone who has an aroma of him about you, you know? ⁓ so people say, I don't know what you've got, but it looks good to me, you know? And and ⁓ so that when someone cuts you off in traffic, you just praise the Lord instead of you know doing something like provoking ⁓ which so tempting, you're tempted to say there's something you shouldn't do. But you say, say

Elisha's Space: Yeah. Mm.

Paul Cooke: ⁓ Lord, help that poor guy to drive better, you know.

Elisha's Space: So Paul, I wanna sit in this for just a moment because before we close, because what you shared, it's just not a small thing. Nine years and you came out, not unscathed, not unchanged, but out, and that matters. And I think what strikes me most about your story, the part I really want our listeners to actually hold on to, is that you didn't leave the cult because someone handed you a theology textbook. You left because something in you remembered itself and that's the word. That's always the word. So if you're listening right now, if you've ever sat inside a system, whether it be a church, a family, a relationship that told you what to think, who to be, and what God expected from you in exchange for belonging, then this episode, it was for you. You are not naive, you are not weak, you are human. And human beings are wired for belonging, and high control groups know exactly how to exploit that wiring. So stay with me. Here is the challenge that I have for you. Name belief that was handed to you, not one you chose, that you have never actually examined just one. You don't have to dismantle it today. I'm not asking you to burn anything down. But I am asking you to look at it, hold it up to the light, and ask, is this mine? Or was I shaped to carry it? That's not re rebellion, that is recovery. So I'd like to take a moment to pray with you. So let's pray. Lord, we just come to you as a people who have been led astray, a people who have trusted the wrong voices. As a people who in our hunger for truth and for belonging, we walked into rooms that should have protected us and didn't. And yet here we are, we are still breathing, we're still asking questions, and we are still finding our way back to you. I am grateful, Lord, that you made these bodies, that you knit together the very nervous systems that carry the weight of those years, the shame, the confusion, the grief of realizing that That what we call devotion was sometimes called control. I ask that you would heal what was twisted in us by systems that twisted your name, restore what was surrendered out of fear, and remind us, remind us today that you have never required our confusion as proof of our faithfulness. His peace is not dependent on having all the answers. It is a regulated nervous system in the presence of a safe God. We thank you for all these things, Lord. In your precious and holy name we pray. Amen. And if this ep if this episode has helped you, if it names something that you've been carrying, share it.

Paul Cooke: Amen to that.

Elisha's Space: Text it to one person you know is still inside a system that doesn't feel safe, or one person who left and is still trying to figure out who they are on the other side. And you can fall find Paul's work in his memoir. Now it's not published yet, but it will be in the show notes. And once it becomes published, we'll have him back on the show and we'll talk about the book in more detail. I think you guys would like that. And if you want to go deeper on cult recovery, spiritual abuse, and the neuroscience of high control group trauma, everything is linked below. So I want to thank you, Paul, for joining us and for sharing your story. And audience, until next time, you are not too much, you are not too far, and you are not alone. ⁓