Michael Airhart’s description of the “overcomer” as a living trophy is painfully accurate. I know because, for years, I helped build and maintain the display case.
At Exodus International, our stories were never simply personal. They were presented as evidence: evidence that our theology was right, that our ministry was necessary, and that other LGBTQ people could experience the same transformation if they surrendered enough, prayed enough, or worked hard enough. Once your life becomes proof of a proposition, telling the whole truth begins to feel like threatening everything—and everyone—you love.
I don’t remember thinking of myself as spiritually grandiose. I believed I was serving God. Most people inside these ministries probably believe the same thing. That is precisely what makes the dynamic so dangerous. Harm does not require cartoon villains, it only requires sincere people inside a closed system where questioning the system has been confused with questioning God.
The “overcomer” story traps everyone differently. Those seeking help are taught to blame themselves when the promised transformation does not occur. Leaders are rewarded for projecting certainty even when their private experience is far more complicated. Doubt becomes disobedience, vulnerability threatens the ministry, and ordinary human contradictions must either be hidden or given a sufficiently spiritual explanation.
I saw how quickly someone’s honest experience could be transformed into a deeply moving and emotional theological lesson. If the program appeared to work, God received the credit, the ministry gained another testimony, and speaking engagements started lining up. If it didn’t, the individual was assumed to have unresolved wounds, insufficient faith, or an unwillingness to surrender. The underlying premise remained safely beyond examination.
That is why shutting down Exodus was so personally traumatic and mattered to the world at large. It was not an admission that every person involved had been acting maliciously. It was an acknowledgment that sincerity could no longer excuse the destruction our message had done. Good intentions did not restore the years people had lost, relieve the shame they carried, or absolve us from taking responsibility.
Airhart is also right that the weapon eventually turns inward. A community built around proving victory cannot make room for people who stop performing it. Once someone admits that the mirror is reflecting an ideal rather than reality, that person becomes a threat to everyone still depending upon the illusion.
Perhaps the most faithful thing any of us can do is stop mistaking our idealistic religious projection for God. God should be able to contradict and confound us. Truth should be allowed to disrupt the testimony we, and others, have invested in. And people must always matter more than the religious or political story we have recruited their lives to prove.
There’s More to This Story
If you’re wondering how I ended up inside the display case—and what it took to climb out—I wrote a whole book about it. WHY: A Memoir follows my journey from leadership at Exodus International to helping shut it down, with plenty of life before and after. Available wherever books are sold.
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