I Was Groomed to Die for God
About this episode
Liz Dieatrick shares her experiences growing up in a fundamentalist household and her journey through religious trauma and identity rebuilding.
Liz Dieatrick grew up in an intensely fundamentalist Assemblies of God household, where she was told from childhood that God had uniquely called her to become a missionary. Raised by a pastor father and a deeply controlling, highly religious mother, she developed crippling religious scrupulosity, suppressed her own identity, and built her entire sense of purpose around sacrificial service to God. After studying missions in college, surviving life-threatening illnesses on overseas mission trips, and enduring the public scandal of her father's arrest in a sex sting, she interpreted every hardship as confirmation that she was faithfully following God's plan rather than questioning the system that shaped her. Liz recounts her years with Live Dead, an Assemblies of God missions movement focused on reaching "unreached people groups" in restricted countries, the intensive security training for kidnappings and interrogations, pressure to deceive governments about missionary work, and an organizational culture that glorified self-sacrifice while minimizing personal autonomy. Looking back, Liz identifies numerous red flags she overlooked at the time, and reflects on her suicide…
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