 This video might get me a ton of backlash, but it's something that we really, really need to discuss. What is up everybody? This is Chris from the Rewired Soul where we talk about the problem, but focus on the solution. And if you're new to my channel, my channel is all about mental health. And what I like to do is pull different topics from the YouTube community to try to teach you how to improve your mental and emotional well-being. Something else I talk about is addiction and addiction recovery. So if you're into that, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell. So I sat here, I sat here after Jesus Christ's, it's gonna sound weird saying his name. I sat here after watching Jesus Christ follow-up video just now, seeing that Pewdiepie talk about it. And I sat here and I was like staring at Tristan and she knows when I'm, I got something in my mind that I'm questioning and I didn't know if I should make this video. Something that I'm always trying to teach all of you is to pause and check your motives, right? Like people can call me a drama channel all they want, but before I make any video, I check my motives. There's so many videos that I don't make because I don't feel like I can add any mental health or addiction recovery, you know, information to it. I don't think I can help anybody. I think all I would be doing is just adding to the, you know, the drama or the gossip or whatever it is. So I'm always checking my motives before I make a video. And when I checked in with myself, when I talked it out with Tristan, my motives I believe are in the right place when talking about this. All right. And before I move forward, I like to cover my butt. All right. And here's a big fact disclaimer. I'm going to talk about this, share a little bit of a story, talk about Jesus Christ, talk about what the situation is from what we know, but I want to make it very, very clear. Okay. If you want to donate to him, do it. Okay. There is a huge issue. I'm a single father. All right. My son's mom and I are split up in the United States and in other places in the world. It is very, very difficult for a father to get custody of their child. It's something that many men deal with. So if you want to support Jesus Christ and his legal funds, go for it. I am not telling you not to. I just want to put everything out on the table so you can make an informed decision because I personally feel that he's misleading some people and it might be unintentional. Okay. I'm not saying that he did this purposely at all. It might be unintentional. And let me explain why. Ever since Jesus Christ, aka SoCal Christ released his first video, I've gotten a ton, a ton of tweets, DMs, comments on my YouTube channel saying, yo, you need to talk about this Jesus Christ situation. He needs our help. You know, he came from a cult. Like a lot of my subscribers know that Tristan and I were both fascinated with like cults and, you know, that psychology and all of that. So I'm like, okay, you know, we'll check it out. And we went and we watched Jesus's first video and we watched and he says this, I was raised in a highly controlled religious group. Some people call it a cult, although I was able to escape the control of this organization. My kids have not. I am one against many. So he says that and like, let me tell you, let me tell you Tristan, Tristan will find some stuff out. So as we're watching Tristan just on her phone looking some stuff up and I'm sitting there kind of pacing back and forth because the way Jesus Christ presented it was that his kids are currently in a cult and he needs to rescue them from that situation. And I'm sitting there pacing back and forth. Like, although I know that men are less likely to get custody of their children, I'm like, why would it judge even question whether or not to give this man custody of his kids if they're living in some religious compound in the middle of nowhere? Right? But there was a few things in that that didn't really add up for me. Like the fact that his kids like to watch YouTube and all that. I'm sitting there. I'm like, usually most cults don't give you access to the outside world like that. Right? Well, Tristan looks it up and Jesus Christ is an ex Mormon. He comes from the Mormon religion. I'm going to explain that in a little bit for those of you who aren't familiar with it. And I'm like, okay. So just so you all know, there is a branch of the Mormon religion which is called FLDS, I believe. And I think that's more on the cult side. All right. But LDS, the Mormon religion, it's not a cult. And I take a huge issue with people who mislabel things as cults. It's messed up. All right. And here's, here's my thing. Okay. A lot of you know that I'm an addict and alcoholic in recovery. Like if you look through my catalog, I don't care if people smoke weed. I don't care if people use Kratom. I don't care. The only thing I care about is people tell the truth. Okay. Now, just so you know, me personally, like full disclosure, I teeter between atheist and agnostic. All right. I always say I'm spiritual, but not religious. So I'm not Mormon, just so you know, I'm not religious. I don't believe for me personally, there's nothing wrong with organized religion. I always say, if you're not hurting anybody else, do yo thing boo. I really don't care. All right. Just organized religion is not right for me. But when Jesus Christ is calling the Mormon religion a cult, the reason I wanted to make this video part of my motive behind it is I got sober through 12 step programs. And a lot of you who don't know about 12 step programs, like you might hear people say, Oh, AA is a cult in a is a cult. Right. And I am not that active in 12 step programs anymore, but it's saved my life. I have my own issues with 12 step programs. You know, I don't make it too public or anything because I don't want to scare people away from something that might save their life. And it drives me bonkers when people say that 12 step programs are a cult because 12 step programs are not a cult. There's a huge difference between a cult and like a cult. All right. Huge, huge difference. Okay. Like I said, I am fascinated by cults. And there are so many things about 12 step programs that have nowhere near what a cult mentality is. All right. For example, you can come and go as you please. When I don't go, when I don't show up to meetings, nobody's chasing me down. You know, I'm saying nobody's trying to convince me, you know, or whatever it is. Well, actually some people might try to convince you to stay or whatever. They're not gonna like come knock on your door or whatever. But anyways, here's my story. Here's my story about the Mormon religion. I've never been Mormon, but I have a special guest for you pretty soon here. I've never been Mormon, but I grew up here in Las Vegas, Nevada. For those of you who don't know, Las Vegas, Nevada has a ton, a ton of Mormons. So most of my best friends growing up were Mormon. Okay. My best friend to this day, he is ex Mormon. His family is still Mormon. They still go to church and everything like that. So I know a lot about the Mormon religion. Not only that, but my high school sweetheart, she was Mormon. Okay. So I know a lot about the religion. I don't know everything. I know different, different churches might believe or talk about different things and all of that. Right? I have my issues with the Mormon religion. I think the Mormon religion is like a cult in some cases, but definitely not a cult. All right. For example, for example, growing up, my friend's families like every Mormon that I grew up with, their family was always like, Hey, Chris, when are you going to get baptized? Hey, Chris, when are you going to convert? Chris, when are you going to get baptized? I'm like, uh, and when I was dating my girlfriend, like we dated from most of high school, I think like sophomore to senior year, I almost converted a few times because in the Mormon religion, typically Mormons only marry other Mormons. And I, you know, I was in love and I thought I was going to marry her, you know, whatever. So I thought about it many times, but I knew I would be doing it for the wrong reasons because I wasn't a believer. You know what I mean? So I, I didn't like the fact that they tried to recruit me. Some other things that I didn't like about the Mormon religion was, and this is not a blanket statement by any means, by any means, but I met a lot of people who were racist. Okay. For those of you who don't know, I'm actually half black. So that is an issue for me. Okay. Again, not all Mormons are racist, but I met a significant amount of racist. All right. The other thing is too, I also grew up, my mom's best friends were gay and the Mormon religion is very anti LGBTQ, but not all not all at all. Okay. Not all. All right. I want to make that clear because I know someone's going to try to misinterpret what I am saying, but these are things that I personally took issue with. All right. When Mormons turn 18, you know, a lot of them go on missions and try to recruit. So like when you have people who like show up on bikes at your house and knock on your door, you know, and they try to convert you and all of that stuff. All right. So there are many things I don't like about the Mormon religion, but I don't feel it's right to call it a cult because everybody who's messaging me, like they're telling me that, you know, like, Oh, it's a cult. Like he was part of a cult. And I don't think people are properly informed. Again, if you want to give him money, do your thing. I don't care what you do with your money, but I do think it's important to discuss this. And, and in his most recent video, he pointed out this book, it was called like CES. And that's when I got the motivation. Like, dude, I got to make a video on this because for me, it's just, it's not cool. It's not cool because when somebody hears the word cult, like, this is one of the reasons why I teach you all to practice mindfulness. When you hear certain words, you immediately get a picture in your head. Like if I said the word, if I said the name Jeremy, right, you are, you're getting a view in your head of what Jeremy is. Okay. So when I say the word cult, I know a lot of people when they heard Jesus Christ say the word cult, they imagined some, some compound, you know, in the middle of nowhere staying away from society and all of that. Now, don't get me wrong. I don't know anything. Jesus Christ said he's going to do an AMA, answer a bunch of questions and all of that. Right. But here's what I would assume based on the knowledge that I have. Like Mormons can be very strict. I've heard, I've not, not even I've heard. I've had, I've had friends who have been disowned by their families just for coming out as gay, like it's messed up. Right. So when Jesus talked about how his father told his brother that he wishes he was dead, I would imagine pure assumption. Like I don't think his family is too happy with A, him leaving, um, him leaving the church and B, making money off of impersonating Jesus Christ. Now I imagine a hardcore Mormon dad wouldn't be too happy about that. But again, no excuse, no excuse whatsoever. But you know, it's, I think it's important that at least one person, at least one person comes on the platform to discuss this because PewDiePie just made this video. Now he mentions that he was grown up in a cult. I was raised in a highly controlled religious group. Some people call it a cult. It was because of YouTube that I was able to learn the truth about the organization that I dedicated my life to. So Jesus mentions that, uh, he is losing custody of his children and that he needs your help to be able to pay for his lawyer. And it's a very heartfelt heartbreaking video. So we have the largest YouTuber on the platform promoting this. And, and people are saying, you know, like, oh, well, yeah, he's in a cult. So go, go support him. Go support him. Like if you want to support him, go support him. But like, there's a difference between an organized religion that like if Jesus Christ became atheist, which is the weirdest sentence I've ever said in my life, like if he became atheist or left the church, cool. That's fine. All right. But just because you see it as a cult or being like a cult, it's not, it's not. So anyways, I'm going to shut up. I bought, I brought my buddy, um, Ryan from the channel Crimson Studios, which is doing awesome stuff blowing up. He actually talks about PewDiePie and T series a lot as well as he's a commentary channel does some cool stuff. But anyways, I had the weirdest DM for Ryan. I'm like, hey man, are you there? And he's like, yeah, I'm like weird question. But were you Mormon? He's like, I used to be. I'm like, call me. Like, he must have been freaking out. But anyways, I asked Ryan to send me a quick clip, um, to discuss his experience. Thanks, Chris. My name is Ryan and I am currently broadcasting to you live-ish underneath a crawl space in a cabin in the woods. Never thought I'd say that. I am also an ex Mormon. Now, why am I an ex Mormon versus being a current Mormon? So something I want to preface this video with is that I was not raised Mormon. I did not grow up in the church. I was a convert when I was 18 years old. And something that I learned very quickly when I moved to Utah back in 2010 is that there are a lot of Mormons there. And when you're dating and you live in Utah and you're not Mormon, there's not exactly a lot of non-mormon female specimens to pick from. So I naturally started dating a Mormon because that's just what was around and I dug this person. And the first thing I noticed from people when I moved to Utah is that when they find out you're not Mormon, they began to invite you to things to get you to learn more about the church, something I was very standoffish at initially. But when I was dating this girl, I was so freaking in love with her. Oh, my gosh. Looking back on it, I feel like an idiot. But I was so in love with her that of course I was going to meet with missionaries and go to church with her. So I started meeting with missionaries and going to church. And I am Mormon. I get converted. There's a long story with that, but I'll skip to the chase or whatever. And so when I'm going to church, I began noticing these things where there's a thing called Fast Sunday, where the first Sunday of the month you fast and you pay tithing, etc. And you're invited to go and speak in front of everyone in your ward and tell them why you know the church is true. And every single one of them go up there and they say the exact phrase, I know the church is true because this happened in my life, blah, blah, blah. And noticing that was something that I noticed a lot when I was meeting with missionaries and just going to school. When you live in Utah and you're going to school, you have this thing called seminary where you get released time and you can go to a convenient building place right off campus and go to church during the week because why not? And I noticed that when little kids like age four or five and six and when you're a little kid, you need to understand that you don't really make decisions for yourself and you don't really know things. You learn everything from your parents and other adults and stuff like that, your environment around you. And when you grow up in an environment and when you're like this, there's no way you're not going to believe certain things. Now that's just the way life is. But when you see three, four, five, six-year-olds go up in front of an entire ward and say, I know the church is true, you know in the back of your head that they were completely told what to say. And when you repeat that for many years, you begin to believe certain things. Now when I was dating this girl and I became Mormon, when you become Mormon, you are very pressured growing up in the church to go on a mission, serve a mission for two years in another country and teach other people about the church. This was something I was not down with. I didn't grow up in a religious household at all. I was basically doing this for her and there were certain things about the church that I didn't enjoy. And I don't want to knock anybody that is within the church. And I didn't want to go on a mission because there was a saying that I heard when I was going to church, when I was with all these other kids that were in my age group who were getting prepped for missions. I kept hearing these words, you don't go on a mission to convert others. You go on a mission to convert yourself. And I thought about that a lot. I ruminated on it. And I thought about living away from home for two years where you do nothing but preach the good word every day for two years. You can self indoctrinate yourself. And the reason I left Mormon church were basically those things. I didn't feel like it was a healthy situation to be in, especially when I was truly not doing it for myself. I was doing this for another person, but you can't live a lie when I didn't believe it. I had to leave. And now there's a comparison here that Jesus Christ makes in his video where he mentions leaving a cult. And in his book that he promoted in the last video that he made, he mentions this book. And in the book, apparently it's mostly about him leaving this cult, this cult being the Mormon church. Now, I personally do not believe that the Mormon church is a cult. There's a pretty fine line between being a cult and then having cult-like tendencies. And I think the Mormon church has cult-like tendencies up the wazoo. And that's fine for them, up the wazoo. But they're some of the nicest people I have ever met in my entire life. How much of it is real or not, I don't know. But I genuinely think that a lot of them just want to live good lives and just let them believe what they believe. And the reason I left the Mormon church, because I simply don't believe these things. And I just can't connect with it. I wasn't raised in it. And I think when you're raised in something, if I was raised Mormon, I would probably believe more of it. Now, there's a lot of crazy stuff I could talk about about the Mormon church, about baptizing dead people, which I got to do, and all of these other crazy things, the crazy underwear that you have to wear after you get married. But that's not what this video is about. I hope that answered your question, Chris, and all of that fun stuff. So thanks for having me out again. All right. Thanks so much, Ryan, for including that clip. Like I said, I've never been baptized Mormon, so I wanted somebody who has been and was in the church to make a quick clip. By the way, check out Ryan's channel and we'll link it down in the description, as well as up in the info card. All right. So go check this channel out. But anyways, this is no hate, no shade or anything like that. Again, like I just want people to know the truth when they're making these decisions. Like we have, especially as influencers, we talk about this all the time, as influencers, we have a responsibility to word things in a certain way as to not mislead people. So the last thing, the last thing anybody needs is for Jesus Christ to make all this money and then to get exposed. You know what I mean? Like I'm not trying to expose Jesus Christ. I just want everybody to make an informed decision and like also understand just because people say something's a cult doesn't mean that's a cult. All right. Anyways, if you made it this far in this video and you don't hate me, go follow me on Instagram. I'm trying to get to 10,000 followers and I'm pretty close. Anyways, that's all I got for this video. If you liked this video, please give it a thumbs up. If you're new, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell because I make a ton, a ton of videos. I'm about to record a mental health video for tonight as well. All right. And a huge thank you to everybody supporting the channel over on Patreon. You are all amazing. All right. Thanks again so, so much for watching. I'll see you next time.