I recently changed my comment policy. I used to close comments on posts after 45 days. Since I am unable to regularly check this email account as I care for my two young sons, I am opening up comments on older posts as a place for folks to dialogue.
I moderate the first post of initial posters for the same reason I lock my doors at night. The Internet provides both darkness and anonymity, and trolls abound. If you want to curse or fight, direct your wrath towards Al-Qaeda or Healthcare.gov.
More or less, I use the same principles moderating comments on the Internet as I would at my own home: I allow respectful — even heated — disagreement, but I disallow verbal abuse.
I refuse to approve any comment which uses ALL CAPS to scream at people, or a comment which attacks someone personally. Christians can do better than that.
I may go hours without checking my email, especially when I’m asleep. Thanks for your patience as I clear initial comments.
Welcome to the conversation. Your voice matters.
Liberty for Captives 
I really just wanted to thank you for your work here and in the lives of people who have been abused. My wife and I experienced excrushiating heart break and almost lost our marriage when I was excommunicated from an abusive church and subsequently shunned by my wife and the rest of the church. God did an incredible miracle to bring us back together and allow us to see the abhorrent abuse the leaders had been controlling us with for over 13 years. We still have close family trapped in the deception and pray daily for the Holy Spirit to reveal to them what is going on in that group. Your writing and personal experiences you have shared here have so encouraged my wife and I. To know we are not the only ones is comforting-especially when you feel like you are the only gullible and stupid people on the planet. You have given voice to things in our hearts and heads that would could not put words to. Keep up the good work your ministry is making a huge impact. Thank you!
Wow. Thank you so much for your encouragement. It makes me so happy to hear of your reconciliation as a couple and that you were able to leave this abusive group. I pray that God will free your loved ones from this abusive church and that he will deliver all of the people out of the hands of these leaders, whoever they may be. Grace and peace to you as you walk this path of healing.
Thank you Jeff and Selena for your comment. We were in a cult for 12 years that sounds very much like the one you left. Your comment saying you “feel like you are the only gullible and stupid people on the planet” totally crosses my mind every time I tell someone what we just came out of. It is the look on their faces or there comments that make you feel stupid. I know we aren’t the only ones because our hearts break for all the families we left behind that are still trapped/brainwashed. Thank you Steve for this website. It has been such a blessing to us and was a catalyst for getting us out and now it is a healing resource.
Thank you so much for this website. As a licensed professional counselor, I see first hand the enormity of the problem of spiritual abuse in churches that leaves people broken in their relationships with God and other believers. The bottom line… “Obey God rather than man.” If someone in a position of authority… spiritual or otherwise… is abusing that power and does not have the “fruit” of what God indicates is Godly behavior, you are asked or told to disobey scriptural principles, then God expects and requires us to stand true to what God says, and do what is right in God’s eyes, regardless of what the person in the position tells says. I am praying that this site will be much visited for those who are in need of healing, and that the light of truth will be shined into the dark abyss of spiritual abuse.
Thank you, Kim. Spiritual abuse is so common, but many folks don’t have the words to describe it. Lots of kids grow up in these unhealthy environments and it just seems normal to them. Thanks for your encouragement.