Interview: Hollywood Actor on Addiction, Hypocritical Religion
Witnessing firsthand the power of God and His spoken word, one Hollywood actor and screenwriter is hoping to turn people toward the very thing that saved his own life: the infallible Scriptures.
Only a few years ago, Chris Carberg, the founder and CEO of Holypop.com, an educational community for believers and skeptics, was a man under a powerful and destructive addiction.
Before becoming a devout believer, Carberg, who starred in such films as “Kill Zone” and “Sydney White,” battled with prescription pills and painkillers, drugs that were originally intended to relieve his painful migraines.
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Having at one point consumed nearly 60 pills a day, the 28-year-old struggled to get his life together even though he found growing success in the entertainment industry as an actor, producer and screenwriter.
His addiction eventually landed him at a rehab center in 2005, where he began to form a craving for something other than pills – God. Though Carberg had been brought up Catholic all his life, up until that point, he had called himself an agnostic.
He was uncomfortable with what he characterized as “hypocritical organized religion,” turned off by pastors who cheated on their wives, priests who committed sexual abuse and more. Still, he said he was curious about who God was despite the evident problems.
In the following email interview with The Christian Post, Carberg spoke in detail of his past, his struggles with organized religion versus God, and his hope for Holypop.com.
CP: What caused your addiction to prescription pills and what sparked your desire to get help?
Carberg: From a young age, I battled severe migraine headaches, and as I got older, they seemed to get more intense, as did the medication that I was being prescribed. My addiction really had a lot to do with lacking a strong self-image, and one time I took two pills together and felt a calm peace that I’d never experienced. From there it was just a matter of ordering pills online, hitting plateaus and needing more and then spiraling out of control. In the weeks leading up to being “found out,” I had called 12-step hotlines and left messages but never my name, and began to inquire to others who I knew had addictions (as to) how they’d conquered it.
On Feb. 8, 2005, I visited a Kinko’s in Orlando at 3 a.m. and was out of it. I passed out and was overdosing heavily. Apparently in my stupor, someone called the police to check on me. He found me and asked me if I’d been drinking, and I told him no. Then he asked me if he could check my car, and I told him sure. In my trunk was a garbage bag filled with every pill bottle I’d ever had, probably hundreds of them – my golden calf, my trophy, my idol. He called an ambulance and got me to the hospital. I’ve been trying to find him since that day to thank him for saving my life, but the name I got and that my parents got, Officer Voyles, led to a dead end. I detoxed over the next day or two, then checked into University Pavilion in Tamarac, Fla.
CP: How did you decide to visit a church after your rehab was finished? What made you curious about God again?
Carberg: When I was going into rehab, I visited my grandparents to tell them I loved them (my mom came with me). My grandfather brought out his Bible and gave it to me. I’d brought a whole bunch of books with me to rehab, but never got to read any. One night, since one of the other patients there was an Orthodox Jewish man, they allowed him to have his copy of Scripture with him. Naturally, I asked for mine as well, and they brought it into me. I began to nose through it, but really focused on the passion period of Christ. I was in a deep dark hole, wondering how I’d gotten there and I fell asleep with the Bible open. At that point, I didn’t necessarily have faith specifically in Christ alone, but it opened a door for me.
I met a couple friends in college at University of Central Florida, and then I was introduced to my future wife, Jenna. She invited me along, and while we weren’t dating or seeing one another, she kind of witnessed me asking her dad (Scott is Holypop’s developer and a brilliant Sunday School teacher) hours and hours of questions on faith, often in single sittings for four or five hours at a time. My walls were coming down because I was getting some actual Bible literacy, and Aloma Church and our pastor, Anthony George, really were helpful in feeding me as the babe in Christ that I was.
My largest struggle was the concept of having a personal relationship with God. I’d always thought that He was to be revered but never spoken to lovingly. That was one of the main turning points in my faith, accepting him as Abba.
CP: What do you think turned you toward Christianity? The same reasons that you shunned Catholicism seem to exist in the Christian community as well, so what do you believe allowed you to still trust in the Bible and God's Word and become a Christian?
Carberg: Well, first off, I think that sin permeates all organized religion because we’re essentially a congregation of sinners trying to organize ourselves. It’s difficult. From the outside looking in, we imagine that having “religion” should make us all sinless, and therefore, incorruptible. But sometimes, it feels the other way around, as if choosing Christ puts a target on your back, both to the world at large and to sin.
For me, it was really starting with a foundation unrooted in tradition for tradition’s sake. Let’s not be held down by either emotionalism or ritualism. It starts with the Bible. I started off questioning the canon of Scripture, how it was assembled, why it was assembled, and bringing up all the controversial topics and hitting them all at the beginning. When I saw the Bible was translated and copied with an incredible amount of accuracy, especially compared to other renowned “classics” such as Plato or Aristotle, it really amazed me. I began to have faith in the idea of faith.
Christianity did not appeal to me, because I had major issues with priests committing sexual abuse, pastors cheating on their wives, a lack of accountability, as well as an air of “business” that had cloaked faith. It really took me a long time to realize that there will always be charlatans abusing the name of Christ, but Scripture says that they will be held accountable. My job is to do better than they do, and cleanse the image and legacy of Christ as much as I can. None of us will be perfect, but I think humility, honesty and transparency helps us through these difficulties.
CP: Biblical illiteracy is in fact a huge problem still all around the world, where Christians themselves seem to know less and less about the Bible. What do you think is the root cause of biblical illiteracy? Why are people no longer reading the Word? What's missing?
Carberg: Holypop is really focused on hitting young people ages 13-30 with content that is digestible and focusing on the reality that each and every verse of the Bible contains value, truth and is coded with inspired lessons, meanings and wisdom that can be fed to the Holy Spirit. When we stop looking at the Bible as the largest book we’ve ever considered reading and focus on verses and explanation of verses, we can draw out knowledge that gives people confidence in what they’re reading. Another part of what keeps people from the Bible is the sheer volume (of) it, as well as relevancy and fear.
It’s a big book. Let’s be honest about this. People look at it and they see shepherds and global floods, and miracles and visions and have a difficult time imagining that as real. The new information age tells us that what can’t be seen or shared by someone we know, simply couldn’t exist. Yet most of the people (who) believe that are the first to trust evolutionary thought, without anyone having been there.
I think that people feel like this is an old book for an old time, rather than the only book in history that will apply to all times, and is devoid of ego. You have 66 books by numerous authors, working in absolute harmony across thousands of years. If this was just a manmade book, you would’ve seen progression of story, books “outdoing” other books and trying to one-up. That’s how writers are. Rarely do they work in concert with those they’ve never met for a cause that is absolutely without financial profitability and usually leading to death.
The other thing is fear. When you read it, and you get it, it changes you. You can’t be the same person because it turns societal norms upside down and counters culture. The Bible is by far the most controversial book in history because it flies in the face of what we as sinful humans want to believe. It flies in the face of sin, and I think that our flesh keeps us from wanting to discover more things to change, more ways to grow.
CP: How does your website seek to fix these problems then? And what makes your site unique/special from the thousands of other Christian sites on the Web?
Carberg: Holypop challenges Bible literacy issues by not only providing a multi-translation online Bible, but also by complimenting it with strong content that helps users get a full Bible study experience in one place. We have content from Dr. Elmer Towns, Dr. Jerry Falwell, Dr. Harold Willmington, Scott Basham and more. We use all of our easily digestible content to work in tandem with Scripture. Each Bible verse is tied to a commentary, Hebrew/Greek dictionary, parallel and a concordance.
What makes Holypop so special is the new media approach we take. We’re building one of the largest databases of Christian thought on the web, and we’re doing it with modern technology. Our new site (which is launching soon) aims to target young people and to feed them tenets of faith that will build a stronger generation.
My team didn’t want to make a website for old theologians (not that there’s anything wrong with that). Holypop speaks to living everyday faith, and we hope it will connect young Christians across the world as we’ve already seen it doing via social media.
What makes it exciting is all of the awesome content there is and how you can get everything you’ll ever need to have a strong walk of faith in one place.
CP: What do you think needs to be done today to strengthen evangelism and personal faith in the world? Sometimes people tend to forgo their personal faith and relationship with Christ while "advancing the cause" of Christ, bringing in a whole spew of legalism, works-based salvation, etc. How does your website then deal with this issue and successfully build true believers?
Carberg: I have seen, first hand, the damage that legalism has done to the church. It’s created little “tattletale robots,” (who) seem to tell on everyone else around them that are doing something wrong, while ignoring their own wrongs. It’s also created mega-ego pastors, who view themselves more as heaven-sent politicians rather than fallible leaders of a fallible flock. Congregants like knowing that they’re not the only ones battling – that the guy at the front of the room isn’t their taskmaster; he’s their servant leader.
Holypop preaches personal accountability and the reality that we always have something to work on. There aren’t degrees of sin. There is just sin. We’ve seen it in large-scale cultural issues such as homosexuality. We call it a sin but lift it up as the worst of the worst, meanwhile, the American divorce rate has gone through the roof and the structure of the American family has been maligned and ignored.
I think that there needs to be a revived effort for evangelism within our own American borders. It appears that we’ve ignored Jerusalem and focused only on Samaria and the ends of the earth. We need to start locally, building grassroots campaigns that serve those closest to us, lovingly spreading the Gospel through our actions.
The best evangelism that we need most is lifestyle evangelism. We need to positively affect others for Christ, using what He taught us, staying humble in the process and not looking for another notch in the proverbial salvation belt. Holypop looks to create Christians that can function in the real world, affecting people for Christ.
CP: Was your website intended for Christians or non-Christians?
Carberg: Holypop was created for sinners. Whether you’re a sinner that’s come to the truth of Christ, or a sinner still in darkness, Holypop is designed to help you get closer to the truth of Christ, to knowledge of His plan for your life. I think that when we just try to help “sinners” rather than Christians or non-Christians, you can go a long way, and not leave out someone important, someone that was me, six years ago.
