Counter-Cult Witnessing Induced Cognitive Dissonance Part II: Thoughts About Motive

(If you haven’t already, please read Part I HERE.)

There are many resources out there about helping people who are in aberrant religious groups, but I wanted to outline my own observations and thoughts about motive (that I’ve recently considered for my own benefit!).

Before I write anything about motive, I’d like to mention something that is of the utmost importance to me. Not everyone will share my opinion on this point, but I believe strongly that the most effective resource you have in your possession when trying to help someone out of a manipulative group is that of prayer. In Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, he says that the words of the Bible are foolishness without the spiritual discernment of the Holy Spirit. In the same way, I believe that in addition to encouraging your friend to think for themselves again, you need to pray for them and for you. For the person in bondage, I pray that the Word will be effective and ask God to mightily show Himself faithful to His promises regarding watching over His Word to perform it, never returning to Him void. For the person to whom I am witnessing, I generally pray along the lines of Matthew, Chapter 13. For me, I pray that I will faithfully hear the Lord, faithfully speak His Word, that nothing will interfere with my hearing, and that I will be sensitive to the Holy Spirit Who I ask to guide me in all things. I don’t really like the idea of others praying my prayers or me praying theirs, but I will work on a new blog post along these lines as an encouragement for others to pray. Prayer helps you keep your motives on course while you’re working through these things with someone.

Before you get started in a counter-cult witnessing situation such as I have recently with my Mormon neighbor, you must accept the very real possibility that the person may not respond to you with an eventual rejection of their cultic or aberrant belief system. They may never respond to your message about their beliefs, and the process will be much more difficult if they do not believe that you have concern for them on a personal level.

Any motive of yours that is not healthy will make the process of witnessing and helping the spiritually abused person very difficult. If you say that you want to help someone, but the process unfolds in a way that is very different from what you want to see, that conflict will produce a great deal of dissonance for you and for the person you are trying to help. Your words will not match your actions, behaviors, expressions, etc.. This will contribute to a lack of trust in the person you are trying to help (perhaps keenly aware of what does not feel right), and it is essential that you work on fostering and building that trust. You have to create a safe place for them to heal, and you will often find that you have to abandon your expectations in order to create and protect that safe place. What is safe for you may be unsafe for them. Knowing the subculture that they are involved in will be tremendously helpful, but you must be willing to accept that the person may not meet your expectations, particularly early on in the process.

Keep in mind that the person enmeshed in a spiritually abusive system is literally restructuring their mind as they consider new ideas. They’ve been “wired” with a particular set pattern of thinking with automatic responses to all sorts of problems and issues (Cialdini’s “click...whirr”). They need time to process the ideas that you introduce. You are working to help them re-wire these well-worn patterns in their mind, and it takes time. Realize that part of this is actually neurophysiologic. It is an emotional process as much as it is a cognitive one, and emotional pain will make this process more difficult. The person will fatigue, and they will try to protect themselves and their own sense of integrity because they will find the new information personally threatening. Give them lots of room to process things, and be quick to forgive them because this is a terrible trauma for most people. Anticipate defensive responses and do not take them personally if the occasionally try to “kill the messenger.” They are in the throws of the terrible discomfort of cognitive dissonance, trying to figure out what and who they can trust. You need to create a place for them to purge, and this is not pleasant. Sometimes, people will exit the relationship or will shut down to your efforts because of the discomfort. Don’t take any of this personally, and anticipate that the process will test your motives.

Particularly when speaking to people who were brutalized in the patriarchy movement, even from respected people of note and sophistication I hear a common theme: “I never would have believed this terrible experience could be possible if it had not happened to me.” Fundamentalists, because of the nature of faith and the idealism involved, will demonstrate a higher level of resistance to ideas that are contrary to that of their group. You are battling confirmation bias, so a direct confrontation of beliefs for belief’s sake will often not help change a person’s mind about the group. For this reason, a great deal of the person’s realization and recovery will be experiential. You may have to stand by and watch them suffer some of these things before they will receive critical opinions about their group and belief system or even help from you. But you can be ready and prepared to help them. Unfortunately, many people only realize the true nature of the group through direct abuse.

Don’t be surprised if their honesty stirs up cognitive dissonance for you! Religions in general and spiritually abusive systems offer answers that help us transcend the most painful problems in life – about life, the universe, and everything. Though spiritually abusive systems offer oversimplified solutions to complex and difficult problems, those problems of life in an imperfect and sometimes cruel world still exist. If you haven’t thought through your own belief system on your own terms beforehand, and if your faith has been vicarious in some areas (if you were a crash test dummy for someone and never dealt with it), you will find yourself asking questions right along with the person you are trying to help. Know that lots of these questions have no “proof” outside of faith, and that is okay, for the both of you. I know that this is an uncomfortable place to be, but it is actually a very good one for you. This will push you into some cognitive dissonance of your own as you validate your own faith and beliefs. Anticipate this if you can. (Since I believe that truth is transcendent and that the Holy Spirit leads and guides us into all truth, I have great faith in this idea which dispels fear for me. I believe that the truth can take it.)

Witnessing one-on-one builds upon friendship and a certain degree of mutual respect. You invest real time, energy, and care in an individual when you help them, and this will have a significant cost for you. Please be honest about the cost you are willing to pay in order to help this person, then set limits and boundaries ahead of time. Relationships get “messy” rather quickly, and if a person is involved in spiritual abuse, this creates even more “mess.” Sometimes, there are lots of logistical problems for people as they start to leave a group, particularly if they are shunned for listening to an “apostate” (someone who views their group as a cult or a former member), voicing opinions contrary to their group, or leaving itself. What can you offer to this person if you are their primary contact or their primary encouragement to leave? Be prepared to answer specific questions. (In the past, I’ve been called upon to help people with financial burdens as they relocated from patriarchal homes in crisis. In retrospect, the process would have been easier if I’d been better prepared for this stressor ahead of time.)

If you want to help and you inadvertently promise more than you can conceivably offer on a practical level (be it money or time or emotional support), this can also be a problem. You must “count the cost.” In my own recovery experience, I approached a friend and explained how much I needed friendship and counsel because I felt so abandoned. Though I was disappointed that they were not available to me, this woman sat down with me and explained the many pressures and a very consuming crisis in her own life related to one of her children. I didn’t know about any of these things, and I was glad for and grateful to her for her honesty with me. I understood that she was not available but that it was not personal. Be honest with yourself about what you are willing to give and what you can conceivably offer. Be willing to clearly communicate this.

Because you are “giving” of yourself in many ways into a relationship with the person, be very aware of your own expectations! In keeping with the caution that the person my never renounce their belief system, if you are giving in order to get some return (such as complete conversion), this will create relationship problems. We live in culture of entitlement, and people in crisis often cannot reciprocate. Depending on the situation, they may have been low functioning in terms of relationship skills to start with, and they certainly will not be at their best when they exit a group. Once they are out and established somewhat, they may stop coming around because they might associate you with the pain of their leaving. In some ways, this is a positive thing, because they desire to move on from their pain. Don’t be offended if this happens with a relationship you’ve worked to build with someone in need. Don’t set yourself up for heartache and place extra strain on your relationship because of a sense of your own entitlement. In other words, your efforts to help them should never be about you but should be motivated by your desire to do right by them and for them for the right reasons (either for the sake of altruism in general or out of Christian love).

I do not speak for everyone, but I believe that whenever I give, whatever it is (time, money, practical help, etc.); I have learned that it is best to give without any expectation of return. The catch phrase in Christianity is that we should “give as unto the Lord.” My motive for giving should come from my love for Him, expressed in love for others. If I give with the idea that I am actually ministering to Jesus, then I should also expect my “return” to come from Him, perhaps in ways that I do not anticipate. I give, and though I endeavor to give wisely, I do not “keep score.”

More thoughts on expectation. We are programmed with a sense of reciprocity, and we will have to face this in any friendship – and most friendships and associations have a degree of functional pragmatism. They involve an exchange and mutual respect, and if we are witnessing, we are establishing some level of friendship with the person as a person that will involve an expectation of reciprocity. Awareness, assessment of our expectations and good boundaries also protect both parties in the relationship. “Giving to get” disrupts this respectful balance and sets the scene for dysfunction. Boundaries will also protect you from getting too committed so that you will not end up getting “used” by the person coming out of spiritual abuse. They will have many needs and they have been in an environment that encouraged them to have NO boundaries. You will likely have to be the more mature party, because the other person may likely be unable to set boundaries themselves. (But if you “counted the cost” at the outset of your relationship, your boundaries have already been framed out fairly well.)

If you approach witnessing to someone with the sole motive of seeing them become converts, be very aware of the tendency to turn that person into an object. This can be very subtle and can happen for religious and for personal reasons. In spiritually abusive systems, people are objectified – they become objects that are used by the group to achieve its desired end. As the end justifies the means as a group gets further off course, the follower loses their personhood.

Be very careful that you keep your motive to “counter heresy,” for example, separate from your desire and motive to help individuals. If you go out to witness to Mormons because the statistics say that ten members of your own denomination convert to the LDS every day, AND you are not also operating out of true concern for individuals when you interact with them, you have turned the people you intend to help into objects in a way that is similar to their abusers. Make sure you keep mindful of your motives and keep tabs on why you do what you do. This is an easy trap to fall into and one that the church growth movement has encouraged in many cases. Motive is very important, even though it is subtle. If you are witnessing to people and winning converts to prove something to yourself in some way that boosts your own ego, this is also going to create dissonance and will affect your witnessing work.

As a teenager, I now realize that I was championing truth by defending my faith, but I didn’t understand all of my own motives. I was getting psychological benefit out of it through the reward of the respect and admiration of other people for succeeding in such a lofty endeavor at a young age. But as I stated in the previous post, I failed to understand that despite the offensiveness of the doctrine, the rank and file members with whom I contended wanted to do the best thing in life as unto God as they understood Him and to live a life that meant something. Because of my motives, understandable as they may be, I inadvertently objectified these people somewhat. Avoid this by properly honoring and respecting them.

Along those same lines, if you are involved in a church that rewards witnessing and conversion through evangelism, keep your motives in check. We should aspire to do the right things for the right reasons. Be careful that your motives do not become selfish, because this is a great temptation if you are successful at motivating and persuading others. Again, remember that helping to get someone out of spiritual abuse pertains to them and you are just an instrument to help them, even if your focus is limited only to doctrine. Don’t allow it to be about you, making sure that you do not let new converts or potential converts become objects. It is an easy and subtle pattern into which many leaders can slip.

Though my Evangelical friends may disagree with me, I will summarize by stating that I have two separate motives when I encourage and support someone’s exit from a spiritually abusive group. I discussed these separate objectives in this recent post, but I would like to briefly reiterate.

My first objective involves getting the person out of the manipulative group. Many times, the person is not in any kind of mental shape to choose where to go to church, if they even want to go to church at all. I could not tolerate much regular attendance during the first year or so after my own exit. I experienced a great deal of fear and panic, as did my husband. You tend to wait for the next shoe to drop. Again, the person must feel safe, and a traditional church setting may be the most unsafe environment for them. They must feel comfortable in order to start their recovery.

As a Christian, I hope that the person exiting the group would choose Christianity, but I must be careful to allow that choice to be their own, something that is between them and God. If I coerce a vulnerable person or use undue influence to achieve my own ends before they are ready to make their own choices, I am behaving no differently than their abuser, in some sense. So my desire to see people seek Christ and an Evangelical perspective that is similar to my own, I must consider that this is a secondary motive. I am not out to sell hell insurance, I want to see people healed and whole. I am responsible to provide reasons for why I believe what I believe with meekness and patience. It is the responsibility of the person to choose what to believe, and that choice rests between them and God.

More to come….

A note about formatting

As a person not a bit interested in HTML, I have no idea why transposing something over from a word processor sometimes creates formatting issues and why it sometimes does not. Sometimes, one paragraph in the middle of a post will change, and I cannot get it to re-adjust.

Sorry if this is troubling for some of you... It troubles me too, but I don't get paid enough to hire someone to figure out where the bugs are in the system!

I thought I had the last post straightened out, but I give up. I think it has paragraphs now!

Counter-Cult Witnessing Induced Cognitive Dissonance Part I: Introduction to Motive

Back in the seventies, it was still all the Christian rage to go “street witnessing,” much like something you will see in the old film, “The Cross and the Switchblade.” My corner of the greater Church became quite taken with street witnessing, and the practice was still encouraged as an activity for young people when I was a teenager. It still had all of the flavor of the “hippie” mentality of days quickly passing us by then. People were laid back and they were concerned about people as people, but the climate was changing then, now 30 years ago. The adults who were most effective at this were the ones who were genuine and kind to people, showing concern for their well being. (That may seem stupid to say if you’re not an Evangelical or if you’ve never been on one of these witnessing excursions yourself, but sadly, I believe that it needs to be said.)

Ray Comfort Engaging in “Street Witnessing”

The cold call on the main street of one’s city can be intimidating, and teens would go with an adult to observe and interject into these conversations. The most effective street witnessing efforts I saw always seemed to involve the very poor, and quite obviously, these people needed tangible, practical help. Sadly, I only every saw one adult pay for a meal for one of these unfortunate and broken people. And often, these indigents were reluctant to accept anything because they understood something that I did not come to appreciate deeply enough until I was much older: “There is no such thing as a free lunch.” They understood motive, and even with Christians, motives are often selfish. If these unfortunate people stood to gain something, they understood that they probably risked losing something.

They understood Cialdini’s principle of “Reciprocity,” the human tendency to feel obligated to return a kindness if one has been shown kindness or given something. Salesmen use this technique every day, particularly in multi-level marketing venues. If a Kirby salesman comes to your door, they generally will offer you a free gift as a “show of appreciation” for taking time out of your day to listen to their presentation. That sounds good on the surface, but it is misleading. Something else takes place when the person receives the “free gift.” The salesman has just dramatically increased his chances of “closing the sale.” The relationship between the salesman and the gift recipient has been established and built upon obligation (thought it may well also be about the vacuum, too) to the great advantage of the salesman. To continue in this relationship or to grow in it, the consumer understands on a very deep and subconscious level that obligation drives this relationship. The consumer feels pressure and will be expected to reciprocate.

The salesman knows that acceptance of the gift sets off what Cialdini describes as a “Click…whirr” automatic response of innate human tendency, one of which is “Reciprocity.” Just as a click of a mouse can open up a process in a computer system, the salesman knows that he has turned on human nature’s machinery in the mind of his target or “mark.” Most people are completely oblivious to the powerful tendency, something that we humans “just do.” The good salesman capitalizes on it, and many exploit it, in order to put food on their table. If they are good at what they do, they will also capitalize on the other “Weapons of Influence” that Cialdini describes and more (see this post, particularly the Wizard of Oz graphic).

Through the school of hard knocks, I believe that the indigent who were offered a cup of coffee or a sandwich on a cold autumn evening had expert knowledge of this principle. They understood well that most everyone who engaged in this activity were SELLING SOMETHING. If they accepted “our deal,” they would be obligated to listen to us talk about how Jesus could help them, and He was usually presented as some magic panacea for every area of life like a genie in a bottle. The woman who I saw was most effective at this, different from the rest, did sincerely want that person on the street to have a full belly and warm toes, regardless of whether they would even agree to pray with her. She was not selling anything. She was offering comfort to those who were in need without expecting any return on her investment. She was very different, because she had the right motive: she wanted to share her bounty of the comfort she’d received from others in the name of the Lord. I get the impression that she also empathized with these needy people on a deeper level. She wanted the relationship with them, however simple and short-lived, to be built upon kindness rather than obligation. The recipient would have to make a “leap of trust” to receive from her, even if it was just a cup of coffee on a cold night.

As a young teen, I also gained my first experience witnessing to Jehovah’s Witnesses, but this was all done completely on my own without another adult present. (That is another topic I’d like to get to one day.) I did not have anyone to observe, and I had to “arm myself” with knowledge of the belief system and the Scriptures that countered the JW arguments. When I first sought out help (prayer, encouragement, guidance, and information) as a 14 year old, never at any time did anyone explain to me that rank and file members of these groups were sincere and kind people who were being manipulated. Sadly, it is something that I would not understand for many years, and I now see this as the most critical element in “one-on-one” counter-cult witnessing.

I was given doctrinal information which was fantastic, but I now assume that because Christians find distortion of the traditional understanding of Scripture so highly offensive, they primed me to be what I would call an aggressive approach. The three early experiences that I had with JWs were all entirely on my own without any supervision, and I was once “tag teamed” and outnumbered by two adults at age 15. They were aggressive, so I sometimes “survived” by returning their aggression in kind. I learned through unspoken communication that people I respected believed that the JWs themselves were somehow enemies of mine and almost evil in some way for “rejecting the truth.”

The truth is that most of these JWs were ignorant of the truth about their religion and its problems. I know well that, at the time, if I had asked any of my resources – these adult Christians – if the rank and file JW was evil, they would deny it, but their behaviors and approaches to the topic and to me clearly communicated this strong impression of the JW as a type of enemy. I actually ran into one of these women about ten years later, and we BOTH apologized to one another. I regret that I never acknowledged these people as earnest people, perceiving them rather as my enemy. But I followed what I was taught and could only walk in the light of understanding that I had at the time. What do you really know when you are 14 years old? I knew doctrine…

Now that I can fully empathize with the cult experience from many vantages including former membership in a cultic church myself, I see things very differently. And I think most people, even other Christians who have come out of cults, have major motive problems. The intent of your heart will be revealed in the process, because it is a difficult thing to confront someone about such matters. (NOTE: In terms of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, their founder claimed to be an authority in Greek but in a court of law, he could not demonstrate knowledge of the Greek alphabet. This contrasts with the scientific discipline and the art of peer reviewed tradition of the translation of ancient text.) If your motives are not good ones, you will run into major problems and will not reap good results, in my opinion. For one-on-one witnessing, you must hold the best interest of the “lost” or deceived person before your own desires or expectations, and your motive must be for their good, not your own gain.

How does cognitive dissonance come into play here? If your motives are not good – if you are seeking something other than the best outcome for the spiritually abused person above all else – you will experience much cognitive dissonance yourself. This makes the work of helping others more difficult for you, and it will be difficult enough without motive conflicts.

More on motive to follow….

Another Example of My Own Dissonance

A few months ago, new neighbors moved into the apartment below us, and we’ve since developed an interesting friendship. I’d met the wife before, beside our cars in the parking area, and she told me that she was a licensed professional counselor.

Before I was able to have a “proper” conversation with her, I developed a general opinion of her based upon my impressions. I relied upon stereotypes that I’d developed about groups of people to build my ideas about my new neighbor, primarily related to her counseling background. As a person who has expert knowledge about human behavior, I made assumptions about her that I expected be validated when we did meet again.

When we had our second conversation, I was shocked to learn that she was a Mormon! Bam! I immediately went into a state of cognitive dissonance when she announced that she attended “the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.” (She was so happy to announce this, too!) I instantly became very aware of my facial expression, because I felt so disappointed! I’d not expected this at all because I’d relied upon a stereotype or a “rule of thumb.” (Cialdini talks much about this in his book.) I’d taken a mental shortcut, and in this case, it had not served to help me through the information that one has to process when one meets a new person.

All at once in that moment, I’m suddenly feeling my own shock, I’m trying to hide my facial expression of disappointment, I’m disappointed that I’d relied upon a stereotype (because I should know better), and then, I’m thinking about the impact the Mormon issue would raise for us in our friendship. The experience was both cognitive and emotional – and it was intense. The new information was very inconsistent with what I’d believed and all that I knew at that point, and I was very much off-balance. I never saw it coming.

(If I had kids, it would have been an excellent opportunity for them to ask me if they could play with knives and fire in the middle of the living room! I likely would have agreed to anything in that moment because of how intensely distracted I was by this powerful experience. Everything shuts down for just a moment. In this moment, we all are highly vulnerable.)

This is cognitive dissonance. The experience itself is neither good nor bad, but what triggers it and how one responds to it can very well be.

Since this second meeting, I’ve developed a great friendship with my neighbor, and we’ve had many frank and honest discussions about all sorts of things, religion in particular. It’s been very enlightening, because I’ve been able to address the doctrinal issues of Mormonism, but I’ve also been able to talk with her about the dynamics of our relationship and the clinical features of our interactions. For instance, a week after I “unloaded” what I knew about the Book of Abraham and the most problematic doctrines that Mormons like to avoid, I asked her for feedback. I told her about the symptoms of cognitive dissonance that I observed in her as I shared this information that she’d certainly never heard from the Mormons before. But we had a relationship of growing trust, and our discussions have been mutually instructive. We are teaching each other in many different ways as we go.

We’ve both made an effort to be transparent with one another, and it has taught me a great deal. I’ve asked her whether she would feel strange if I discuss our experience here at Under Much Grace, and she was excited and happy to help. In some upcoming posts, I would like to explain important factors I took into consideration as our relationship developed, the responses I observed when I introduced sensitive material, and ideas about how these observations might help others understand the process of leaving the thought patterns associated with a manipulative mindset like that of patriarchy.


More to come…

Memories of My Own Cognitive Dissonance: Gothard's Doctrine of Grace as an Example

In so many words (!), I’ve already shared what cognitive dissonance felt like after some exit counseling and realizing that not everything I’d believed had been true.

I’d like to discuss a bit more about the process that facilitated my acceptance of Gothard’s take on grace (and other ideas introduced at the Institute of Basic Life Principles conference I attended). I only briefly mentioned it in this post. Cognitive dissonance was easy to ignore for me when I first accepted his views, but when I revised my understanding after I left the spiritually abusive system; I had no other option but to let the process work in me. I loved and wanted the truth more than my own comfort, so I honored the process. Because I’m not a masochist, I did not really want to submit myself to the pain of realizing that I’d been duped, but I saw no other way around it. In the process, I started to learn how to accept life as it is, and not as I would have it. Life is what it is, and it takes maturity to accept life’s reality when it is unpleasant. I am learning how to accept this and cope with life’s unfairness, right along with everyone else.

Here is the saga of my dissonance regarding IBLP.

I attended the IBLP conference with new friends at a church that was in our area (it was not held at our own church.) The setting (a nice church where I was surrounded by respected friends) told me that I was in a safe place listening to safe and legitimate information that was trustworthy if not essential. Eventually, we get to the first section wherein Gothard presents his novel, aberrant views about grace. This large church, a social setting with strong, established rules of social conduct, holds a certain degree of power over me because of the very setting itself which makes my ability to resist influence more difficult. I’m sitting in the lower level of a very, very large church sanctuary, and I must look up to view the very large screen which causes my gaze to sit just above 30 degrees over midline which puts me into an alpha state physiologically. (Alpha states of alert relaxation, the ideal state of consciousness for hypnosis, make it much more difficult for us to think critically about information.) I was also physically fatigued and my regular routine had been altered which put me at another disadvantage. (We’d been required to attend every weeknight, then all day on a Friday and Saturday for the IBLP basic course.) I'd driven there with another couple, and I was not at liberty to gracefully leave if I decidede that I wanted to do so. If I am going to think critically and resist ideas that I find interesting but not convincing, “the cards are not stacked in my favor.” (Please refer to this series on "Surviving a Conference" for more information.)

If you watch the first session of the online video, notice that the first thing Gothard suggests is that your own perspective (your own “gut” and common sense) is faulty and God’s perspective is true. Naturally, Gothard purports to present God’s perfect perspective to you in this video conference, so reasonable self-doubt and your own good judgment is cast as something sinister and something to deny as you participate. He states directly that reason (all reason?) is something to distrust, but he fails to acknowledge and honor those whose reasoning is already well-informed by a conservative and strong knowledge of the Bible which would absolutely qualify as wisdom in Biblical terms. (He’s subtly cast everything in simplistic terms of black and white, so that if you are not in complete agreement with his white and pure perspective, you are entirely black. It doesn’t encourage scrutiny and it does not give “grace” per his definition of it to those who feel their own conviction that what Gothard is saying might not be pure and white, reflecting God’s perfect wisdom.) No good Christian is going to reject God’s perfect wisdom intentionally, and this is what Cialdini defines as an appeal to human consistency and commitment. Gothard does an excellent job of capitalizing on this human trait in this conference.

When I first heard the novel ideas, my trust was engaged, and I was not in a situation that favored my critical judgment, to say the least. Then, the ideas are thrown at me. Though my mind was engaged, suddenly I felt some emotional engagement. I had I very good command of Scripture at that point, so I had a sense of “surprise” when I heard these new ideas. Everyone’s response to this kind of thing will be a little different, but given my personality and experience, I felt self-conscious because I’d never discerned this before. Here’s where I made my mistake because of the setting and other factors: I assumed that the people teaching this information in a manner that implied that they had an authoritative perspective on the subject, so I acquiesced. I assumed that I must be wrong about what I understood in the past in light of this new information. It is the path of least resistance. Because of how the course is set up – overwhelming really – the new information could be reinforced quite quickly before I left the setting and went back to the real world.

There was also the ride home with the elder and his wife (we’d traveled about an hour one way to get to the church where they held the course) wherein they would also reinforce the information through the discussions while we were all confined in the car together. It started out feeling odd, but in an ethereal and pleasant sort of way. This was cognitive dissonance. In the light of the other reinforcements, the “changing of my mind” became quite enjoyable. I also received quite a lot of positive reinforcement for having attended the conference from and through the leadership at the church. Add to these influences the subtle air of superiority of having a new slice of truth that puts me ahead of others who only thought they understood grace. Gothard has a reputation for promoting this in his conferences, and Doug Phillips has published similar ideas on his website concerning those who follow his system. There is an appeal to believing that you have “a corner on truth,” whether that is just a self-satisfaction or whether it is something that you use to “level the field” to make yourself feel and seem superior.

Living a few hours away from my parents who were not people to sit down and discuss doctrine, and after a recent relocation from another state, there was nothing in my environment to really challenge the new views that Gothard’s IBLP course introduced. I didn’t find myself on the phone with one of my mentors, and if I had, the discussion of Gothard’s doctrines may not have come up. I’d made the assumption that instead of this new and novel information possibly being wrong, I fell for the logical fallacy of the “appeal to authority” *(see here also) and my own feelings of shame which facilitated my acceptance of these ideas. I had no reason to doubt the information at that point, other than the fact that it was new, novel and subtle. The other environmental factors showed me only “green lights.” There were only lots and lots of benefits that encouraged me to change my mind, so I ignored the not so painful "splinter in my mind" that cognitive dissonance posed. (I didn't know any of this information about manipulation at this point, either.)

Before I move on, I would like to offer an example of a situation wherein I would have refused the interpretation that Gothard wrapped around his concept of grace. Even in my own new church, if these kinds of ideas had been presented in a Sunday sermon, I would have contacted the pastor within the next couple of days to ask questions about what he was really saying. I would find myself saying, “I must have misunderstood something because he couldn’t have meant that.” As a good Berean, when we first started attending that church, I showed up on the church doorstep about two weekdays per month, asking questions about things that were said from the pulpit on Sunday.

The pastor was very pleasant and enjoyed talking with me, and I with him. What I would later understand was that though I had intended to get an explanation of problematic teachings and statements when I showed up there, they really turned into indoctrination sessions that the pastor would use to assuage my concerns through techniques like the “double bind” (pointless "thought-stopping" discussions full of cliches along the lines of “If a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it, does it make any noise?”) or Cialdini’s “Weapons of Influence” such as “Liking” in particular. HOWEVER, I wish to stress the point of comparison here that the pressures upon me in our regular church setting were light compared to the week-long Gothard IBLP indoctrination session.

As something introduced to us after only about three months or so into our experience at this church with subtle and aberrant doctrines, the Gothard session became a part of the overall “program of indoctrination” at our church. I never heard Gothard mentioned from the pulpit, and the IBLP course was not discussed openly. The elder who directed our midweek home group came to us and invited us to go along with him to the course privately, and this was not even an invitation that was directed to the whole group. (This also added to the sense and emotional appeal that we were “special,” though I did not see it as an obvious factor of appeal at the time, and I am ashamed now to admit that this was a factor of manipulation, too. We were new in the area, had no social contacts to speak of outside of this church, and we liked the company of this elder and his wife which added to our vulnerability.) We were being groomed to accept these doctrines and many more in a way that was quite innocent, and it was not overt. The process was pleasant and stroked our egos.

I did eventually stop resisting these doctrines our local church taught for a season. I am encouraged to recall that I did question these ideas until I was lulled to sleep by the pleasant aspects of the experience. When you are overwhelmed by many factors that create cognitive dissonance on many levels, you cannot remain a rational, critical thinker who is a good Berean. No one can. I would just tell myself that I didn’t have enough information to make a judgment call about the problematic statements. They were subtle, and I was just being “too critical” and that “I must have misunderstood something.” (The problems had to rest with me and my thinking and not with what my gut told me about the situation that seemed problematic.)

These visits to the pastor’s office early in the week put me in good spirits, though I would often feel disoriented and dizzy when I finally plopped myself down in my car when I went to leave. It was so pretty in the spring there, and the trip to and from the church office with the car windows open bathed me in the scent of honeysuckle that grew thickly along the lovely country road, just off the highway. It was like a beautiful oasis there that reminded me of my home in Pennsylvania, surrounded in a lovely wood that was so pretty compared to the winter terrain of Oklahoma that I’d recently left when I’d moved. All of this was part of the process of changing my mind. Why was I resisting such a pleasant experience? What was I REALLY protesting? People that seemed wiser and kinder to me with each passing day? People who had my best interests at heart and thought the world of my husband and me? That’s all how the fantasy seemed at that time during the honeymoon. But honeymoons end.

Three years later, I would find myself in a very different situation. I saw the bitter fruit of the doctrines of Gothard applied many times over by this time, and they produced garbage in the lives of many of my friends at the church. They were used with me in nearly every discussion I had with church leadership. As I advocated for these women who were being mistreated and against other abuses of power and social proof, I suddenly noticed that the pastors did not reach for the Bible for wisdom. They reached first for their big red book from IBLP for wisdom. I did not understand until this happened just how much of an influence the ideas of Gothard’s doctrine affected church leadership. I didn’t appreciate how they’d affected me, either. These hard experiences and how the leaders consistently relied upon Gothard’s perspective to talk their way out of complex problems of real people using these idealistic and oversimplified examples in the “Big Red Book” (given to you when you enroll in IBLP) taught me the real, unspoken and unwritten doctrines of this church. I felt very trapped and confused.

Did we believe the in the Bible or in Gothard’s authority? Clearly, “we” believed in Gothard and trusted his views above our own experiences and circumstances, and an honest consideration of Scripture was secondary to Gothard’s simplified paradigm. I would later learn that this was “Doctrine Over Person” in play, something necessary to maintain order within the group and to consolidate and verify the sacred science of the ideology. People who resisted this sacred science and the milieu control used to defend their system of beliefs were greeted with punishment and varying degrees of a loss of personhood within the group. “Existence was Dispensed” to those who were model citizens and denied for those who did not participate because of their “sinful willfulness, pride, and independent spirits.” If spiritual blackmail with monikers of shame and rebellion from Scripture did not work, one found that they were no longer a part of the group. You became instantly invisible within the life of the church which continued to happen around you.

At this point, I knew something was very wrong, but I was too enmeshed in the system at the time to assess what was happening to me. Acceptance of these doctrines and thinking them through was not a dispassionate process anymore. It had never been dispassionate based on the veracity of the ideas alone because I’d accepted them and doubted my better judgment because the system and the wide experience of the whole grand process allowed the ideas to slip in past my scrutiny. But something was very wrong, just the same. I found that a particular passage from the first Matrix film describes this feeling very well, something I blogged about HERE. I cannot imbed the video, but you can link HERE to the scene on YouTube where Lawrence Fishburne’s character talks about the “splinter in your mind, driving you mad.” (Insert the name of your church’s system of belief, the name of your church or your religious group in place of “The Matrix.”)

When I first spoke to an exit counselor for the very first time, she told me very much the same thing that “Morpheus” tells “Neo” (the Keanu Reeves character). There is something wrong, but you just can’t figure out what it is that is wrong. This is the very first feeling that you will have when your mind starts to process the inconsistencies involved in the cultic group or the aberrant teachings. They don’t add up. Either what is being said does not match what is being done, or the beliefs to not match with the emotional ways the beliefs are applied.

I discussed this in previous blog posts when I talked about how I understand Hassan’s “BITE Model” in the context of my own experience with in the Land of Gothard. That is cognitive dissonance at work, and when you wake up to the fact that you bought into someone else’s fantasy, the feeling is not light and ethereal. It is deeply painful and intimidating. It is like taking "the red pill," and in my own experience, I felt like I woke up into a nightmare much like Neo did, all with no possibility of turning back into the bliss of ignorance. This is what it felt like for me, and cognitive dissonance is as much of a process of feeling as it is one of cognition.

I mentioned the discomfort I felt (in this previous post) when I tried to sit and read longer passages of the Bible as I had in the past, something the Christian understands as essential for growth and good stewardship, the way one best learns about the Savior they love so much. The first time that I saw this section of the film reminded me in a very dramatic way of how I felt when I first looked and re-examined Gothard’s favored verses about grace. Again, I felt much emotion of surprise that I had believed Gothard’s version of grace. In a much better position to think about and evaluate what he was really saying, and under punishment as opposed to the reward I felt when I accepted these new and novel interpretations, I felt not only surprise, I was angry and felt very ashamed.

At the same time, I was also angry at and deeply disappointed in myself for not seeing the doctrine that I would have otherwise rejected. If I had been home and in the comforting presence of people who had confidence in me when this information was first introduced to me, I would have identified it as something that sounded more Roman Catholic. (If you happen to be Catholic, I am very agreeable to agree to disagree on this point of doctrine in the RCC without it being something personal. It is just not what I believe, and as a Protestant, Gothard shouldn't believe it either.) In my living room, I would have been able to counter this interpretation, offering an answer of defense of my own doctrine in my own mind about why I believed differently. But I was not strong enough to evaluate the doctrine because of the surreptitiously manipulative conditions affecting me when it was all first presented to me.

I knew something was different and wrong about it, but I felt so insecure about myself (only about 25 years old at the time), and the setting capitalized on the power of the human tendency to agree with and submit to authority. (See the Milgram Study history and Cialdini for more information.) And then there was the whole religious idea that because I’d listened to another gospel, I was essentially “spiritually intimate” with ideas that were not God’s ideas. Unlike the claims about Jezebel from the Gothardized cultic church, I essentially engaged in spiritual adultery *as I understood things at that time* (like Jezebel actually did) for displacing God with the ideas and authority and relationships with this system, serving the system instead of serving God. This was truly a horrible feeling, and examining these doctrines that I accepted, in addition to the intense self-doubt that results from realizing spiritual abuse, all intensified every time I picked up the Bible in these early days after I left this church. It was like a flood of painful truth, and the waters covered me.

I am here to tell you today that if you are experiencing anything like this, rejoice, for this will not last forever. It did not last forever for me, though it took some time for me to work through the process. Looking back on it, this process of realization taught me invaluable lessons that have carried over into many other areas of my life, if not all of them. Do not resist what your heart of hearts or your gut tells you. Be aware of the discomfort of cognitive dissonance and honor it. Honor the feelings in your body when you process your own spiritual abuse experience. (One sensation I felt and learned to pay attention to was an awareness of the soles of my feet, and I interpret this now as my desire to get up and run away from the painful process of admitting that I’d been duped and that I was going to have to grieve, repent, and relearn many things again.)

Everything that I once understood, given the light of understanding that I had at the time and my own spirit of naïveté, proved itself to be quite pleasant. It takes much determination, confidence, optimism, and faith in the truth to stand up to the unpleasant feeling that comes with realizing that you've been manipulated and deceived. Because our most deeply held beliefs become personal, this process of “changing your mind” (repenting) about the false doctrine will be painful, even if not to the extent that it was for me. Everyone will feel differently about this, and I am a right-brained person who identifies with more of the artistic ways of explaining things. Your feelings will be different because we all have different personalities, but the process of working through these aberrant beliefs will involve feelings, just the same.

If you can stick with the process of examining your beliefs, putting them to the test of scrutiny, and you can persevere through the process of dissonance that you feel as you direct your own understanding, I promise you that it will be to your ultimate benefit. (The “rabbit hole” does open up into a bright place if you follow it all the way out. The tumbling stops, the feeling of darkness does come to an end in time.) I hope that you will embrace cognitive dissonance as one of your new teachers in this process of change, making peace with the process as one that will help restore you now and protect you in the future if you learn to use it.

Encourage yourself for your courage and valor. This is not a process for the faint hearted, and it will certainly help you work towards a cure for a faint heart.

The LORD is near to those who have a broken heart, And saves such as have a contrite spirit. Many are the afflictions of the righteous, But the LORD delivers him out of them all. He guards all his bones; Not one of them is broken.

Psalm 34:18-20 (NKJV)

From the film, “The Matrix”
written by Andy Wachowski & Larry Wachowski

Morpheus: I imagine that right now you're feeling a bit like Alice. Tumbling down the rabbit hole?
Neo: You could say that.
Morpheus: I can see it in your eyes. You have the look of a man who accepts what he sees because he's expecting to wake up. Ironically, this is not far from the truth. Do you believe in fate, Neo?
Neo: No.
Morpheus: Why not?
Neo: 'Cause I don't like the idea that I'm not in control of my life.
Morpheus: I know exactly what you mean. Let me tell you why you're here. You're here because you know something. What you know, you can't explain. But you feel it. You felt it your entire life. That there's something wrong with the world. You don't know what it is, but it's there. Like a splinter in your mind -- driving you mad. It is this feeling that has brought you to me. Do you know what I'm talking about?
Neo: The Matrix?
Morpheus: Do you want to know what it is?
(Neo nods his head.)
Morpheus: The Matrix is everywhere, it is all around us. Even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window, or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work, or when go to church or when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.
Neo: What truth?
Morpheus: That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else, you were born into bondage, born inside a prison that you cannot smell, taste, or touch. A prison for your mind. (long pause, sighs) Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself. This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back.
(In his left hand, Morpheus shows a blue pill.)
Morpheus: You take the blue pill and the story ends. You wake in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. (a red pill is shown in his other hand) You take the red pill and you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes. (Long pause; Neo begins to reach for the red pill) Remember -- all I am offering is the truth, nothing more.
(Neo takes the red pill and swallows it with a glass of water)

("The Wizard of Oz" and "The Matrix" copyrighted by Warner Brothers.)