Recent posts here discussed the risks that a person faces, but there
are also smart ways to prepare for meetings of confrontations with
spiritually abusive leadership. In addition to knowledge about
spiritual abuse as discussed in this post, there are pragmatic and
physical measures that one can take in addition to exploring what the
Bible has to say about such meetings, if it mentions them at all.
Have Realistic Expectations (or Make an Attempt to Get Them)
When I remained involved with my own
spiritually abusive group, and for a time after I left, as a
Christian, I felt it was my duty to tell leadership about the things
that I saw as in direct conflict with the Bible. For their own sake,
I also felt the need to tell them about the nature of their own
behavior which was more like that in a Chinese POW camp than in what
I knew as the Christian church. Though I wanted some closure and to
set behavioral limits (I desired no further contact with them because
they had hurt me), I felt like someone needed to explain to them what
they were doing to people and the harm that they caused. My husband
who says that I'm much nicer than he is didn't feel that he had any
duty to these men because they strayed so far from righteousness and
good intent that he no longer considered them his brethren. I still
don't share his perspective on that, and that was fine with both of
us. Not being an authoritarian type, he gave me great liberty to
do whatever I felt I needed to do to move on and heal, however it
worked for me.
Writing that now, more than a decade
and a half later, I almost want to laugh, because I know that I had a
dreadfully naïve view of the dynamics of the relationship I had with
them as a follower. I thought that the pastor and the elders
believed what I did about them: that we were fellow believers who
submitted to one another in love and who submitted to truth
(including what the Bible plainly defined as right and wrong). If
asked whether they would agree as a matter of principle in a direct
question, they would say that they agreed with me. Our conflict was
not one of agreement but one of how those ideas “fleshed out”
functionally. I was ignorant of the premises of the Shepherding
Discipleship Movement until after I left that church, so I never
realized that those ideas took on an entirely different meaning for
that church's leadership than they did for me. We used the same
language, but that language had a coded meaning that I didn't
understand.
I didn't have realistic expectations. Mine were naive.
Never Underestimate the Unwritten
Rules of the System (Another Vignette from Experience)
Honestly, even with study of the
dynamics of spiritual abuse and retracing my experience of learning
their submission doctrine which was so strongly tied to hierarchy, I
didn't understand elements of it until I started reading about
Complementarianism (gender hierarchy), specifically when I listened
to others talk about their experience in Gothardism. Many times,
during recent years in my study concerning patriarchy, I had
epiphanies about past experiences at my own Shepherding church that
made no sense to me at the time.
One of the earliest and very weird
reactions I saw involved my resignation from a position wherein I
served as a liaison between my church and our affiliated seminary. I
was given tremendous responsibilities without any structure and
without authority to carry out critical tasks. In resigning,
however, I felt that, to some degree, it would be embarrassing to the
men in the seminary who abandoned me with impossible tasks to
accomplish. I asked to meet with the men, my husband who was on the
board of the seminary, and with my pastor in his office at a
convenient time when all involved were present. I presented my
formally written resignation in the form of a memo which I felt was
businesslike, much like this paragraph is turning out to be. I
wasn't trying to be adversarial but wanted to be freed from the
dilemma. Even so, I felt a duty to tell them why I felt uncomfortable, just for the sake of anyone
else who might be drafted into the frustrating role.
I handled things in such a way that no
one had cause for recourse against me (I'd considered how to
proceed about the matter for a long time), but the emotional
reaction of these men bordered on bizarre.
Essentially, I presented the matter as a resignation as opposed to a
confrontation, but I did convey the message that the lack of guidance
and resources afforded to me were inadequate, making the position too
stressful and difficult. My pastor seemed fine, but the men from the
seminary acted like I'd kicked them in the groin repeatedly or had
physically hurt them (though I was 100% business-like and respectful
to them, but very formal in my manner). I was no stranger to this
kind of process as a manager in the workplace, and I generally
handled such matters with compassion, especially when addressing
errors. I'd never seen anyone act like they did, but I didn't
consider their reaction to amount to some problem that rested with
me. One man almost hung his head like a puppy who'd just been
beaten, and all of them but the pastor turned so that they stood
perpendicular to me (almost protecting their torsos from directly
facing mine, as if I would spear them in the heart). I asked my
husband about what he understood about the fragility of the male ego
in the car on the way home – that perhaps I'd been missing
something all of these years.
What I failed to realize was that the
response didn't have anything to do with male-female interaction
issues as normal people encounter them in normal society. I realized
later that I'd broken three of the many cardinal rules of a
cultic system. I not only proved to be a female that could
challenge men based on well stated facts (through the authority that
comes with truth to which even Watchman
Nee attests in his book), I challenged the Sacred
Science (the status of perfection of leadership who never make
mistakes), and I stood up for myself (a violation of the
absolute requirement to suffer all all costs under a
“God-appointed
authority”). I didn't realize any of that until I learned
about the dynamics of thought reform, years after the conflict.
Because I didn't think that any Christian could really derive such
ideas from the patterns of interaction detailed in Scripture, I
couldn't comprehend that these leaders followed these dynamics. In
retrospect and in consideration of other things that I'd heard and
the responses of others that followed this meeting, I could see how I
failed to accept the real dynamics of the group. They were not
formally stated in such direct terms which I would have understood,
ideas conveyed through the
hidden curriculum. Had they been stated to me directly in a way
that reflected how they were acted upon in real life, I would have
never joined the group.
Prerequisite of Basic Knowledge
Before Confronting Your Spiritual Abusers
Even if you don't think that thought
reform applies to your group very strongly, please spend some time reading about the
dynamics of spiritual abuse. At a minimum, consider these
factors so that you will be able to spot spiritual abuse for exactly
what it is. It is my hope that if you end up in a meeting of
confrontation, you will be better prepared for the possible outcome
that you might not anticipate. I'd rather see you prepared for
confrontation with knowledge about how these tactics work than to
walk into a meeting unprepared. If your leadership turns out to be
reasonable and honorable, then you've lost nothing by reading some of
these matters in advance. I failed to consider them, and in
hindsight, I wish that I'd known about them. At the bare minimum, I
wish that I'd known about these resources. I never dreamed that they
were applicable. Many have been discussed in the previous posts on
this topic, but I offer them here for easy reference.
1. Dynamics of Spiritual Abuse. Be
able to name the five elements listed by David Henke in the Spiritual
Abuse Profile at Watchman
Fellowship. It only lists five points which are fairly
self-explanatory.
Run through the lists proposed by
Robert
Lifton and by Albert
Biderman, and take note of anything that sounds like it might be
a problem within your group or your church, or perhaps just among the
leadership. They're easy to find and simply summarized in the
sidebar of this website. (Biderman's list features the crazy picture
from the You
Tube video which discusses them.)
Take a look at the typical ways that
human nature lends us to manipulation as written by Robert Cialdini.
The best summary list I've found appears on Philip
Zimbardo's website. Each of those “weapons of influence”
which provide manipulators a way of exploiting people You can also
watch my review of Cialdini's list via
video, noting the primary tactics used in religious settings.
Consider also what Steve
Hassan elucidates about the manipulation of emotion, thought,
behavior, and information as a means of dominating and controlling a
person. If they can get you sidetracked into shame, or if they can
use some largely irrelevant red herring argument to sidetrack you,
they've dominated the meeting. Be aware of the strong influence
about where and how the group demands that you approach them. These
are all tactics to reduce your power which gives them the advantage.
If time permits, I would recommend reading
your choice or all of the three
fairly simple posts that I wrote about narcissists and how to
confront them at Overcoming
Botkin Syndrome. Another resource along these lines, making the
same kinds of points regarding confrontation can be quickly read in
Dr.
Z's List of Helpful Hints.
3. Investigate material concerning
conformity studies and obedience to authority, if time allows. At
the time of this posting, this
link will pull up a total of nine blog posts that discuss
conformity studies, many of which include some brief videos about the
phenomenon of social pressure. To see them all to see if any catch
your attention, you will have to scroll back by selecting “older
posts” in order to skim through all nine of them.
Further Discussion About
Preparing
for the Star Chamber
In upcoming posts, I plan to discuss
practical considerations for arranging meetings with church leaders
who show signs of spiritually abusive behavior. Those who plan to
meet with their minister to explain why they are leaving their
particular church to find another will also benefit, I hope.
Later, I would also like to explore a
little bit about the proper use of Matthew 18 as well as what I
believe Jesus presented as a model for those who are called to
adversarial meetings.
