Extremes in Postmodern Religious Addiction and the Childhood Roots of Victimization

09Sep19 NOTE:  If I had to write this over today,  there are several things that I'd change.  I have moved away from so much owing to postmodernism, accepting that it is just due to old generation gaps as the causative factor.  Human nature, too.  Menopause will do that to a gal, I guess.


Revisiting Imbalance.

Originally posted  27Feb12;  Reposted 25Aug12.
Updated with restored graphics 04Mar19

Lewis at Commandments of Men has written a post that's inspired me to write a bit more about imbalance found within spiritually abusive evangelical Christianity.

In January, I wrote a synopsis of the core emotional issues of childhood in a series of posts that lead to dysfunctional living.  (The series didn't, but the core emotional issues did!)  If we come through childhood and our very nature as children is not honored by our our parents (likely because of their own interrupted emotional growth), or if we suffer a great deal of trauma which may have nothing to do with our families, we tend to have problems in adulthood which surround these core emotional dilemmas. Children are valuable, vulnerable, imperfect, needy, and immature., and we carry all of these traits with of into adulthood to some extent, revisiting them from time to time. This is a normal occurrence in a healthy adult, but healthy adults don't remain in these states of recalling the sense of being childlike for very long.

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Breaking Free of the Pattern of Extremes

This question appeared in a comment at the Commandments of Men in response to the discussion of life graphs and how to chart emotional responses. I read it and thought it seemed like those intimidating essay test questions that say “Define the universe. Give examples.” Of course, these are the kinds of questions that come at the end of the test with only limited time to complete answer. I have so much to say on the subject At some point, I suspect that I've said this all before somewhere on this blog, but perhaps, not all at once, woven together in this way. But I'll give it a go!

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Balance Defined as Self-Control

 

Extremes in living in those who have unhealed emotional wounds left over from their childhood which, left unattended often results in addiction – often in “religious addiction” for the Christian. I'd like to point out a simple insight I had about the balance of health some time ago, as I've been thinking quite a bit about it since using a life graph to illustrate the immaturity that we can sometimes carry over into adulthood. Maturity which results when we accept and manage our immaturity produces self-control and balance. I hope that this post will also help people understand aspects of spiritual growth and some of the struggles of living the Christian life related to overcoming the unhealed wounds of childhood with which we all struggle to some degree.

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Finding a Counselor to Deal Specifically with the Adult Problems Resulting from Emotional Developmental Deficits During Childhood

In response to the posts concerning the “childhood roots of victimization” (the consequences faced by adults who grow up with parents who fail to respect the characteristics and needs of children), I've received several emails asking for advice about how to find a good counselor.

Given the very promising research and my own positive experience, and though I'm a big fan of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, I really believe that when dealing with trauma and depression, I believe that Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing offers the best alternative.

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Finding Healing Through the Twelve Steps: Recovery from the Emotional Wounds of Childhood (and from Spiritual Abuse)

Once you've realized that you've got emotional wounds left over from your childhood and where they came from, where do you go? I go to the Cross. In terms of the specific problems that arise from the particular emotional wounds that govern the way my flesh tends to act, I show myself responsible to God and others using the framework of the Twelve Steps – the only viable hope of healing that I have to offer anyone.

My Journey of Acceptance

As part of my training as a nurse, and through classes that focused on the primary health problems of adults, I spent time observing care in the clinical settings of drug and alcohol rehab facilities. At the tender age of 19 and 20, this experience taught me a some vital and very moving lessons about my own nature and myself. One day, I was in South Philadelphia observing a group therapy session with addicted teens, and as I listened to their stories, I had a very dramatic epiphany. At the end of the session, I asked the therapist if I could address the group, and he graciously complied. I explained to those teens at an inpatient detox ward that the only real difference that I could see between us was that rather than turn to drugs or alcohol to deal with my own pain, I turned to other things. I turned, primarily, to performance (through work and school) and to religion.

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Shame Based and Immature Parenting Creates Victims of Circumstance and Dependency on Self (External Locus of Control)

We've now considered the two primary ways that a damaged or immature parent takes from their child (unloading shame and by siphoning back nurture) which we understand results from a parent's disrespect for the child's characteristics (and needs). With that background, we can now better understand how adults, both parents and grown children, cope with the sense of emptiness that they face. As we've noted in the most recent posts, the parent has two drives and needs of their own. They need to both purge shame and gain their own worth, and they pass this “multigenerational faithfulness” down to their children because the have nothing else to give to them. The immature adult must then look to other sources to find worth, peace, safety and soothing elements so that they can cope with the pressures and problems of life.

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How Dysfunctional Parents Siphon Resources Back from a Child, Depriving them of Healthy Self-Development

In the previous post, we discussed how children lack internal resources which the parent provides to them so that they can develop their own sense of self, internal peace and what many authors describe as a sense of abundance.

Healthy parents understand that their children cannot tolerate or process many aspects of living because of the natural characteristics of children. They understand that they are immature and dependent. When the child reaches maturity, ideally, they've developed a sense and personal worth as well as a sense of peace about being alive and okay in the world.

In the diagram, an empty beaker represents the child's lack of resources, and a heart represents the healthy adult sense of self. Parents that tend to be full of shame unload their shame onto their children, but this is not the only way that a parent uses a child when they fail to respect their developmental needs. 

 The enmeshed parent uses their child in a slightly different way. As we will see in the next post to come, both of these patterns set up the child to become an adult who does not look to who they are in Christ to find worth but obtains all of their sense of worth and peace from performance, circumstances, and the esteem of others.

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Shame-based Parenting Fills a Child's Heart with Shame Instead of Love: Disrespect for Children that Tilled the Soil for Abuse at Hephzibah House

If you recall, this latest discussion here concerning developmental problems and deficits in children came about after a supporter of Ron Williams, the proprietor of Hephzibah House (HH), published a blog post that challenges those HH Survivors who have come forward to tell of the abject abuse and terrible conditions they suffered while incarcerated there. There are many other Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) homes of this type where children suffer these same conditions right now, every day. Kathryn Joyce wrote an excellent, must-read article describing several of these homes where young men and women live in and under unthinkable conditions as punishment under the guise of rehabilitation through religion.

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Parents Prime Children For Spiritual Abuse? More Posts to Come on Developmental Needs and PTSD

The purpose for this review of the developmental needs of childhood and how parents can show dishonor to those needs came about to help the reader understand why a young woman exiting Hephzibah House (HH) would fail to protect herself once she left. If a person had developmental deficits going into the home, she would certainly have them upon leaving. Those identified characteristics (and resulting needs) are value, vulnerability, imperfection, dependency, and immaturity.  (Explore these topics HERE in a developing index of posts on this topic.)

Why protect yourself if you have no worth, if you have no right to have personal boundaries, if it is required of you to be perfect though it is impossible, if you're taught that you must have no needs (and guilt over having them), and if you're required to be the epitome of self-control when you're life is completely out of your own control??? A person can respond to trauma through a “freezing response” which we will explore further in future posts, but post traumatic stress after leaving HH may only capitalize upon the deep felt helplessness in the heart because of emotional issues from early childhood. For many who endured at Hephzibah House, it was actually a revictimization experience re-traumatizing a previous and older emotional wound.

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Index of Posts Pertaining to the Childhood Roots of Victimization (Understanding the Role of Childhood Emotional Development in Spiritual Abuse)

Though it is true that all people are vulnerable to spiritual abuse when the conditions of their lives make them more vulnerable (new job, move to a new community, death of a loved one, etc.), for people who carry a great deal of shame, manipulative religion finds a greater manipulation potential through that shame. Failure to work through and successfully complete all of the emotional development of childhood leaves the adult with unmet needs for a sense of worth, peace, and safety which they will unconsciously seek to find through unhealthy ways, and often, people turn to spiritually abusive religion in an effort to heal themselves. Because such groups operate on deception and faulty premises, they tend to promise more than they can actually deliver to the individual, and that individual often finds themselves replaying or reenacting the dysfunctional dynamics of their childhoods out within their abusive religious system.

This series of posts came about through the exploration of the problems experienced by the survivors of Hephzibah House and how their experience of torture at the facility rendered them with a reduced capacity to self-protect. Though people who experience trauma encounter diminished self-protection, the finding is also a feature of adults who were raised in homes where their needs for emotional development were not sufficiently honored. Not for all, but for many who have suffered spiritual abuse, the experience also brings up an awareness of their own emotional development in childhood and points out areas that need healing. Those who identify with these problems in emotional development can benefit by learning about those needs so that they can heal and grow past them, finishing up what may have gone undone in the past.

The posts pertaining to these developmental needs are listed here and organized by topic. Though they stand alone as topics pertinent to spiritual abuse, they also offer additional contributing reasons and a primary developmental basis for why the survivors of Hephzibah House fail to protect themselves from harm after they leave.

You can now read all the posts in the series in one page at the archive site by linking HERE.

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How Parents' Intolerance of a Child's Immaturity Creates Both Victims and Abusers

As noted earlier concerning the natural characteristics of children, the parent's proper respect for and care of a child's immaturity builds the basis for self control in their adulthood and helps them learn how to effectively manage and govern their lives as adults. This mastery, a characteristic of maturity, also provides for a healthy sense of spontaneity. Healthy maturity involves relaxation and time for restoration, an early lesson that the parent can build into a child through celebration of that spontaneous wonder and joy of life that children possess.

Parental Intolerance of Immaturity

As discussed in an earlier post, sometimes parents can become weary of the boundless energy and the self centeredness of their children, failing to see these qualities as the gifts they are given to accomplish the hard task of growing up. When a parent fails to accept these traits which they view as an inconvenience, or they punish these qualities in the child, the child learns to feel shame when “being authentic” and honest. 

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How Parents Prime Children for Victimization through Ignorance, Neglect and Abuse of Dependency Needs

 

One of the primary roles of a parent should be preparing their children to be safe, protected, and secure in adulthood, preparation that begins in childhood, encouraging the child's growth into maturity. When successful, parents prepare children who become adults who are able to care adequately for their own basic needs and are also responsive to the needs of others without compromising their own self-care in the process. In dysfunctional homes, children derive too much of their identity and sense of self from within the family or specifically from another family member. When they enter the world of adults without having adequately shaped their identity, they have much difficulty in relationships when they move on from the family of origin.

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How Piety and Perfectionism Prime a Child for Exploitation and Victimization

Human beings make mistakes, and it is unreasonable and unhealthy for people to believe that they are perfect. By embracing and anticipating the needs of children related to their characteristic of imperfection, parents can raise children who become adults who not only feel comfortable with themselves, but they learn to become accountable for the impact that their actions have on other people.

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Priming a Child for Victimization or Predatory Behavior Through Poor Regard for Developing Personal Boundaries and Vulnerability

Human beings are not omnipotent creatures, and children are definitely not invulnerable. When properly honored and taught to the child, appropriate vulnerability teaches and prepares the child to be appropriately intimate in relationships in their adult life. To achieve emotional intimacy in a healthy way, a person must be emotionally honest with their close friends and in love relationships through limited vulnerability which allows them to connect to others.

An excellent resource concerning Boundaries is the Christian book of that title by Townsend and Cloud whose topical video clips are featured HERE online.

 

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The Extremes Created by a Poor Sense of Vulnerability

As we will note in all of the characteristics of children that parents must honor, in dysfunctional homes, children tend to develop the same kinds of boundaries both modeled and taught directly to children by parents. Problems tend to develop when children fall to one extreme reaction or the other, or an ineffective mix between the two, wherein the child learns only partially effective boundaries. As one only protects what is worthwhile protecting, boundaries can be closely tied to self-worth.

The child who learns ineffective boundaries becomes too vulnerable because the parent fails to teach the child self protection. The parent may overprotect this child, objectifying them by viewing them as incapable of any discernment of their own, or they just fail to protect them altogether. The child never learns where they begin and end, and they walk into dangerous situations with no awareness of the threat of harm. Some children are taught to place implicit trust in any adult and authority figures, and in religious groups that follow patriarchy, girls are taught to obey all men without qualification. Likewise, some Christian groups teach that adults and children alike have no personal rights, viewing any suffering that comes because of lack of boundaries to be an opportunity to develop character through disappointment. These children learn passivity, or they follow passivity to avoid punishment by the parent who will tolerate no assertiveness.

The exaggerated alternative results in a child who does not set boundaries but establishes walls and thus avoids vulnerability by feigning invulnerability. They're too fearful to be vulnerable, and the cost of their safety comes at the forfeiting of emotional intimacy. They may start to develop friendships but will retreat in withdrawal. 

Internal Versus External Boundaries

• An internal boundary involves behavior and thought originating with the self, that which refers to what that person does.  Of people who have poor internal boundaries and set no limits on their own behavior, it may be said of them that such a person "knows no bounds." The primary problem originates with them as a lack of their own internal boundaries.  

A child with a collapsed sense of self may have been conditioned to set very narrow limits on their own behavior in a way that is inappropriate, allowing others too far in to their inner world, if they have any internal boundaries at all.  When any child has not been trained to respect others or basic rules of appropriate social behavior, they may violate the boundaries of others without realizing it, merely out of ignorance.   Their self-centered perspective may be the only indicator of appropriate behavior because they have not been taught to anticipate or be sensitive to the needs of others.

In the child who demonstrates too much invulnerability, they will either withdrawal from interaction all together (their created internal boundary) through antisocial personality traits, or they may exaggerate their behavior, willfully ignoring the boundaries of others by in order to feel powerful.  They claim everything (including other people) as within their own boundaries by setting no boundaries on their own behavior.

• An external boundary is a barrier that a person creates around themselves to limit outside forces.  An external boundary involves what the a allows into their world and involves saying “No.”  (LINK HERE to another Boundaries video about what the Bible says about saying "No.")

In the collapsed response, the child lets anyone and everyone take advantage of them. In the invulnerable, the child does not allow anyone to get close enough to take advantage of them, and they may be well-known for always saying “No.” Another way an external boundary can be violated presents when adults do not permit the child to own their own perceptions and experiences. If a parent does not like a particular emotion, they may punish a child for it, teaching the child that they cannot know themselves or their experience. The child is required to allow that parent in through their external boundary, exchanging their reality for that of the parent.

Vunerability Issues in Adults

In a healthy adult relationships, boundaries establish what we will and will not tolerate. For adults who grew up in very dysfunctional homes and didn't learn appropriate boundaries, this dynamic element of hard work within a relationship fails.

Those who are too vulnerable fail to establish any kind of boundary, and they let anyone have access to any area of their lives. Or they may have a difficult time establishing boundaries through assertive expression of their wants and needs, the type of person who struggles with saying “No.” Sometimes, these individuals can declare boundaries to others, but cannot motivate themselves to defend their established new boundaries. These are not boundaries at all but are merely “nice ideas” when they are not defended.

The person with very weak or non-existent boundaries may also seek to have levels of intimacy that are too close for the nature of the relationship, and this may create behavioral problems and may violate appropriate social rules. It also sets the adult up for disappointment through unmet expectations and confusion.

Some individuals may also have only partially ineffective boundaries, and in one area of life, they may be able to clearly establish what they will and will not tolerate in a relationship. But when dealing with a certain situation or a particular type of person (such as a woman raised in an extremely patriarchal system of gender hierarchy, she may find herself completely unable to establish a boundary or may have been taught that a woman must submit to the demands of men. Authority figures also pose great difficulty for the person who tends toward collapsed responses because it is human nature to tend to comply with authority.

As noted earlier, the invulnerable type of person tends to withdrawal from social interaction and may cope through an anti-social personalty. They may have erratic relationships, vacillating between the development of friendship, only to abruptly retreat in response to perceived threat. They have the opposite type of presentation concerning their problems with intimacy, but both types of manifestations prevent healthy intimacy. 

The invulnerable person can also develop ineffective coping mechanisms leading to the abuse and exploitation of others by violating their boundaries through an exaggerated response, motivated by manipulative behaviors and poorly controlled negative emotion, the extroverted expression of lack of respect. These are the classic abused people who go on to repeat the same type of abuse as their abuser modeled for them.

One might think that the person with excessively collapsed boundaries is more vulnerable to manipulation, but because the invulnerable type of person who hides behind walls craves intimacy and attachment, this basic human need can also be exploited, making this person just as vulnerable to the right influences.

Self Awareness and Self Regulation

Many adults who grew up in dysfunctional families of origin struggle with knowing themselves because they were never permitted to own their own experiences and feelings, constrained to feel only that which was set for them by someone else.

Because their boundaries were never respected or because the parent fails to realize that the child is not an adult with the capability of setting limits, the adult who uses their child as a companion or requires the child to be someone that they're not overrides that child's sense of self. The interaction is too intimate and interferes with the child's development of a sense of self.

The child has no choice and does not even realize that the relationship is emotionally inappropriate or damaging to them.  (An adult can set limits and protect their sense of self when overwhelmed by another, but the child is obligated to absorb the parent's reality because of their dependence on the adult to protect and provide for them.)

Instead of awareness of self, the child's inner world must be negated (their heart denied) in favor of the adult's experience, wants, and needs. 

These adults struggle with finding satisfying vocations, pastimes and relationships because they are unaware of their feelings and emotions and do not have much awareness of their true strengths and weaknesses. They were not encouraged to make their own decisions regarding their life choices and were required to sign the right to direct their lives over to someone else or some religious system. When they work on recovery, learning self awareness and experiencing  the liberty of choice can be a very difficult, anxiety-producing challenge.

Erratic patterns in relationships are common in people who suffer from complex PTSD, both craving attachment and fearing it and feeling unable to modulate their own behavior. So in the person with patterns built around long-standing trauma, they may have a very complex mix of incomplete boundaries, varying from the extremes of walls to the enmeshed type of unhealthy attachment found in the person with little to no boundaries at all.

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How Parents Prime Children for Victimization Through Faulty Ideas About Self Love/Esteem

 

Failing to Teach A Child Appropriate Self Love and Value

As noted in the previous post, children the characteristics of children, when respected and anticipated by the parent help to form the basis of appropriate core behaviors in adulthood. What is perhaps the most primary of these is the development of appropriate self-love, addressed briefly in an earlier post. 

When a child learns that they have precious value and the trait is honored by the parent, the child matures into an adult who can find stability and worth in themselves instead of either earning worth through outward performance (What happens when you can't perform?) or only when circumstances in life are very good.

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Understanding How Dysfunctional Families Prime Children for the Experience of Shame (Leading to Victimization)

There are many excellent Christian books concerning dysfunctional family dynamics -- that is besides the Book of Genesis which contains the best archetypal examples of how you should NOT relate to other family members! One of the most interesting families to draw out on a relationship diagram is that of Jacob, Esau and their parents, and some of the Christian self-help books in this genre look at many of the Old Testament patriarchs to explain how triangulation in relationships works. 

My favorites include titles on the topic of family relationships include Love is a Choice (by Hemfelt, Minerth, and Meier) and Forgiving Our Parents, Forgiving Ourselves (Stoop and Masteller) and many others which are discussed at some length on the OvercomingBotkin Syndrome blog (posts which you can find by looking for the author near the top of the tag list). I also like Sandra Wilson's Hurt People Hurt People, too. And specifically related to boundaries, the Christian books by Townsend and Cloud shouldn't go without mention, either.

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Misunderstanding and Punishing the Character of Children as a Root of Victimization

--> A few days ago, I pointed out that the girls who survived incarceration at Hephzibah House (HH) suffered both trauma/torture and spiritual abuse, and upon leaving, they struggle with unique problems including trauma reenactment, revictimization, and an inability to self-protect. Though some of this relates directly to the debilitation of the self created by the harsh conditions at HH, the roots of these related deficits are created in childhood. Many other fundamentalist and cultic evangelical groups share ideologies that predispose children to these common patterns of dysfunction. I believe that to fully understand the nature of problems such as problems with self protection, one must understand the root causes.

The Nature and Character of Children

To raise a child well, it gives to reason that a person should have a good understanding of the capabilities of children in order for parents to set reasonable expectations for children in terms of their behavior and their anticipated understanding. Many of the common problems seen in spiritually abusive religious groups begin with a misunderstanding of the capabilities (and needs) of children, and the misconceptions eventually produce patterns of dysfunctional thought and behavior in adults within the system.

Consider the three very obvious characteristics of children: they have incredible amounts of energy, they are very resilient, and because of the way the mind develops and learning takes place, children are very self-centered, initially aware of only their own experiences. In a recent post discussing levels of consciousness based on brain development, this self-centeredness can be understood as a physical limitation as a child first learns “how to be” before he learns how to fit into the world around him. The child eventually grows beyond this self-centeredness developmentally (both physically and psychologically), but their first standard of comparison of how to be in the world begins with the self as a standard of comparison. Parents teach the standard to their children by modeling the standard for the child and by serving as a mirror in which the child can see themselves so that they can understand their own behavior.

Expectations of Parents

These considerations are all quite philosophical, and they aren't of primary importance to parents while they are overwhelmed with the management of the practical needs of the newborn or the tiring busyness of a rambunctious two year old. Just the “battle fatigue” of raising young children alone can frustrate parents, and this might lead them to feel frustrated by that endless energy and that adaptability of children, too. A parent may not stop to consider that the child needs that energy and that ability to bounce from experience to experience in their self-centered ways in order to grow effectively into adulthood.

In that respect, the child's self-centered nature, their busy energy, and their resilience are the vital and necessary gifts that they are given to accomplish the monumental task of growing up. But consider that the parent who punishes a child for these traits or abuses their child for having these traits depletes these needed gifts and energy, stealing them from the child. The child pays the price for this diversion of their resources, and as adults, it is up to them to go back to master the development that they may not have achieved.

Common Misconceptions About the Immaturity of Children

One pitfall that often takes place within Christian fundamentalism is the punishment of the child's self-centered nature. There is a time and a purpose for everything under heaven, including this aspect of a child, but an inexperienced or a demanding parent (who may be uncomfortable with balancing their own wants and needs) may expect too much Christian oriented self-sacrifice from a child too soon. A parent may also expect the young child to have few needs – and young children are especially needy! The parent with unrealistic expectations may teach a young child at an early age that they should have no needs at all, God-given or otherwise. They may also teach the child to feel guilty if they ridicule or criticize the chld for having needs or if the parent complains about having to statisfy both wants and needs. The parent may misinterpret the child's need as greed, failing to see the balance and the difference between needs and wants, misinterpreting both as sinful indulgence.

One of the developmental tasks of the self-centered child includes the development of healthy self-esteem which begins with the child's learning to love themselves. Jesus implies that this is essential to properly relating to others and includes appropriate self-love as part of the two greatest commandments which encompass the Law and the Prophets. However, many Christians fail to take this self-love into consideration and interpret it as conceit.

Some misinterpret Paul's admonishment to “esteem others better through lowliness of mind” as a cause to have less than appropriate or low esteem for oneself. “Not to be ministered unto, but to minister” can also be misconstrued into feelings of shame during seasons of need. Bill Gothard extends this idea which confuses humility and shame, teaching that all should should actively submit to all suffering without protest to develop humility. He takes the principle of generosity and compassion too far out of balance, claiming that God requires His followers to relinquish all personal rights of justice by denying the appropriate balance of forgiving tolerance between mercy and justice. This promotes the development of a lack of respect for the self and results in a disrespect for the image of God in the person.

Ultimately, problems of this type stem back to the parent's lack of proper esteem for others, and among those others for parents come their children. They may believe that children should serve their parents as opposed to serving God by raising them, being good stewards of the precious people God has placed in their care.

And ultimately, the child learns balance from the parent through all of these things which require the parent to exercise self-control. If the parent has difficulty understanding the difference between needs and wants because of their own maturity issues, they cannot give to their children what they lack themselves. The parent may understand that they have no rights or may be made to feel guilty for their own God-given needs, so they lack the perspective of balance and cannot pass that on to their children. They may suffer from a “shame-existence bind” themselves, believe that they shouldn't have needs, while knowing that they cannot endure life without help from others. Human beings require a healthy level of interpersonal dependence, because we cannot meet all of our needs by ourselves. We are interdependent creatures, but if the parent lacks this understanding or has learned shame regarding their own needs, how can they pass that on to their child?

And the parent may also have unreasonable expectations that the Christian life and parenting as an experience that is largely free of tension or pain. Balance is not a state of floating bliss. Balance is the artful skill and dynamic process of managing two competing forces at the same time. That requires effort, and sometimes it is nothing short of very hard work. The child also learns this from the parent, and as an adult, that child may gravitate towards extremes because this their parent taught them through their own example. They may see frustration as sinful and may be uncomfortable sitting with their frustrations and the internal discomfort that maturity requires. If their parent lacked frustration tolerance, it is likely that they required their children to pay the bill for their own needs. We see this pattern in the behavior of men like Voddie Baucham and Michael Pearl who tolerate no repeated error in their children, asking of them more than God asks of adults. Child of such families grow up and very likely pass this along to their own children by being intolerant of their immaturity.

At the heart of love is respect, and at the heart of respect is balance (self-control), the willingness and ability to tolerate frustration. Either due to lack of maturity or due to aberrant religious ideas that result from poor interpretations of Scripture, some Christians understand their faith in terms of being unbalanced, unable or tolerate diversity. If the parent lacks balance, then their sense of respect for themselves and others suffers, and respect of a person's personhood is the minimum requirement of real and healthy love. Quite often, the parent with lack of balance, respect, and love translates those issues into unreasonable expectations for their children, and they pass their discomfort and frustration on to them. The child then pays the price for the parent's lack of maturity and mastery of the tasks of adulthood.

In the next post,

we will look at more specific characteristics of children 

that contribute dysfunction when their weaknesses are

not appropriately anticipated by adults.

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Patriarchy, Controlling Outcomes, and the State of Denmark: Desire that Gets the Best of Us

I’m always amazed at how different aspects of life converge to speak to seemingly unrelated matters.  As a friend of mine struggled this week with the very negative, long term consequences of following patriarchy, I also found time to enjoy a new rendition of Hamlet.  This found me as I finished the last of my preparations on an article that I wrote about patriarchy that I anticipate will be published in early summer.  I thus find myself pondering another aspect of the complicated and subtle topic that I did not have the opportunity to address in the article, resulting from all of these matters.  How can patriarchy’s desirous end of fostering wholesome family life by employing many wholesome and laudable means warrant criticism?  And…  What could patriarchy possibly have in common with Shakespeare’s Hamlet?

One of the great appeals of patriarchy for parents involves the idea that a prescribed plan can produce a specific if not a guaranteed outcome, a system promoted as God’s formula that can give parents the ideal family that they so desire.  Many swallow patriarchy like a medicine meant to anesthetize their fears.  The problem with this approach rests not with the virtuous end that seeks goodness but with the focus of the means one pursues to achieve the goal.  Desire gets the best of us as we seek the wisest and most expedient means to achieve our goal.  Much can be said about the trappings of formulaic religion, and it gives the illusion to the follower that they somehow bear less responsibility for their actions, displacing their responsibility on the plan that makes so many good promises to them in their great need. 

This kind of plan to control outcomes, craft as Shakespeare calls it, can also be seen throughout Hamlet in nearly every character, some for good in the pursuit of meeting God-given human need and some for evil in the pursuit of ambition.  Most spectators easily identify the murderous deceit of Claudius, but are Gertrude, Ophelia, and Hamlet any less culpable for their own choices?  Are they less culpable when they become the object of the craft of another or when they design their own craft as a means of coping with their own lot?  Can these examples provide some insight that might help us better understand patriarchy’s ambitions for virtue and the nature of its supposed error?

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More on Spiritual Abuse: Reasons Why We Get Drawn into the System

The Problem of Shame

As mentioned in the previous post, all people share a common trait: we all bear a certain degree and potential for shame. The Christian explains this by putting this in spiritual terms. This shame derives from our separation from God which occurred in the Garden of Eden at the time of Adam’s fall from grace. This shame over our separation from God and our fallen nature (sin nature) serves as the foundation of all of our other shame.

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More on Repeating the Familiar and Where We Find Ourselves

“Love is a Choice: The Definitive Book on Letting Go of Unhealthy Relationships” by Hemfelt, Minirth and Meier.


From pages 108 - 109:

A woman emerging from an alcoholic family vows to leave that misery behind forever. She marries an alcoholic and may well become an alcoholic herself despite knowing from experience what alcoholism is. A man whose home life was disrupted by several divorces finds himself constantly and repeatedly “unlucky in love.” Claudia Black wrote a landmark book on the problem with the self-explanatory title “It Will Never Happen to Me!” Numerous other sociologists and social workers have recorded the constant phenomenon: adults from dysfunctional families end up with dysfunctional adult relationships, for they have become codependents.

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