Integrity and Trustworthiness

I've been pondering the forces that push people toward integrity or support people in being divided.

By "integrity" I mean "an inner wholeness such that we are able to be fully true in any environment, and will not betray ourselves, our friends, or our beliefs." Our heart and mind are in unity. We walk undivided.

But by this sort of integrity, I don't mean "certain of our rightness." This integrity leaves space for the other to be whole in themselves too, even if their view is different.

I have always liked to think that I had that sort of integrity. But over time, I have observed how quick I have been to speak disrespectfully of certain others behind their backs. At the time I was doing it, I didn't even see it. I think it has been a raw "survival" technique. Primitive. Immature. Hurtful.

I have begun to choose consciously not to partake in this behaviour, and am appalled every time I realize I have done it again.
Sometimes I find myself in a group that begins speaking disrespectfully of someone or something I love, and I am speechless. I don't even have the awareness, the brains, or the courage to stand up for the thing or person I love in real time. It is like watching a friend being stoned, and yet being unable to stick my own neck out to help them. After the fact I feel ashamed of my immobility, ashamed of my unwillingness to step in and defend. Why can't I consistently stand up for my loved ones or my values?

We all know what the phrase "two-faced" means. I wonder if we don't all start out more or less "two-faced" and have to learn over time to have genuine integrity? I hope it is true that we are all in the process of learning how to be more loving and respectful.

I'm particularly wondering about any system that values ideology over humanity, or that encourages people to be so disconnected from their hearts that they will sacrifice their souls and sell out their children for the sake of the preserving the ideology. There are many religious systems that develope this tendency. Truth is NEVER more important than humankind. In fact, when it makes itself so, it ceases to be true in any way.

Yesterday, one of the channels was having a preliminary show for the Da Vinci Code movie. They were taking a look at the Opus Dei organization. A former member was discussing the psychological manipulation used to gain and hold onto members. She said that she was taught to see everyone as a possible recruit, and to befriend them, so long as the person was a possible convert to their faith. If a person was happy elsewhere, or was walking away, they were no longer worth any energy. They became meaningless and invisible. In this mindset, there is no real human or heart connection. There is no respect for the individuality of the other, or of the way God might be leading them. It is all about the rightness of the ideology (in this case, the Opus Dei sect) and about making its organization swell in numbers. There is no sense of loyalty to friends or family, because primary loyalty belongs to "the one true, right" belief system. The belief system is seen as the only true path to God. The belief system becomes the only God, because every other belief system is seen as wrong or false, never as an alternative path to God created BY God.

The heart can't but help to scream out at the injustice and inhumanity of this attitude. This mind-set produces a highly attractive and deeply manipulative hold on the psyche of the follower. At first it is very sweet. How wonderful it feels to have found the one most correct path to God! (How full of loving compassion I have felt, when I believed myself to be in the one true right organization, for my poor fellow humans who had not yet found what I had found. It felt really good. I was completely unable to see how arrogant and simplistic my faith was at that time.)
But with these groups over time, one is asked to sacrifice more and more for the group---sacrifice family time and means, sacrifice friends if they don't wholeheartedly come on board, even sacrifice your health by endless serving and self-neglect (which is called "being unselfish".) Give time, give money, give your whole self to the ORGANIZATION, because if you don't, you don't really love God....

When people from my childhood denomination have lived out in the world, and subsequently moved back to our "Mecca" in Pennsylvania, a common (and insulting) statement is, "It must be wonderful to be back, where you can have REAL friends." (Clearly, the friends one had "out in the world" were disposable and insignificant, because they weren't "in the church." They weren't "real.") This is believed with genuine sincerity and backed up with fervent explanations.

Emanuel Swedenborg has a big problem with "faith alone," and the group that raised me always pointed fingers at the reformed churches when they discussed how terrible faith alone is.

Now I'm wondering if "Ideology alone" might not be exactly what Swedenborg was objecting to.
Ideology over humanity. Doctrine, to the sacrifice of heart experience.

But we aren't supposed to place truth over love. The minute we do, it stops being truth.
Humanity matters. Christ illustrated that by taking it on and walking among us. "Stop rejecting your human part!" He says. "Look, I unite it with My Divine. I don't chop it off! YOU beat it up and kill it! I raise it back up."

The twelve-steppers say, "We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it." To me that means, I will not hide or cover up or beat myself up for all my faults and stupid behaviours---they are part of who I am. I'm not proud of them, but I'm not ashamed either. (Well, I AM ashamed, but I try not to let it cripple my forward movement.) They are for learning from.

To me, that is connected to not chopping off our humanity, but letting it be gradually raised up towards something divine.

Swedenborg talks a lot about the marriage of good and truth, and how we are born with our heart and mind disconnected and must seek to have them be reconnected in a healthy way.

It seems as if some think this will happen by stifling, shaming, blaming, and banishing all uncomfortable feelings, and being "nice." Feelings are treated much the way girls are. They are to be pretty and ornamental, never angry or expressive. "Anger is from hell and is to be shunned."

But we remain blind, ignorant, and stuck until we learn to value and listen to our feelings. There is an immense richness of information in the simplest of feelings. If you stifle the ones that aren't pretty, you stifle them all. That's what depression is. If you don't believe me, there is an enormous amount of data about this in Psychology and in the field of study called Emotional Intelligence.

Others think that the union of love and wisdom happens if you contract a heterosexual marriage and stick to it. These people promote heterosexual marriage with tremendous energy, with hardly any attention to personal growth skills or personal integrity and development skills. I think this approach is missing the main point too. An external marriage won't ever substitute for an internal one, period. It is better to be externally single and internally united, than internally split no matter how externally married one might be, IMHO. (In My Honest Opinion).

Sigh.
And we are all internally split, most of the time. External marriage has all sorts of great things about it, but it isn't the path to salvation. Life is the path to salvation. Personal humility and integrity and reliance on a higher power are the paths to salvation. Kindness and compassion and a passionate investment in the common good are part of that path too.

For me, personal integrity returns when I remember love. It isn't about battling stupid thinking. It just keeps looking like it was stupid thinking that caused all my hurt, so my first impulse is to go slay the stupid, hurtful ideologies, or to chastise those who promote them. ("Hurtful and stupid" by MY definition. There I go, missing the point again.)

Battling about ideology always comes down to winning and losing. "Rightness" is the ultimate value. "Wrongness" is the greatest fear. I can love the person but hate the ideology. But when we disagree, especially in the church, it can be so hard to separate the ideas from the people who promote them.

Perhaps that is why I have been the target of so many personal attacks, and why I feel like I want to attack the people themselves who represent all the hurtful attitudes and practices to me. I keep swearing that I don't want to go there, and yet I keep waking up there. Again.

"God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change...."

How does one accept spiritual alcoholism and sexual abuse, because I don't seem able to stop it or change it?

How do I find integrity in such a mire? I refuse to stand for any abuse, but I don't want to hurt ANY people, even the abusers.

I believe the only truly trustworthy people are the people who truly know themselves, who understand the bulk of their feelings and motivations, and who exercise rational choices based on their best thinking AND intuition. The only truly trustworthy people respect the other as much as they respect themselves, no more, and no less.

Will I ever have that?

Thou shalt not commit publicity

In Martha Beck's "Leaving the Saints," with her usual candor and humour, she expresses that one of the unspoken commandments of her faith of origin is "Thou shalt not commit publicity."

Thou shalt not ever say anything in any way that might reflect badly on THE CHURCH.

She comes from a different denomination, but the dynamic is the same for me. I am amazed at how deeply the fear and hesitation runs. Even if the church has abused me and hurt me and denies my pain and dismisses me and minimizes me, I have been afraid to ever, EVER actually mention this in public. No longer. Now I commit publicity.

Other women in the church who have confessed their deep pain and hurt and disillusionment, still have enormous hesitation in letting anyone outside the church know it or see it. We are deeply socialized to maintain the reputation of the church at all costs.

"After all, the General Church is the Lord's True New Church, isn't it?"
How could we ever criticize that? We might as well criticize God!
(Actually, God is much more forgiving. God is also not co-dependent, nor does He have financial interests that He values more than His children.)

Why are we so afraid to commit publicity?

I am not the first to observe that the dynamics of the alcoholic family runs true in every aspect of the General Church, all the way down to the "look good to the world at all costs," dynamic and the "keep the family secrets---especially the sexual abuse!" dynamic---we shame and blame and cut off the the ones who dare to try to break through the denial.

"That's not true any more!" some cry.
(Except for all the ways it still is, and is still hurting and wounding and dismissing and invalidating and minimizing....)

I have been getting slapped about for committing publicity. I am "personally disparaging" and "insulting" people. Shame on me.

Martha Beck's family of origin has published very rational sounding objections, which imply that she is sadly mistaken and mentally and emotionally unstable. (They are all card-carrying members of the Mormon faith. Actually listening to her means they would have to question the underlying dynamics, the pain and deep disfunction and fear and control that runs in their dear mother church. They simply can't do it. The only alternative is to make Martha wrong.)

She's my hero.

ow, ow, ow........

We are so horrible to each other. How do we bear it?

To the church

When I was born, you were disappointed because I was not a boy.
That told me that boys are better than girls.

When I was growing up, you told me that boys can do whatever they want, but girls really should be wives and mothers---that a GOOD girl would want nothing else. You criticized and gossiped about the women who had jobs and careers, and questioned their femininity.
That told me that, as a girl, I had no real choice in my future, and was wrong to even want anything besides the role of wife and mother.

I wanted to be a good girl.

When puberty hit, I was feared and controlled and told to wear special clothes that show I am a girl---alluring, but not too alluring---and I was told that wanting to keep wearing pants because they are practical and comfortable is worldly and unfeminine.
That told me that my freedom was over. That I was special in a way I didn't want to be. I was to be ornamental, curbed, and feared for the rest of my fertile days.

If a girl was unattractive, she was criticized. If a girl was pretty, she was praised. If a girl was too pretty, she was feared and criticized.
That taught me that a girl's essential worth is in her appearance---and that I, too, should expect to be discussed and criticized and judged by the group like a piece of merchandise. It also reminded me to be afraid of my sexuality.

When our sister denomination started ordaining women, you shrieked and howled and mocked and laughed. You questioned their intelligence, their doctrine, their love for the Lord, and their ability to understand the Word.
That taught me to mock, howl, shriek, and laugh at different ideas. That taught me that only our denomination was right. It showed me that, if I ever agreed with the other denomination, I too would be mocked, reviled, and laughed at---that my intelligence, judgment and mental stability would be called into question.

In our denomination, only men are allowed to be ministers. Women are taught the doctrine, but are not ever to question it. Women are taught how to translate ancient texts, but are not allowed to officially translate, except as proofreaders, or when there are not enough men. When intelligent, educated women question the church positions, they are called "clever but undoctrinal."
That showed me that women's voices would never, ever be respected unless they say what the boys want to hear; that women will always be second class, and that even when the girls play by the boys' rules, the boys will dismiss and invalidate them anyway.

When the loving, respectful, women-honouring minister was taken from our congregation and replaced with a conservative, "Let's celebrate men's wisdom!" minister, I cried out in pain and anguish. When he took away our artistic, circular, inclusive contemporary service and insisted that everyone should be content to worship in the traditional manner, I watched the death of the only acceptable avenue of heart-ministry for me. When I told you I was suffering, and please, please, was there no way to allow our contemporary service to come back? you told me I was an essentially unhappy person who did nothing but complain, and really should get counseling.
I died.

You criticized me for dying.

My latest rant

In my upbringing, there was a lot of talk about "being selfish," and "being worldly." There was a lot of, "Don't be selfish!" and "Don't be worldly!" announced with a stern countenance, and generally was used as a socialization tool. Not wanting to volunteer at a church event was "selfish." Not donating money to the church was "worldly."

Not that long ago, I watched four kids riding bikes in my home town, and the kid in the back of the pack, after shouting, "Hey, wait up!" to no effect, tried louder, "You're being selfish!"
I realized then how early even the children were socialized to use the same "motivational" tools. If all else fails, accuse the uncooperative soul of being selfish or worldly.

I was taught that I was essentially prone to evil of all kind. The effect, combined with voices of authority telling me when my unwillingness was simply selfishness or worldliness, was that I believed I could never trust my inner voice. My inner voice was "really the voice of hell," and I needed to listen to my superiors if I wanted to be saved from it.

It's a great way to produce a fearful, compliant laity!

This sort of socialization cuts a person off from their essential self and from the still small voice of God within. It systematically plugs up the inner ear that hears the voice of God (because the inner voice "is only, always, and ever selfish and worldly!") and replaces it with (in my case "The Word," which was really) the views, interpretations and biases of the all-male clergy. We were always encouraged to read and study the Word, but should we ever come up with an insight or interpretation that was contradictory to the standard interpretation, we were a threat, and obviously wrong. The lay person was always, by definition, wrong. Should she be a woman, worse still. So we "read the Word," but came up with what we were told to come up with.

Something was true because it was "in the Word," but if two people disagreed on what "the Word" said, males won over females, and ordained males won over everybody. The ordained males whose interpretations disagreed with the power base were (and still are) given desk jobs of no influence, or are assigned to the backwater placements that nobody wants, or simply left unassigned. Their training is so disconnected from that of the broader brotherhood/sisterhood of Christian clergy that they would be hard pressed to find work anywhere else but within their own, tiny denomination. Daring to disagree means losing your livelihood, your community and even your family---so tightly wound are the bonds of fear and loyalty.

Has anyone read "Leaving the Saints" by Martha Beck?

In my childhood reality, it turned out that the Church was essentially God. Woe betide those who dare to challenge it. We sang to the church, toasted the church, vowed to place her well-being above all else, called her glorious, the bride of the Lord, etc. etc. OUR church was "the crown of all the churches."
The best.
"We're number one!"
(Maybe there is no "number one?" Maybe God doesn't play favourites?)

We were taught that the teachings of the church came directly from the Word. "The Word" was essentially any standard General Church interpretation of Swedenborg's writings, which means more or less according to The Doctrine of Wm. H. Benade.

Apparently, the folks who were reading the Writings for a hundred years before Benade ever came on the scene had somehow missed completely the exclusive, purist, patriarchal, fear-based, "new chosen people" interpretation Benade found and promoted. But thanks to Benade's influence, the tiny denomination of Swedenborgians that existed pre-Benade was spun rapidly into civil war, dividing families, and creating such a hurtful split that the wounds still smart 100 years later.

I certainly witnessed and continue to witness nothing but contempt for our mother denomination. They are reading the same material as us, but the General Church gets it "right" and they QED, must get it wrong. God forbid we should be like them, since they seem to find a gentle, loving, inclusive, non-purist, love and trust-based message in the very same books.

Hm. Sound like any other Christian splits we know? Fundamentalists and .....

I can't count the number of female employees who have secretly confessed they think the leadership and micro-managing style of employment is utterly ludicrous. Still, they stay for many reasons. I can't blame them. Many stay for the sake of the next generation. But the politics involved, the tightrope-walking, gang-warfare, back-stabbing, and gag-orders would have to be seen to be believed. And most of it is cloaked in tremendous Niceness. Smile. Be polite. Look nice. Volunteer until you have lost your health and your children, and smile while you're at it.

No wonder so many lay people in the General Church are afraid to say what they really think. No wonder they are terrified to leave. We are so used to a tight, homogenous community, and so alienated from our nearest cousins. Where do we go if we leave? We are trained to feel so special and different, we have a hard time feeling "at home" anywhere else.

Right now, "staying" for me looks more like staying with an abusive parent or husband because one has never learned or believed one can survive without them. Funny thing is, the farther I get from the fear and cowering and hiding, the more I come home to the Lord.

I can hear in my head the huge array of voices telling me I am wrong, lying, making it up, exaggerating, defaming, falsifying.....
I can see the head-shaking and tsk-tsk-ing, and sad concern for my mental health that I could dare say such terrible, misguided things.

It makes me sick.

Did I mention the incredible invalidation of personal feeling and experience at all levels?

What? I'm not bitter! Who, me?