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?
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