Fault Lines

It is amazing how much the passage of time plus education can change one's perspective. You can of course also pass time without learning anything.

I am looking back at my post "when is a cult not a cult" and am not so sure of it any more. "I was younger then". I will let it stand because it contains some good things, one being an effort to avoid blaming other people for ones own foibles.

Here is an article about cult behavior. Or rather, it is an article about a book called "The Wrong Way Home: Uncovering the Patterns of Cult Behaviour in American Society" by Dr Arthur J. Deikman. It may be worth noting this quote before reading,(which comes further down in the article): “Eventually, we in the seminar were unable to maintain the belief that cults were something apart from normal society." In other words, there is no black and white border between being in a cult and out of one, but rather a scale of grey which finds most people in normal society (as the article says) involved to some degree in the ways of thinking that typify a cult. (So similar to mental health problems!) “What I wish to stress is not that every group is a cult, but that cult thinking is the effect of psychological forces endemic to the human mind, and that these forces operate in the everyday life of each of us; they distort perception, bias thinking, and inculcate belief.”

Having read and thought this (and other material) over I am not convinced that it is fair to blame people for getting trapped in what we might term "cult thinking". After all, that is a part of what my last cult post boils down to - don't blame the cult, blame the cultist.

A useful definition of the boundary between cult and religion concerns an improper measure of control imposed by some on others.

One cannot blame those being controlled since the invitation was not worded in that way. In fact mentioning an invitation at all suggests that someone actually knows what is going on - those who were "in control". I'm not so sure of this - at least in terms of what is being fore brained, premeditated. Instead it seems to me that there are roles which it is naturally easy to fall into. Roles of leadership ("I am a study group leader" - Sacred Diary of Adrian Plass) and roles of submission. I suspect then that one cannot blame the controllers either.

Submission is in itself a potent drug which deserves its own post.

Did Hitler understand his power, his charisma? Did he consciously abuse it and manipulate people for selfish reasons, or did he truly believe in his fated role as the leader of the master race into a bright new future and world domination?

"Power corrupts - absolute power corrupts absolutely" - Lord Acton. I have heard this modified this to "power may not actually corrupt, but it does always reveal what was there from the beginning". What I am hoping to suggest in this blog post is that there is a real need for us to know and understand our fault lines, our natural tendencies. These are things that I do believe only God can help us with, but I also believe that he has set various natural laws in motion: the easiest to hand being "what you sow you reap". These laws may be used to our advantage.

Although the USA has a fairly corrupt government I do admire the idea of a system of "checks and balances" which seeks to stop runaway trains in any of the various branches of government. An interesting study in one such is Watergate, of which I've recently listened to a really interesting podcast: Slow Burn. it covers many details of the whole affair which I had no idea about. Overall I had no idea of the scale of corruption involved. Near the end the narrator talks about how close Nixon was to pulling the whole thing off and never getting stopped, and about whether Watergate was clear proof of the system of checks and balances working - or not. His conclusion was that yes, it worked - but only because of a series of fortunate coincidences without which it likely would not have worked. Agree or not as your own erudite knowledge would lead you, I still wish to point out that balance is a precarious yet precious thing which should be guarded - "keep your heart, for out of it are the issues of life".

Here is a particularly poignant speech that came out of Watergate. "It is reason, and not passion, which must guide our deliberations, guide our debate, and guide our decision." - Barbara Jordan. More on reason later.