Posted by Carol on August 08, 2004 at 14:08:31
Someone recently tipped me off to a poll (N=63) of second generation folk in which 51% of the respondents said they favored using unethical or illegal tactics to put an end to The Family as a viable organization.
With regard to stopping or destroying The Family, I tend to come down on the side of tolerance, mediation, and incremental strategic change. Remember, I am a child welfare advocate, and my blood absolutely boils at the thought of parents choosing to raise their children without access to educational opportuntities. I also have little sympathy for adults who see no problem in economically exploiting children for the benefit of the adult mission to "save the lost." And while I think it's a good thing that The Family no longer packs adult/child sex in its doctrinal fleebag, I'm also painfully aware that individual sexual predators don't change as a consequence of a sincere confession, a temporary demotion to babe status, or a "permanent" excommunication that ultimately plays out in reassignment to the mission field in Outer Slobovia.
Religious cults serve a social function and emotional need for the people who create the reality of thier particular closed social systems. Groups like The Family tend to thrive like paracites on larger social systems--whole societies--that are undergoing deep structural changes. The former Soviet states are an excellent example of societies undergoing deep structrual change in terms of political power distribution, economic resource distribution, and fundamental beliefs about national identity. In such unpredicatble social environments in flux, highly structured, authoritarian groups like The Family come complete with answers to every last one of life's challenges: Just ask Jesus into your heart, join us for a few hours of sweet fellowship, and presto--you're on the road to figuring out where you fit into the complex & confusing social, ecnomic, emotional, spiritual, and political landscape of human enterprise.
Instead of thinking about ways to "destroy" The Family, I've been trained to think about way to "destory" families with pathological patterns of behavior that have inhumane, destructive consequences for children and vulernable adults, such as dependent women with children or members who are mentally or physically handicapped. The Family has a central story that it tells itself and the world over & over again. The key elements of that central story can be found in a reading of the Christian scriptures, particularly the accounts of the life of Jesus, his disciples, and the early church. I'm not saying I believe The Family's claim that they are the closest thing out there to the original, First Century Christian movement; What I'm saying is that this plot of this story is their self-professed blueprint for their construction of social reality in the 20th and 21st centuries.
The basic plot of the Christian story-cycle goes something like this: suffering, apparent defeat, resurrection (renewal or transformation, depending on whether it's first of second-order change). However, when the story is laid out in a linear fashion, it goes something like this: provocation, persecution, suffering, apparent defeat, renewal, growth, continuation. Mature, well-grounded Christians know they don't have to seek out suffering through persecution or provocation. Life on life's terms is just plain hard enough, replete with numerous opportunities to "die to self" and be reborn and/or renewed to go on with the good fight of living day to day in the Spirit of lovingkindness, hope, courage, joy, patience and trust. (For anyone who's interested, this particular approach to Christian life was formally out by Therese of Lisieux in the early 20th century as 'the little way'.)
However, some people feel compelled to tell the Cnristian story another way: It's about the heroics of defeating death itself, and by extension, waging an aggressive, non-stop war with Satan. Just what it means to fight Satan in a concrete way is up for grabs, but in The Family there is a core sickness that equates Satan with "The System." The reason I call this belief a sickness is because "The System" comprises 99.9% of the rest of humanity who are "not Family."
I have concluded that it is a "sickness" to believe The System is evil and The Family is godly because this "us against them" mentality that inevitably sets groups of people up for conflict that is mostly unecessary and avoidable. A Family member would argue that the conflict IS necessary and unavoidable, because the conflict created by the "us against them" mentality is part of God's plan for the salvation of humanity.
OK, I'm a social scientist, and I can't speculate about the truth of unprovable metaphysical explanations for human behavior. What I can say as a person of faith and good will is that human beings choose to behave in ways that are inherently stress-provoking and conflictual, or they choose to behave in ways that modify inevitable conflict, or they choose to behave in ways that remove barriers and reduce and eliminate conflict. Funny thing about free will: It's also part of the Christian story about God's plan of salvation.
I'm particularly inclined to label the "us against them" mentality a sickness when it is based on something other than a true Darwinian competition for survival. The Israeli & Palestinian conflict is an "us against them" scenario that's based on a Darwinian competition for tangible realities: ethnic survival, land, potable water, economic resources. In The Family, the "us against them" mentality is based on the *belief* that the survival of all humanity depends on Us, The Family, taking an aggressive stance of us against them, with "them" being "the damnable, hypocritical churchianity Christians," or the "great, whore antichrist United States," or even our own children if they behave in ways we are too ignorant to understand.
So from an evolutionary standpoint, people who make up The Family may in fact be a "species" of human that adapts by creating a group identity through self-imposed conflict with the rest of the world. If I were to talk about this is Freudian terms, I'd say these are people who have a persecution complex. Why they have it is a complex question that gets answered in different ways according to your theoretical model.
I'm not a big fan of Freudian theory, but it's been popularized enough that most people get the idea with a term like "persecuation complex." It brings a complex set of social interactions down to an individual unit of analysis. We all probably know someone who is paranoid more often than not, feels persecuted by nearly everyone and everything, and mostly sees him/herself as a victim of unseen forces beyond his or her control. If they believe God is on their side, maybe they don't view these unseen forces as beyond control. Maybe that's a good reason for clinging to Jesus, because he gives them courage and hope that these unseen forces won't ultimately annihilate them altogether.
The way closed social systems like The Family are constructed, any attempt to destroy the organization only re-inforces the core pathology of their persecution complex and amplifies the story. In a family system, behavior is no longer viewed of an individual mind in the grip of unreasonable fear of anihilation--the survival of the group is at stake--and behavior is seen as a series of group interactions. From a family systems theory perspective, the outsider is confronted with something called a positive feedback mechanism. The more you try to shut the group behavior down, the more it grows, increases, engages and reinforces itself. A direct, frontal intervention aimed at the problem behavior tends to augment or amplify the group behavior rather than dampen it.
Knowing this, a family therapist looks for a strategic leverage point elsewhere in the system of family relationships that can be used to divert and leverage some of the unhealthy, destructive behavior under the control and regulation of the positive feedback mechanism.
For this reason, I think "anti" Family activities should be strategically targeted to moderate problematic behavior rather than the shut down group behavior wholesale.
For example, I favor a vigilant analysis of criminal behaviors and calling The Family publically to take responsibility for those bheaviors so that they become a safer place for children and vulnerable adults (single women with dependents, people with mental & physical handicaps). It's not enough The Family leadership to say "we're sorry" and "mistakes were made." Criminal behavior requires the technical expertise of corrections--as in law enforcement, due process, judicial review and mandates, community supervision.
However, because The Family does in fact enjoy the "benefits" of a fairly successful criminal leadership--successful inasmuch as they have yet to face serious criminal prosecuation--we have to respect the fact that this group has at least as much staying power as the Mafia or al Qaida, and that their sworn enemies are much less powerful and determined than the FBI, Interpol, or the Pentagon.
As a social worker, another way I often think about The Family is like an inner city gang. They operate on the margins of society, and there are powerful vested interests that work to contain them right where they are along with all the other social ills associated with poverty & ignorance. Being something of a "brilliant" criminal mastermind, Berg instinctively understood this when he commissioned Flirty Fishers to go out and capture enough of those powerful and corrupt "vested interests" to insure the gang's survival. I'm not sure any of us have the fortitude to successfully challenge the corrupt vested interests that protect The Family by playing the game their way through illegal and unethical strategies.
As a strategy, people who would like to 'take down" The Family may choose instead to effect moderation in The Family by developing something that looks like "normal" relations with their flesh kin and friends who remain in The Family. If enough people on the outside maintain normalizing relationships with kin and friends on the inside, over time The Family system will adapt and accomodate to a pattern of interaction that is not so hostile and counter-dependent. With this strategy, the boundaries of the organization become less fixed & rigid and more permeable and flexible. This small change actually increases the level of safety for children being raised in The Family.
However, the criminal nature of Family leadership (Zerby & Kelly) is such that they instinctively understand the threats to their power posed by the more permeable and flexible boundaries that are created by family on the inside connecting in positive ways with Family on the outside. Hence, the prohets proclaim a time of renewal and obedience and oh-god-I-forget-what-else, but the leadership strategy is essentially to close ranks and begin another telling of the timeless story about "us against them."
This "timeless" story-telling by humans is what is meant by the "power of myth." Our stories bind us together in tight groups secure in the safety of the campfire. Our stories and songs shut out the fearful sounds of the dark and fearsome night. It's even better if our stories make us laugh, because then we can relax a bit, even if it's just for a few minutes.
I believe that if The Family is attacked--particularly in an unfair, illegal or unethical way during this period of self-imposed lock-down--the risk to children and vulnerable adults will increase even more than what is posed by the lockdown itself. If The Family is strategically pressured in a fair & ethical manner--where the rules and boundaries of the opposition's game are laid out in a way that allows the Family system to adjust and respond without locking down futher, this may be the best possible outcome to a bad situation--and not so easy to pull off.
It's difficult to master the tactic of allowing your opponent the space to save face. However, if you allow your opponents the space to save face, they will tend to modify and adapt to your position instead of re-inforcing their original stance toward you, no matter how untenable that original stance. Remember, people can and do "go down fighting." And with that takedown, they also rise from the ashes of their seeming defeat. People will go on telling their stories, and history repeats itself. If we are committed to the science of behavioral change, what we hope for is a slightly better, less dangerous story at each telling.