I reconnected with an old friend recently who had similar experiences with spiritual abuse. It led me to find a YouTube producer I had listened to before, who has, perhaps the clearest view of narcissism I've found, Richard Grannon. [Disclaimer, he is quite uncensored!] It led me to this breakthrough.
His clear description of narcissistic abuse is (paraphrased), "They scoop out everything that makes you 'you' and replace it with what they want you to do for them."
Narcissists have a goal of making you an extension of themselves - a person who will get them what they want, when they want it - and they accomplish that by various shaming and guilting techniques when you don't fit the mold they've chosen for you. It could be physical or emotional violence, guilt trips, gaslighting. As Richard says, this is all done in a context of "I'm doing this because I LOVE you."
Now, I'm Reformed and Evangelical, but I stand against what has become culturally Reformed and culturally Evangelical, and that is centered around Authoritarianism. I'm not a psychologist or therapist, but I've read a lot about understanding these dynamics.
In psychology, there is this thing called our "affect", it's a bit hard to understand, but I would say in Christianity, it's roughly parallel to our "heart" or "will". We are born completely driven by emotions and instinct, and as we develop, we start building a higher-order consciousness to understand who we are, why we fell this way or that, and what we want to do with it. So, the "affect" starts out immature and unbridled, and over time is supposed to develop into what Christians call "the fruits of the Spirit", even though those fruits are what we desire to see in everyone.
Now, the issue of authoritarianism is the relationship between the affect of the authority and the affect of the subordinate. I've mentioned Dead Poets' Society before, and not being able to understand what the point of the movie was. The abusive dynamic shows up in a father/son relationship. The father clawed his way to prosperity and wants his son to be a doctor. The son discovers joy in acting, and wants to become an actor. This leads to a clash where the father (whose narcissism is evidenced by the fact that he always buys an impersonal desk set for his son every year - indicating that he has no desire to know his son other than as an extension of his own affect) asserts his authority to guide his son, and the son seeing no alternative, commits suicide. I could never understand the point of this movie because I was living in an authoritarian, abusive system.
So, narcissism, authoritarianism and even positive parenting center around the proper approach to the immature affect. The idea that "strong-willed children must have their wills broken" - makes a statement. Total Depravity (not the Reformation doctrine, but the modern twisting) makes a statement. Highlighting stories about people who "never wanted to be a missionary, but God made them missionaries" makes a statement. Ultimately, the authoritarian perspective is that our natural will is evil (depraved), and God/authority needs to scoop out that will and replace it with the desires of the authority. Sound familiar? That is the core lie of authoritarian doctrine, cherry-picked from a few passages, to give the leaders false authority and narcissistic control.
Instead, understand that the affect is depraved, not in the modern "100% evil" sense, but an immature mixture of good intentions, natural fallibility and selfish desires. The true "you", without sin, isn't foreign, but is your own desires polished and refined through the sanctification of the Holy Spirit. What is removed is the false "you" - the sinful and selfish desires that do no one any good. So, the job of parents isn't to make children obedient robot slaves. That is not a reflection of God. It is narcissistic abuse. Instead, the job of parents is to nurture what is good and right in your children, and discourage what is selfish and evil, even if what they desire for themselves is foreign to what you hoped and dreamed. In the case of Dead Poets' Society, recognizing the joy and desire to act versus the hopes and dreams of having a successful doctor as a son.
Understanding this dynamic, authoritarian or spiritual abuse is the church forcing members into leader-approved molds, using various techniques. Those techniques could be what the pastor says from the pulpit, the written and unwritten rules of the church culture, what behaviors are approved or disapproved. Ultimately, authoritarianism is an abusive system where members are depersonalized and squeezed into what the leaders desire. In the RPCNA of my youth, this happened through an almost militaristic system of breaking the wills of children and making them narcissistic extensions of the parents, with the theory that it would be easy to transfer a narcissistic extension of a parent to be a narcissistic extension of the church or God. This was all done with the underlying claim that this is "LOVING" parenting.
The RPCNA has raised generation after generation of narcissistic, authoritarian leaders, and it attracts narcissistic authoritarians from the world and other churches with the pervasive culture. The cycle of abuse needs to stop. The RPCNA is not a "safe" church, and it cannot become a "safe" church merely by adopting child protection policies, because children are being groomed to be complacent victims of abuse. They are groomed to be instant, unquestioningly obedient slaves to whatever "authority" asserts itself over them, and not even have enough affect to recognize the violation. When their existence is to be an extension of the authority, what is there to violate? Everything that makes them lovable, worthy, unique, gifted, desirable or anything that would give them the emotional energy to resist abusive authority has been systematically identified and destroyed, so that they can be molded into what "God" (or the caricature of God that idolatrously looks like the church leaders) desires for them.
15 comments:
I don't know if you've seen the PCA's GA committee report on domestic abuse and sexual assault. I think it came out a couple of weeks ago. I'm still reading through it, but the parts I've read seem promising:
https://pcaga.org/aic-report-abuse/
It's not an official position paper, and the GA can't put any kind of official stamp of approval on it, but if it COULD and if I WERE a GA commissioner (both non-realities), I would vote to approve it, based on what I've read so far. I don't have 100% agreement with all of the reasoning, but the substance seems pretty solid overall.
Looking at this blog, I'm not sure you care about the abused so much as using them as human shields in the culture war.
Well, that was fun. My adult son, who is still in one of these reformed cults spawned by D. Wilson, knew nothing about the corruption at Olivetti’s church or about the Soma arrest. I had to inform him about it, because someone else brought it up. It’s terrible when your grown children are trying to hang on to something you taught them when you thought that thing was good, and now you see how deceptive and corrupt the structure is. I’m sorry that someone thinks this is just a “culture war”- that’s just Churchian for openly discussing the truth about these forms of abuse or power and privilege.
I haven’t engaged much of late with this whole thing because I reached a point in my healing of facing how my sexuality has been manipulated and abused because of these structures. It’s a horrible thing to have to deal with.
These men think half the population is inferior to them, and that children also exist to be used as props for their righteousness. But some can’t/won’t see it.
Hey McGregor, Stop searching for polyps, pull your head out and take in a deep breath of reality. While you are at deal with/ have the courage to address head on even one reality issue addressed at this site. These are real issues and to dismiss them so flippantly shows just how much of the Koolaid you are drinking in your pathetic NAPARC cult.
Thanks for the link, I agree with a lot of the paper and a lot of the reasoning, but my concern (putting on my RPCNA lens) is that many of the more contentious areas, like emotional abuse are argued differently. Something like, [secular psychological] studies show that emotional abuse is as traumatic or more traumatic than physical abuse, therefore... I did find it refreshing that the authors were able to find convincing evidence that abuse IS within the territory covered by the WCF, but not as clear as it should have been.
Hi Chris, this blog represents my journey out of toxic NAPARC culture. NAPARC culture creates a lack of care for "the least of these". I believe it's because it is primarily a political culture looking for scriptural justification. So, when the Bible says care for the oppressed, the church has to twist that into the oppressed being members of NAPARC, not the abused and poor in society.
It is certainly not my intent to use abused as pawns in a culture war and I am learning and healing more, but it takes time and there is a temptation to default to being a legalistic non-conservative vs. a gracious non-conservative.
That said, would you care to address anything specific or is this just the typical NAPARC drive-by-shooting at survivor blogs?
I will say, however, that I find taking baby step towards caring much more righteous than the position of NAPARC, which seems to be "we support all victims, we just don't every see any." It then becomes a few caring pastors and elders against a system where pastoral authority and convenience is the ultimate end. What happens in practice is that victims are messy, trauma/PTSD quickly becomes a discipline issue and victims either leave on their own or get excommunicated.
It's not half the population they feel is inferior to them, but 99.9%. They see themselves, after having said the Right Words and prayed the Right Prayers, as inerrant. It's amazing how close it is to Popery! But you don't see it until you've been through it yourself.
I'm thinking the point was that male elders feel superior to all women and children, but you are also correct. The honor/shame culture inherent in much of the western church places male elders at the highest level of all humanity, and devalues all others. You can see that, for example, with the pastor in Indiana (not RP) who raped a girl at 17. After hiding it for at least a decade, he had to resign when she got enough strength to fight him, and even then he tried to whitewash it as consensual sex (adult/child is by definition non-consensual!). After she told her side of the story - being RAPED - the congregation surrounded him in a show of support.
There are so many ways that this is a broken system, but the one that sticks out to me is that somehow this church feels it is regaining honor by honoring an abusive rapist pastor.
Ditto! Although they will deny it, RPCNA leaders and its sycophants who have not seen the light yet do in deed have a Protestant system of Popery going on.
Richard Grannon gives great info, and I agree with most he says, but warning: he really does not like Christians. He isn't very open about this but if you know him a little and spend time talking with him, you'll hear it. He's been on the receiving end of narcissistic abuse, also, and I'm sorry for that. The starting points of his viewpoints are important though, because even though he's saying a lot of things that are true, he draws some conclusions that would be out of step with a Christian. His mentor, I think, is Sam Vaknin, also a complicated guy with some narcissism himself (he is also anti-God). I've definitely learned from Richard, we can learn from anyone.
I wouldn't be surprised that a lot of psychologists hate Christians because at least Evangelicals typically have very harmful views of mental illness and trauma. If your a therapist, and day after day, Christians come into your office talking about the harm they suffered in the hands of the church. It'll take its toll. And specifically to the point, Christians do all this harm claiming it's done in love. I'm beating you, child, because I LOVE you. I'm publicly shaming you in front of the church because I LOVE you. I know you were severely sexually abused, but acting out is sin and God says I need to punish all sin as your leader because I LOVE you. Look, your abuser has repented and moved on. Our church is done with this and needs to move on. Why can't you, too?
I think if we're going to glean truth about psychology we'll need to do it acknowledging that some truth will be from a religious perspective, some will be somewhat neutral, and some will be antagonistic. Much of societal reformation, recently, has been done with the church brought kicking and screaming. Do we really believe that sexual abuse in the church, like IRPC, would be brought to light and dealt with if it weren't for secular society making it such a big deal?
The RPCNA church has very harmful views of mental illness and trauma, and while this hurt me terribly and I know they're wrong, my heart towards God has only grown. People who are hostile to God, while they may not be helped by people in the RPCNA, are still responsible for their hostility. I get it- more than you know. Countless years of abuse from people who say they belong to God and do what they do in the Name of God. But scripture doesn't hide that we will face these troubles, and these troubles have revealed a faith in me that could never have been tested by the world alone. The wounds from the world are tough, but they have never been so treacherous as those inflicted by those who say they do what they do "in love." Those professing Christ can pervert love as easily as those without Christ. The RPCNA church doesn't seem to place a real distinction between their leadership and God, and as a result, I'm not surprised if people find their hope and even faith fail them when the church is revealed to be...well, what we know the bulk of the denomination has become. Our hope is in Jesus, the real Author and Finisher of our faith. The de facto hatred of some people claiming to speak for Christ is seen in the context of the deep affections of love, patience, kindness, long-suffering, etc which still fill me and overflow in spite of it, one of many evidences of a real God I know, love, and experience despite the clamor of the world. I'm so sorry for the people at Immanuel, and everyone that has suffered at the hands of this denomination and all within or without that claim to speak for Christ while blaspheming Him with the actions that flow from their own sinful, unrepentant hearts. I forgive them, but am removing myself from their authority and sticking with Christ. Their judgment will come. Forgiving doesn't mean trusting them or letting them back into and in leadership over the church. I am with you and tracking on this. I think we need total reliance on Christ. I've benefitted myself from information gleaned from many secular writers, and i'm thankful for it. I just make sure whatever I learn is not incompatible with scripture. The whole point of Satan's attacks is to weaken us and send us in directions away from God. It's okay if we don't see everything the same, I have no judgment whatsoever. I'm very comfortable talking with other Believers and listening to them and having fellowship if we don't see everything the same. I don't have everything right.
....oops I mean responsible for their hostility to God (I think all people are). Meaning if someone burns down my house, I'm not right to turn against God for it. I don't mean they're responsible for hostility towards the people and wrongs done them by their abusers. Sorry, I need a new eyeglass prescription and haven't proof read very well.
Protestant Popery indeed! They either forgot to reform some things or chose not to reform the things that could benefit them- and yet, isn't that the same kind of corruption that led to the Reformation? Proud leaders who refuse to change even that which is clearly wrong? Luther tried to reason with them, but they were willing to split the church over their unyielding pride.
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