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I’ve thought about this off and on. I started thinking about it again today. I know full well a great many people will see this as extreme cynicism, but I am thinking about it in a positive, practical way. Maybe our Church (and religions in general) should really do things like they do — let people believe in a story and set of rules, even if not ideal or actually misguided. Yes, the immediate response is to shout “that’s manipulative!” True. But it’s as manipulative as people allow (want) themselves to be manipulated.
Thou shalt not do A, B and C
Thou must do X, Y and Z
or you will burn in hell … not go to the most bestest ever heaven … whatever …
It plays on peoples’ fears and pride. Yes. I’ll call it like I see it. Playing on the fear of separation from family, of never seeing God again, that is manipulative. Telling people they have to accomplish a laundry list of tasks or they don’t qualify for the best level of the best Celestial Kingdom *IS* is manipulating their pride, on some level. I’m not saying this out of anger or frustration. On some level, it just is what it is. People manipulate each other. I manipulate my children when I play the role of their parent. Promise of reward and threat of punishment, those are tools. I use them to get my children to do things that I, as their parent, believe are good for them. They should brush their teeth, get adequate rest, eat some vegetables sometimes for good nutrition, and they should not hit each other.
OK. Here is the crux of my point. People have to lead the Church, a church full of other people. This has to get done. Someone has to give direction. Well ok … the alternative is to have no church at all. That is another leadership choice too, but lets focus on having a Church community. Your goal is to get the most people possible to be “good” people. You truly care for their earthly welfare and their eternal spiritual progress. You want to be a good leader. What do you do? Tell everyone the real secret is … there is no secret? Advanced discussions about love and enlightenment are nice. I love ’em. But lets be honest, you aren’t going to reach the majority of people this way and motivate them, not right away. You kind of have to aim at the lowest common denominator, and those people mostly *want* you to just tell them what to do. “Look, i’m busy. All that crap makes my head hurt. Can you just tell me what I need to do, so I don’t roast in hell. Please?”
The ones that are beyond that level, well they will figure it out on their own anyway. Theirs isn’t so much a group development path anyway, so it isn’t effective to homogenize everything for them.
It actually seems like an effective system to me overall, almost like it could be divine
What do you think? Too cynical? Am I excusing manipulation and deceit? Or am I seeing a very practical organization, based on what we have to work with here?
Quote:Playing on the fear of separation from family, of never seeing God again, that is manipulative. Telling people they have to accomplish a laundry list of tasks or they don’t qualify for the best level of the best Celestial Kingdom *IS* is manipulating their pride
Well, I don’t necessarily think so. It’s only manipulative if you know it isn’t so. It’s not manipulative if you feel the same fear and pride – if you buy what you’re selling, it’s not a con (or manipulation). Your motive isn’t crowd control, but may be your own genuine fear or pride or your own love for others because the fear and pride (guilt is probably a better word) has dictated your actions.
So, is it manipulative of God? I don’t think so either. I think it’s just human nature. Many people are very motivated by guilt and use it to motivate others. I do, however, have a hard time imagining that God feels guilt or considers guilt as something to aspire to attain. Maybe guilt is a gift from God (a basic instinct) to get people to do what he wants us to do (like sexual drives).
My own view is that all human organizations work this same way. I’d like to bear my testimony that I know this church is human.
I agree completely with this, valoel – except where I disagree. Seriously, my only quibble is the same as Hawk’s. Rather than just say, “Ditto!” I will do what I often do – link to something I’ve already written about the topic (this time, manipulation):
Not Everything Is Manipulation (
http://thingsofmysoul.blogspot.com/2009/02/not-everything-is-manipulation.html This is way too provocative for me, so I am gathering my thoughts. The Church the way it should be? Hmm. Aside from the fact that everythingis perfectly as it should be in this world, perish that thought! I agree mostly, Valoel. Look: for the most part, the world is composed of simpletons. The vast majority of us, myself included, will never contribute anything to the progress of the race. We need sticks to beat us into decency or, put more accurately, out of awfulness. I truly don’t think most people are capable of ethical reasoning. I mean, go talk to the dumbest person at the worst college in America……and then realize that person is smarter than half of our country. If you can’t understand how a bill becomes a law, how can you intelligently figure out how to do the right thing?
The Church isn’t what it should be, but only because it needs to pick a pony. Either try to be more open and honest or turn hard right and start upping the ante. Being in the middle just makes you intolerant and ineffective.
hawkgrrrl wrote:So, is it manipulative of God?
Hawkgrrrl, I’m sure you didn’t want to equate God with Church or imply He makes the same bad leadership choices as does the church. The truth is, we hold His style to be perfectly loving and wise, and all our living and talking and dreaming is to try to agree with each other on what His style looks like.
So, heavy into Fowlers’s Stages of Faith this week, I will say that I agree with the general gist that people need a concrete imagery at Stage 2 of their faith development. Some adults never move beyond Stage 2, and many never move beyond Stage 3, and Fowler says most churches operate on a Stage 3 level.
But the way we go about it can have many flaws we need to fix so that we also move people onward and upward:
The church should be less an Old Testament church and more a Jesus church
- The church should call the leaders “Sister, Brother” instead of “Elder, Bishop, and President”
- We should better allow and honor celibacy and voluntary poverty
- We should better discourage war and capital punishment and honor conscientious objection and sacrifice
- We should honor and uphold 40-day fasting, simple eating, and total debt avoidance
- We should put those ashtrays at our chapel doors.
- We should honor individuality and pluralism
- To name only a few. We can and should do many things much different.
I will share more about this from Fowler later.
Quote:Hawkgrrrl, I’m sure you didn’t want to equate God with Church or imply He makes the same bad leadership choices as does the church.
No, I was just responding to Valoel’s post. God is certainly not the same thing as the Church, but the post raises a valid question about whether God is manipulative – not just whether the human organization of the church is.
Do you kind of mean to ask if possibly we believe in a God who is manipulative and if that belief possibly leads us to likewise be manipulative? Quote:Do you kind of mean to ask if possibly we believe in a God who is manipulative and if that belief possibly leads us to likewise be manipulative?
No, that wasn’t something I was implying. I was merely referring to the worldview that many have of a controlling God. If controlling, then sometimes is he manipulative (pulling the strings, making very detailed things happen according to his will, etc.) and is that sometimes duplicitous to achieve a certain end? That is one religious worldview that Valoel’s post brings up as a possibility: “Is the church the way it’s supposed to be because God has deliberately designed it to manipulate people because manipulation is effective at getting people to do what God wants them to do?”
You could either say the Church does that (which it certainly does at times, although my point was that it’s not really manipulation if you buy what you are selling) or that God does that (which I disagree that God does, although it’s just my opinion – it’s a possibility that he does, I just don’t think so).
Maybe my new faith is just too simple to understand. Maybe I no longer can even conceive of associating such words as “manipulative”, “deceitful”, and “tricky” with the Highest. To me, your explanation says it all: “Before we came to this world we all signed a disclaimer.” We are full accomplices; there is no evil to attribute to Our Source. Tom, it looks like we agree with each other. As I said, my quibble with the post itself was the use of the word “manipulate” – both for God and for the Church leadership. Yes, I would say the church leadership too. After all, it is an article of faith for me to believe that others are doing their best. When I first looked at this topic a couple of days ago I thought I may want to comment on it. I have been thinking about the idea of the church being “the way it should be” for some time. An underlying assumption of this idea is that there is a force deciding how it shouldbe. Is that force God? Or is it some kind of balance the church has ended up in? I have worked on this sentence for quite some time, trying to express what forces the church balances between. But I can’t figure out what the forces are that are balanced. But it seems to me that the church is where it is as a result of some middle ground it has found. Here is an idea:
Two of the forces that keep the church in balance may be perpetuation of the institution by not appearing too radical versus declaring the innovative and sometimes radical doctrines that permeate the theology of the church.
On another idea, I agree that religion can be manipulative. But it can also work like training wheels on the bike journey of moral development. When we move past being moral for the hope of reward or avoidance of punishment, and do what is best because we have a desire to be the most fully developed human we can be (ride without training wheels) then I think we, as humans, become more open to a real exploration of right and wrong, good and bad, truth and personal improvement.
I really believe the church is the way it is so that it can exist.
Buscador wrote:I really believe the church is the way it is so that it can exist.
I agree with this. Whether it matters that it exists, and whether the survival instinct is a good way to run religion, is another question. But it’s ours and and it is the way it is.
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