Confessions of a former exit-counselor:
The Insatiable Quest for the Supernatural
[The following observations apply mainly to those who have had no family members in the Witnesses and are cold-recruited or (like me) actually sought out a fringe religion to join. Others who have been brought up in the faith may only share a limited comparison.]
Sometime in the early 80s I met Steven Hassan at a cult awareness meeting up in Northern California. Steve is a former high-ranking member of the Moonies (Unification Church) and was actually deprogrammed by his Jewish parents with the aid of a cult deprogrammer.
While being free of the Moonies was positive, the deprogramming experience was not. Steve set out to create a more positive, less damaging approach to helping a loved one out of a cult. You can read much of this on his website. Especially helpful is his FAQ page and his About Steven Hassan page.
Steve had not yet considered Jehovah's Witnesses as a cult, having more frequently worked with other high-control groups such as Scientology, Moonies, Children of God, The Way International, International Churches of Christ, etc. We began to work together on a few cases (mostly Witnesses but some others as well) with very positive results. Steve and his techniques have helped me immeasurably in getting the much bigger picture of how the mind works, and how it allows internal and external deception and obfuscation to aid in the religious conversion process.
Although not a Christian (nor an atheist), Steve respected my Christian faith and we became good friends, traveling infrequently. In some of the stories to come, you will see how his techniques opened up my mind to some very specific truths about humans on a core (primal) level. Rather than being secret techniques or questionable tactics, they are simple observations about humans in general, easily recognized by social workers, employers, social reformers, animal trainers and even mothers and fathers. Those who work with a wide variety of people in intimate settings over a long period of time will have no problem understanding what I am about to say. Experiencing and observing various human reactions are the source of wisdom in these matters.
On the other hand, the isolated soul that lives in a virtual world of his/her own choosing may be shielded from seeing certain behavioral patterns common to the "mundane" things of life. Not understanding the incredible sameness of many supposedly "supernatural" behaviors, they may attribute them to real supernatural causes, either God or the devil, unnecesarily.
In March of 1986 I attended the Conference on Deception and Discernment at the First Presbyterian Church in Berkeley, California. Danny Korem, world-renown magician and also a Christian, was the keynote speaker and discussed as well as demonstrated psychic deception with some very powerful mind tricks.
Danny told the audience in advance that none of the demonstrations of "supernatural activity" would be anything more than clever deception of the mind and the eye. He also said that in spite of his announcing that in advance, there will probably be about 25% in the audience who would still think it was a supernatural trick. Sure enough, he had those who still thought so afterwards to raise their hand... about 25%. I was floored, yet I understood why. Many people have a strong hunger for the supernatural... a world bigger, brighter and more magical than this old system (excuse the pun).
Another advantage of going to conferences on cults (besides meeting many great people!) is that in all the weird variations of cults, with all their odd beliefs, they all use pretty much the same techniques to "wow" their recruits. After you hear a few hundred testimonies of former members from dozens of groups that have no resemblance outwardly to each other, you can usually predict the outcome of their story.
What does that mean in terms of practical lessons?
That if you learn what needs, feelings and behaviors bedevil a person, and how they interact with other members of their family (with their particular idiosyncrasies) and you understand the various basic personality types at work, you can know why 99% of all this drama is happening. It is NOT about religion. Religion can be discussed without fights... strong feelings usually cannot. A breakdown in communication, often many years before, has led to involvement with a fringe group that just happens to offer the "right drugs" that the recruitee really, really thinks will rescue them from their miserable state. Some strongly perceived need is being met for once in their life. It is often more powerful than falling in love for the first time in your life. NO ONE can talk you out of the healing you have just experienced. Woe be unto them if they try!
Jim Jones, founder of The People's Temple in San Francisco, understood the importance of finding those in need and giving them something supernatural to believe in:
Jones had previously witnessed a faith healing service at the Seventh Day Baptist Church, and concluded that such healings could attract people, and generate income, helping accomplish his social goals. [ 2 ] Jones and Temple members knowingly faked healings because they found that the increased faith generated financial resources to help the poor and finance the church. [ 2 ] These "healings" involved chicken livers and other animal tissue, claimed by Jones (and confederate Temple members) to be cancerous tissues removed from the body. [ 4 ]
In 1956, Jones bought his first church building, in a racially mixed Indianapolis neighborhood. He first named this church "Wings of Deliverance", [ 5 ] and later that year renamed it the "Peoples Temple Full Gospel Church", the first time he used the phrase "Peoples Temple." [ 2 ] Jones' healings and purported clairvoyant revelations attracted spiritualists. [ 5 ] from Wikipedia
Jeanne Mills found out the hard way in her haunting classical statement about cult recruiting:
"When you meet the friendliest people you have ever known, who introduce you to the most loving group of people you’ve ever encountered, and you find the leader to be the most inspired, caring, compassionate and understanding person you’ve ever met, and then you learn that the cause of the group is something you never dared hope could be accomplished, and if all of this sounds too good to be true, it probably is too good to be true! Don’t give up your education, your hope and ambitions to follow a rainbow."
Jeanne Mills, former member of the People’s Temple and subsequent victim of assassination a year following the November 18, 1978 Jonestown suicides/murders of 913 adults and children.
Jim Jones attracted people, not due to religious doctrine, but because he gave them "real" demonstrations (much like Danny Korem) of what this church would do for them. Always look for what the recruitee is getting out of the experience, or what the religion is safeguarding them from in their minds. Sometimes it's protecting them from an abusive husband, or giving them a sense of power for the first time in their lives, or new friends. For others, it is a new hope and a new reason to move ahead positively in life. POWERFUL drugs. How some can assume that dealing with them on the level of doctrine is going to be powerful enough to make them leave those religious drugs behind is often bewildering to me.
The Truly Strong "Drugs" At Work behind the Scenes
People are not so complicated. They have simple needs, certain fears and prejudices, as well as primal issues with others that drive much of their behaviors, yet they are often completely unaware of the bigger dynamic at work.
"Sam" reasons that he is 39, unemployed, and going nowhere in life. His health is failing, he is divorced and drowns his sorrows in alcohol each night. He has more than once stared down the barrel of a loaded pistol, feeling nothing works for him anymore. His neighbor drops by and asks Sam if he wants to go to a pool party. He doesn't mention it is a Mormon party.
Sam is impressed that these people can have so much fun in life and not drink or smoke or need to cheat and steal. He is impressed by the way they dress, the smiles, firm handshakes and human feeling and expression these people have. Since so many members seem to be special in the same way, there must be something to it. It really does appear to be supernatural. You sure don't see this anywhere else!
Cults know what to offer, and it's not so otherworldly after all. Since they ultimately are NOT supernatural and CANNOT deliver all of what they are promising, they deliver up the easier primal goodies: the friendship, sense of purpose and a congregation to interact with... and in some cases active forms of welfare and special care. All together, the power of the "religious drugs" are accentuating one another, so that it can reach a crescendo that gives the illusion of pure ecstasy. Group religious experiences are born this way. That "drug" tells you that this, indeed, must be the truth. The emotional power of the experience is SO STRONG that no further cognitive dissonance is allowed, for fear of losing the "high" permanently through apostasy. Case closed. I am in the TRUTH.
In virtually every exit-counseling scenario, a cold-reader can sit down in a family circle and talk for two hours, and can pretty much figure out why the person is in the cult. Cold reading enables you to feel what is going on, so you can come to a diagnosis independent of all the verbal reasons they are giving you. Sometimes you have to ignore the verbal posturing and watch the physical posturing, which doesn't lie.
If I could talk to the family dog, it would probably tell the whole story. Dogs are keen on learning many things about us by watching us. They don't need words.
Misconceptions
In an exit-counseling (or, cult intervention) some clients feel very strongly that they have personally done nothing wrong to enable this cult involvement, but that someone has hoodwinked their child/mother/sister into believing religious lies. They believe that the lies have absolute power over the cult member. "Get the lies out of their head, and they will return to normal."
Unfortunately, that is not true. People cannot be held captive by doctrine or beliefs alone, without strong emotional processes running in the background. There has to be a number of reasons they are enjoying flirting with this new religion. Some heavy needs are being met... some peace of mind is being attained that they have never experienced before.... some feeling of goodness and magnanimity (feeling great of mind and heart) has enraptured them... or perhaps it's just some really nice friends for the first time in their lives. It may be the lure of a new soul mate.
The group's teaching, or doctrine, has little power other than to corral the group into a programmed unity useful in indoctrinating others. Young movements rarely have much in the way of doctrine. Even the early Christians had little in the way of "doctrine" until their opponents forced them to develop "apologetics" for the Christian faith, as we see in the early Church Fathers 100 years after the death of Jesus. The "Bible" as Christians know it did not even officially exist until about 400 AD. Yet the movement changed the known world in its first 300 years. Apologetics came later, and only to establish who was orthodox and who wasn't.
Wikipedia says of "apologetics":
Apologetics is the whole of the consensus of the views of those who defend a position in an argument of long standing. The term comes from the Greek wordapologia (απολογ?α), meaning a speaking in defense.Early Christian writers (c 120-220) who defended their faith against critics and recommended their faith to outsiders were called apologists [ 1 ]But people didn't originally become Christians due to apologetics. They joined for healing, for relief from suffering, from a promise of a better future, for hope in seeing their loved ones again, and for feeling good and not hating their fellow man any more. People became Christians to have friends who think alike and have the same values... and they also become Christians for welfare and food. While often hated and mocked in the first three centuries, and even tortured and killed for their faith, they knew that this was their last chance to be at peace with themselves, even if it cost them their lives. The much greater sense of well-being they experienced was not worth giving up. They had burned their bridges behind them during their initial conversion phase. They sacrificed one thing to get something better. But was that something better really supernatural? It might greatly improve their lives, but most of those tricks are no magical at all.
Have a personal conversation with an honest, time-worn pastor of any Christian church today, and he can tell you the real reasons why each one in his church became a believer. Most likely, the reason won't be supernatural. Humans must have rewards in order to sacrifice... whether the rewards come now or later. No one will really do something for nothing. In the end, payback is expected.
Wikipedia continues on apologetics,
The legal nuance of apologetics was reframed in a more specific sense to refer to the study of the defense of a doctrine or belief. In this context it most commonly refers to philosophical reconciliation. Religious apologetics is the effort to show that the preferred faith is not irrational, that believing in it is not against human reason, and that in fact the religion contains values and promotes ways of life more in accord with human nature than other faiths or beliefs.In other words, using apologetics is defending why you believe what you believe. In Tertullian's (ca.155–230) Apologeticus, he was the first who qualified Christianity as the 'vera religio' ("true religion"), and symmetrically relegated the classical Empire religion and other accepted cults to the position of mere 'superstitions'.
Don't get me wrong. I see the value of apologetics. I spent six years of my life writing apologetics for the Christian faith, and I still consider them accurate for their intent, and they are still all on my website, unchanged and unedited. My book, Refuting Jehovah's Witnesses is my best collection on that. In the early years after my leaving the Watchtower, I felt it very important to get the important beliefs down, and their historical record. I even recommend the same course to others who are serious in this field.
Yet their importance is overrated. For instance, you can argue the "Trinity" on an abstract level until you're blue in the face, but the written record of secular history plainly shows the early Christians worshipped Christ as God. Christianity cannot actually "work" right without this revelation. Rational or irrational, an apostasy from Judaism or not, this new worship of Christ gave them a sense of POWER. You see it exactly the same in the evangelical churches today. Converts will die to keep it! That has not changed in 2000 years.
Limitations of "Beliefs"
My experience over the last 37 years of being immersed in doctrine has taught me that beliefs mean almost nothing compared to the core reasons why people do things, the so-called "selfish" reasons. As a Witness, and Pioneer, then Bethel Elder, Floor Overseer and loyal doorknocker, followed by a few years as a Foursquare Christian pastor, I can tell you the REAL reasons why people are stuck where they are in life. I can't read their minds, only their predicament. Fix the predicament, and their thoughts will change much easier.
What I do know is that when I began exit-counseling, the knowledge of WHY people do and believe certain things was not to be found in their HEAD, but in their actions, their expressions, their body movements and voice. It was also in their family and personal history. To pay much attention to their "beliefs" was a dead end; I could almost be deaf in the room and come to the same conclusions without hearing a word that was said... just watching interactions between whoever was in the room. Religious language has a way of obfuscating the truth at times, so in the early stages (the first day or so of the intervention) religious words were avoided, and personal bonding and friendship was the goal, along with a steady diet of education from third-party sources not hostile to the religion. I would never start with the Bible, because the Bible is not the problem. More often than not, the family was the problem. Eliminate or defuse the fear, the animosity, the jealousy, the misunderstanding, and the cult was no longer needed anyway.
With just a few professionally guided heart-to-heart talks with the aid of an experienced intervention therapist, combined with the subsequent emotional release of years of anger, resentment, despair and hatred, the cult involvement may lose interest very quickly.
Randy
Where Can I Get Counseling Or Intervention Help For Myself Or Others?