You have referred to a
Catch 22
experienced by many of us with 2X2 backgrounds:
Concerns about how acceptable we are to a group, how well we can conform to measure up to expectations--coupled with not being quite at home in the environments we learned early on to see as worldly and improper.
There were many activities I was taught should be avoided.
If specific grounds could be cited, they were:
- being in the band would mean wearing pants,for band uniforms were unisex, and designed for use in the marching band, although they were worn at concerts too.
Movies were worldly even when the subject matter was innocuous (Heidi, The Yearling, westerns):
- the film industry and Hollywood were Babylon,
- and the actors, directors, producers were immoral, wicked people who were corrupting all that they touched.
Worldly education was highly corrupting--look at Solomon with all his knowledge!
He lost out!
It was harder to define what was wrong with sports for boys, because no one seemed to be shocked by their wearing shorts and athletic shirts to play basketball or compete in track. Girls, of course, could not wear team uniforms or shorts and such. But sports, and socializing in general, and a host of other activities fell into the "empty, unprofitable" category.
One must redeem the time! One must be focused on Kingdom matters.
A favorite accolade to state about the deceased, in a funeral sermon, went this way,
"I always appreciated this about him:
He valued the things of the Lord."
By contrast, to enjoy most kinds of recreation, particularly in groups or sponsored by worldly organizations, was to "be interested in the things of the world." Thus my piano playing, if it was Mendelssohn, Chopin (let alone Richard Rodgers, Gershwin or Joplin) was not pleasing to the Lord, as the sister worker said when she slammed the Schirmer edition shut and slapped a hymnal onto the rack in its place, while I was playing.
We were exhorted not to be interested in politics and the various activities taking place in the community on grounds of worldliness, or waste of time, or mingling with "the careless world" or being yoked with unbelievers.
It's good to know that there were areas where there were fewer strictures. I'm glad to see that even in the more conservative parts of the 2X2 realm, restrictions have been eased in some aspects.
But that still leaves thousands of people who were imprinted by those attitudes,
and may still have some degree of "crippling."
I guess much depends on what has happened SINCE, and how much support
each person had in recovering from what I think of as "head binding."
For some, being in God's one true way may have imparted feelings of
belonging, and of security, and good identity.
But for many of us, that anxiety about needing to measure up continues
to crop up here and there, now and then, a little or a lot.
Sports is by no means the only part of growing up that so many of us missed out on, compared with a more "normal" upbringing.
Music, drama, and being in a number of co-curricular activities and organizations were either forbidden or strongly discouraged. Friendships were few, with worldlings, or kept superficial.
With females in particular, dressing like dorks and looking generally weird
caused us to be self-conscious, and got us excluded from much of the fun,
even during the school day.
We couldn't date.
We were just left out of everyday discussions kids would have about dances, dating, games, scouts, 4-H, Christmas presents, clothes………………!!!
In short, our growing up years left many of us stunted, socially and emotionally
and intellectually crippled.
- We didn't quite grow up, in some ways.
- We are stuck with many misconceptions about others, particularly other churches and those who attend them, and many parts of our society and culture.
- We have leftover false guilt, and fear things that should not frighten us, and are inclined to reject things we should not reject.
We have a bad cult hangover.
Posted by Marti Knight
Sometimes, I feel robbed and cheated:
Dear _ _ _ _ _,
Thanks for all the information you sent.
Were you as angry as I when you learned about the sexual misconduct of the workers???
Whether you realize it or not, you have raised an important question in my mind.
“Just how active do I want to become in telling the REAL TRUTH?” I don’t want to be passive for who does that help?
But fear can be overwhelming.
I am not stronger than those that are still “INSIDE.”
Sometimes, I feel strong, strong enough to stand up to them. But as soon as I run into “THEM” somewhere, I feel weak and powerless.
- Who will help those that are still inside if we do not???
- Who is gonna’ really care?
Only those that have been there, like us, really know the conflict and pain that they go through.
One of the difficulties we face is trying to help them when we are viewed as the enemy.
I still have one friend inside. We used to be very close. Things seem so very different now. It grieves me. We still talk but not about the books or what’s in the books. I wish we could openly discuss these things. Sometimes, I find myself feeling guilty and ambivalent about meetings when I talk to my friend. It’s nothing that is said exactly, It’s a strong dominating presence that I feel.
The experience I’ve had at meeting tends to make me distrust people.
It’s hard to trust others when you’ve been burned, don’t you think?
After reading about your experience in “Reflections,” I am amazed that you and your brother were able to excel artistically. My artistic and athletic abilities were constantly being choked and stifled while I was going to meeting. I am trying to revive them, however. I spend a lot of time (probably too much time), thinking about “what might have been.”
Sometimes, I feel robbed and cheated.
I used to act and dress like a little “worker.” One time, someone tried to give me some money, thinking I WAS a worker!!!
Even though I have been in graduate school for my masters, I feel like I’ve wasted so much of my life.
I question everything I do.
- I ask myself, “Why am I doing this or that?
- Is it to please someone else??
- Who is pulling my strings?
- Who is controlling me now??
It is hard for me to stay focused and set long term goals or concentrate on my present school curriculum. I have so much freedom now that I hardly know what to do!! I want to explore and do things that I wasn’t able to do when I was going to meetings. It’s like becoming a teenager again!! I want to do everything!! And I want to be a rebel!!
How do you live and believe in the American dream while going to meeting? It’s impossible because every aspect of your life is controlled and dominated.
You don’t allow yourself to dream and the workers and friends don’t
encourage it either.
I offered for the work while in college and would have gone, but at the last minute I had second thoughts about it and didn’t go. I am so glad that I didn’t go into the work. Everyone expected that I would go. When it was apparent to everyone that I was putting more and more time into college instead of the meetings, I began to lose my status in the “truth.” I worked weekends to finance my way through school. This sure did not go over well with everyone at meeting.
When I finished my bachelors’ degree and began to start on my masters’, the elder of the meeting said, “Now, don’t you start no more of that school stuff.”
- He didn’t say anything positive to me.
- He wasn’t cordial or friendly, just condemning.
Another elder came up to me at convention and told me that I was going to lose
my soul because I was spending too much time working and going to school.
Who did he think he was? God???
At that same convention, another professing man started to lecture me on the evils of education but I walked away from him.
That was my last convention and I hated every minute of it.
I was so angry.
I was supposed to overlook and put up with every derogatory remark that people gave me with a smiling face. That sure go old. It still makes me sick to think about it.
When I was getting ready to go into the work, I was told by a worker that there are certain words and expressions that I needed to omit from my vocabulary like, “I betcha…!”
I was shocked when a worker told me that.
Not only do they control what you wear, where you go, what you think but
even the way you express yourself.
Another thing that used to aggravate me was the reaction the friends would have when there would be some kind of natural disaster in some part of the world or the country.
They would say, "I wonder if any of the friends or the workers were killed or injured.”
They didn’t have any concern about all the hundreds or thousands of people who didn’t profess who were hurt or killed. They were just concerned about their own kind.
I dream a lot about being in meeting or convention and giving my testimony. I dreamed one time that I was inside the elders’ home trying to escape from their house. I got away just in time, just before they grabbed me and dragged me inside to meeting. Sometimes, I dream about the workers. In one dream, a worker was telling me about the fear of God. I told him in my dream that he didn’t know what the fear of God really was.
Another thing I have hated is the way the workers like to “DROP IN” on you at your house without any notice.
It’s like the want to see you at your worst, unprepared, un-groomed, half asleep.
I am an RN and I work odd hours. It’s not convenient for them to drop in.
Like a poisonous snake, they always show up when you don’t expect them, when your guard is down.
My dad goes to meetings irregularly. So the workers drop in form time to time to check up on him and us. I’m usually asleep when they are here, at work, or purposely, “OUT OF THE HOUSE.” I cannot handle a confrontation with them. I am not strong enough.
I have two aunts who profess and an arrogant cousin. I avoid them like a plague.
I have wondered why so many professing women in this area go into the nursing field. It’s convenient, it’s acceptable, and it’s familiar. Very familiar!! The abuse and oppression are similar.
I recently read a book called, “Nurse Abuse” and I subscribe to a radical nursing magazine called, “Nursing Revolution.” Nursing, like “MEETING,” is oppressed and has been oppressed for years. It is dominated by women and controlled by people who know nothing about nursing. Nurses together could be very powerful. But nurses don’t network together and so change is slow.
Nurses are afraid to publicly tell what is really going on inside their hospitals. They know their lives and careers would be jeopardized.
- Nurse abuse can be so subtle that nurses don’t even realize they are being abused or manipulated.
- Nurses think they should be appreciative and not complain.
- They don’t want to “ROCK THE BOAT” or “MAKE WAVES.”
This holds true with the 2x2’s.
The 2x2’s are encouraged to keep the peach and maintain unity at all costs.
When a worker or elder harshly criticizes another 2x2 or steps out of line in any way, the 2x2 thinks that “it’s just a test.”
God is testing me or them to see if we will become bitter or sweet.” They think that it’s their privilege to suffer. When things go wrong, the 2x2’s are encouraged to keep quiet.
They frequently quote from Psalms 144:14-15,
“That there be no complaining in the streets: happy is that people that is in such a case. Happy………..”
They are conditioned to think that they should be happy when they are not.
Gloom is written all over their faces.
Because they are told how to feel and what to think, they deny reality and their true feelings.
Those that realize they are not happy, don’t understand why.
They feel guilty and think that there is something wrong with them.
Recently, when patient dissatisfaction increased at a hospital, nurses were told that it was “THEIR FAULT.” Nursing forewarned administration that replacing registered nurses with unlicensed personnel was no way to cut health care costs. But they did it anyway. Now, nursing is taking the rap. Nurses have been told that they just need to be more friendly:
- “Introduce yourself by your first name,
- greet each patient by name,
- make eye contact and
- smile a lot and everything will be okay.
- Make sure you help your fellow co-workers.”
What an insult to Nursing!!
What a danger to patients!
Administration has totally evaded the real issue, patient safety and the health and welfare of the nurses as well. They actually think that an R.N. can safely take care of 14 patients on a Medical/Surgical Unit with one unlicensed staff member helping her and maintain patient satisfaction. They want the nurses to accept it all with a smile. But gloom and stress is written all over their faces. Administrators pass their own guilt to the nurses who usually willingly accept it.
Nurses are constantly taking on more and more responsibility with no increase in salary. “Oh, yes, we can do that and this. No problem.” It’s sickening. And it is not safe. There was a Nurses March in Washington recently to protest the unsafe nurse/patient ratio in hospitals nationwide.
Entry level Nursing education needs an overhaul. Nurses begin to lose their self-esteem the first day they start nursing school. And then they spend years trying to get over that experience. And people begin to lose their self-esteem in “the truth” when they sit in their very first meeting. I can remember how I hated being put down, torn down, told to “submit,” and “die,” week after week in meeting. The truth is, I felt better when I didn’t go.
Professing and being a nurse is a “double whammy,” a double dose of
oppression.
Nurses all too often are perceived as the doctor’s slave. I wonder if professing women are drawn to nursing because they seek out oppression.
Professing women, like nurses, see so much abnormal behavior that they
think it’s normal.
One woman wrote an article comparing the similarities of her nursing career to that of a battered wife. She felt trapped in her working environment and said that she had nowhere else to go.
How often in meeting have we heard, “But where else could we go?
There is no where else we can go.” The workers reinforce this idea at every
opportunity.
Abuse is physical in nursing. Nurses literally “run ragged” up and down the halls on Medical/Surgical Units without a break for 8-12 hours at a time. Graduate nurses fresh out of school hit the floors running and don’t stop until they fizzle out in a few short years. It’s no wonder so many nurses leave the profession. They can’t keep up the frantic pace on the hospital units. More and more nurses are changing to non-traditional nursing roles. They are getting away from direct patient care.
There is an increase in violence directed at emergency room nurses across the nation. Three emergency room nurses were gunned down while at work in California emergency rooms. At the last national conference of Emergency Room Nurses, there wa a special segment addressing violence in the workplace.
Becoming an Ex-2x2 has made me acutely aware of all abuse around me.
I am really sensitive to it. I hate all abuse!!
I am trying to “ROCK THE BOAT” in nursing. I am sensitive to all derogatory remarks and especially those that men make about women.
I am glad to see that professing people, ex-workers and ex-professing people are beginning to speak out about their person experiences with abuse.
USA
Posted in the F.P. -- Summer of ‘95
I just had the “privilege” of reading a transcript of
Ken Paginton’s
sermon at Second Masterton Convention in 1990.
He did a masterful job of reinforcing the “Party Line”………such subtle control of a group of people!! He touched on the usual stuff to get his “job” done:
- Having a right testimony,
- Having a right spirit,
- Bringing up the children,
- Education ( i.e. the fact that it’s not all that important),
- No higher calling than the “work,”
- The standards,
- Long hair on women,
- Being different than the world,
- And accepting correction.
Allow me to quote Mr. Paginton:
- “It doesn’t matter much what the world thinks about us, if God look down and says, “I have found you righteous.”
Too bad that Mr. Paginton doesn’t realize that God will NEVER find any of us righteous!!
We are ALL sinners!!
Someone should tell Mr. Paginton that we can be accepted by God, but not based on any ‘standard of righteousness’ we attain!!! We can only be accepted by God based on our faith that Jesus died to take our sin upon Himself!!
Ken also said:
- “It’s a wonderful thing to see children growing up with a love and respect for the workers and the meetings.”
Oh yes, just elevate those workers and the meetings.
But what really tickled my fancy, and caused me to write to you, is this:
“I hope there are some young people here who are thinking about the need in the world. Some years ago, I saw something that always helps me to understand a little more the value of spending a life in the Lord’s service. I think it was the second year I was in the work and my older companion was away and I was on my own for a few days and I had a meeting that night, and after the gospel meeting, the message came that an old lady was dying and would I come. I got on my bicycle and got there at half past 11 at night and went into the room and this old sister was lying there completely unconscious, she didn’t know anything.
I spoke to her and there was no reaction at all. Her family was there and her son who lived with her, nobody she knew better.
He took her hand and said,
“Mother, it’s John, do you know me?”
His touch and his voice meant absolutely nothing, completely gone.
Then he said,
“Mother, it’s John, do you know so-and-so?”
He mentioned the names of those two strangers who years before had brought the gospel, and that old lady sat right up in bed and she said, “Yes, I know them,” and fell back unconscious on her pillow.
When everything else had gone and nothing in life meant anything, still living in her memory
was the names of those two strangers who had brought her the only thing that meant anything
when she was going from time into eternity.
Could there be any better way to spend one’s life than telling that wonderful gospel?
No better way.
I learned something that night that I will never forget, that scene as she just fell back there on
the pillow, nothing else meant anything, just the names of those two servants of God who
brought this wonderful everlasting gospel.
I will resist commenting. Just thought your readers might “ENJOY” this as much as I did…………
I also read through some workers’ meeting notes recently.
They were full of clichés about “keeping on - keeping on!!
More proof that they are indeed a cult within a cult.
I think that workers must get bored out of their trees, sometimes.
Canada
Posted in the F.P. -- Summer of ‘95
