Don’t give up thinking for yourself.
The caravan of cars created as the Children of God moved from one campsite to another stretched out at times for a mile–this was in the early days of 1969 to February of 1970. We followed our leader, trusting in him because we believed he was trusting in Jesus. This was not a bad thing, except it bred a tendency not to think for oneself–the idea was to trust and follow. But one must be careful not to give up taking responsibility for oneself. The Bible, the handbook of true Christians, makes it plain that each person will stand alone before God one day; it will not do to say on that great day when we must give an account for our lives, “I just followed.” One must be careful not to give up that sense of personal responsiblity, no matter how charming are the words of the one who is your leader. You don’t want to give up thinking for yourself.
Thinking for yourself is really about integrity—being ready, willing and able to stand alone. Thinking for yourself isn’t something that often comes easily for a kid of twenty years of age, which is what I was when I joined the Children of God. I wish I had been more “my own person” then—which is another way of saying “Think for yourself!” in the face of all sorts of charming but undermining allurements—but I was not.
Did I wish too much to be accepted? I think so. Was I so needy I needed the approval of others more than to defend my own integrity? Yes. Did I use my mind to persuade myself to go along rather than stand up for what I suspected might be a better course? Yes. Was I afraid to say, “But wait a second, what about….” Yes. Now, looking back, I add all this up to come to this conclusion: Labor to think for yourself!
Here’s what happens: one finds a group to identify with, to call one’s own, and there’s a strong sort of gravitational pull to agree with one’s new colleagues and friends because of the wish to belong and a fear of missing out, especially if the appeal of the group appears to be based on something one values highly. One might also label this the fear of being excluded. In the face of the allure of belonging to that which suddenly seems so captivating and important, it may not be easy to grasp and hold on to your own integrity and your commitment to what is the highest principle you know. When being part of your gang or group or whatever you wish to call it, becomes so important, it’s hard to stand aloof enough to think for yourself, though ultimately this is what is required if one wants to be a man or woman of integrity.
Part of the problem for me was I feared what others would think of me if I challenged things, if I openly questioned anything about the group to which I was now pledging myself. I was affected by something which the old-fashioned translations of the Bible called “manpleasing.” It’s the tendency to put too much trust in the opinions of the men and women all around you, or call it the need for approval from others. I was affected by this tendency. But, as I say, that’s easy to do when “belonging,” once you choose a community to be your own, is so important—and this is especially, though not solely, a characteristic of young people, and I was very young.
Where’s the lesson here? Beware of situations where questioning is made to seem a grave error and less than noble behavior. One must learn that the noblest course is to value one’s integrity above even belonging to those whose opinion of you is so important.
“Integrity” is related to the word “integer,” a whole number. Integrity, by extension, represents singleness or wholeness or completeness of mind; you call it character. One must somehow learn to value most of all the maintenance of one’s integrity, one’s wholeness of mind, one’s character and personhood, as something high, good, noble and worth suffering to maintain. One could call integrity one’s sense of responsibility to that which is the highest thing one knows.
Did I wish too much to be accepted? I think so. Was I so needy I needed the approval of others more than to defend my own integrity? Yes. Did I use my mind to persuade myself to go along rather than stand up for what I suspected might be a better course? Yes. Was I afraid to say, “But wait a second, what about….” Yes. Now, looking back, I add all this up to come to this conclusion: Labor to think for yourself!
I did know Jesus already at the time I joined the cult, but it was hard for me to distinguish between what I thought Jesus wanted and what the cult was telling me Jesus wanted. I didn’t know the Bible well. I got confused and thought being loyal to the group was being loyal to the Bible and to God. This is how cults work, equating loyalty to the group with loyalty to that which is the highest one can do or be or know. Thus one sees why cults implicitly require persons to give up thinking for themselves, and it means cult members are too easily persuaded of things that really do bear questioning.
Regarding any potential problems within the group, we were conditioned early-on in The Children of God to squelch any inclination to blame leadership, criticize leadership, or doubt leadership, and the foundation of this conditioning was laid in biblical texts—but in a misinterpretation of them. One might summarize this conditioning under the heading, “The things you couldn’t think.” It’s hard to think for yourself if you also believe there are things you couldn’t—or shouldn’t—think. One of the leaders back when I joined came up with a saying—it was Miguel, who I’ll mention further later: “If you think, think, think, you’ll sink, sink, sink, because you stink, stink, stink.” Mo actually ordered that saying to stop—not because it didn’t reflect a real attitude in the group, but, I think, because it was just too blatantly candid; it looked and sounded so bad. The same young leader came up with another saying: “My family, my family, right or wrong, my family.” Miguel had been something of a political radical before he joined and he brought along some of the notions that went with that into his role as leader in the group. Mo canned that saying, too—not because he didn’t want also to promote a fanatical loyalty to the group among us, but because, I think, it just didn’t look or sound very good; it seemed to suggest we were to put loyalty to The Children of God family above matters of right or wrong. But both sayings played a role in my thinking in the early days—I tended to believe them. And, despite the fact that they’d been officially disapproved of, they never quite left me and played a role in my mental outlook until the very end of my time in the C.O.G.
So where does one start to act on this imperative, to “Think for oneself?” What solid ground can one begin to stand on if one is to have any hope of doing such a thing? I think the answer is the conscience; a person has to learn to cherish that thing called conscience—that which reminds you of the highest thing you know. It’s not infallible, but it’s not to be ignored, either.
In my years with the Children of God, time and again the little whispers of conscience were there—only I didn’t heed them, for I feared losing too many things that were important to me. I feared disapproval. The lesson is that there’s nothing as important as pausing when conscience sends one of those little “checks,” those little moments when something in you says, “I’m not sure about this….” It’s scary because it can cost you a lot. You’ll be “out there” all by yourself with your qualms. But if you want to be a person of integrity, of character, it is unwise to deny the imperative to think for yourself. One must take conscience seriously and not let it be squelched.
There is that thing in us that corresponds to that which is the highest we know—stored for us in our consciences. The cult thrives by taking truths, selectively chosen and removed from their proper context, and using them to hem you in so that you can’t separate your sense of what is highest from what the thinking of the group tells you is highest. Thus, if you move in any way contrary to the group’s view, you cannot escape feeling you’ve betrayed that which is highest. I hope that makes senses, for this is what happens!
This is what the cult does—it takes advantage of one’s wish to be loyal, to be a person of integrity, to be a consistent, whole, logically-operating person. It does this in order to steal your freedom, to deceive and manipulate and bind you in, destroying your integrity and ultimately devouring that which ultimately makes you, you; instead you become an unwitting slave of the cult.
The cult must silence your conscience or seek to take it over, though happily this “take over” is not something fated to be permanent. The whole effect of the cult is to prompt you to surrender your will to the one running the cult so that you do not think for yourself. But one must resist this, for one’s whole future as a flourishing human being is at stake. Of course one can be wrong about some qualm and you don’t want to be contrary for contrariness’ sake—you want to be teachable. But you also don’t want to capitulate because of fear, stifling the voice of conscience because of the fear of man. This, then, is the first lesson I can say I’ve begun learning—but it took a long experience of the Children of God before I could start following its imperative, and it took a long process after I left, to take it to heart.
