A logical critique
The
target of this post is to analyze the doctrine of The Law of Love and its
premises from a non-theological perspective, judging the sensibility of its
supporting premises and the logical consistency and coherency of its arguments
in their own right and without respect to any Christian doctrines or theology. The
first two posts in this series have criticized The Law of Love with arguments
which were based on other Christian assumptions like the authority and validity
of the Bible, and the nature of marriage etc, but this post will not invoke any
theology or Christian doctrine. This post will feature only the claims and
arguments that The Law of Love itself makes. The question that I’m concerned
with in this post can be put simply in this way: does the sexual doctrine of The Law of Love make sense?
The
Law of Love literature which most famously features The Family’s doctrine of
extramarital sex is really a kind of social philosophy. Other Family
publications that make reference to the Law of Love often stress that the
sexual aspect of The Law of Love is not the primary subject of this doctrine
which is really an ethic. Sex is significant in the doctrine of The Law of Love
as a social manifesto because it is perceived to be useful to the end of
achieving The Law of Love’s social ideal.
David
Berg believed that sex has long been misunderstood by the Christian west, and
that it has uses which go beyond procreation and the marriage bed. In The Law
of Love’s social sexuality, the body is not personal property and neither is
sex the property of marriage, but both, belonging to The Lord, are to be used
for the unification and well being of the community. The Law of Love offers a
model for society in which sex is a kind of social adhesive, creating
inter-family unit cohesion.
I
wanted to mention that part of the premise for The Law of Love’s social
sexuality is not so unorthodox. For instance, the idea that the body is not
one’s own property and that sex’s purpose is social—I think most Christian
faith traditions would find these two statements to be fairly agreeable. I
believe that the major disagreement is centered on these two fundamental
issues:
1. Sex’s telos, the purpose for which sex was designed.
2. The
ways in which sex can and ought to be used in society.
Point
number 1 is a principally a theological issue, but point 2 is not strictly
theological. The Law of Love (and related Family literature), argues for a
number of special and unusual uses for sex. These arguments are subject to the
rules of logic and common sense. In other words, The Law of Love’s conclusions
about how sex can be used are arrived at by logical methods which are either
correct or incorrect and they are based upon premises that are either true or
false. My goal in this post is to consider those arguments and their methods
and evaluate the truth of their premises.
To
answer the question in the title of this post—“Does the doctrine of the law of
love make sense?”—I’m going to scrutinize three arguments that are used to
support three uses of sex that The Law of Love proposes. The Law of Love is a
model for society in which sex is used as a social adhesive and a charitable
community resource, but if these arguments aren’t sound, then their conclusions
could only be true by accident. Likewise if these arguments aren’t sound then
the law of love’s sex doctrine is also unsound and The Law of Love’s practice
of extramarital sex could only be morally correct by accident.
I’ve
known many people who, whether they practice the doctrine or not, seem to view
the sexual doctrine of The Law of Love as having a very noble purpose. Surely
this view is reasonable if these assumptions about sex are correct. If sex can
do the things that The Law of Love claims, then The Law of Love must be very
useful; if sex is as important to health and well being as we are told, then
The Law of Love must be very charitable. And if sex is capable of saving people
from loneliness then my friends are right, The Law of Love must be of very
noble intent. But if sex doesn’t work in those ways, then the act of
extramarital sex can’t have the value that The Law of Love ascribes to it and
those who ascribe to it have been mislead.
Let’s get cracking! The following are three uses of sex which are fundamental to the doctrine of the law of love; these are some of the ways that the law of love uses sex…
© As a
tool for achieving special unity, strong interpersonal relationships, and group
cohesion.
© As a
charitable act to meet the unsatisfied biological needs of the undersexed.
© As a
remedy for loneliness.
Now
I’m going to do my best to clearly articulate the arguments that The Law of Love
makes in support of these unique uses of sex.
(Note)
There are a few technical terms which are used in this post that have very
specific meanings with respect to the disciplines of Logic and Critical
Thought. Logical validity and soundness, for instance, are two terms that I
will repeatedly use. If you aren’t already familiar with these terms then you
can read about them at this website: http://www.iep.utm.edu/val-snd/
Charitable Sex
(Sex as an act of
philanthropy)
1. Christians
ought to be charitable: giving what is in their power to give to those who are
in need of it.
2. Human
beings need sex in the same way that they need food, sleep, and exercise.
3. There
are people who don’t naturally get enough sex, and so, are in need of it.
Conclusion:
Christians
ought to make themselves sexually available, when it is in their power to do
so, to people who need sex.
I believe that this argument is the most important that the law of love offers. If sex has the capacity to be used charitably then not only is it easy to see how sex is an important social tool, but also how the law of love really is a Christian doctrine.
The
main problem that I find with this argument concerns the truth of premise 2. Is
it really true that human beings need sex in the same way that they need food,
sleep, and exercise? Is sex really necessary to life and health the way that food,
sleep, and exercise are? In what sense can this possibly be true?
There
are clear and adverse effects to a body that does not sleep, eat, or exercise,
while there is no clear evidence that sexual abstinence poses any threat to
health. On the contrary, sexual abstinence may be an effective way to avoid
many real health risks. Furthermore we have at our disposal numerous examples
of people (and no lack of Christians) who have chosen a life of sexual
abstinence for some reason or other and do so without any report of mal health.
The
argument for sex as a meaningful charitable act relies heavily on the
assumption that sex is in some way essential to health. But we have no reason
to treat sex as an emotional or biological necessity. I’m not denying that there
are certain health benefits associated with a healthy sex life, but to say “sex
is healthy” is a very different thing than saying “health depends on sex”, or
that sexually abstinent people can’t also enjoy good health.
Premise
2 is clearly false; our “need” for sex can’t be compared to our need for food,
sleep, or exercise, so the argument for charitable sex is unsound. But is there
a way that this argument could work without assuming that sex is a biological
requirement? Can sex still be a meaningful act of charity if it doesn’t fulfill
any biological needs? Let’s revise the argument and see…
1. Christians ought to be charitable: giving what is in their power to give to those who are in need of it.
2. Human
beings need like sex. in the same way that they need food, sleep, and
exercise.
3. There
are people who don’t naturally get enough as
much sex as they would like, and so, are
in need of desire it.
Conclusion:
Christians
ought to make themselves sexually available, when it is in their
power to do so, to people who need sex.
power to do so, to people who need sex.
If the argument was valid before, it certainly isn’t now. That is, the conclusion doesn’t follow necessarily from the premises. It may be possible to make a more modest argument which argues for the possibility of sexual charity as a concept--although much more eminently important forms of charity abound which do satisfy unmet biological requirements. But this argument which argues for the existence of a moral responsibility to satisfy the needs of the undersexed is logically unsound.
Sex as a remedy for loneness
1. Christians
ought to be charitable: giving what is in their power to give to those who are
in need of it.
2. People
need companionship.
3. Some
people don’t have a personal companion, and so, are deprived of companionship.
4. Having
sex with a person assuages loneliness and provides companionship.
Conclusion: Christians
ought to make themselves sexually available, when possible, to people who don’t
have a personal companion and who suffer from loneliness.
I know that I’m no expert when it comes to matters of the heart, but premise 4 seems very dubious to me. I doubt that sex is really what a lonely heart desires; clearly what a lonely person needs is companionship. But maybe someone will argue, “Do you deny that a person can experience companionship while having sex?” Well no, I agree that a person is more likely to experience companionship while having sex than he would while spending time alone, but this fact isn’t only true for sexual acts. This same argument can be made for any activity that involves two or more people: “Christians ought to play checkers, when possible, with people who suffer from loneliness”.
People
don’t need to be having sex to keep each other company, and if shared company
is what alleviates loneliness then I don’t see what sex adds to the solution in
the first place.
But
then again, sometimes people want a special kind of companionship: not just
someone to play checkers with, but someone to share a romantic love with. In
this case I still don’t see what sex by itself can do. When a person wants
romantic love (Eros), sex alone still isn’t sufficient. They still need a
person to love and belong to, not just a person to perform sex with.
Sex gains its meaning and all of the romance
with which we imbue it when it is practiced between a man and woman who belong
to each other. On its own, sex, after all, is nothing but a biological function
of the body that even the insects perform; it’s the context of sex that makes
it so special, or so vulgar, or so plainly biological.
If
sex could remedy loneliness on its own, then we would have to change our
attitude about prostitution and the idea that “you can’t buy happiness”.
The argument for sex as a remedy for
loneliness relies on a premise that is naively ignorant of the nature of love,
sex, loneliness, and of human emotions (apparently more so than I am). It also
isn’t logically sound or valid. Sex is not the same thing as love, romance, and
companionship, and it’s a poor substitution for those things.
Sex for Greater Unity
1. It
is good for Christians to strive to live in love and unity with one another.
2. Sex engenders
unity between people when it is practiced in accordance with The Law of Love.
Conclusion:
To use sex (in accordance with the guidelines
of The Law of Love) to achieve love and unity in a community is good and right.
Let’s suppose, for the sake of the
argument, that premise 2 is correct, and that sex can create a bond of unity
between its two subjects who have practiced it in accordance with The Law of
Love. In this case the conclusion still doesn’t follow by necessity from the
premises. Even if sex can do what The Law of Love claims, it is not necessarily
good and right that sex should be used for such a purpose. I suspect that the
most important reasons why sex ought not to be used to create social cohesion
the way that The Law of Love proposes are theological, but I promised at the
beginning of this post not to appeal to theology so I won’t discuss them. But
there are other strictly logical reasons why this argument’s conclusion doesn’t
follow from the premises. For instance, let’s assume that premise 2 is true: let’s
assume that when extramarital sex is practiced in accordance with The Law of
Love, greater unity is always the result. Before the new doctrine can go on the
market we need to test for error. We need to have an accurate idea about how
the doctrine will perform in society before it is made available to the public.
We need to know how often people will fail to practice it correctly, and what
will be the consequences for such malpractice. It may be that in attempting to
practice such a doctrine so many would fail to practice it correctly that the
harm which would result in terms of divorces and broken homes would be too
great for this doctrine to be worth attempting. But this is just one example
that is meant to show that the argument “Sex for Greater Unity” isn’t logically
valid.
And although I didn’t address the
validity premise 2 at all, it isn’t because I don’t find it to be very
doubtful. I suspect that this is yet another overextension of sex’s abilities
and correct uses. And if sex were such a social utility as The Law of Love
apparently believes it to be, I wonder why The Family has been the only society
to think of it.
As a side note, it seems to be a common
approach to evaluate The Law of Love by how it functions in theory: to talk
about the things it can do in the ideal situation. This approach seems to be
essentially flawed because The Law of Love is not intended to be applied in
theory but in a real society full of imperfect people and non-ideal situations.
If The Law of Love can’t work in a real society, then it’s useless to us. So
it’s useless to evaluate this doctrine in abstract, its value is connected to
its usefulness to us. For example: it doesn’t matter if a miracle drug can, in
theory, cure cancer if it kills all or most of the people to whom it is
administered.
*Bonus
feature*
I want to also mention
an argument that may not belong strictly to The Law of Love itself but seems to
be a popular defense of the doctrine no less.
This is one of my personal favorites, I call
it “The Evolutionary Argument” and it goes something like this…
The Evolutionary Argument
1. People
(men in particular) are not designed for monogamy as illustrated by our
powerful desire for extramarital sex.
2. To
prevent the body from performing its polyamorous function is unnatural and
unreasonable.
Conclusion: Extramarital
sex is normal and natural behavior that shouldn’t be discouraged or prevented.
This is an argument that I have heard with surprising frequency and has usually been articulated by young men.
What surprises me
about this argument are its underlying assumptions. For one, it doesn’t assume
any Christian doctrines about the body or about marriage, and seems to assume a
very evolutionary theory about human sexuality (which is an unusual idea for a
Family member to be in possession of). It also acts strangely (almost
nihilistically) ignorant of reasons why people (both Christians and
non-Christians [but especially Christians]) ought to, and in fact do, routinely
deny their biological impulses from having authority over their person and behavior This argument with its hidden assumptions can
be easily modified to argue in favor of things like rape.
But back to a logical
perspective, both of the supporting premises of this argument are very
questionable and presume a number of underlying assumptions that are purely
theoretical themselves. The premises of this argument need their own arguments,
and the hidden presuppositions need to be substantiated and supported as well.
This argument also “begs the question” by assuming the conclusion to be true in
premise 1: that people aren’t meant to be monogamous. This is the equivalent to
saying that people are meant to be polyamorous which is essentially the same
proposition that is made in the conclusion.
Closing
argument
I’ve taken my time in
previous posts to theologically evaluate The Law of Loves sex doctrine, but to
what rigors is it really necessary to subject an argument that is itself
logically flawed at the start? The sexual doctrine of the law of love can’t
stand on its own two feet so it needs no defeater. Its arguments don’t make
sense and their conclusions: the proposed ways in which sex can be used for
good, are unfounded. We have no good reason to believe that sex can be a
meaningful act of charity, or that sex can or should be used to create social
harmony, or that sex alone is a functional solution for loneliness as The Law
of Love claims. I want to close this post with two open ended questions:
1. What
meaning is left in the practice of extramarital sex?
2. What
purpose does this act accomplish if not the ones which The Law of Love claims?
24 comments:
"And if sex were such a social utility as The Law of Love apparently believes it to be, I wonder why The Family has been the only society to think of it."
You may want to consider this point a bit more, as utopian societies have often used sex in a similar manner. However, you could drop this point and it wouldn't detract from your overall argument.
Good point. I'm not sure why I said that seeing as I've made another argument against the LOL's model by comparison to that of the Nicolaitans: a heretical gnostic sect that St. Irenaeus chastised.
Very well written and logically sound, I like it.
I would say that perhaps the doctrine was useful when inside a society that artificially had a very small dating pool it would have allowed people more flexibility when looking for a partner when otherwise they would have needed to look outside the group it may be the reason that it lasted as long as it did
another possible reason it was implemented would be the destruction of the coherence of the family unit (as in many early letters MO would talk about breaking up smaller families for the needs of the big one)as having "Jesus babies" and most other aspects of the law of love serve to promote not unity as is stated as a reason but passiveness as you have a lot to lose (sexually) by upsetting the apple cart
I guess your not really looking at it from the perspective of why and or how it was used in the TFI but I would be interested in hearing your take on that
Very interesting perspectives - and made much more readable by your improved spelling and grammar. Kudos.
I found your views on the "Evolutionary Theory" especially interesting and quite accurate.
I feel that TFI's viewpoints/beliefs on the LOL were formed with good intentions. Unfortunately, very often a good thing can be twisted and end up causing more harm than good. Did good come from these beliefs? I feel that it did. But because the beliefs were so prevalent (even imposed), harm was also done and people ended up feeling pressured into something that they didn't necessarily agree with.
Change is a great thing.
Very logical argument.
How did this subject provoke your interest, and why did you decide not to put a theological spin on this discussion?
One: thanks for participating.
It's interesting to look at the sociological forces that helped to bring these doctrines into existence as you have done. I don't think it's enough, however, to evaluate a doctrine like The Law of Love on the basis of its usefulness. (Which seems questionable [to me] anyway if it has had anything to do with The Family's overall success as a social movement).
Maria and Peter have published a number of publications that give these kinds of socio-historical explanations for doctrines like The Law of Love which have come under scrutiny, while insufficient attention has been devoted to much more important questions about its moral correctness, logicality, and its general cohesion with the Christian religion.
I'm just curious:
As a person who has spent the majority of his life in The Family I've naturally spent a lot of time thinking about these doctrines. These kinds of arguments would have been very useful to me 10 years ago, so I hope they will be useful to someone today.
The reason why I left theology out of this post was to allow me to discuss The Law of Love's arguments in more detail and, as I mentioned in the closing argument, an argument which isn't logically sound in the first place doesn't need to undergo any other scrutiny.
Anonymous: Thanks for your compliment and participation.
Philosophical discourse, tradition, hermeneutics, and wisdom are all necessary because good intentions are inadequate. Your comment reminded me of a passage in The Westminster Confession of Faith:
"The two great pillars upon which the kingdom of Satan is erected, and by which it is upheld, are ignorance and error...and indeed, in every sin there is something both of ignorance and error at the bottom: for, did sinners truly know what they do in sinning, we might say of every sin what the Apostle speaks concerning that great sin, 'Had they known him, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory'...".
For some time it's seemed to me that the whole thing was an "edge case," mostly to prove a point (the primacy of love), that went way too far.
Is there any conceivable case in this or any other universe where sex before or outside of marriage could conceivably be the better, kinder, more Christlike choice? Probably yeah.
And probably all the 5,000 people that Jesus bothered to feed with the loaves and fishes weren't literally going to die of hunger, Jesus just figured he'd be a pal and send them home a little happier and more comfortable.
But you can't build morality (or much of anything else) around edge cases. And somewhere along the line when "maybe possibly in some rare cases" became something perilously close to a moral imperative, well, sharks were jumped and a not-so-good time was had by all.
It’s like those "what if" ethics arguments people have like "ok, well, what if either the pre-term baby had to die or the mother would die... oh and she has six other kids?" Or lethal force in self defense, just war theory, voluntarily offering your body as a food source to your starving companions on a raft in the pacific, and on and on.
Yeah there are edge cases, but using them as a cornerstone of morality and practice is probably a bad idea.
And it's also telling that male-favoring, heterosexual interaction was the liberty targeted. There's a ton of other edge cases that could have been highlighted--I won't even bother with examples. It's just too easy a bandwagon to jump on, and for that reason alone, it probably should have been avoided.
Now of course under all classic Christianities, there's no room for it at all, so it wouldn't have even come up. I'm talking even given TFI's non-traditional theologies, even given a "love is the most important thing" religion, it's still a stretch because it isn't--as you rightly show--"that which is needful to the body."
It's certainly useful as a way to make a strong point about love and self-sacrifice, as providing legitimate bodily needs is really not even praiseworthy, it's just being a decent human. To inconvenience yourself to that degree to provide a want or a perk, with only altruistic motives, is showing an awful lot of love.
But that's a bit like saying that tying your son to an altar and being just about ready to stab and burn him on God's command is admirable because it shows a lot of faith. That may be true, but it's a very dangerous thing to play around with.
I'd boil it down to yes, the point literally stands: LOL-style sex, murder, abortion, homosexuality, etc may in some edge cases be the more loving, Christlike thing to do. Some more frequently than others. But NEVER should an imperative have been attached or even implied.
It’s interesting to note that it didn’t start out as “you really should do this,” and it’s hard to pinpoint a time when that transition occurred. It was more or less one of those “what if” discussions, and the proverbial “slippery slope” (snicker snicker) took effect.
So, all that to say, I basically agree with you. (Except what do you have against evolutionary theory? It's true; and it's high time we all came to grips with that.)
Anonymous, a question.
You said, "...what do you have against evolutionary theory? It's true; and it's high time we all came to grips with that."
Now then, do you say that evolutionary theory is true because you think it is, or do you say it is true because it is fact? If it is a fact, then what evidence do you have for believing it to be so--seeing as how the big bang (which evolution depends on)--is a logical fallacy? And, furthermore, if it is a "fact" then why is it still called a "theory" in the scientific world (which is one step away from being a hypothesis) and not a scientific law, like the law of gravity?
Don't get me wrong though, I am not saying that sex is not, ultimately, a biological function. It is, there is no way in getting around that. However, just because human males are biologically programmed to have sex with as many human females as they possibly can and, therefore, continue their lineage it does not mean that we descended from apes, or that the universe was formed from a dot that spun rapidly.
I know, a little off the point, and I apologize for that. However, it seems to me that this is an important point because, if indeed the evolutionary theory is correct, then that means that scripture is quite possibly untrue, and if scripture is quite possibly untrue then it means that, theologically, the LOL could very well be permissible.
"The Big Bang is a logical fallacy?" -- Oh sure. Sort of like ad hominem or post hoc!
"Evolutionary theory depends on the Big Bang?" -- You're confusing cosmology and biology.
If scripture is untrue then the LOL is theologically permissible? -- Wha..? Speaking of logical fallacies, look up "non sequitor."
Anonymous: thanks for the comment, and sorry for taking so long to get back to you. Having finished my finals and returned to physical health I'm now ready to participate again on my blog.
--“Is there any conceivable case in this or any other universe where sex before or outside of marriage could conceivably be the better, kinder, more Christlike choice? Probably yeah.”--
I’d be very interested to hear an example of a case in which you believe that Christ would have engaged in extramarital sex for some charitable purpose. Even if we assume that there could be such a thing as “edge cases”--where extramarital sex is not sinful, I can’t imagine any case where helping someone out by providing “a perk” could be so important that it could be worth the costs listed below.
1. The risk of creating illegitimate children who risk being deprived of proper mother-father care.
2. The risk of offending against propriety and creating a misleading example of behavior that is usually destructive and immoral. (As the Christian archetype this is a serious risk in Christ’s case.)
3. The increased risk of developing a habit of promiscuity, a formidable vice which, like most vices, becomes more threatening when a person has a taste for it and when some intellectual provision has been made for it.
4. The risk of contributing to the ill health of the beneficiary of such charity. Sexual fixations, compulsions, disorders, and the heart adultery that Christ speaks of in Matt 5 are common and difficult to remedy. Any charitable act that might contribute to an unhealthy sexuality would be no favor.
¬In any case I very much doubt that there are special cases where extramarital sex ought to be used for charity. I don’t believe that sex is a thing that was meant to be used for charity, and with the multitude of ways in which a person can show love to another, it seems that only a lack of creativity and experience would ever force a person to provide sex in order to show someone “an awful lot of love”.
I do agree that there are special cases in which the ethical course of action is unusual, but it isn’t true that every rule has special exceptions. You need to give an argument to show that there are such things as “edge cases” in which the morally correct course of action is to have extramarital sex; you can’t just assume it to be true.
Lastly, I wasn’t making any kind of statement about evolution. I only remarked that it was unusual for a Family member to assume an evolutionary view. But I’m not sure what you mean when you say “evolutionary theory is true” since I don’t think you have any way of “knowing” that.
Incidentally, we can’t even know that the theory of gravity is “true”, despite what Andre said, however useful the theory is. The scientific method is inductive and can’t yield that kind of information.
Andre: You might be surprised to know that atheistic cosmologists hate the Big Bang theory as much as you do. That's one reason why we've been able to enjoy so many fantastic and fascinating brain stretching attempts to otherwise explain the phenomenon of the universe by atheist scientists like Stephen Hawking. The Big Bang theory is scandalously metaphysical, invoking some powerful causal agent that exists beyond time and space. How else could time and space, plus all of the matter and energy in the universe instantly come into being?
The Big Bang theory is not atheistic.
Jason:
I know that there are alot of atheists that don't like the Big Bang. However, I know alot that...well...do. Perhaps I was in error to assume that Anonymous believed in it. (I'll admit to that.) But, as I stated above, we must first explain from where existence started before we can talk about whether or not we developed from lower species. I have a difficult time believing that God would create a world of slime and explosions and then sit back to "let nature take its course." Given the immense fine tuning of the natural world, and the hair-triggered mathematical accuracy of everything I'd say that the evidence points more towards a creator more than anything else.
However, yeah, it was a bit off topic. I was just curious more than anything else.
Recently my husband and I have been studying up on what the Bible really says about the sexual practice of the LofL, essentially adultery, and what we've really been trying so hard to practice all these years we've been married, and individually before. A church we're visiting, though we probably won't join until we clear out all some of these majorly wrong beliefs, gave us this list of verses and chapters to read:
Lev 18:20; 20:10
Deu 22:22
Prov 6:29
Eze 22:11
Mat 5:27-32
Mar 10:2-12
1 Cor 5:9-13
1 Cor 6:18-20
1 Thes 4:3-5
Also 2 Peter is scarily reminiscent of DBB, the man who founded TFI and who i personally studied like a college course in my early teens and later.
These articles you wrote are very eye-opening and i've recommend them to different ppl who are re-evaluating these things...and my hubby and i actually read them together and discussed them as part of our personal process of re-discovering our morality :)
Also I've noticed in my recent research that an automatic 'block' goes up when i read something that says i was 'required' to believe in something like the LofL or LJ in order to be in tfi, because really, it's always been stated by DBB, maria, etc. that it's all purely voluntary. But then I've read different explanations about tfi literature and methods used by dbb specifically to 'encourage' obedience and loyalty. It was eye-opening how something can be 'voluntary' but if you don't believe and practice it you're 'nonspiritual,' 'unrevolutionary,' and going to lose, or not receive, God's special blessings.
Anyways, here are somethings i found about that:
*Obedience, Criticism and Murmuring (by Lord Justice Ward): http://www.xfamily.org/index.php/Complete_Judgment_of_Lord_Justice_Ward#OBEDIENCE.2C_CRITICISM_AND_.22MURMURING.22
*The role of the MO Letter (by Lord Justice Ward): http://www.xfamily.org/index.php/Complete_Judgment_of_Lord_Justice_Ward#THE_ROLE_OF_THE_MO_LETTERS
* No Regrets: http://www.xfamily.org/index.php/All_of_These_Things_Moved_Me#STAY_ON_THE_WALL_AND_NONE_OF_THESE_THINGS_MOVE_ME
And there was more, not to mention simply thinking back over the past and my own past attitudes and perceptions... Anyways, food for thought for sure.
Thanks for reading Ren. Just so you know, this post is the third in a series that I've written about the Law of Love. You can read all of them in order if you click the "Law of Love" tag in the tagbox on the sidebar at the homepage or at the footer of this post.
I did read them all, actually we did :P they're very good
Thanks for writing them
Ren, I was thinking about your one of your comments about whether or not The Family "required" people to believe in it's doctrines and I had two points to make with regard to it.
1. The Family did "require" people to believe in their doctrines as far as it's possible to require belief. As someone who cronically suffered from disbelief in Family doctrine. I clearly remember passages in publications like "The Year of the Bottom Line" in which language like. "This isn't a cafeteria style religion" was used. As far as it was possible, Family leadership did require belief in their doctrines.
2. When I was thinking about your comment I was under the false impression that you were deciding whether or not members were *forced* to believe.
Again, my response is yes, Family members were "forced" to believe as far as it was possible for Family leaders to enforce belief.
We need to remember that it's really impossible in the strictest sense of the word to "force" someone to believe something. But it is possible to manipulate the *will to believe*, and I think that Family leadership, from the top down, has done everything that they could have done (lacking any technical training) to manipulate the will of Family members toward believing Family doctrine.
Among such methods were...
1.Public demonstrations of disciplinary measures exacted against dissenters.
2. Appeal to divine authority--specifically divine punishment and reward (often used in conjunction with public punishment).
3. Legal requirement: the Family's principal governing document,"the Love Charter", required FD family members to adhere to a particular set of doctrines.
4. Peer pressure and groupthink: The publishers and upper level leadership created an environment in homes where the "group spirit" created a very uncomfortable environment for doubters and suppressed critical thought (unless, like scientists on the payroll of the tobacco companies, your investigation supported your boss's doctrine).
What methods could Family leaders have plausibly used to manipulate the will to believe that weren't used?
why did you remove my comment?or it was straight and to the point?
I didn't remove any comments. I believe you'll find your comment and my response to it on my other post entitled (I've written three about The Law of Love) "The Christian Model for Marriage". You can copy and paste the link below.
http://nashville9.blogspot.com/2010/05/institution-of-marriage-which-has-for.html?showComment=1297346405604#comment-c2784504714654335337
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