Hebrews 13,7 (21st King James Version)
Dear Reader!
First, thanks to everyone who responded to me personally about the last post, a tough one to read. I was encouraged to receive feedback and strengthened in my hope that these posts are bringing wisdom to others.
In the past few weeks I have started to watch the Netflix original show "House of Cards". After the first episode I was hesitant to continue as the main character and his wife are basically on an unstoppable pursuit of political power, driven by mere vanity, using, deceiving, and discarding the ones also in hopes to jump up the ladder. All that darkness and lack of moral conviction seemed too bad to expose my mind to. I chose to continue to check it out and got sucked into the schemes, crimes, abuse, and foul play, realizing eventually that in the main character I am observing the mindset of a psychopathic leader, quite familiar to me.
Yes, to my best knowledge my former cult leader is a psychopath, following the definition that a psychopath is a person that hurts others and never feels remorse. A recommendable explanation of a psychopath in 18 pictures based on the Hare Definition can be found here: http://www.wikihow.com/Identify-a-Psychopath
So my question in today's post is:
Can psychopathic leaders be recognized for who they are before they trap you?
I believe "yes". Here is why and how;
It is all about emerging character. Character is defined by Merriam-Webster as:
the way someone thinks, feels, and behaves : someone's personality
You can create a shiny stage persona, but eventually the real you will shine through, especially to an open minded, not infatuated observer.
1) Today's Bible quote from Hebrews advises us to observe leaders closely. Not only their teachings, their preachings, prayers, prophecies, published books or number of children; On the contrary, it tells us to observe them as a person when they DO NOT have the mic (even though they can surely expose their issues during all of the above).
What ever observations of character, good, bad or ugly, needs to be taken seriously. If there are any grievances concerning their character, then...
2) Leaders need to be made aware of the observed shortcomings. In this step it is all about observing how a leader reacts to issues concerning his person being brought to his attention. This step is as crucial as the first, because it brings even more character to the surface.
a) If the leader responds to criticism with humility- even if the observation was wrong- there is hope for that leader.
b) If the leader diverts the attention away from his exposed weakness to the person who brings it up, making them the problem, the rebellious one, the one that "touches the anointed", we have a clear case of a bad leader in the making.
I'm going to show you how this can play out with two minor but telling cult-times experiences:
The Case Of The Shared Breakfast-Rolls Basket
Early on in my cult days the leaders asked me and other new followers to meet them for social outings. It so happened that one Sunday morning my eventually best friend in the group, let's call her Ms. Co-Dependent from now on, and I met the two leaders for breakfast at a nice restaurant. We decided to order a breakfast for 4 and were given one little basket with a small selection of rolls. Ms. Co-Dependent took offense in the leader picking the one roll that happened to be the only one of its kind in our basket, without asking the others if they may want it. She brought this up to me later that day and I, seeing that it was bothering her, encouraged her to bring it up to the leader. So, she did. That phone call did not go as well as desired. The leader behaved in a 2b) manner, telling her that it is wrong from her to question him like that and that he deserves the roll he wants, being the leader he is. Both she and I were intimidated by this display of power and felt bad for thinking badly of him. Petty example, but clear display of bad character.
The Case Of The Ridiculed Son
If there was any particular group culture established, next to dressing up, it would be ridicule. The leader set the tone of never ending, constant ridiculing of others, pointing out their flaws, their weaknesses, serious problems, mocking and laughing about anyone for what ever reason he could find. It was great entertainment to him and a clear power play as no one could ever get to him without being ridiculed even more. This was like in a food chain passed on to the next lower in the ranks person if he wasn't around.
I, back in the days when I was considered a to-be-reckoned-with prophetic voice, pointed this out to the leader various times. But it was also ignored various times. Then there was this one time when the leader had his 4 or 5 year old son with him at a service. After meeting me so many times I was surprised to see his son not calling me by name, but hanging on to his fathers legs. So, in front of the leader, I asked his son if my name was the name of Ms. Co-Dependent.
That harmless question, originating from a place of trying to get this little kid to remember my name, was turned into a severe case of child maltreatment, which of course had to be followed up with one of those "meetings with the leader/s", that was initiated with a phone call- during my studies for a near exam- of the co leader telling me that he is going to pick me up at a certain place in the city in 15 minutes, which of course are never 15 minutes, so what the heck did I drop everything and ran there for?, being finally picked up by the co leader to realize that he enjoys that I am literally in fear over this sudden meeting, being late to meet the leader which meant running to catch up with the leader and his dogs for their walk; and that ended with me repenting for child abuse and not washing my hair that morning, me defending that my fiancé (who was still living in the US at that time) IS the right choice for my life, and go on with the creepy feeling that, according to the leader, I am drifting into some weird spiritualism that he couldn't pinpoint clearly. Another clear case of bad character and really bad leadership, and again made possible by an intimidated even more confused version of myself.
Conclusion
We can know a bad tree by bad fruits, Jesus said so 2000 years ago. I was too distracted, infatuated, and immature to apply that wisdom and got badly burned. But there is a lot of hope in this lesson! Don't allow yourself to get away with bad character and apply the same standard to others, especially the ones that have authority over you. I am not speaking of a rebellious, anti-establishment attitude;
I have learned from my past mistakes and know now better what it means to walk through life free from idolizing people. I want to see them how and for what God sees them. I desire to see the truth and not be distracted by vain promises. I have put my ambitions in life into God's hand and therefore don't need shady people to help me up a ladder. I have nothing to prove to anyone as I have proven already that those pursuits really do not work well for me. I have surrendered into Jesus' lead. I have never known more peace and freedom from anxiety than in this season. Talk of some good fruit!
As messed up, corrupted, immorally explicit, and ethically debilitated the show "House Of Cards" is, we can learn from the unfolding story. Everybody has a motive that needs to be identified and then can be used to get them to become one's puppet or, if that doesn't work; everybody has a nasty secret that can be discovered and used to blackmail them so they do what you want them to. And all that so that one man can fulfill his aspirations of grandeur. It works in fiction and it works in reality. The more we know and let the Holy Spirit clean up our motives and come to terms with our secrets the less ammunition a bad leader has to shoot us with. The more we look to God to fulfill our needs the less likely we are to become slaves of others.
We will continue to look at what good and bad leadership looks like in future posts.
To discovering that the Good News are much better than we thought!
