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AR 26:27 - Wokeness and how hurt people hurt people
In this issue:
CULTURE - Wokeness and "the abused becoming abusers" cycle
DISCERNMENT - mood-driven "objective judgment" seen to be counterintuitive
ISLAM - a Muslim apologist gives all apologists a bad name
Apologia Report 26:27 (1,532)
July 8, 2021
CULTURE
"Until around 300 years ago, deviations from religious orthodoxies could result in fines, floggings, banishment, and even death. Now, deviations from social orthodoxies result in ostracism, job loss, career ruin - whatever penalties social media affords.... One of the most protected social orthodoxies is that the charge of abuse causes the accused to forfeit any due process rights and bear the wrath of the mob. ...
"A new and vicious kind of tribalism is plaguing the church. Some who have truly been abused, along with their allies, have become abusers. Social media has become their amplifier."
This comes at the conclusion of "When the Abused Become Abusers" by Ron Henzel of Midwest Christian Outreach. He begins with "the fact that in the past few years a rather intense media spotlight has been shined on all types of abuse.... And nothing has served to more clearly train this spotlight on these subjects than the #MeToo and #ChurchToo movements. ...
"It's questionable whether any of these cultural phenomena would have even existed, let alone taken the shape they have, were it not for social media. ...
"What is wrong is when the abused become abusers, the oppressed become oppressors, and the victims become the victimizers. ...
"They became instigators, not objects, of willful force and injustice."
Henzel unpacks this, explaining how, for Auschwitz survivor and psychiatrist Viktor E. Frankl, "it's not that external factors in such cases bring out what is already in people (i.e., their fallen natures), but that those factors induce a new condition in some people - it makes them morally and spiritually worse."
After applying Frankl's understanding to the "Day-Care Sex-Abuse Hysteria" of the 1980s and '90s, Henzel concludes: "Thus was born our culture's first large-scale experiment in turning alleged victims into inadvertent victimizers. ...
"Simply being accused of child molestation was treated as grounds for forfeiting one's right to due process in the eyes of many people. And we now know that the civil rights of many were trampled on in the name of 'believing the children.' The child 'victims' were often coerced into giving testimony and thus became 'victimizers' through their legal surrogates. ...
"[W]e seem to have learned virtually nothing from this shameful chapter in our history. ...
"Frankl correctly observed but less helpfully diagnosed and treated the fact that those who are abused often go on to become abusers."
Henzel relates his own experience: "For 5½ years, I belonged to a spiritually abusive group. One might even call it a cult. ...
"As I was going through the worst of my spiritual abuse experience, I read the newly published Churches That Abuse, by Ronald M. Enroth [1]. I was astonished by its accounts of groups and leaders that were depressingly similar to mine. ... After I left, I discovered through many first-hand testimonies how unthinkably common my experience was. ...
"I just wanted to crawl into some hole and never tell my story to anyone.... Others ... allowed bitterness to take them completely away from the church and even away from God. These latter folks often became verbally abusive to anyone who tried to relate to them as Christians. ...
"So many indisputable cases of horrific abuse, sexual and other kinds, have recently been exposed to the light of day that no one can question the fact that evangelicalism has a problem every bit as grave as [that of] the Roman Catholic Church or the Jehovah's Witnesses, even if not as centralized. ...
"What I learned at my own great expense was that being a victim of abuse, like the leader of my cult claimed to be, doesn't make one an expert on abuse or how to respond to it." <www.bit.ly/3gIcOJS>
New and recommended: "When It Comes to Abuse, It Takes a Village," by Glenn Scrivener at The Gospel Coalition <www.bit.ly/3yuU1Ia>.
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DISCERNMENT
The Wall Street Journal (May 15 '21) thinks it only fair to warn you that happiness can be a liability. "Good Moods Often Lead to Bad Judgments: Psychological research shows that judgment is surprisingly dependent on mood - and that being in a bad one has a silver lining" by Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony and Cass R. Sunstein, explains that "mood has a measurable influence on what you think: what you notice in your environment, what you retrieve from your memory, how you make sense of these signals."
What's more, your mood "has another, more surprising effect: It also changes how you think." The ramifications are not those you might imagine, and "The costs and benefits of different moods are situation-specific.
"In a negotiation situation, for instance, a good mood helps. People in a good mood are more cooperative and elicit reciprocation. ...
"On the other hand, a good mood makes us more likely to accept our first impressions as true without challenging them. ...
"Inducing good moods makes people more receptive to ['seemingly impressive assertions that are presented as true and meaningful but are actually vacuous'] and more gullible in general; they are less apt to detect deception or identify misleading information. Conversely, eyewitnesses who are exposed to misleading information are better able to disregard it - and to avoid false testimony - when they are in a bad mood. ...
"Physically pushing a man off a bridge into the path of an oncoming trolley is a particularly repugnant act. Making the utilitarian choice to push the man off the bridge requires people to overcome their aversion to a physically violent act against a stranger. Only a minority of people (in this study, fewer than one in 10) usually say they would do so.
"However, when the subjects were placed in a positive mood by watching a five-minute video segment, they became three times more likely to say that they would push the man off the bridge. Whether we regard 'Thou shalt not kill' as an absolute principle or are willing to kill one stranger to save five should reflect our deepest values. Yet our choice seems to depend on which video we have just watched. ...
"This variability or 'noise' should give pause to anyone who thinks we can make purely objective judgments. If our mind is a measuring instrument, it is a noisy one." <www.on.wsj.com/2SX5pxd> (paywall awaits)
Also see "How ‘Noise’ Affects Our Judgment in Business, Science, Government and Beyond: An interview with Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony and Cass R. Sunstein about their book Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment" by William Tipper and Taylor Cromwell in the Wall Street Journal (July 8, 2021), <www.on.wsj.com/3hYbB0p> (paywalled)
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ISLAM
"Rice University's Considine is one of academia's most oleaginous apologists for Islamism." Thus begins "'A' Is for Apologist," A.J. Caschetta’s review of Islam in America: Exploring the Issues, by Craig Considine [2] <www.bit.ly/3jRZOnd>. Caschetta (Ginsburg-Milstein fellow at the Middle East Forum and a principal lecturer at the Rochester Institute of Technology) makes no effort conceal his contempt and outrage: "Considine's book is aimed at the impressionable high-school and college student and written as an A to Z alphabetical encyclopedia of forty-eight topics from 'Abrahamic Tradition' to 'Zakat.' It is a polemic, arguing that Islam and violence are unrelated and that the world is full of bigoted 'Islamophobes' who constantly link the two."
"Aspiring to build bridges between Muslims and allegedly intolerant non-Muslims (mostly Christian) who have been lied to by a cabal of anti-Muslim 'Islamophobes,' [Considine's] writing aims to convince non-Muslims that Muhammad was a broad-minded, unprejudiced, peaceful man, wise beyond his time, and that Islam is a pluralistic, feminist, open-minded religion. ...
"After a preening 'Preface' and an 'Overview' filled with strawman arguments," Considine serves up "a selective timeline of 'Islam in America.' ...
"Each entry contains something objectionable, evasive, misleading, or outright wrong. A few stand out, illustrating the book's tenor." Examples follow - and Caschetta is only warming up.
"Islam in America is disingenuous and bereft of substance. Its argument is unconvincing to anyone with any knowledge of Islamic history and texts. But that is exactly Considine's audience - students with no background knowledge of Islam, an open mind, and a tendency to believe what is offered to them." Middle East Quarterly, Spr '21 <www.bit.ly/3d2oWTQ>
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SOURCES: Monographs
1 - Churches That Abuse, by Ronald M. Enroth (Zondervan, 1994, hardcover, 166 pages <www.bit.ly/3wMWv47> and <www.bit.ly/3iXGPXK>
2 - Islam in America: Exploring the Issues, by Craig Considine (ABC-CLIO, 2019, hardcover, 219 pages) <www.bit.ly/3qkTe9V>
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