There are a number of words in the English language which need always to have other qualifying words to help us understand how they are being used. One word which illustrates this point is the word gratification. On its own we do not know if the word is being used to describe something good or bad. The addict seeks gratification by indulging in his/her drug of choice, whether it be alcohol, heroin or food. There are various examples we can think of when we use the word in proximity to this notion of desperate craving or addiction. These forms of behaviour, involving an intense need to satisfy an overwhelming physical/emotional desire, lead to a temporary relief or gratification of physical urges. The use of the word gratification in this context will normally indicate a level of disapproval on the part of the speaker. The same speaker may well add other words, like ‘desperate’ or ‘out of control’ to indicate further their sense of powerlessness or dismay at the plight of the addict.
The fact that gratification is a word that is often used in a negative context should not blind us to the fact that it is, when used in a positive sense, a very useful idea. It can be used in a positive context when describing honourable activity and human flourishing. Many of the patterns of behaviour that we want to see encouraged in our fellow humans are activated or motivated by the promise of gratification at the end of the process. The effort of writing a book, for example, which includes physical and emotional input, seldom brings wealth or fame, but it normally offers to the author a sense of achievement and satisfaction that we describe as gratifying. Writing books is, of course, not the only key to honourable gratification. There is one particular experience common to the bulk of the human race, that of forming intimate relationships, which brings gratification. Parenthood in particular leads to the reward of experiencing gratifying satisfaction. To see one’s children ‘brought up in the fear and nurture of the Lord’ is an achievement of great importance and the cause of enormous contentment and the right kind of gratification.
The many examples of human activity which lead into satisfying and lasting gratification can be added to at length, but they all have characteristics in common. The first thing about them is that they draw out from the individual some area of skill and creativity which reveals some of the potential for full humanity with which he/she was born. What makes this skill/creativity special is the way that other people are often enriched by it. It does not have to be special skill honed by years of practice and training. It can simply be the readiness to offer help to a stranger. I have now reached the time of life when young people offer me their seat on buses or trains. I accept readily, not just because I do not want to stand on a crowded train, but also, I sense the opportunity of allowing a person the chance to perform an act of generosity is giving a blessing to the giver. The simple human act of giving will always bring grace as well as gratification to the giver.
Gratification of the honourable kind can first be found in these two forms. The first is through the development of our gifts and abilities whatever they may be. Then there is the joy of forming intimate relationships, especially those which cross the generations in the institution we call family life. The task for each of us is, in different ways, to share what we are and what we have with others so that the world is a slightly better place for our having been part of it. All of us will want to be remembered as individuals who gave more than they took from others. If that memory is true of us, then we have cause to feel, in old age, the gratification of a life well-lived.
So far, we have identified two ways of describing human gratification, the honourable over against the self-indulgent/selfish manifestations. We come now to a third manifestation of gratification which, when placed on a spectrum, embraces both the good and the bad. I am referring to the pursuit of gratification through the exercise of power. Some individuals expend enormous energy chasing after the gratification that seems to be given to those who are famous and influential or who simply have the levers of control over other people. Power over other people is sometimes mixed up with other things, like wealth or emotional control. This possession of power is not inherently corrupting or selfish, but it very quickly can become something toxic if the person exercising it is also subject to some existing personal compulsion. This may result in bullying or dominating behaviour, perhaps compensating for some traumatic event from childhood. Exercising power in a just compassionate fashion may also be, at a different point along our imaginary spectrum, a way of making life better for others. A medical worker or a teacher has to assert authority and exercise power as part of their work. Their training and professional skills should protect them from any personal aggrandisement or need to dominate. Gratification is still to be found in this responsible expression of power. The satisfaction and gratification created by doing any task well is owed to such professionals. By contrast the selfish use of power over others seems to promise an instant gratification for the bullying individual, but such behaviour clearly demonstrates a distorted approach to relationships. Sadly, many people only understand power in relationships in terms of aggression and coercion. Somewhere along the line they have lost touch with the healthy longing to give to others rather than to take. We could all speculate why some individuals tip over into the realm of seeking gratification through angry attempts at control rather than giving. Whatever answers we come up with, we could probably agree on one thing. In all institutions and settings where some exercise power over others, there will be occasional clear examples of bullying. For the sake of the well-being of all, processes and procedures are needed to deal it quickly. While a healthy institution should always be aware of the need to respond and outlaw such behaviour, the main antidote is good leadership and example from the top.
It would be good to make the claim that the Church is an institution infused with the love of God, making bullying and the exercise of power gratification among its leaders impossible or, at least, unusual. Sadly, power games and the pursuit of what we call toxic gratification are extremely common. The Church does not help itself through its apparent unwillingness to be sensitive to the ways that human beings can so easily lapse into patterns of dominance that we have learned to associate with secular organisations. The task of identifying individuals who are trapped in their personal need to dominate others and thus destroy the proper working of the whole organisation is vital. One person, seeking the toxic gratification of their power needs, can undermine the possibility of true communication right across a congregation. Instead of what we long for, accepting loving fellowship, there is an atmosphere of suspicion, fear and tension. The possibilities for each individual to grow spiritually to discover the shalom of God at work in their lives are thus much diminished. That shalom, however one translates the word, is the true gratification that is offered by our faith. The desire of a few among the leaders and their immediate circle for the gratification of power, influence and sometimes sexual exploitation over others is deeply destructive. Many who attend church faithfully and regularly are thus denied the fullness of a nurturing experience. This they might otherwise have enjoyed but for the selfishness of the few who demand their gratification ‘needs’ be fed through exploiting or ignoring the needs of others.
This blog post has been about the possibility of all members of a church enjoying the shalom/the gratification of living and enjoying the nurture of a Christian fellowship. Alongside the possibility of living with such a great gift is the common reality, even in churches founded on the teaching of Jesus, of toxic gratification practised by leaders. Perhaps what I am seeking from the church is far greater sensitivity among those who select and train ministers. They must be more alert to the likelihood that some who seek leadership in the church are pursuing a path to exercise a toxic dominance over others. There is much talk in a safeguarding context of protecting ‘vulnerable’ individuals from exploitative behaviour. Perhaps a still more urgent task is to recognise that when leaders find their gratification in the wrong places, much harm is caused and stumbling blocks are placed to the well-being of the flock.
This is an excellent post. Much to mull over here.
I think that the church as a mainstream hierarchical organisation as any other mainstream hierarchical organisation or institution will always have abuses of power by people placed in positions of authority. I will say again as I have said before on other forums that these things will be inherent in any hierarchical top down structure, group, corporation or society. It cannot and will not be avoided. This is why we see in the mainstream churches and greater society a constant plethora of scandals, cover ups, abuses of power and the many victims of such abuse on an almost weekly or daily basis.
Church is/was supposed to be a refuge/antidote to the shifting sands of power, wealth, control and influence of the world yet more and more it simply reflected, copied and became just as worldly. Certainly for those at the top, the power brokers, the privately and well educated and those who live in palaces or multi million pound homes anyway. The majority of us do not live in that rarified world and probably don’t ever expect too. I believe churches have to be free to a large extent from the control and machinations of powerful and influential people. That’s the first thing. Secondly, what happened to the idea of servanthood and humility? Jesus washed his disciples feet and died in their place. Hirelings will never do that. They walk off, resign, mumble usually self justifying platitudes and cling to their own delusions or self sanctification. None of this is remotely Christian.
I’m saying that true Christians and Christian churches need to get back to a faith in Christ first and foremost, and that faith is sacrificial, lived daily and humbly, is nothing to do with worldly power and praise or hobnobbing with the great and good and various elites either, but living and preaching a transformative and powerful and life changing Gospel amongst the mostly ordinary, broken, marginalised and regular every day people of which most of us are right in the middle of hum drum life and the ups and downs and thrills and banality of life. This is where we find Jesus and where He finds us, right in the midst of ordinary life of ordinary people, not the palaces and hallowed halls of the powerful and influential. Last time Jesus was here it was the powerful and influential who persecuted Him and put Him to death. They did not know Him because they did not want to know Him.
Re:” Secondly, what happened to the idea of servanthood and humility? Jesus washed his disciples feet and died in their place. Hirelings will never do that. They walk off, resign, mumble usually self justifying platitudes and cling to their own delusions or self sanctification. None of this is remotely Christian.” A pertinent question, in my view, and more especially when, having bullied lay volunteers out, they resign and the Dio then gives them a Dio job in assessing vocation in others!
AUTONOMY is central across multiple professional disciplines. It also crops up in almost every human relationship or engagement. But is it a forgotten word in the Anglican Church?
BAH (Bullying-harassment-abuse) are some of the results in the Church when autonomy is ignored or neglected. We then see KCJ, DARVO and NDA. A fascinating reflection! Thanks! A very old theme, as ‘Love your neighbour’-is taken from the OT Torah. Nonchalantly arrogant coercion of people by leaders is a dreadful problem within Anglicanism.
I wasted time and money doing a 2-year 2015-2016 New Wine course, following a selection interview with the local diocese. After completion I was advised how being single was unacceptable. Archdeacon (now Bishop) David McClay made an unsolicited offer to marry me and my partner. My partner felt insulted, and that marriage coercion should not be a feature of the Anglican Church.
McClay clearly felt this was necessary, and disregarded a plain reading of Lambeth 1:10. My partner and I are celibate as a result of her health issues. But I felt David McClay did not appear to give a toss about national law, Church rules or biblical principles of justice. Another trainee in my year group was devastated when they felt unfairly accused of sexual misconduct (adultery) in foul language.
The Diocese tolerated false and foul accusation of sexual misconduct against innocent Church members. Two men and two women were rescued by a top flight non-conformist Church leader. They were aghast at the way New Wine and the Diocese treated innocent people. They advised victims to escape further bullying and harassment, by leaving the local diocese urgently. They pointed out bullying and/or ‘unlawful’ harassment of innocent people. Should Bishop David McClay be asked to resign?
I’ve had younger people give way to me in the North East, whilst here in the South I have to ask them to move their bags from the seat next to them, so as to sit for the journey. Generally I have the luxury of travelling at quieter times to avoid either extreme. It is gratifying to be gifted a seat so long as you have processed your old age crises sufficiently.
That’s an interesting angle in the Anglican Church context. Age-maturity vs. youth-vitality sees various interactions. Taking a seat offered, or giving one up, is a meaningful little ritual of social cohesion. A Church obsession with youth work can have a hidden toxicity, if middle-aged trainees depart en masse after feeling subjected to coercive and inappropriate pressure by bullying Anglican leaders.
Younger people, in contrast, possibly tolerate a far greater degree of their freedom being restricted. The Matt Drapper ‘exorcism’ deal is highly revealing. A settlement exposes the crisis in the headlines, but there is no naming or shaming of leaders who plainly appear to have disregarded Anglican teaching and agreed practice.
Also, why are church journalists and media groups not pressing for a robust inquiry?
‘Also, why are church journalists and media groups not pressing for a robust inquiry?’
The media and journalism have fallen into the same quagmire as everything else, in that they neither know or care for the truth anymore, they are paid to protect the high panjandrums and the upper echelons and the cosy social order they rule over. It is as simple as that I believe. No big conspiracy, no secret organisations just powerful and wealthy people doing as they like and being protected. As you and I and others may ask, it’s all very grand but what has it to do with Christian faith of any kind?
Most of the high church men seem more like powerful politicians than Christian followers of Christ. But then the CofE and Catholicism and many other mainstream denominations seem merely to be at best kind of spiritual corporations. Is God in these places, I believe so, but He is there in spite of the leadership not because they want Him there. Faith is I believe found in ordinary folk first, and always will be.
I think that’s too sweeping. There are still some honest journalists around, in all media. They’re an essential part of a functioning democracy, and they do their best to keep us honest. They serve justice and do us a great service.
Yes! Honest journalists are worth their weight in gold or diamonds. Did the Channel 4 news team essentially do the final John Smyth QC exorcism, or put the final cherry on the icing?
Also, while our Bishops and Archbishops bear final responsibility for sinister senior leadership cover ups, ordinary Anglicans need to bear some responsibility for the poor state of the Church. There has been lots of BAH-KCJ-DARVO-NDA.
Bullying-Abuse-Harassment needs Kangaroo-Court-Justice. This achieves DARVO:Deny-Attack-Reverse-Victim&Offender. Non-Disclosure Agreements and secrecy finish the job.
Ordinary Anglicans understanding BAHKCJDARVONDA is the best way to bring positive change. A golden rule of life is that bullies always need to be confronted. But they often need to first be unmasked.
Among those who were still young in 1966 (including unwitting bystanders to the C of E like me) what we need is repentance-by-proxy for the eyewitness-documented 18 th October 1966 spurning, incited by Morgan Derham * and David Winter, of “that nasty sectarian” Lloyd-Jones (who had cleared his address with the Evangelical Alliance’s Council), as crucial representative moment, in favour of the power model (foreign-led moralising plus evangelism).
{ * Scripture Union associate; where have we heard of them recently? }
Daniel 9: 3-21 shows us how we can now do this (meantime, using the book of Daniel as “gotcha” by apologetists with tendentious hermeneutics was cynical). Younger generations have been left in varying states of unconscious bamboozlement, probably having been told the incident, at the National Association of Evangelicals, didn’t occur.
Even if we haven’t “met” a “narcissist”, we are left holding the baby / part of the codependency system-by-proxy. Not all who maintain a “unevangelical” public style are unbelievers incompatible with what a lifetime ago was an old-fashioned, unobtrusively Spirit-filled version of “evangelicalism”. Reading Stott’s “Basic Christianity” (plugged by classmates) as a born again 17 year old, my blood ran cold: children generally should not have been told they didn’t have a radar.
Happily I’ve been reading two books by Sinclair Ferguson in the last few hours. In Devoted To God’s Church he recounts the benefit bestowed on him as youngster through Scripture Union notes. In The Whole Christ he analyses in detail the twin perils of antinomianism and legalism: people of supposedly different theology falling for each error identically – and I’ve known people (some at the C of E) who commit both at once!
Thank you Michael M for giving the 1966 factual root.
A Godsend for me, very grateful.
Yes I witness in line with Daniel 9.
~ It got normalised before it reached the notice of journalists and media groups
~ I am mocking my friend (half my age) because he missed “Scramblers” though he did go to “Pathfinders” – as a bit of fun. When there was still a real real world, all ages sat through the same service and coped all the better!
~ Is it not rather Leninist to separate out the ontologies of the “age groups”?
~ Since the 1980s taking Holy Scripture, belief and prayer in a non-material sense has been outlawed.
~ The newer style of protestant churches ensure that for their audience any nominal proclamation of actual Scripture is to be taken as an inconsequential preamble to being told what they are obliged to think.
Growth-numbers-noise…..little wonder Anglicanism is in such a crisis!
Yes I have met this in a certain evangelical church.
This is the scripture reading – this is how you process this in your head – this is how you find God. There is only this way and eternal damnation if you know better.
Follow the ‘anointed’ and ‘gifted’ leader and their ‘word of knowledge’……
Odd with the likes of Mike Pilavachi how there was no ‘ word of knowledge’ on all the bullying and ill-treatment of people being hidden…….
Any leader who is addicted to domination of others wants to have power and fame so that everyone does what he/she wants. Hence the abuse of church goers caught up in this whether they recognise it or not.
In secular groups and relationships this abuse is being brought to our attention in the media. It continues in church and is ignored by the hierarchy. As Stephen writes there has to be more sensitivity when choosing church leaders.
The churches have to my knowledge no assesment of personality disorders for those entering ministry. Churches attract narcissists see “When narcissism comes to church” by Chuck De Groat.
Power over other people is by its very nature attractive to some people. At worst they might be abusers, sociopaths, narcissistic or just glory hunters. After that you might get the privately educated and wealthy Eton brigade who are generally groomed for high office, versed in the politics of power as acceptable to the elite, so hierarchy, top down thinking, acting and particularly in executive decision making. After that it’s probably a mixed bag of individuals, some good, bad or indifferent like life itself.
My view is and always has been from a grassroots perspective. No one with any kind of executive power should be exempt from the laws and norms of civil society whoever they are and they should answer to those they are placed above. So everyone who gets high office of any kind should be checked as workers are checked with some kind of DBS check. No exceptions.
But, and here’s the gold plated problem, people with wealth and power fight tooth and nail not to be held to scrutiny or account generally. So we as ordinary people are always up against that. What’s the answer? A more savvy and active faith and/or participation in church life? But isn’t that something which a hierarchical structure automatically vetoes anyway? There are no easy answers or solutions to any of it, but I think that until we ask those and similar kinds of questions or rather debates, and we openly speak truth to power as ordinary people, the same things will simply go on and on, the same cycles ‘we’re terribly sorry’ ‘lessons have been learned’ ‘an enquiry is needed and strengthened safeguards’ ‘so and so will resign’ and so on. We’ve seen it all before.
The codependency model of church including those segments more directly impacted by senior authority, has been touted (contrary to Scripture) as the best model.
When we practice Psalm 1 and extract ourselves from these models when we see them, we don’t need to wait around till anyone shows themselves “narcissitic”. Organisational bunglers leap out of bed in the mornings crying, “My highest ambition is gormlessness!”
Since 1966 “Evangelicalism” (which is what the C of E is) can be summed up entirely as, “We know what’s best for you”.
(I should add) thankfully there are still some wise C of E Bishops and their analogues in some of the other denominations who are “evangelicalism adjacent” rather than out-and-out positivists.