A: I see a lot of similarity between the current phone hacking scandal in the U.K. and the behaviour of the apostle Paul and his cronies in the first century CE. In both situations, a very powerful man does whatever he wants regardless of how unethical, corrupt, manipulative, and cruel it is. The only difference between then and now is that Rupert Murdoch's employees have received a public shaming. Without the huge public outcry that accompanied the recent re-revelation about phone hacking at the News of the World, the authorities wouldn't have reopened the investigation or arrested more people. The authorities -- or rather I should say certain individuals in senior positions of authority in the police and government -- knew about the accusations of unethical conduct and did nothing much about them until regular people started yelling and putting their foot down.
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| “But be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves. For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; for they look at their image and, on going away, immediately forget what they look like. But those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act — they will be blessed in their doing” (James 1:22-25). Replicas of Ancient Greek vessels. Photo credit JAT 2014. |
J: The parallels are uncanny. If people today are having trouble imagining what it felt like for my followers soon after my death, they can read about the phone hacking scandal and put themselves in the shoes of the families of the murder victims who were psychologically assaulted by the News of the World reporters, editors, and decision makers.
A: I think most people would be shocked to learn how unethical Paul really was. How cold and calculating he really was.
J: He was a business man. Very practical, very logical. He was like the editor at the News of the World who approved the phone hacking strategies. Anything was okay as long as it got the job done. "The end justifies the means" and all that crap. Success at any price. Just the way his bosses in Alexandria wanted it.
A: Yet you've said in previous discussions that Paul truly believed in what he was doing.
J: Sure. A successful psychopath is an ideologue. It's what separates the successful psychopaths -- "snakes in suits," as researcher Robert Hare calls them -- from the garden variety criminals who get caught and thrown in jail for reckless, impulsive crimes. An ideologue, on the other hand -- and Paul was a religio-political ideologue -- uses "The Big Idea" as a crutch to hold up his dysfunctional brain. It's a coping mechanism. It's an external framework of ideas that the psychopath clings to because he's lost his own internal compass. He can't hear the voice of his own soul telling him what's right and wrong. But he's still very logical, very goal-oriented, and he's addicted to status. So if he can "attach" himself to an external Big Idea, and apply his logic and ambition to it, he can acquire status and not end up in prison.
A: Why won't he end up in prison? Aren't psychopaths inherently impulsive? Prone to risk-taking behaviours and uninterested in consequences? Doesn't this make him more likely to do something criminal?
J: Yes. It's part of the package for psychopaths. But if you put a psychopath in a structured organization where there are very strict rules, very clear punishments, and rigid ladders of governance, he'll be so busy trying to claw his way up "the ladder of success" he won't bother going out to rob banks or gas stations. The buzz he gets from plotting his long-term strategy for "success" is much better than the temporary high of terrorizing a gas station attendant.
This is not to say the snakes-in-suits are "nicer" psychopaths. They're not nice people at all. But no one can question their ability to promote "The Big Idea" (whatever their Big Idea happens to be) with charismatic passion. Regular people are easily sucked in by this passion.
A: So Paul was a snake-in-a-suit. I kinda like the way this ties in with the conversations we've had about the Book of Genesis.
J: Paul was promoting the Big Idea of salvation. Escape from a life without status. Escape from a death without status. He and his followers built a humongous empire on the "4 S's" -- sin, separation, sacraments, and salvation. But Paul's Big Idea was just that -- an idea. A belief system. A theory without proof. A theory that's never had proof. Its very lack of provableness is what makes it so attractive to psychopaths. Why? Because there's nothing in the Big Idea that can act as a mirror for a psychopath's true intent. There's nothing to make him look at himself honestly. There's nothing to challenge him to be his best self. The Big Idea gives him 1,001 excuses to brush his abusive behaviour under the carpet. Unfortunately, until the psychopath sees himself as he really is, he has no incentive to change.
A: I think we've just spiralled back to your analogy between a psychopath and the Greek monster Medusa. Medusa's hideous face turned everyone into stone until Perseus held up a mirror-like shield and forced her to look at herself.
J: Part of the problem here is that regular people don't understand what makes a psychopath tick. Regular people look at a "successful psychopath" -- the guy who has the drive and ambition to work 16 hour days -- and they think he must really know who he is and what he wants. They think they should try to be like him. They think they themselves are failures if they want to go home to their families after working an 8 hour day. But the honest truth is the successful psychopath has no idea who he really is. All he has inside himself is a score card. A score card instead of a heart. His soul is all heart, of course, but he long ago stopped listening to this core part of himself. This is why he has no conscience and no empathy. His soul isn't defective, but his biological brain is seriously out of balance. He's so used to living this way that it's normal for him. Even worse, he likes living this way. He likes hurting other people. He likes to make regular people feel small and useless. And he's not going to change until he recognizes the honest truth that he's not a nice person.
A: It took me years to understand this lesson. I misunderstood what compassion was. I thought compassion meant you should never intentionally make another person feel bad about themselves. That's before I learned (the hard way) that a lot of people out there want to hurt other people and consciously choose to hurt other people and get a high out of psychologically abusing other people and won't decide to stop this behaviour until they're forced to look in the mirror. I also learned the hard way that the more dysfunctional a person is, the more insulted and offended she'll be when you tell her she isn't being a nice person.
J: You're thinking of someone in particular when you say that.
A: Yes. I'm thinking of Grace, the modern day "spiritual leader" (a.k.a. apocalyptic prophet) I hung out with for several years before I came to my senses.
J: These are the people who are quickest to say, "You have no right to say such things about me."
A: Hey, don't forget the other favourite response of the psychopath who insists she's a nice person: "Oh, my dear, tut tut, how can you say such things about me? Why, everyone knows what a good person I am and how hard I work on behalf of the community. I'm so concerned for you, you poor thing. You really need to get some help."
J: A psychopath has extremely strong defences against hearing the truth about his or her own behaviour. It's scary how strong these defences are. The doctrines of orthodox Western Christianity have served as excellent body armour for its successful psychopaths. Pauline Christians are not called upon to look honestly at themselves and make changes to live up to their true potential. Instead they're encouraged to stoop to the level of a psychopath's dysfunctional mind so the psychopath doesn't have to feel bad about himself.
A: You said pretty much the same thing in James 1:22-25.
J: I'm a consistent fellow. But it's not hard to be consistent when you're trying to speak the truth. Truth has an annoying habit of being consistent and provable and open to new and unfolding sources of knowledge. Even if it takes a couple of thousand years for the truth to be recognized, for the facts to be identified, remembered, understood, and acted upon.
A: I'm glad there's finally a solid and widespread foundation of research in place so the truth about Paul's "News of the World" can finally come out.
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