Fixing the Problems Helps Everyone Concerned, even LC Leadership

[Curious]

This forum is made up of ex LC persons in the main. (except me!). The point of view therefore expressed here, is of the deficits of the organisation towards its followers and the harm caused, and its need to change. Absolutely all valid, however, perhaps not the whole picture….

I want to use the following bible story to look at how I think the dysfunction in the LC harms the people at the top too. Maybe a horribly presumptuous move, or maybe an interesting different perspective...

I’m going to review the account delivered in the book of Esther, considered from looking at her husband, King Xerxes, (or Ahaseurus, depending on your translation).

Now I am not reinterpreting to re-write the story as most often studied from Esther’s perspective. The normal focus of commentary is not in conflict with my offering here. It is with specialised interest in the pitfalls of lack of accountability and responsibility in those in authority that I evaluate what can also be found in this book of the bible, in my opinion, that is.

The points I want to draw out starts here: King Xerxes is entertaining at his palace. Many officials, princes and governors are in attendance, and the emphasis is on impressing them. Being drunk, he decided to show off his beautiful queen to the assembly. As it was against Persian custom for a woman to appear before a public gathering of men, this put his queen, Vashti, in a no-win situation. She either disobeys her husband or the custom, both for which she could face retribution. Drunk people do unthought-through, spontaneous dumb stuff like that. (I know from experience).

Possibly in voting for the long-term outcome, she opts to obey the custom, which in turn puts the king in an awkward situation of loosing face amongst his guests. Having no experience of the restriction of rules applying to himself, the king fails to understand the predicament he had placed his queen in. And in this quandary, he receives bad advice. This is because he’s the King, and as ruler, it is believed he should never be in the submissive situation of mopping up after his cock-up!

First move is to banish queen Vashti permanently. (This is done to endorse a pattern of male dominance for his kingdom). And second, when he missed her, and regretted what he’d done, the advice he got was to go out and fill the gap in his heart by culling off a number of the most eligible young women of his kingdom and taking them for himself. Rather than allowing them to be wives for his loyal young men! (Yes I’m suggesting this was also greedy and selfish as well as ill advised. He's using his position to serve himself, not the interests of his people).

however, this is how he comes to have Esther, a beautiful and wise young Jewish woman among the other young women that are taken for him to become his concubines.

Then the more well told parts of the story. Haman is the Kings number two, a descendent of the King Agag, who had survived the command God had given to the Israelites, to destroy. They compromised God’s instruction in disobedience. Haman both hated the Jews for this, and likely had aspirations to become King, as his ancestor had been.

He manipulates the king to enact his own agenda towards all the Jews living in exile in Persia. To destroy them all. How did he gain such an influence? My theory to come.

This situation of the imminent slaughter of all Jews, forces Esther to enact a plan requiring great courage.

This is where I am making comment about lack of accountability in leadership as relates to LC and king Xerxes. Queen Esther must risk her life to approach the King. Why so? If he had not summoned her, and he’s in a bad mood that day, or just doesn’t feel like seeing her, he can have her put to death for approaching him. (That’s the same but worse than being ‘perfected’ or publicly ‘rebuked’ in the LC). So this is the situation. He is so dominant, and his people so submissive, that you may only have an audience with him at his invite. Anything else is great audacity and can be punished as such. Is that an abusive level of authority and submission or what?

However, If one treats human beings in such a way, there is a response. (As well, it’s likely his banishment of Vashti in an unjust way also contributed to this): When people are in such subjection and are basically not safe around you, they will behave in a certain way. They will agree with everything you say, appease you enthusiastically at every opportunity, do whatever you ask of them, but never engage with you honestly or openly, and they’ll scuttle themselves out of your presence as quickly as possible in case you take offence with them about something outside of their control, and have their heads chopped off!

Now the King has been successful, there is no possibility that anyone will ever make him uncomfortable by expressing an opinion counter to his own, or even worse, cast doubt or even reject anything he has to say. But he’s removed all reality from his relationships. Where does that actually leave him? I’ll tell you where. Lonely and isolated. Rejected. Bored as a carrot.

(Is that the real reason why WL became critical of his own followers towards the end perhaps?)

Esther was terrified at the idea of initiating counsel with her King, so you can guess no-one else was approaching him, except Haman. However, the King was delighted with her for doing so. Otherwise, why offer half his kingdom to her twice? I think the drain of being isolated had really gotten to him. So much so, that the enjoyment of the evening she had invited him to, and the short break it had provided from his unhappy predicament, that he couldn’t sleep that night. He determined to seek a way to engage in relationship with people as he realized how desperate his need had become. So, he had the court records read to him, late at night, looking for something where he could make a connection with someone.

At the time Mordecai had saved his life, the King had taken little or no notice of who he was and what he had done. There was much more going on his life at that time that he didn’t pay attention to this. (incidentally, another reason for the controls over people approaching him may have been the attempt on his life by the two men Mordecai had discovered, i.e. fear). However, humbled by his loneliness and boredom, at the reminder of this account, he wanted to express gratitude on a grand scale. Isn’t that how one makes a friend when you are the King? To me this theory makes sense of his actions.

Now Haman comes to visit him late at night. Haman is not worried that the King may behead him for approaching. Haman had a special connection with the King, special freedoms and rights. Yet Haman was someone we would probably call a narcissist today. When your only friend is a narcissist, life is extra lonely. You have this empty and confused feeling that you should feel happy, as your ego is being plumped up regularly, but the real feeling is you are being robbed and exploited in ways you can’t figure out. Like the snake, a clever narcissist is well ‘camouflaged’, hard to identify. Haman had begun to meet his own agendas through King Xerxes. He wanted the Jews killed. He hated them. He manipulated the King to destroy them though the King had no problem with them. This is another vulnerability of being elevated and isolated from others. You become overly dependant on one or a very few people and they can take control of you, and work out their own agendas, you become their puppet.

So, Esther’s approach to the King was rescuing him from his own unhappy circumstances. She was much safer to do so than she realised, God had prepared the kings heart to be more than happy to see her! Haman was the enemy of the King in reality, and therefore the King’s biggest problem too, but on a more personal level. This truth became evident to King Xerxes in the unfolding of this story, as he realised that in destroying all the Jews, Haman was trying to rid the King of the only two people that had shown true care and interest in the King. So, he had no problem supporting the Jewish people in their desire to be rid of Haman.

King Xerxes was exploited in a sense by his own position and the set-up that elevated him also isolated him, harming him.

The message of this story? If you disallow the people around you to have opinions, to hold you to account, to disagree with you, to have their own thoughts and feelings about things, then you isolate yourself from their hearts. (Think of the demands of being 'perfected' in the LC system, losing your identity, opinions etc.) In that isolation there is great loneliness and pain, in the long run. We were not designed to endure that, as human beings. This is true in a marriage where there is heavy male domination, just as it is true in an abusive organisation with a heavy focus on controlling and bullying its members...it’s the same exact thing on a much bigger scale.

I think this is a true message about all positions of authority without accountability. WL maybe didn’t have his own ‘worm tongue’ (manipulative right-hand man), but being elevated and out of kilter with God’s rules for living is as harmful to the person elevated as it is to those under them.

That’s my long, drawn-out point. The main thrust of this forum, if respected by the LC, will be to bring healing and restoration to the leadership of the LC as much as to its followers. The solution is equally important for everyone involved.

That’s my theory and comment anyway. if it is relevant, then I'm hoping some in LC leadership read this.