I've found another very interesting article, but I'm just going to get it set up now, and I'll have to really get started on it later, when I get back from errands, because today is my weekly day to fill my meds and supplements for the weeks and I need several new refills from the drug store, and I'm even completely out of one of the supplements I take. So I have to take care of these things.
The article is:
Sehested, Ken. (1994, March 2). Loyalty test: the case of Chaplain Robertson. Christian Century, 111(7), 212-214.
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Stripped of all duties, he has been removed from the chapel offices and sequestered in a windowless, closet-sized room adjacent to the base runway where he spends his days writing book reviews for a chaplain's resources bureau. (p. 212)This chaplain was fortunate, because virtually the same thing happened to me with the Vienna mission, but did I get all the fanfare? Hardly? And what did I do to deserve being exiled back to the USA from from the position in Vienna, Austria that I had done deputation for and for which all my supporters were sending money to have me do? What offense had I committed, and what records show that I had done something worthy of this treatment?
The mission, in my case, of course, didn't want to call it discipline and didn't want to say that I had done anything amiss and would never point to anything particular that I might have done in the form of disobedience or otherwise bad conduct to deserve ill treatment. So in my case, as evidently in other cases before me, they preferred to use terms of mental instability rather than social normatives and how one might or might relate to them. Maybe that's because the mission's norms were slippery and they didn't want their norms to be publicly focused on, so they had to instead focus early on on the individual's emotional state. Very convenient, especially since the individuals are thousands of miles away from everything that is familiar to them, so the mission can more or less get away with whatever it wants, especially if it is very clever and plays its cards right. The mission wouldn't go overboard, however, because there was no use in taking unnecessary risks, but when there comes along a special case like me, they are fully able to do whatever it takes to play their emotional cards out to the fullest. Since it happens so rarely hardly anyone would really know what was going on even.
I don't know who you - the reader - are, and if you have read any of the previous posts, but my dad was a program manager in SDI at Boeing at the same time I was working with the mission, and I had problems even later that were clearly related to my dad and he had at least some fallback from my interest in missions in the East Bloc countries. In addition, I had way more specialization in East European missions than most people coming in new to the mission - my B.A., (European Studies with a minor in Russian), Bible school, short term ministries, and a lot of other things I did were all in preparation, that was more than just the theological training even. So I was in a position to question their approaches to things and I had come to my own opinions regarding missions in Eastern Europe. So they could find fault with me because of my dad, but also because I was daring to question their ways. But the thing was that I wasn't open about questioning their ways, other than my sticking to my guns about wanting to work with people and not being willing to just be a secretary. They knew about that.
So basically, if they were angry at me for having done something, it would have to have been along the lines of getting too involved outside the mission. But if they came straight out and said that they'd have a problem, because it had been agreed up front that since I was going to be a secretary and not doing a lot of travel, which was fine by me, I'd like to have more of a people ministry then with the Austrians. And I was open with this upfront and told my sending mission and they said they didn't think it would be a problem. And that was the deal. And I wouldn't have come otherwise.
But if we had a fuss about this they'd probably raise their eyebrows - and I mean the administration, including my boss and his boss, as well as H.R. - and not understand what the problem was that they think it's great that I'm having that ministry. But then I'd continue to have these pressures while having it.
They'd never ever admit to any of these kinds of things. So it was always just in your head. At least that's how they made you feel about it.
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He knew the letter would raise objections, but the resulting furor caught him by surprise. As revealed in documents and testimony at his September 1993 Board of Inquiry disciplinary hearing, Air Force superiors hoped to force him out of the service... Robertson exhibited a "personality disorder so severe as to interfere with the normal and customary completion of his duties." This evaluation, was made without an examination, breaching the most elementary rules of conduct for the profession.This is the fallout from publishing an editorial letter in the local newspaper.
A civilian employee testified that her former boss... had taken her aside after a Sunday morning service "to tell me he had to get Chaplain Robertson out of the service..."
Robertson was removed from the chapel's preaching schedule rotation "until the completion of Desert Shield/Desert Storm" (and, later in the year, removed permanently).... Robertson was cleared of a mysterious charge of fraud. (p. 213)
Well, here it is clear that if Chaplain's have independent opinions they are limited in how they can voice these opinions. The missionaries with the Vienna mission were censored too. I had my prayer letter censored. I was told to put content in, take content out, shorten my address list. They really wanted to make me into a cookie cutter Christian. Or cookie cutter missionary. But the problem was that I didn't particularly like what I saw and the more harshness I saw the less I liked what I saw because the more I thought they were taking on practices of the world.
Now how on earth are you supposed to convince people you have something good to tell them (as in Good News) if all they see is a carbon copy of the world's ways? Then when they use the Bible it's to pick it up and use it piece meal, the way you can get it to say anything you want it to. I'm not talking about that way. I mean, let's really drop the worldly ways and garb and put on the whole armor of God (Eph. 6: 11ff.). That's what I"m talking about. And it's something we all do together, we all need. It's not something that someone tries to indoctrinate you with, having some secret inner knowledge or something, maybe along the lines of the gnostics or the like. No, I'm talking about the real deal, sincere Christianity.
And incidently, this kind of Christianity, like I saw there in Vienna, with its strange use of Scripture to counsel into mission norms, may fool some, it may fool you, but it doesn't fool God. God knows what's going on, and he understands perfectly well. So don't bother trying to make excuses to Him at least. [This was directed to Mission leadership.]
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At one point an officer from the Chief of Chaplains office in Washington, DC., paid a visit. 'He indicated that compromise was essential for becoming a successful military chaplain," Robertson said. "I suggested that 'cooperation' was the more suitable word, but he quickly confirmed his intentional use of "compromise." 'If Jesus had been an Air Force chaplain,' he told me, 'he woul d have been courtmartialed.'... Robertson said, "If this senior command chaplain is correct -- that compromise is necessary to survive in the Air Force as a chaplain - then reveal this restriction. The Air Force maintains that chaplains are free to proclaim and practice their witness without fear of reprisal ... It is important that we not deceive persons who look to chaplains for assistance in spiritual growth and faith development." (p. 213)I guess at least I got my shock sooner than he did, but I had put all those year of preparation in before getting to Vienna and I had gone through a lot to pick out the mission, too. And I still messed up anyway. The part there where the Chief of Chaplains says that Jesus Christ would have been court martialed if He were an Air Force chaplain. Well, He would know better than to become one, because, like I've been saying, it's the unequally yoked issue. So then it comes down to compromise, which is the thing in being unequally yoked, but even without that, there are little things that you might not be aware of. It comes down to the friends you hang around with, right? So the friends you hang around with, thats who you're going to end out being like. There's bound to be some of them that rubs off on you. You can't help it.
Jesus wouldn't have faired any better in the Vienna mission either, I don't think, and that's despite the fact that it was a Christian organization. I think that this is a situation where Jesus would have turned some tables over, not for the same reason as the money changers, but because there are problems in the church. Where to start?
To start with, He would have failed socialization worst that I did. Do you think He'd put up with the shenanigans the mission put me through? I don't think so? So just imagine. They have this new missionary coming fresh from seminary. He has unusual knowledge and wisdom, but he is not fitting in with the mission's norms. He is spending a lot of time in the evenings and weekends out teaching, preaching and evangelizing, but he should be spending more time with just with the mission. His outside ministry is becoming more and more reknowned in local circles, but the mission needs him to be only involved in the mission. The only way they know to get his attention is to ... send him back to the USA for counseling. So they find enough evidence (or they manufacture it) to show he might have culture shock. So they send Him back to the USA for counseling.
The Vienna mission is just like the Air Force, because, as I've said innumerable times, the mission lived by the principle that ends justifies the means, and if you believe that the ends justifed the means, then of course you're willing to compromise. You're willing to compromise the means in order to reach the ends, right? Or another way to put it is that as long as the ends are good and right, the ends don't particularly matter - we can compromise all we want on those and that's okay. That's what the mission believed. Now you're not going to find that on a doctrinal statement or on their web site or anything. It's just how they operated. It was their modus operandi. And if you see enough of how they operate, you can deduce it and figure it out based on their actions, and that's how I came up with it. This is not the kind of thing they'd like to be thought of about themselves, but it's how they operate.
So the thing is that the Vienna mission got this yuong upstart working for them and he's out being careless preaching and not getting socialized. So they have a couple things going here. One is that they are concerned about security because he is not being careful in his ministry in the city and the other is that he is not coming under their control for socialization. So think of these ends and means issues here.
The H.R. director pulls Jesus in to talk with him about the possibility about getting some counseling back in the USA. Jesus (having this advantage over me) knowing what they were up to, becomes angry and summons the mission leadership together in a never-before seen scenario) precedes to rebuke the leadership for their deceitfulness and their lack of faith, for being unequally yoked and mixing church and state, and several other issues. After this, he resigned his post with the mission.
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I think that's it for this article.