Now remember that I did the research that resulted in my having all these articles and book segments in the mid 90's, so my thinking along these lines has stayed pretty constant all this time and that was much closer to the time when all this happened to me - specifically the Vienna years.
Also, the fact that I've kept them all this time is an indication of my continual intention of using them eventually, when life circumstances permitted it.
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"When an individual enters an organization as a newly recruited member, he is likely to experience what Hughes (1958b) calls a 'reality shock.' The extent to which the shock affects the outcome of the organizational socialization process depends largely upon the extent to which the person has correctly anticipated the various expectations of the organization." (p. 84)
Whoooa, Nelly! Need I say that I didn't anticipate "the various expectations of the organization" very "correctly"? I got along pretty well in Austria apart from my dealings with the mission, which indicates that I knew the Austrian culture better than I understood the organizational culture mostly made up mainly of fellow Americans, and evangelical Christian Americans at that. How can that be? Where had I ever had problems among American evangelical Christians? So as you can see, this is not just any ordinary group of (mostly) American evangelical Christian. No, this is a group of (mostly) American evangelical Christians who had developed a way of thinking and doing that seemed very foreign to my American evangelical Christian experience, which spanned about my whole life.
Now it's one thing to do things a little differently, but how could more fundamental things like way of thinking and rationalizing ways of doing that seemed antithetical to all that I knew about my faith and biblical teaching? Had I been mistaught? Had I all these years misunderstood the Bible?
If these perceived differences were real, and not just ephemeral or a misunderstanding somewhere along the line on my part, how could these seemingly astute theologians and Bible teachers come to such divergent understandings and ways of thinking?
If they were correct, was their way of thinking something that needed to be taught back home too - after all if they were right, surely they should spread it to Christians back home (and elsewhere) too, right? Or was it that they were right only in the narrow context of working in Eastern Europe (or "closed countries" anywhere), which mandated a different reality, a different understanding of things?
But if there was a real gap between the mission's reality and what I'd been taught, experienced and read in the Bible, how could they bridge that gap? I can tell you my theory on this: they were convinced that these differences were necessary to be able to "successfully" carry out their work... in the context of Communist countries. So then the issues become: 1) What is "successful"? 2) Was this really necessary to be "successful"? and 3) Was it biblical?
Here are my answers to these questions:
1) "Successful" in their eyes involved minimal human suffering (e.g., imprisonment of nationals, missionaries being banned from countries, etc.) and more equipped national church leaders to build the Church in those countries. I think the first part of this equation is based on our modern/cultural thinking and does not biblically justify their tactics (although if broken down into specific individual tactics, some might not have been an issue).
2) To meet their idea of "successful" (as I've just surmised) the complete package of their tactics might have been more or less necessary. But since I disagree with their concept of "successful" (as I've interpreted it), I also don't agree that their means were necessary.
3) No, I don't think it was biblical. If it were possible to have one of the leadership (i.e., one of those that would have had the greatest knowledge and understanding of the tactics used) list out the various specific tactics - including the things not written down - and then give a biblical/theological explanation for each of them, I would be very interested in seeing such a list. But first of all, there would need to be corroboration that the list was relatively complete and accurate and not snow job. But since I think that these tactics are still in use in other "closed" countries (i.e., countries not open to Western missionaries), I highly doubt that you'll find anyone willing to do this, unless there was someone else out there (besides me) who was disgruntled about these things but had more insider access than I did.
So all that is to say that I had a very incorrect understanding of the "various expectations" of the mission before arriving in Vienna.
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"In many cases, anticipatory socialization sharpens the positive features of the organization and dulls the negative features. For example, recruitment procedures seek to present the organization in its most favorable light. Consequently, the encounter period is likely to be an extremely trying period." (p. 84)
Hah! Missions give EVERYONE a glossed over view of their work!! Of course, the more deviance in the mission the more "glossing over" you'd expect. Most missions with any deviation, though, would be expected to having something like disagreements among workers or something scandalous about a particular missionary, or the like. But the glossing over that missions to Eastern Europe did involved intentionally hiding a major part of what they did!
Of course, in general terms I anticipated this, but the kind of discretion I imagined paled in comparison to the whole-scale spy-like institutionalized deception I encountered. You've heard of front companies? Here's something from the Sept. 17, 2008, Los Angeles Times:
The CIA set up a network of front companies in Europe and elsewhere after the Sept. 11 attacks as part of a constellation of "black stations" for a new generation of spies, according to current and former agency officials. (http://articles.latimes.com/2008/feb/17/nation/na-intel17)
That's about what it felt like.
***
I'm going to break off for now...
Ciao...
~ Meg
