The church was prompt about follow-up. A few days after my visit I received a phone call from a member who encouraged me to come back, and asked if I had any questions.
I told her that I had become interested in the church because of all the stories about the Jackson family and the starving boys. Did she know anything about that?
The poor woman was obviously familiar with the story, and equally obviously did not know what to say. I don’t blame her for that. It’s a tough position to be in.
Thinking over what I know from the newspaper articles, I do not believe that anyone in the church had any reason to think that the Jacksons were mistreating the four boys. If a family in my church had four weirdly small, obviously ill sons and told me that their condition was due to something genetic, or congenital, or to early mistreatment, I would believe them. I might question why they didn’t take the boys to a dentist, but that would be about the extent of my doubt. I would probably just think that it is wonderful that such sick boys had found a family to care for them.
After the story broke, it is perhaps more surprising that the church defended Raymond and Vanessa Jackson so vigorously. As the facts began to emerge, you would think that church members would begin to have doubts. You would think that, unless you had some experience with cognitive dissonance.
It would be a good thing if every educated churchgoer took some time to think a little about cognitive dissonance. The introduction to the article on this topic in Wikipedia begins:
“Cognitive dissonance is an uncomfortable feeling caused by holding conflicting ideas simultaneously. The theory of cognitive dissonance proposes that people have a motivational drive to reduce dissonance. They do this by changing their attitudes, beliefs, and actions. Dissonance is also reduced by justifying, blaming, and denying. It is one of the most influential and extensively studied theories in social psychology.”
According to the theory of cognitive dissonance, when people discover facts that are in contradiction to their beliefs, they can reduce the dissonance by changing those beliefs – or by “justifying, blaming, and denying.” The latter course of action is extremely popular.
In the case of Come Alive! church, the prevailing beliefs were that the Jacksons were saintly people exhibiting Christlike compassion in caring for these extremely ill boys, that the church was demonstrating its own goodness and Christlikeness in supporting the Jacksons (on top of everything else, you have the interesting dynamic that the Jacksons were a black family attending a basically white church, which provided a subtext of additional godliness), and that the pastors and people were good at discerning “real faith” and “true saints.”
Those are powerful and attractive beliefs, and the facts were no match for them.
If Pastor Thomas were a hypocrite, he would not have stood up before the House Ways and Means Committee to defend the Jacksons – there was nothing in it for him but ridicule. I believe he honestly thought, “I am a good person and a good judge of character. I could not be so wrong about these people. Therefore the facts as presented must be wrong.”
Religious people think this way all the time. (As do non-religious people; it’s a human thing.)
Now, what would account for the Raymond and Vanessa Jackson’s behavior? I have more trouble thinking about this, but it may be something like that Munchhausen by proxy syndrome that describes people who make their own children ill. I’ll admit it’s a very unusual case of whatever it is – both parents colluding, as well as discriminating so blatantly between the boys and the girls in their family. However, I’m pretty sure that in some way their actions were justified in their own minds, hard as that is to comprehend. They were obviously rather far removed from reality in more ways than one. For example, when the case broke it was discovered that the Jacksons were more than $9,000 behind on rent payments that were already heavily subsidized by the state, and electricity in the home had been turned off for months. Raymond Jackson’s job? He was a financial planner.
As time went by, especially as it became clearer every month that all the boys needed was an ordinary family and enough food, I imagine (and hope) church members began to come around to accepting the very unpleasant fact that they had been ignoring starving children in their midst for years. No one would like to admit to a thing like that, but there it is. Lots of people don’t want to admit lots of things about their churches – or their families, or themselves, or anything else in which they have some personal emotional investment, such as their country or their profession.
In the end, I’m glad, as I said, that the church did not abandon Vanessa Jackson. It would be best if they were to confront her and themselves about glaringly obvious sins and failings, of course, but even if she is never able to finally take proper responsibility for these terrible crimes, it’s better that she has some support somewhere. She is a person made in the image of God, too.
Churches are funny. Church people want to see themselves as the good guys, the ones who defend the orphans and fight for the powerless. And it’s so very hard to accept that more often than we would like to believe we are the bad guys, the ones who starve orphans, or get rich off the poor, or rape children, or feed the flames of hatred. The case of four starving boys in the midst of a loving church family should be a wake-up call not just to New Jersey child welfare services, or to Pastor Thomas, or his church, or the Jackson family, but to churchgoers everywhere. We are very, very good at justifying, blaming, and denying.
You might say it’s a special gift.
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