(From alt.support.ex-cult)
From: Alexandre R. (raapje@hotmail.com)
Subject: the UBF
Newsgroups: alt.support.ex-cult
Date: 1999/11/15
Hello everyone, it's nice to have a forum like this; it is very encouraging to feel you're not alone in struggling against cult dependence. I walked away about two years ago and would like to talk to people who also walked away from the University Bible Fellowship. It took me a long time to myself, after I walked away, to start realizing that I spent four years of my life in a cult. If anyone comes from the group, please answer me. Thanks again for the discussion group, Alexander
(from the reformubf.org discussion forum)
Posted by Alexandre R. (147.46.137.68) on February 21, 2002 at 01:29:17:
Although we humans are privileged by having received the ability to think and act rationally, rationality has always to be considered in a certain context. I believe in the case of established UBF leadership a lot can be explained by the 'sunk costs' those people incurred (or were made to incur) years and years before. 'Sunk costs' is actually an economics concept that is simply the amount of money you invested into a project some time ago that cannot be recuperated under any circumstances. The key consequence of incurring sunk costs is that after you did it, the probability that you will go on with you project in case it goes bad will be much higher compared to the case of no sunk costs.
Now, UBF makes one to incur loads and loads of sunk costs that make exiting it or admitting making a mistake extremely costly and undesirable. Just think about marriage by force or one's education and career choices. These are all dictated by UBF directorship and are almost impossible to reverse. Imagine you're forty years old, you've three kids, you've been married for about twenty years, you've a stable job somewhere in Mexico where you're a missionary as well. All this because you've invested a lot into your UBF life, and most of this investment is sunk.
Joining the reformers would mean losing all of the benefits you acquired due to this sunk investment, and the prospects of regaining your current life standard are dim and remote. In this situation, is it not rational to choose retaining your status quo?
See, that's the clue to the conundrum that was haunting me for years: why would they let me deliver messages at the conferences while telling me I was spiritually immature? why would they want me to preach to the dormitory students while castigating me for being un-godly, selfish, money-oriented (you continue the list)? why would they want me to marry when I was clearly not good enough for God's Kingdom (in their view)? The answer is--they wanted to change the context in which my rationality would dictate my behaviour, and the context is sunk costs.
When I quit, I wasn't married to a UBF wife and of course had no children, I didn't owe my job to my UBF shepherds (like some of our Russian members did), I haven't had spent twenty best years of my life toiling for the organization. It was thus relatively easy for me to quit. The UBF leadership is in a mirrored situation--quitting for them is just impossible and would almost amount to self-suicide. This is why I really admire those people who were able to take their rationality out of the sunk costs context and put it into the context of God.
God bless.
