Dear Scientologist,
I am writing to you in hopes of bringing some clarity to the recent upsets and protests.
L. Ron Hubbard speaks much about integrity, responsibility, honesty and ethics. These are good things. The world needs more honesty and people need more integrity, better ethics, and need to take more responsibility.
But we have a problem.
I'm sorry but I must be blunt here. You have given up your responsibility for your church. You have given all the responsibility for your church to unnamed and unseen “others” of church management. Most Scientologists only know of one person, David Miscavige, who is in charge.
You trust that your church management is doing a good job. You trust that they are doing the right things. But your only source of information on how and what management is doing is management's own event presentations, which are, obviously, produced to make management look good.
The actual actions and statistics of the Church of Scientology management are hidden. The actual people involved in church management, except for David Miscavige, are hidden.
You are told that all information from outside sources about the church is false, and that church management's event presentations are the only valid sources of information. And you believe, and follow that.
This is irresponsible.
It is your church. You are responsible for the Church of Scientology. You. Not David Miscavige, not some mysterious and unnamed “management team”, not “someone else”, you.
You have been told that your "responsibility" is to follow management's orders. This is not responsibility. "Obedience" is not part of any definition of responsibility. Responsibility involves knowledge and it includes action--knowledge you have gathered for yourself, not some spoon-fed, predigested presentation, and action you have decided is best, based on your own personal knowledge.
I won't tell you what you should do, except to say that you need to take responsibility. The information available on the Internet won't kill you. Millions of people have read everything available and no one has died from it. No one has even gotten sick. Scientology has certainly not made you weaker than those people. It is safe for you to look.
Some of the information may be upsetting. So? Is your faith so weak that it falls apart at the slightest contrary opinion? Don't you think you have the intelligence and awareness to spot truth and lies? I think you do.
Taking responsibility has never been easy, but it has always been necessary. It is time for you to step up and assume the responsibility you abandoned.
You should be ashamed that others have felt it necessary to take responsibility for your church. They might not understand and may be clumsy in their attempts to correct things. You would obviously be better at it but you haven't done anything.
Take responsibility for your church. It is time.
Bill
