The following are some of the highlights of a friendly online debate between another Christian and myself. His comments are italicized.
“(Brainwashing) is a process of conditioned behavior, thinking, and perception. We brainwash ourselves when we build good and bad habits. We condition ourselves when we recite the National Anthem and sing hymns.” We can also be forced into conditioning as everyone who has ever been through football or boot camp can attest.”
Definition of brainwashing from Merriam-Webster:
“a forcible indoctrination to induce someone to give up basic political, social, or religious beliefs and attitudes and to accept contrasting regimented ideas….persuasion by propaganda or salesmanship.”
Force and persuasion are necessary techniques employed to bring about submission of will. Torture and consciousness altering drugs are other methods. These techniques are necessarily aimed at spirit because the fleshy brain is to fleshy body what spirit (mind, will, conscience) is to soul. Hence, it is not the brain being ‘washed,’ but the will of the spirit being persuaded or coerced through brutality.
The building of good and bad habits are choices. Rebellion against discipline meant for adoption of good behavior is the sign of a will turned against good.
Prior to football and boot camp ‘conditioning’ is the freely chosen decision to try out for football or enlist in the military. Free will always precedes what comes after, or the ‘conditioning.’
“What has happened to the Left in this country re: brainwashing might have been voluntary by most people. I don’t know. But it is reinforced by the echo chambers in which Lefties live and by the media that constantly fills their heads with propaganda.”
Rather than the political term Leftist, let’s apply Biblical thought to them. Biblically, Leftists are by choice worldly, hard-boiled sinners; natural men of blood and soil who hate God, hate His creation, deny the living souls He blesses each one of us with, and are not averse to evil. Psalms and Proverbs have much to say about them. Their echo-chambers of propaganda and re-education necessarily reach into the souls (seat of disordered passions) and spirits of the gullible, seducing their disordered passions and persuading them to submit their wills in unison with them (Leftists) in a life of sin, defiance, and rebellion.
“‘I don’t know where along the line of all that conditioning most Lefties made the decision to abandon their free will. But it appears to have been abandoned. “
The choices we make every day, whether for good or for evil, will eventually become hard-wired habitual behaviors because this is how God designed our brains and wills. Big Liars such as Hitler for example, were hard-wired liars who could no longer choose truth and good because they no longer possessed the ability to choose. Against this, the brains of the children of the Lord, through their choices on a day-by-day basis to become more Christlike will also eventually become hard-wired, but to always speak truth, desire good, desire justice, and love the Lord.
By choice, we eventually become hard-wired for good or for evil. The first are the children of the Lord, the second the seed of Satan:
“The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” Genesis 6:5
“That said, people can be deprogrammed. We have all seen it work on people who were under the sway of others (gangs, cults, or just destructive friendships).”
The healing (deprogramming) of souls who have fallen under the sway of toxic souls is difficult for reasons having to do with methods of persuasion and corruption and the fallen condition.
First, toxic souls possess an uncanny ability to zero in on souls (intended victims) made gullible through loneliness, selfish rebelliousness (against parents for instance), feelings of hurt, and so on. Such feelings or passions make these fallen souls gullible to the techniques of persuasion employed by ill-intentioned, lying toxic souls who persuade the lonely of their love, the hurt of their heartfelt understanding and care, and for the selfish rebel, unending validation in a brotherhood of rebels.
Once the deep feelings of gullible souls have become attached to the toxic soul, a process commences leading to the isolation of the victim from family and friends or anyone else capable of seeing through the malignant intentions of the toxic soul.
Once isolation has been achieved, there follows another process designed for the step-by-step corruption of conscience through initiation into ever darker perversions and evils. With corruption of conscience and guilty knowledge of freely made bad choices comes the guilt and self-loathing that keeps the victim tied to the toxic soul. Only a faithful, orthodox priest can truly help such souls.
We must never downplay the role of free will. The Lord our God who gave us free will takes very seriously our use and abuse of choice. It was after all, the abuse of free will by both Adam and Eve that led to their fall and our own fallen condition.
@Linda