Scientologists DO Have an Agenda!
I’ve been in Scientology since 1975. For 32 of those years I worked in a Church of Scientology as a staff member. For 19 of those 32 years, I was the Executive Director of the Church of Scientology in Denver. So, I pretty much have seen whatever there is to see in a Church of Scientology. I have been to all of the advanced Scientology churches and spent quite a bit of time there as well.
And I have to admit, we actually do have an agenda. It’s not one people often attribute to us, but we do have one. It is to make the world a better place. Now, if you think that’s a pretty innocuous agenda, you might want to take another look. There are people who think we are evil incarnate because of that very agenda.
I have friends who took “vacations” from their jobs to go to New Orleans and volunteer for weeks after Katrina devastated the city. Who spends their vacation in a disaster zone just so they can help? Scientologists do.
I have a friend who is a Scientologist. He was hired by the State Department to help the Iraqis set up a democratic government. They had never had one before, so it was assumed they might need an adviser. On his first day in Iraq, as he was being escorted by a mixed assortment of military personnel to the base where he would be stationed, he was confronted by a cynical Australian soldier.
The soldier said in a derisive way, “You Americans! You’re such believers.”
Brian was a bit mystified so he asked what the soldier meant. He replied: “You actually think that you can change the world. The rest of us have figured out that you can’t.”
Brian thought about it for a moment and responded, “I’ll own that. We do think we can better things.”
So, as a Scientologist and as an American, he worked his butt off to improve a country by helping its people set up a democratic government. It was hard at first because he had to convince them that he didn’t have any agenda other than helping them. They frankly didn’t believe him until he said about ten times: “I don’t want anything from you. I’m here to find out what YOU need and want.” It was a novel idea to them—that he was just there to help.
Now, Scientologists run into this situation all the time. We’re out there helping people and they’re suspicious of us. We do food drives, toy drives and clothing drives. We’ve set up free community literacy programs. We’ve worked with gangs to get their members to do something constructive rather than destructive. We are all about human rights (as you can see from our blogs) and we work ceaselessly to see that everyone is treated fairly no matter their race, religion or creed. We’re there whenever there is an emergency, gathering up and handing out supplies and assisting however we can. I have friends who took “vacations” from their jobs to go to New Orleans and volunteer for weeks after Katrina devastated the city. Who spends their vacation in a disaster zone just so they can help? Scientologists do.
We do good. We do a lot of good. We help a lot of people lead happier, more productive lives. Who wouldn’t like this? Well, anyone whose livelihood depends on people being unproductive and unhappy.
Did you know that 1 in 6 Americans takes an antidepressant? Someone is making hundreds of billions of dollars off of them.
Now, if you were a drug company and this was your cash cow and some church started making people happier without antidepressant pills, what do you think you would do? Look at the news sometime and just count the number of ads for drugs. Just count how many there are in one news program. These guys are big business. And frankly, we have really pissed them off. Scientologists are pretty happy people and we don’t do drugs. Sure, medicine. But psychiatric drugs, never!
So, there’s our agenda: to make the world a better place. Now look at the agendas of those who attack us. I think a little light just may dawn.
I like our agenda. I like making people happier. I like seeing people do well in life. I don’t like the agenda of any group that would happily drug 1 in 6 Americans and strive every year to increase that number. They might just mean you harm.
Well, we don’t.
