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howwelldoyouknowyourmoon · 7 years

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FFWPU / Unification Church Matching by Moon video

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Matching by Sun Myung Moon on June 24th 1982

Todd Harvey was at a 1979 matching in New York:

“... I was soon back in Manhattan. Virtually within hours, I was in a room with hundreds of other members who were being matched up by Moon, most often with a complete stranger. I went into that room full of excitement and happiness, but by the time I came out, I was one very confused boy. I saw all sorts of strange, pragmatic, and very unspiritual considerations, like leadership position, special considerations for favorites of the higher ups, and even visa status being taken into account in Moon's decisions. He was supposed to be able to look at you and see you aura and ancestry, (this is how he determined who would be a good match for you), yet he had to ask members what their nationalities were. I saw him strike a girl in the head with his fist when she dared suggest someone. We were told to take some time with our match to talk things over and come to an agreement about it, yet Moon angrily berated members in front of the whole assembly when they rejected his pick. He matched one talented, outgoing, intelligent and pretty girl in the rock group "Sunburst" with a poor guy who obviously had some mental impairment that kept him operating at a fourth grade level. I watched as my special friend was matched to someone else, and I wasn't even in the considerations, as the Japanese sisters, being so few, were matched first to the MFT "commanders". Moon didn't match any one together if the girl was taller than the boy, so when he paired me and my match up, he had us stand together to make sure. As we were standing there, it occurred to me that if she is just 1/2 inch taller than me, we will go on our separate ways, but if not, we will spend the rest of our lives together. In the speech he gave to us after the matching, he made the emphatic statement that "From now on, the most important thing is ABSOLUTE OBEDIENCE!", chopping the air with his hands for emphasis. And through it all I saw a lot of other confused, dazed members giving it their best fake it smile as they pretended happiness. But again, I buried my doubts, and went along with it. I didn't even consider rejecting my match, because I knew that good members didn't do that.

By now, I'm in a really, really weird space. I don't know what challenged my faith more, the deprogramming [I had recently experienced], or the matching. It's hard to describe the emotional and psychological turmoil of those days. You see, the dilemma of someone considering leaving, someone having a deep "crisis of faith" in such a group is very complex. It's even more difficult in the UC, due to the fact that you are not following just another guru, but the messiah himself. Someone on the outside says, "Look at what he does, look at how he operates – how can that be God's love, how can that be the messiah?". But if you really believe first that he is the messiah, then almost anything can be rationalized and accepted. It's like a "catch-22". And think about it – if Jesus were here now, would you second guess how he operated? Wouldn't you do anything at all he told you to do?

So, a struggling member is completely and absolutely all alone. I couldn't turn to anyone on the outside – family, friends, authorities, – because they just didn't understand. And I couldn't turn to anyone on the inside – after all, that was the whole question. They all had an agenda, and wanted something from me. I couldn't even turn to my own prayers, for once again, that was the whole question. Had all those prayers during the previous 6 years of membership been a mistake? Had I not been open to what God's will was? Was I doing God's will by staying, or leaving? No matter how hard I prayed, the answer to this dilemma wasn't clearly given to me. In the end, I just had to trust myself – my thoughts, my feelings, and my own gut instincts. That's all I could do.

It took another year of struggle and unhappiness until June, 1980, when I walked away from the group on my own, with a little more help from family and "exit counselors" whom I voluntarily met with. The day that I left was one of the most stressful days of my life. (Being stuck in Manhattan rush hour traffic and late for the plane flight didn't help!) Earlier in the day I had honored the request of my "match" to go talk to Mose Durst about my questions concerning the group. That did not go well. I found him to be manipulative and arrogant. He seemed unable to speak in anything but PR cliches, and we quickly came to blows, figuratively. His parting shot was that if I got on that plane, my "spiritual life was in danger", his exact quote. In the New Yorker hotel, the performing arts director, Mr. Pak, did his best to pressure me not to leave. I told him my intent was simply to go home for a while and think about things. I wasn't completely repudiating the group at that time, and in my mind I was still unsure what I was going to do, long term. But he still insisted I stay. When he realized that I wasn't going to be persuaded, he put his nose up in the air, turned and walked away without another word. No goodbye and best wishes, no thank you for the six years of hard work, no please stay in touch and call me anytime, nothing. I had ceased to matter to him. (This proved to be the pattern for my contacts with almost all the people I knew in the group. My "spiritual mother", my "spiritual children", and many others never contacted me after I got out, even though I contacted members of the band for at least a year, and anybody could have obtained my address and phone. In the ensuing years, I have concluded that members, for the most part, are reluctant to talk with former members.)

Of course, you don't just walk away from something as fundamental to your identity as that and just forget it happened. I spent a lot of time over the next years reading about the cult phenomena, writing reflections about my experience, and examining the doctrine from a new perspective, all in an effort to understand myself and find some peace inside. I felt like I was actually rewiring my brain. (This was an expression I remember hearing Moon use, telling us members what we needed to do to become good members).

What I'd like to do now is highlight a few of the main things I've distilled of concluded about all of this. I don't claim that all of the following insights are 100% my own, and I thank all the people whose work on cults and totalistic belief systems has lead to a deeper understanding of this extreme manifestation of religious faith, and also basic human nature. ...”