In 1973 a gang of bank robbers held up the Kreditbanken (Credit Bank) in Stockholm, Sweden. The police interrupted their heist, but the bank robbers proceeded to hold a number of bank employees hostage for six long days. When at last they were rescued these kidnap victims, who had been terrorized and abused by their captors, stunned the authorities by demonstrating considerable emotional attachment to their victimizers. Some of the victims even publically defended the very ones who had held them at gun point and threatened their lives.

You know what we call this phenomenon. You may not know that it was a Swedish psychiatrist/criminologist by the name of Nils Bejerot who dubbed this bizarre behavior with its sticky name. But you know the name of the syndrome: it's called . . . the "Stockholm Syndrome." . . . . That's right. You're good. . . .

Since 1973 this strange sympathetic behavior — a hostage showing loyalty and concern for the hostage-taker — has been repeated numerous times since Berejot's observation, and by tens of thousands of unnamed/unknown domestic, spousal, and child abuse victims. The captives get their own identity so wrapped up in that of their captors that no matter how bad their reality, it seems better than facing the fear of an unknown, undefined future.

I want to make the case this morning that one of the dominant sicknesses facing our world today is the "Stockholm Syndrome." There are many of us who are suffering from a kind of cultural "Stockholm Syndrome," blindly defending and claiming as good for ourselves the very things that keep us captive…

Who shall set these people free?