lindyhopper

Whoever runs it... the corps will have to go and a new program will be created by it's namesake....the Pimpjuice Clergy. Even better, get rid of the name TWI and put a new sign out on HW-29, "The First Church of the Pimpjuice Clergy- Welcome Home! Have some juice. You gonna love it." "You're always welcome at TFCPC." You could even add an "international" on to the end of that but we don't really need that. Everyone knows it's a global economy and we would think globally and act retarded. Ahhh, thanks for that PJC. That is the funniest handle I have ever seen. Have a caramel-schitzo-frapa-mocha-lattaccino on me.

Congrats Oak. You left twi exactly one year before I got married. Happy anniversary! Here's to a new life.

Sorry for going on and on... My last two posts may not be exactly what you were thinking, ILB, in light of emotional entrapment but as T Bone, said it is a web. This is where it all starts in the foundational class and from there it affects everyone differently and to different degrees. Emotional entrapment isn’t possible unless someone has gained your trust. By session twelve we have just been given “proof” of God, eternal life, and that what we had just been taught was right on the money. We have also relinquished and/or demonized doubt, worry, fear, and some very important steps to critically looking at what we are taught, such as: considering opposing thought and using our own perspective in interpreting and analyzing what we read, hear, and see concerning “all that pertains to life and Godliness.” I won’t argue faith and trust in God. That is between you and your God. This is not about that. This is about very early on, twi’s doctrine requires this same type of faith and trust in the organization and it’s leaders. Big difference. Once they have that kind of trust, they use it later to manipulate and pressure people and part of that is emotional entrapment. The biggest doctrine I saw used to keep peoples emotions in check was epiluo (sp?). This is also tied to that very early teaching of PI, “letting loose” “one’s own” (ability to critically read). This was also used along with the other Greek word that I can’t think of off hand that was used by LCM in the “fog years” tapes or what ever they were called. It was interpreted as “emotionally out of control.” It was used in reference to Chris G and others trying to show how they let grief get them emotionally out of control leading to devil possession. Anyone remember that Greek word? Anyways I saw this a number of times used to “tame” “overly emotional” women in one area I was in. By the mid 90’s we were at a point where even though we were supposedly “fully equipped” and “more than conquers” and etc etc. fully grown adult humans, advanced class grads even , couldn’t make simple life decisions without checking with an “overseer.” This checking and checking in and checking back and “getting wise council” replaced trusting your own instincts, emotions, and common sense at times. The short of it is that to a varying degree each of us relinquished personal control of our lives to THE ministry in part or in whole. Emotional entrapment is not hard to believe when you consider that many people are still physically and mentally trapped in the organization today. As I said, it effects people differently, but the doctrine is there from the beginning.

You also have doubt, worry, and fear being labeled negative believing, which as you know, is believing in reverse. So if you doubt any of the rightly divided Word of God you have been taught, you actually don’t believe it at all. So lets not do that. Don’t worry either, after all, God will protect you if and only if you do the Word we have taught you and you stay in THE Household that has taught it to you…otherwise all bets are off. No need to fear either. Fear is believing in reverse, or not believing, so how can a believer be a believer if you don’t believe. Always remember: THE Ministry’s hedge of protection will keep you safe, so fear not. To act as the Bereans is now actually impossible while adhering to twi’s doctrine, it would require doubt…doubting until you have found “whether those things are so.” Twi wanted you to search and research what you had been taught daily, but do not doubt or come to any other conclusion for you will be wrong. So put your shoulders back and hold your head high and say look out world, I am right and you are wrong.

ILB, Great topic you have here. I think as, Tbone said, it was a web, each small point of doctrine seemingly innocuous but when spun together and accepted it becomes a sticky, tangled snare very hard to escape from. The “Eve considered his words” point is a great one. Then there is the “private interpretation” teaching, which is both taken out of context and misinterpreted to stop you at the next step. If you go so far as to consider something, then you must remember you must not privately interpret. In other words if you don’t come to the same conclusions that you have been taught, you are privately interpreting. VPW, LCM, and any other person at a podium or in the hot seat at someone’s home was not performing a homily, or their take on things, it was the “rightly divided Word of God.” 2 Tim. 2: 15 or to be as noble as the Bereans and “search the scriptures daily whether those things were so,” “biblical keys to the Words interpretation,” “biblical truths we must adhere to” (says who), were all just a song and dance, a smoke screen. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, you, yes you, are still the one with the power to discern right from wrong and good from evil. This was all just false empowerment for so called abundant living, for as we all know, to come to any other conclusion was to be PI’ing. Which means not only have you have already considered, you have added, subtracted, and or changed THE true meaning of THE Word, which has already been rightly divided for you in a three part series. Besides “the Word is the Ministry and the Ministry is the Word,” and “the Word of God is the Will of God,” and “you can’t separate God from His Word,” and “logic comes from logos.” So THE Ministry is the Word and Will of God and you can’t separate THE Ministry from God therefore THE Ministry is God. Anything else is illogical PI which is sin and most likely a doctrine of the Devil. So screw being noble and screw being a real workman of the Word. They have given you the road map, even the “title deed,” and explicit directions, to arrive at any other destination than the one they have showed you obviously means you have “turned to the right or to the left” and deviated from the “path that has been laid before you.” That is just a part of it….

D0nn@ M@rtind@le told a few of us teens around a campfire a story of when she and another young lady were in a big city, maybe NYC. They sat down somewhere and started talking to a guy about believing and God. The guy pulled a gun on them and theatened to shoot them. They said "go ahead, God will protect us." The guy apparently thought it was funny and left.

Real quick on wife swapping. Once while in the family corps (F12), I passed some F11 guys in the hall. They were alone with the exception of me passing by. At the time I could have sworn they were talking about swapping wives. I thought I must have missunderstood what they were saying and forgot about it. I can't remember who it was but remember the face of one of them. They were definitely F11. Of course once I read about this sort of thing here, I thought maybe I heard correctly. Looking back, I was 12, why would I think of wife swapping unless they had said it or something about it? Other than that, sorry, I was born in 75. :)

Hi NG, I was a fellow F12 4th-6th grader. We must have been in the same group at some point if not the whole time. I think I was 10- 12 years old while in. Feel free to drop me a private message if you like.

Boy Belle, that guy MH sounds like a class act. That's funny. I believe I left in 01' and part of the little "reproof session" I bowed out of had to do with me not ABSing in recent weeks. Old habits die hard I guess.

I think most religion is cult-like to a degree. It has to do with the control for sure and of course there are always controls in life, but I tend to messure it by what degree personal liberty and freedom are taken away. In that respect I feel TWI is worse than most groups I know of presently. "Good times, good things and good people" are everywhere, there are also very commited and good intensioned people in every walk of life and those are the ones that contribute the most to the world. The problem with fanatics is the "intense uncritical devotion." In that respect I don't know if you could consider Jesus as a fanatic. It is my observation that while positive things can come out of terrible people, groups, and situations, those that choose to be fiecely commited to good causes have critically thought things through...or they are just sheep. I don't think it is something anyone can be talked out of. Rather it is a process of going from the "uncritical devotee" to critically looking at our lives and the group we have been involved in piece by piece. As we do that, one notices the liberty and freedom that have been taken away, or coersed away, or that we have freely given up out of fear or ignorance or just plain short sightedness or youthful bliss. All things have the lighter side and we can look at the good in every situation. We can do the same with the bad, but what is the cost of our personal liberty and freedom? For some here and currently in twi it is not much for others it is a great deal. If we are in the category of the lesser, as critical thinkers and compassionate people we must realise that it is not just what we alone have paid but all of us collectively. Weigh the good to the bad with a clear view of how things were and are in twi and I come up with a cost too great to compromise.

For me I was just itching to find a way to deny Jesus Christ as my saviour, just itching. Sure enough I found one. Ok, not really, but ah the days when I used to think I knew everyone's true motives! Those were the days. I won't list all the reasons or give a break down of my process step by step, but it was a process that led me to admit to the fact that I just dont know. It was about being honest to myself first, and then to others. Funny a lot of people don't care about your personal honesty or respect it much. That is what it boiled down to though. Now I try not to belittle people for their beliefs. Although, if someone brings it up, I will discuss it in very frank and honest terms. I think for many people a theology does them a lot of good. That's great. I can't say I fully understand why but it does and that is fine. Just do the same for me is all I ask. "Do unto others as they would do unto you" makes a lot of sense to me. Not a big fan of war zones of any kind, but hopefully peace will come from it. Although, as with most war zones peace was possible another way. As far as Weirwille goes, for me too many things point in a bad direction for him. Obviously, the ultimate answer is we don't REAALY know, but with an educated guess it looks to me like perhaps he mixed something that would make him the "man he knew to be" with the man he wanted to be, and it seems that way from the start. Of course for me, it doesn't really have a bearing on my personal standing or state as a human being.

Well I don't have to think back very far to remember some good ones. They happen almost everyday around here. Some of the funniest ones of course involve unintentionally saying words they shouldn't. My oldest, now almost three, when he first started to build his vocabulary had trouble with certain sounds as many kids do. For example, he couldn't say "truck". Instead he would excitedly yell out barn animal names like, "Daddy, look-a-that big cock!" Of course, he is a boy so he was and is enamoured with trucks of all shapes and sizes but at this age everything is big to him. I would say, "Oh yeah, that is a TRUck" emphisizing the TRU part. He'd come back with "Yeah, that's a big HUGE cock!" of course usually his excitement made him yell this most of the time. We had to explain it to the daycare lady. Thankfully she understood. Another time while outside on the deck for dinner, his cousin had been outside with him earlier playing with sticks. You guessed it. He couldn't say stick very well. The "st" was much too hard to say for a boy of only two years. The "D" sound was much easier. So after dinner he saw a stick they were playing with and wanted to show it to us. "Look at at my big *ick. Its a big HUGE *ick." To which the entire table erupted into laughter, with the exception of his territorial 3yr old cousin who had eaten with us. He exclaimed, "NO THAT'S MY STICK!" So my son corrected himself, "Look at Andrew's big HUGE *ick!" Which was even funnier to us, but we were trying to calm ourselves and kept saying through our laughter "STick....STick, that is a big STick." At that point though, all our laughing had already fueled the fire and my boy continued to please by describing the stick to us the best he could as loud as he could so we could hear. "Its Andrew's big, huge, long *ick." etc. Once we caught our breath the only thing we could do was distract and divert his atteniton to something else that he could pronounce correctly. Our neighbors must think we are a strange bunch. Something I always get a kick out of is how he uses words he knows to relate other things to us. Like once while we were playing with those sticky octopus things that kind of crawl down the wall when you throw it against it. Well the little man threw it up and hit the ceiling. Of course that was a "big, huge" throw and as he put it he "hit the wall up in the sky."

Happy Birthday, +/-ODD. You young wipper-snapper. Hope everything continues to go well with your art career and other endevours.

A quote from a ways back... This made me wonder about what you guys thought you would do in the long term once you where corps. Or did you think long term at all at first? Some people have already said they were thinking they would be the best darn twig coordinator they could be, but I wonder how many people saw "lifetime commitment" and thought or had the goal of becomeing an ordained minister at some point. I don't know who here was ordained except for maybe one or two of you. Was this a goal of yours that you set out for when signing up? How many of you had that goal but never made it there? I remember hearing talk from my parents and others about so and so will probably be ordained. I kind of think that at one point this is what my parents wanted. I know my mom has said that of my brother and others. At what point did you realise this meant a lifetime of working two full time jobs with only one of them paying?

Hey CW, let us know how the resin counter project goes. I looked into either getting this done or doing it myself for the project I am working on right now. I think we are straying from it at this point. These guys have really cool looking stuff as do the guys at 3form, but they are a little more commercial. To buy it is very expensive and in the end I am not that confident in how long it would last and how durable it would be if I did it myself. Ex10, that sounds like a fun project. Maybe we could see pix when you're done?

I am an HGTV addict, I admit. What can I say I'm a designer. I think Candice is very good. Kenneth Brown is very good as well. A new show called Design Inc. is nice and I always like Designers Challenge. I have a kitchen family room coming up in May and then nothing until the end of next fall when I have another kitchen lined up. Which is fine since I stay home with my boys. I have always wanted to do a drastic remodel. I have a stong modern asthetic but I like good design across the board. There was a long 60's 70's-ish ranch here in town with an old white barn behind it. The price was insane, but I played around with it on the computer as to what I would do with it if I had the money. Someday maybe. I also like a lot of the emerging modern prefab housing. Check it out here and click on the Fablist second down on the right for a list of companies and pics.

I understand what some of you are saying about not wanting to speak up and pushing it down so far that it seems like it wasn't real...like it was just a bad dream. I had one incedent that happened to me when I was young (less that 7, don't remember exactly, maybe 5). It happened at a daycare at a lady's house down the road and was done by her older boy. If you've read my story here you know that I never told anyone until it was nearly forced out of me by my LC and BC during a "homo purge" sort of situation. I still didn't tell anyone after that until I met my wife and then on my first post here in my story. I don't feel it affected me much as an adult, but perhaps as a kid. It was only one time, but it was still something that stuck with me over the years even though I had repressed it into a faint unreal memory. What really is upsetting to me (I started a thread about this before) is that as an adult I think I have met more women that have been abused than not. I hoped for boys for this reason when having kids. I feel I can do more good by raising good boys into good men. Being a guy I have seen the objectifying of women by peers and what seems to be most men on a large scale. It is disconcerting to say the least. Even today in 2006 woman are viewed as meat and as a prize so often it is sickening. This is a big problem and a complicated one to deal with and I don't think there is any one answer. There needs to be more open conversation about it in families, in schools if they teach sex ed and other places that might help. I see Satori's point and think that perhaps it might help some people before they commit a crime. If it helps one person it helps 117 victims according to the stats. To me that seems worth it. On the other hand, once the crime is commited there needs to be severe punishment. I think once these people ravage a child they are no longer of use to this world and should be removed from it as quickly as possible. This needs to happen first for justice and second so that they never hurt another child again. That being said it is unrealistic to think that capital punishment alone will rid us of all of them. That would assume that we apprehend all of them which we all know doesn't and probably never will happen. More harsh punishment like, life in prison or death, would help though, IMO. (((((all of you))))) I think most of it comes down to parenting, both in protecting our children and in raising loved, well adjusted, future grown ups. Unfortuanately, that is someting we can't and wouldn't want to regulate.

I am thankful my wedding was not a ministry event. Ours was a beautiful thing. It was like a family reunion- well union, up in the mountains for several days with close family and friends. My wife and I did live together before we got married and I don't really see a problem with that for two mature adults who have open, honest, and genuine communication and love. For us it wasn't a matter of "trying eachother out." It made sense financially, for one. Since we spent every available waking and non waking moment together it seemed like a waste of money to have two rents just to keep up appearances that we didn't care about anyways. Besides we had already decided to commit ourselves to eachother. The commitment of marriage comes down to two people, and when that decision is made is when the commitment starts. The marriage cerimony is just a public persentation and celebration of the commitment you have already made. So in our eyes we were already "married." If you have already discussed "to death do us part" with eachother and agree, then saying it in front of family and friends doesn't suddenly make it so. I feel sorry for these kids. My younger brother who is still involved with twi is getting married. I don't know how much the local LC is controlling the situation, although, I know him personally and know he tends to do that. I also know that for some reason I am not in the wedding party while my older brother who is corps is. I can only imagine one reason why I am not, but perhaps I am wrong. I can only assume that the LC had some say in that, since he is doing the wedding and since it is usually customary to have your siblings stand for your wedding and seeing as that is how we did it for both my wedding and my older brother's wedding. I'm not upset with my brother but rather more upset for him, because I think that without the presiding LC being involved he would have asked me to stand up with him. I don't want to push it either, becuase I know the stress of planning a wedding and I don't want to add to that. I want it to be about them. Hopefully that happens. Besides the LC and I aren't exactly big fans of eachother. Me not his for him being a ignorant evil prick and him not mine...well because I left the ministry. Since I left everytime he has looked at me or my wife it has been either a nasty glare or a plastic smile...usually depending on whether anyone else was around or looking. I wouldn't want to distact him from doing his job at my bro's wedding.

GeeZ Tom, I could almost "feel the love" there for a minute then you had to come in and start shootin' up the place. I was about to break out the tie-dye, now you got me standing at attention. I always thought the gun training was done more because many leaders seemed like paranoid end of the civilized world conspiracy theorists. Even as mini corps, we had survival training. At the time I thought it was a lot of fun....probably still would be now. But looking back it seemed like in some respects we were all being made ready for Red Dawn. Do you still have your backpack packed and ready at a moments notice? (Gonna pack it up nice) I'm with you Socks. I think I have said this many times. It is hard to have regrets if you are happy with where you are. Still there is a part of me that would have liked to left left earlier, and not hurt the people I hurt and not have been hurt by the people that hurt me and to have stood up to them for myself and others at times. But, everything that has happened has led to this point and I like it here....a lot. I also agree with Pond that perhaps the biggest learning experience for me in twi, was in the leaving.

So, Shorty, is it really your view that it is the "lifetime" part of the commitment that is the problem or is it perhaps the degree of submition and control over the one who commits that twi requires. In a marriage there are deal breakers...conditions in the contract so to speak. Do you feel there are situations where breaking the corps commitment becomes valid and what are they? Is the fact that the corps contract (is there one?) is so vague make your commitment unbreakable or should the vagueness be grounds for an easy exit if one feels mislead or misinformed? I would think the answer to the later is a simple yes.

No, he as just asked by Paw to play by the rules.

I think the last thing I wanted to comment on was about 4 pages ago... Shortfuse, you compared the commitment of staying corps for life to the commitment of marriage. I think the comparison falls short a little. A marriage is a commitment between two people The corps is a one sided commitment of, as it turns out, a lifetime of submiting to the leaders of twi. A marriage has the perhaps unexpercted ups and downs, the shouting and sweet nothings, total joy and anger, arguments and of course COMPROMISE. It is a two way street with heartfelt discussion, disagreement and working things out, if you are commited to it. For the corps and most people in twi, if you are commited, you submit and obey or you are out on your arse.

OK. We are all different people and we all stayed in for different amounts of time and for different reasons. People still stay in for perhaps even different reasons Recap- Sounds to me like you changed your belief that twi was the Min. Of Rec. No?

No that is fine JL, I think it can be brought back around to the topic. I think you answered your question with the following post. For starters though: No one forced her to commit the murder of her baby. She has not claimed this. They, THE ministry, and THE man of God, pressured her, a totally believing wayfer, to abort her baby becuase her commitment to the ministry with a God mask on was more important to them than the birth of a baby she wanted to have. She wrote them saying she could not go through with the program....so she wanted and was intending to have the baby. They pressured her and convinced her to do otherwise. Did she have a choice. To a degree, yes. In her own words.... fThat brings tears to my eyes. For some, something to attack. Nothing about forcing, but pressuring from the people she reveered the most. In contrast to personal first hand experience, here are Oldie's replies: Rascal Oldies Here in addition to implying she is lieing he confuses what she is stressing and what twi leaders (LCM) were stressing. I believe there is more but hopefully you get the idea. As you said, This is the a point many have been missing here. If that is what you thought, then your choices became limited without totally changing what you believed. That as we all know is not an easy thing to do, just look at Oldies. It is even harder when faced with a difficult situation as Rascal was. Thanks Paw, i guess I was posting as you were. Now back to topic.

Actually that is not what she is saying. Anyone with a little love in their heart, say someone who claims to be a Christian, would treat what rascal has been talking about a little more delicately, regardless of whether they agree or not. No one is allowed to post personal attacks on this board. Read the rules. If someone does (I have been guilty of it before) then an offended party is asked to inform a moderator. That is how it works. Don't like when it is you on the butt end? Report it. When all else fails "do unto others as you would have them to unto you." Now if we could please return to the topic and reasonable discourse.