lindyhopper

Now that one was especially fun to read in my best Groucho Marx voice. money, money money, and more money. LOL I crack myself up....well, with your help of course.

Of course this is all anecdotal or based on my experience, but for me at the heart of a cult is control. The group think, corruption, heirarchies, wolves in sheeps clothing are all just symptoms of the control and the pressure to conform. Having said that, I think most if not all (again just extrapolating my limited observation) religions have cult like characteristics. Being an artist kinda fuels this sort of anti-conformist and distaste for control, I suppose. I do understand the need for certain limits of course and for having rules for social interaction to a degree, and I understand that it is virtually impossible to be yourself without referencing all your experiences and personal relations. I know we become the sum of our absorbtion. Although, I think when it comes to the pressure to act a certain way or a pressure to think a certain way or a pressure to change who you are for no other reason than a major uncertainty, we are talking cultish control. I don't blame people for wanting or needing that pressure to change. As I said we become a sum of our absorbtion and sometimes we need to be squeezed to get some of the bad stuff out. There is a possitive way to do that and a negative way to do that. There are real reasons for the need for that change and there are fictional ones. IMO, a tribe is an extended family that you have to live with, and I don't know if I have been in or seen a family where all were equal. In any family, immediate or extended, there are politics and there is a degree of control. I think the very idea of God in most religions that I know is prone to, if not designed for cult developement. IMO it is not so much the family/tribe evolution as it is a trasfomation of a conservative and useful form of control to a liberal and negative use of control (and I ain't talkin' politics).

I hear ya, Belle. When I left twi some of the first people I called were friends from college. There were only three that were really very close and they all were happy to hear I had left. They knew me while i was in and even though they didn't say anything apparently they were concerned behind my back. That is the best kind of thing to have gong on behind your back. :)--> Unfortunately they had all moved away to other states. I keep in touch through email and occasionally on the phone. I saw two of them on a day weekend trip we took shortly before we left the east coast. I really wish they were closer or that we could visit more often. I have talked about this with my wife a number of times. While she is my best friend and I love spending time with her and our son, I do wish we had more friends. We had a number of friends in MD but many, for me anyway, were firends of convenience. By that I mean they were friends of friends or friends through work. Things like that. I didn't have friends that were friends because we hit it off and had similar intersts ect. Now that we've moved we still mostly have friends through work but I actually like a number of them a lot. We really get along. I think it'll take time but these friendships seem like they will grow into something good. Really, I don't know what to tell you. It is hard to make friends, especially as an adult. Most people have those long-time friendships that is comfortable and they don't need or want any new friends. In college the first few weeks kids were just craving friendship. It was almost like when you were in elementary school..."do you want ot be my friend?" lol As an adult I think people don't want to seem that needy. That is one major problem I have with the ministry....destroying good friendships. For sure you have to go out and do things and meet people. One thing the G-Spot has done for me is as I have expressed myself here and sort of figured out who I am again I have been much more real and true to who I am when I go out. I used to hold back a little, probably so people didn't figure out I was in a cult. lol Now I am just who I am and the people that like who I am seem to stick and the ones that don't...don't. I'm sure you will find some folks, and I think you should contact those old friends. Don't be concerned with who they are now or who you were, just who you are now and who you know them to be, and that is old friends. You might be surprised at the welcome you recieve. And you can always email me if you like. ;)--> Oh, one more thing....find a place to go swing dancing. :D--> Don't worry if you aren't coordinated, people at these places that have a dance with a lesson before hand are usually very nice and welcome new-comers. I have been to many and have always felt welcomed. The people are usually looking for friends too and good, clean, alcohol free, fun. It was one of these types of places that I met my wife. No that you're looking to do that right now, but I did meet a number of good people and became friends with a lot of them at least for a while. Or do salsa or what ever sounds good to you. Have fun.

/

(((((((EX)))))))

David, that is becasue it is pineapple. I know you folks up in the great white north have never actually been in a huricane before, so just to enlighten you a little the spin around spewing pineapple everywhere. And raf, that is a skull...oh yeah you have been in a real tornado. Never mind. :P-->

OK getting back to moddishwasher. My extensive experience in the service industry has finally become useful. mod= manager on duty dishwasher= lowest on the totem. inotherwords, moddishwasher does it all and plays the tamberine while doing it, but he doesn't get tips. And now for a list of one hundred names I'm not supposed to type. OK, I won't do that to you.

Groucho...you were having a flashback. As far as I can tell from marlene aka bunnie's post is that she has never posted, never registered, and since there is no date on the post I will assume that the post is either not there or is in some sort of cyber-limbo. whatever the case that is one freaky strange attractor icon. I am strangely attracted to it...and I don't know why. OK, back to trying to get help for JohnUR. He really needs it. Maybe a stress releaving squishy ball is all he needs. So as I was saying...I think your experiences during your wayfer rearing largely had to do with WHO you were raised by. Thank Dog I was paired with my parents and not a fly swatter.

Yeah, the never ending run-in with people. A friend dubbed it "Yikes and away". That is from an old Daffy Duck cartoon where he is playing a clutsy Robin Hood caracter. When trying to swing from a vine to steel the rich man's money, he keeps hitting the tree in front of him and repeating "Yikes and away....Yikes and away....yoiks and away....yoith and avay...". It was hard to get anywhere you needed to go after going to a decade of ministry functions. You just had to keep walking as if you were in a hurry to get to the a very important meeting. lol

Looking down at my "Livestrong" bracelet, I think back to those ROA armbands. Did you ever see anyone get kicked out for not having one, or anyone ever even check for them? I did do bless patrol a number of years. I was usually the unlucky person out on Werwille Road somewhere helping people cross the road. My favorite quote from the bless patrol was from when I was around 18 or so and we were out late at the gazebo. A few BP guys came up and told everyone that they had to leave. Then he said, "Love ya. Bless ya. Go home!" LOL What a blessing that guy was. Just thinking about it "blesses my socks off". haha ...then there were those teenaged orgies.... lol, ok, never did that.

JT, just the person I was thinking of. Perhaps my idea of what a glass parking lot is refering to, is different from what you think, or what he meant. I saw it as saying we should have nuked Iraq 2 years ago. I think that assumption is correct. The family you know is not the one I was refering to. The one I was refering to was one by marriage. My wife has many many relatives in Iraq, including in Bagdad. They are all Christian BTW. There are quite a few Christian Iraqis, which is what I think Oak's "infanticide" comment was about. Somehow PE thinks that is the spiritually correct thing to do. IMO, that is beyond insanity. To think that there is such a disconnect between spirituality and morality clearly shows a lack of understanding of at least one if not both of those topics. Religion has perpetuated, clarified, and enforced many good moral philosophies and ideals, and not just Christian ones. So to bring this back around, if killing off part of my family is part of that "owe no man anything but to love" then that is one twisted interpretation. Sorry for going off, but I do think blood is thicker than water, oil, ectoplasm or any other possible spiritual fluid. BTW, JT, did some people I know help someone you know move this past weekend?

Oh, sorry i mis-read that.

he did WHAT all over sin?

So nice to hear that you want some members of my family dead, personalwanker. Funny, as soon as I hear someone say something like:"just look at Iraq! Should have been a glass parking lot 2 years ago!" I quickly realize that you know nothing about morals. So why should I take anyone seriously about morality vs. spirituality when they don't even know what one of those words is all about. Not to mention that the other word is more of a fantasy than anything. But thanks for your thoughts, idiot.

That sounds all nice and pretty, but it makes absolutely no sense to me, Def. Glory in ALL his creation? but when we live for him it reflects back his Glory? When we don't, what does it reflect? Where does the Glory in ALL his creation go to? What do you mean by Glory anyway? As you might suspect, I have a different slant on this. I think religion came from living for yourself. You don't have to live very long before you realize the cause and effect of your and other's actions. You see if you hurt someone, they want to hurt you. You don't like being hurt, so you don't hurt others. Pretty simple. You don't need any commandments telling you how life works, you just need to take note. I live for myself. In turn I live for my family, for my community, for my country, for the world. Those concerns for others are genuine, and perhaps you lose yourself in them, but in the end you are doing it in some way for yourself. Anything else is just not honest. It doesn't sound as nice and flowery as radiating Glory and reflecting shiney stuff back to a god that lives for himself, but it is real. Speaking of which, aren't we to be imitators as dear children? Maybe by bringing glory to yourself, you bring glory to others and to God. That could work too, but I admit, I don't know the mechanics of Glorification. Hey and my life is turning out good, not bad.

I didn't read Long Gone's Google link, but I can say with certainty that this link (from the study Dot first referenced) was from 1 study. Since then they have tried to duplicate it's results many times with many studies and haven't been able to. If there was a cover up then it was one that was trying to silence those saying the finding were legit. Something like this can have serious public health consequenses. For example, here in Boulder CO we have one of the lowest vaccination rates for pertusis. Why? Because of this damn study. So there are more and more kids here dying from Whopping Cough. The only reason a lot of them are not is because of "herd immunity". In other words, they don't get sick quite so often or spread it as much because the majority do still get their shots when they are required. There is even a school here that doesn't require kids to have vaccinations. Insanity. My wife has been working on this very thing.

Wow, Roy, thanks. I've never heard anyone sex up Romans 10:9 quite like that before.

As I look back I am not always that happy with what has happened in my life. Although, I can't say that I would change a thing. There were many little things that happened which led me to my wife. keeping in touch with her sister going to a dance a person that led me to dancing leaving college taking a crap job going to that school going to the one before it being sent to FL as corps kid going WOW w/ family going to first fellowship parents divorcing etc etc each step led to the next. Kinda how life works. I am very happy where I am now and in spite of the many stressful and bad things that happened in twi, there are still many things that I gained from being raised in da ministry. I would like to have stayed in school the first time around. I would liked to have said a few things to my corps interigators on different occasions. I would have like to have left earlier. I would have like to not have hurt a few people. I would have like to have left that 6 year dead end job. I would have liked to have studied harder in high school so I could have gotten more money for school...and on and on. But to change anyone of those things or one of millions of others would put me in a different place perhaps without my wife, perhaps without my little boy, perhaps without some very vaulable life experinces. You get the point. None of you parents should feel bad unless you beat your kids or did something terrible. Perfect people are so boring. Why be one of those? I love my parents and am happy with the way they raised me more or less, but I would like them to leave the ministry just so they can realise how great life is out of it. it would open up so many doors for them and our family on so many levels. Still, I don't blame them.

As I peruse the forum, here I found, somewhere between Dennis's cone and Emily's cone, coolchef's bedside manners. ;)-->

Belle, I think it was that and the fact that there were a lot of people going WOW or Wafer Disciple and then going straight into the corps. As control came more and more out of the closet more and more of those people were being kicked out of the program and M&A, as you well know. I think that part of his college endorcement was to make sure people had job skills and qualifications. He didn't want them to have much of a legal leg to stand on if they decided to sue after being kicked out. Although, even after his endorcement some leaders like the Very-ills in my limb repeatedly told kids that they didn't need to go to college to have a good job and be prosperous. Of course he had never gone to college and was a contractor (before and after being a full time minister lol) not that there is anything wrong with that. He told me this many times after I told him I wanted to go back to school to finish my degree. This was in response to being asked when I was going corps or "would you like to go on staff". Oh, that cam up way to often.

Isn't that what a policy and a mandate are? Why yes it is. Mandate- transative verb: To make mandatory, as by law; decree or require: policy- noun: A plan or course of action, as of a government, political party, or business, intended to influence and determine decisions, actions, and other matters Talk about double talk. Spinning like a top they are. How many wayfers see this or see and ignore? I guess I probably would have been one of them.

Actually, I worded that wrong last night. The point is that your account with love will never be balanced, will never be perfectly met. That is why it says, "owe no man anything but to love." The other things it speaks of are to be obligations that you don't fall behind on. But they are still continual obligations that are to be met you are owe that to people whether they are "leaders" or any other person. So its bad to be in debt, yet God set up an entire system of debt that could not be fully paid through the Law? That make so sence at all. If it is so wrong in God's eyes, then why did he do that?

thank you Belle. This is the first time I can really see what they are trying to do. The claims of them twisting the words and verses of the Bible to keep people "debt free" (really still in debt in many real ways) so that tehy can keep the ABS rolling in at higher levels are clearly confirmed in this teaching. The clarity comes with reading Chris's paper and realising that they had it before doing this teaching. Then seeing how they skirt and skoot around Rom. 13:6-8. The real explaination is right there and they had it after reading Chris's paper, but they make a clear attempt to make it say what they want it to say. Debt is an unmet obligation. If you pay your house in full with cash it is not an obligation. If you have a morgage and you make your payments on time your obligation is met. If you don't it is debt according to the Bible. Once you pay it off it is no longer an obligation. To through in tithing and ABS just makes it all the more clear what they are doing. The verses in Romans is talking about giving people the love and respect that is due them. It is an obligation that is continuous. You won't some day give a person all the love they are due. You need to constantly love and respect them. To not do that would be to fall in to debt. You would not be fulfulling your obligation. Financially it is the same way, this is where they twist it. If what they are saying is you owe your leaders dues (financial dues) but it is bad to be in debt for say a house and you should save until you can pay it in full, then you should save to pay all your ABS in full at once so you aren't in debt to your leaders. But that is not what it is saying. If it is an ongoing finaicial obligation, their twisted reasoning doesn't then fit. I can't wait to go over this at some point with the family.

Oeno, That used to be so annoying. At some point I actually believed it. Now I think it just has more to do with what your parents were like and not whether you were in a cult or not. Although, as a young adult the whole cult thing started taking its toll and had less to do with your parents and more to do with being in a cult full of people who thought they were your parents and you were still a kid. Timtim- just saw your PT- I'll get back to you. ;)-->

Georgio, you've changed your appearance slightly. :)--> To those that wanted to know about Chris Geer you can look at the Passing of the Patriarch here and that will give you an idea of the type of person both he and Werwille were.