chockfull

I don't give a ratz @$$ either whether they apologize. At this point they can apologize to God because I've moved on and am not interested in their shenanigans any more. I would enjoy your account above much more if it wasn't almost identical to the advice I've heard from a number of TWI top leadership who used it to encourage people to continue to "stand with the household" in spite of mistreatment. "After all, we have 'da Verd' that we agree on - that's most important". Their other main argument is "You don't have to like everything about the ministry. You don't even like everything about yourself". They too can kiss my @$$. You on the other hand, ClayJay, are an all right guy. Even if I'm not agreeing with you.

In all of your efforts to highlight their freedoms you seem to overlook some of ours. Freedom of speech, my friend.

brainfixed, I agree with you. It's not my job any more to forgive these clowns. I've turned over that responsibility to the Boss. And removed my life from their presence.

My best response to this is that the BOD of TWI are not David. They have sinned many times and yet have and continue to cover their sins over, to sweep them under the carpet. There sins are not recorded anywhere for people to see except for this website. That they are recorded here are some of the great things about modern technology - where people's reputation is more public knowledge. Warning people about idiots like that is a public service. They can kiss my @$$. My position is that forgiveness is no longer mine to give. I have turned that over to God. So that's how I fulfill those scriptures about "if you have anything against your brother resolve it before offering at the alter". I no longer have anything against them. God does. For mistreating people. I'm just one example. And again if you didn't catch it the first time, they are f'ing idiots. Hopefully that position doesn't offend people who really are comfortable with the victim role too much.

Nor will I carry around any burden of bitterness from the abuse I have suffered. That is why I have given it to God, so he can have my care and take care of me. And I trust that in His time justice will be served.

Well, maybe what I see in the word forgiveness is different than others. To me, when God forgives sins, He says that He puts them as far from us as the East is from the West and remembers them no more. Likewise, when I forgive a spouse, children, friends this is a similar type of thing. People can ask me "Do you remember when this happened?" and I honestly many times can not as I've forgotten it completely. So I am just not seeing how you can forgive someone on one hand, but still speak up and warn others of them on the other hand. To me that is a two-faced Christianity. That is something that does not interest me. I saw enough of that in the Way. I can't do that. No, those that have deeply affected my life in an evil way due to the evil that is within them, and who have not asked for my forgiveness will not receieve it. I will testify of their evil now, and if asked to will testify of it before the Just One, and witness His justice. They are not forgiven. Their sins are retained, by the hardness of their own heart. I remember one delusional top TWI leader teaching that at the bema, there will be no accountability for sins, but rewards only. He used that belief to continue to justify his mistreatment of people, lying to people, lying about people, treating them poorly. Will there really be no accountability before God for evil? Is that what Jesus truly was teaching when he taught people to love their enemies? For my life, I don't see how I can have some different standard of forgiveness than the one God has for me. I have to ask Him for forgiveness. Which means I have to internalize and vocalize at least mentally what exactly what it is I did wrong. In court they call it allocution. Those that believe they are never wrong will never be wrong until the charges are brought up in a higher court. In TWI they taught that there are no degees of sin. I do not think I believe that. Some sins and some forms of evil are worse than others. Jesus said "woe be unto them that lead these little ones astray - it would be better for them if a millstone was hung around their neck".

Ham, I agree. No way. The evil has to stop. They do not need to whitewash the image of the adulterer and build a new generation of fools to worship it. Those halls need to come crumbling down around their ears.

Clay thanks for the reponse. I'm not trying to fight with you or anyone, just getting to the root of an issue I've seen around here and have dealt with. Who am I? Just a Christian, a son of God, and someone trying to apply scriptures and Biblical principles in my life. Nothing more than that. The Pharisees are an interesting study. The guys who wrote "The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse", David Johnson and Jeff Van Vonderen, have quite a lot worked up on that topic in their book. My personal opinion is that Jesus didn't waste a lot of time praying for the Pharisees because their conscience was seared. Nor do I feel he spent a lot of time forgiving them. I guess when you say people were deceived by Satan, that is true, but where is the personal accountability? Even Satan himself made a choice to allow his ego to run rampant and try to usurp God's power. People who allow themselves to be deceived by Satan do so by choice, by making a choice. People like the BOD of TWI, who act like they report to nobody else besides God Almighty, and lie and abuse their brothers and sisters, have that pride and ego by choice. I heard recently about someone who returned to fellowshipping with TWI, who is dropped Corps, personally wronged by the BOD. Another person I know was at a fellowship with that person. This ex Corps person did the teaching. The teaching was on this topic of "forgiveness", very mealy mouthed, Polyanna, and it was touted that "forgiveness" was how people could "stand with the household" in spite of difficult situations, and that they should forgive the BOD and previous leaders that hurt them. To me when I heard that report it made me want to vomit. It was like a dog returning to its vomit. The complete abuse cycle was set up to happen again. The abusers were excused, the victims were primed to take whatever more abuse they wanted to deal out. Some women live like that, with guys who like to beat them. To me it just makes me sick and sad. No, when I left TWI, my prayers to God were that the abuse had to stop. The answer to my prayers were that for the abuse to stop my association with the abusers had to stop. So I stopped and made new friends and built a new life. The answer to my prayer wasn't "just forgive them". Since I've left, I've turned over the debt of my abuse to God. So in my opinion that debt is no longer mine to forgive. It is Gods. I view it like turning over someone who owes you money to a collection agency. The person can deal with the agency, not with me any longer - I've given the debt away. Now people are saying and quoting scripture that I have to go back and take the debt back from God so that I can personally forgive it so I can heal? Sorry - talk to the hand. Or talk to God about it. I'm not buying what they are selling. Now if you want to define forgiveness as "casting my cares upon Him because He cares for me", and "vengeance is mine I will repay", then I can relate to that. I view Jesus teachings of loving your enemy, and turning the other cheek to be teaching a love that is higher than the pettiness that most surround themselves with. I just don't consider the depth of evil in the abuse I've suffered pettiness. What I can't relate to is the weak definition of "forgiveness" that will enable TWI's abuse to continue, to deceive a whole new generation of kids like my kids. I don't want my kids to experience the abuse that I have. So I will use my voice to warn people of it. That's all I am - one Christian. That's all I have - one voice. You can use yours how you choose. You can use yours to judge me. That I'll give to the Father.

I disagree with your assessment of "living in a state of unforgiveness" or holding a grudge. If you cannot call good good and evil evil then there is absolutely no standard for truth. Under your philosophy what distinction is there between them and those that do good towards me over the course of years? None at all. This is not holding a grudge - it is simply calling good good and evil evil. And expecting people to live up to the standard they profess with their mouth. I have healed up just fine without needing to play the victim and excuse the behavior of abusers. Jesus also was accomplishing the goal of saving mankind. But what you say is only partially true - the ones he was asking forgiveness for were those who did not understand what they were doing. Not the Pharisees who orchestrated the murder. I also look to his example for the strength to move on and heal in the face of abuse. Part of the purpose of the time I spend revisiting the way is to ensure that abusers to not get away with it but that the truth about their actions aer exposed. Why are you judging me in this? To forgive abusers on one hand but to judge victims on the other is hypocrisy. I agree with every part about this except using it to judge others. Well here is something to consider. Very clearly those who spoke up about issues like this, like Paul Allen, January Barnes, and others in doing so have prevented him from having other victims. On the other hand, what if those individuals just "forgave him" and moved on, never bringing it up again? That would be enabling the abuser. He would have and did move on to abuse other women. Quite obviously at least now it's very apparent that what he said in the letter is a lie about not living that way. If people are going to act like "the man of God for our day and time", but lie and abuse people, they should be exposed. I am not faulting you or your wife for not doing that at the moment. Many times the personal cost of exposing someone like that is high.

You see there is a portion of this I do not agree with and I think it is an important distinction. The scripture "vengeance is mine, I will repay" is not this. It is not tearing up the bill you owe me. It is handing the bill you owe me to God. I will no longer pursue personally collecting upon it, as that task could negatively impact my life. I will turn it over to a higher power to deal with and move on. I think if people get in the habit of tearing up bills when people are continually abusing them that is wrong. It is playing the victim mindset. No, I want the bill collected. I just don't want to burn up my life doing it myself. Abusing people is wrong. It needs to stop. People need to pay for abusing others.

Thanks for the note. I'm not so sure about your statement that excusing and forgiving are two different things. In common language, to forgive a debt is the same as to excuse a debt. And then there's the John 20:23 record regarding the remitting and retaining of sins. Remitting there is the same word as forgive in the NT. IMO abusers by virtue of the unrepentant behavior have sins that are retained. However, it is not me that holds the paper on those sins, it is God. That's where the "vengeance is mine I will repay" scripture comes in. We're talking around the same concepts though. We need to hold abusers accountable but not allow their behavior to encompass our lives. Living well is the best revenge. God will take care of the rest. So far voting is unaninimous. It seems pretty clear that the BOD of TWI displays unrepentant behavior, despite the trail of bodies behind them they have slandered, marked and avoided, blackballed, ruined, probationed, etc. God will deal with them in His time.

To me it is not a moot point. I think scripture is pretty clear that if we confess our sins, He is able and willing to forgive sins. That's our relationship with our Heavenly Father. Now I'm not getting hooked up in semantics whether we need to individually account for them or not. But the premise is that we are asking for forgiveness because we are sorry about our behavior. We ask, He grants. In human relationships this also is a key factor. Those who unrepentingly treat other humans with impunity do not ask for or receive forgiveness from other human beings. Forgiveness among humans is a two-sided contract. Jesus and Stephen I look on as a special case. IMO they are forgiving the mob - the pawns that were swept up in the game played by the manipulating Pharisees who orchestrated their deaths. They forgave the individuals involved IMO on the premise that later on when they were not swept up in the passion of the moment they would repent. Remember their words at the moment - "Father forgive them for they know not what they do". IMO this definitely is NOT addressed to cover the Pharisees who orchestrated their deaths - they very much knew what they were doing. The Pharisees will answer at a later date for the hardness of their hearts and their actions which consisted of conspiring to commit murder. I completely disagree that "unforgiveness", whatever that term means, is a form of bitterness and anger. To me not forgiving those who have treated me with impunity and unrepentingly wronged me in the past (such as TWI's BOD) is simply that there is no contract in place - no asking for forgiveness, and no granting forgiveness. I am not bitter any more towards them or angry - I am moving on with my life. But with respect to forgiving people, I simply note their behavior and whether or not they are repentant of it. And I document that fact. If people are behaving in that fashion to a large number of other people as well, then I feel it is probably worth warning others about it. But to me it is funny how people use the topic of forgiveness to excuse the unrepentant evildoers who treat others with impunity and to blame those who simply note that fact and behavior as the ones with a problem. That type of thing to me is being an enabler to evildoers and helps to propogate the abuser / victim relationship behavior cycle.

So a topic that often comes up in conjunction with this website is "forgiveness". The accusation being, people on this site don't "walk in forgiveness". So I thought I'd start a query into that, by discovering if somewhere the BOD of TWI has asked for forgiveness and I've just missed it.

That is kind of like a small town losing it's one redeeming quality.

V2P2 - "The Sequel"

Hey Joe, You're right. It is very lame to sum up what occurs on this website as either accusing or excusing TWI and VPW to feed some kind of bitterness. That kind of lameness is typically experienced in a brainwashed environment where the boundaries established by the group make it an absolute taboo to question activities of the leadership of the group. No, a much more accurate depiction would be akin to the corporate whistle blowers in several of this last decades corporate headlines - someone alerted attention to Enron execs, Haliburton, and the activities of the recent financial organizations who were bailed out, still carrying on the status quo with airplanes, expensive retreats, high salaries while being bailed out. But I'm sure that the corporate whistle blowers also were accused of lacking kindness, courtesy, manners, respect, love, forgiveness. The Bible teaches to give respect where respect is due. It does not teach to blindly give respect in spite of respect not being due. Also, a key tenet to forgiveness is someone has to ask for it. TWI and its leadership are notorious for acting as if they are never wrong. In such they have not asked anyone for forgiveness. They certainly haven't asked me. And sure - you can talk about a vulture routine of picking over dead man's bones. However, on the flip side of that, there's the activities of the current BOD of TWI, which is playing the whited sepulchre routine of whitewashing a dead man's image and using it to drive another generation of blind robot followers. And now, as Paul Harvey says, you have the other side of the story. Good day.

No. But I used to be

My reaction? The only thing you learn from history is that people learn nothing from history.

Oh, I'm sure that the "hundred plus collective years of wisdom on the Board of Directors of TWI" will "ensure that the Word lives on to future generations". Barf. First of all, lesbians don't have "future generations". So Rosie and Donna, you'll have to adopt from a 3rd world country, because all of your natural offspring happened to be too smart to buy into your BS. Can't you picture it now? Little Ghandhi Jr, with glasses and bug eyes and two mommies? Next, the thriving economy surrounding "New Knoxville" OH just doesn't have anything that could support buying that up. Sure the warehouse could always be converted into something more useful than offices for turds, but the auditorium is useless that far out. Unless they could convert it to a concert venue or something. No, they'll carry on and make more stupid rules, and deceive the simple for longer. Eventually people will die of boredom and leave.

Because he was black. Geez, skyrider, do I have to explain ALL the intricacies of modern society to you? Being serious, though, many times plagiarism is just a reflection of lack of attention to detail or poor scholarship in instances. IMO MLK is more of that variety. With VPW, I agree with brainfixed - it is a small part of a large hoax.

It's all semantics. And TWI's stupid logic on the topic makes no sense whatsoever. For instance, you can't have a mortgage on a home. All a mortgage represents is an agreement to pay a monthly amount over the course of 30 years or until you sell the home. To contrast this, TWI vagabonds sign lease agreements yearly. That is an agreement to pay a monthly amount over the course of 1 year. What is the difference? Nothing. On a lease you are still liable for the full yearly amount. If TWI was being consistent in their debt policy, they would require people not to enter into an agreement where they did not have the resources at the time of entering in to the agreement to satisfy the whole agreement. But that would put people in an impossible situation, as opposed to a merely very difficult situation. TWI members can lease cars and not be in debt. However, if they "purchase" a car on a loan, that is debt. What's the difference? You pay a substantial fee for utilizing someone else's capital in a lease situation. No, that policy is as dumb as the day is long. It keeps people as non-permanent members of society, vagabonds, and in the lower class. Most people in neighborhoods do not interact with renters. They consider them second class. And mostly they are. Most renters will never improve the condition of the property they live in, as it makes no fiscal sense to do so. One thing the debt policy does, though. It is a barrier to proving loyalty. Those who succumb to it, they are much more willing to compromise other areas of their lives. It's a Pharisee pre-qualification.

I've moved many many times under the direction and duress of the tenets of TWI. And yet, after I'm free from them,

IMO this is just the type of language that TWI uses to promote "group think". Organizations such as that struggle in cultures and societies that have a high level of individualism, and a low level of collectivism. The United States typically does have a more individualistic culture than many. "Group think" is important to establish for TWI because it is a highly controlling organization. To actually get people to be willing to participate in levels of control of this nature, they have to introduce language of control. This language instills the values of an organization over the values of an individual. This is necessary to get people to agree to extreme behavior. How else would you expect to convince people to do things like sell homes just to get rid of mortgages? Or to forego individual goals so "serve in the household". With "group think" people display exteme levels of brainwashing, where they make major decisions in their life "because so-and-so thought it would be best". No, all of that is a subtle twisting of scriptures or the intent of true Christianity. I have Christ in me, and that frees me to completely develop myself as an individual. It is not some corporate or organizational image that I am building. I have no need to wash out the personality from my endeavors under the guise of some ruse. Christianity is freedom in Christ. TWI is bondage under man.

You got me pegged, bro! And cool link. I loved the vocals.

So true. The very Word they teach in their basic foundational class judges the fruit they produce.