Nathan_Jr

I saw this bumper sticker today: "A closed mind is a wonderful thing to lose."

7x70

I can accept that something divinely-inspired doesn't necessarily need to be perfect. How does one know if something is divinely-inspired? Is one of the criteria that it must only come from the ancient Near East written by Jews? I generally believe that anything or anyone proclaiming to be of God or by God or from God or inspired by God is certainly NOT. Those proclamations are for story tellers and story readers/hearers -- a device employed to advance narrative. Maybe it all comes down to the question: What is God? But this, it seems to me, is an absurd question that can never be answered on an internet discussion board.

That's it!

Ok. ”God-breathed” is figurative, right? Interpretation is subjective. So, what does it mean to be God-breathed?

I don't think I would ever be able to find the time.

You couldn't have said it better yourself. Amen. Even if PFAL claimed, explicitly or implicitly, to be God-breathed, the claim wouldn't make it so.

I feel like my questions are designed to further the progress of the discussion. Maybe they aren't perceived that way. IDK. Should I add my questions to the Unanswered Questions folder and gently read them at the gentle beach?

Can we clarify this? If something is God-breathed, it is without error or contradiction by definition. PFAL and the Bible both have errors and contradictions. Therefore, neither PFAL nor the Bible is God-breathed. Is this the proposition?

God-breathed = inspired by God. Right? Or does it literally mean written by God? All scripture is God-breathed? All without exception? Or distinctly Judeo-Christian scripture? Says who? The writer of scripture says so himself about himself. Oh... well that settles it.

"Say that reminds me, how’d you get that kid so darn fast? Me and Dot went in to adopt on account a’ somethin’ went wrong with my semen, and they said we had to wait five years for a healthy white baby. I said, 'Healthy white baby? Five years? What else you got?' Said they got two Koreans and a negra born with his heart on the outside. It’s a crazy world."

I wonder what the take rate of "grads" is -- for very 100 "grads" how many stick around? This is hard to know, I imagine, because TWI wouldn't want to track that kind of statistic -- a negative confession, dwelling on the negative.

Thanks for this, Rocky. A rather balanced account. One can't say TWIts aren't represented in the article. They're the ones denying everything. Michael Rood is mentioned. Doesn't he have his own cult now? Or am I thinking of a different Rood? Do you know how the membership numbers were calculated/estimated? 40,000! I thought TWI didn't keep membership records. It doesn't really matter. Just curious.

Narcissism everywhere with this cult.

"I have no friends when it comes to the word." (Something like that.) Isolation, insulation, paranoia, devil spurts everywhere, empties, controlled information flow... Isolate to develop codependency. Typical NPD strategy.

Will someone please translate or interpret $dang for me? (According to usage, literally, please.)

Yes! The pimp-prostitute analogy fits like a hand in a…

The subtle difference between bull$hit and deception.

In my experience they promised relief for a condition that was NOT present, an imagined condition projected on the targets of their proselytizing. When I first encountered all of this madness, my life was full of joy, peace, wonder, prosperity, healings..."manifestations" that can't be counterfeited. But they persisted with the relentless, if subtle, claim that I was lacking something, that I was incomplete without taking "the class," incomplete without "having" their contrived truth, that I was without REAL "power" until I heard and revered what "the doctor" had to say, that so much was "available" for me, but I was leaving it on the table "untapped." Tell someone enough times they are missing something BIG, they will start to believe it, in spite of the evidence against the claim. This is called gaslighting. Gaslighting is the most wicked abuse.

"Homework" and "glove fitting" -- there are folders for those.

Everyone has their own tab, including you, OS. The folder is almost three inches thick. One day, when I have time, when I'm not so overwhelmed, I'll transpose all the questions to 3x5 cards and file them in a special file box. It's a cross between a lock box and a bookcase. It's a dandy... nay, it's a REAL dandy. All this filing and foldering takes time. Time I just don't have. And then there's the reading. I'm reading slowly. It's gentle and tremendous and absorbent -- it slowly absorbs time, gently.

I'll add these questions to the folder I started to track all unanswered questions.

One of my favorite verses. Before I divorced my wife, before I realized she was a sociopath/narcissist, I sent her this verse in a text. It was one of many attempts to extricate her from the manipulation of the wierwillian "fellowship" and save our marriage. She hated that verse. HATED it. I suspect she had it crossed out of her Bible. She was obedient.

I keep seeing this come up. “Body count” is what they call it, I think. Kids these days…

Perhaps ambiguity, paradox, mystery point to that for which verbiage is insufficient. Only a clear mind free from conditioning can contemplate them. And in the contemplation one might see beyond the image constructed by thought.