Bramble

When we had alot of autonomy and ran a small twig out in the boonies, I don't believe we were in a cult because we had no authoritarian figure manipulating our lives. So, in our immediate circle, no. But the seeds of 'obey your leader obey your leader' were already sown in us through teachings, classes, wow program etc. So when the authoritarian leadership made an appearance, we were sucked in...what we knew as right doctrine was to obey the yahoos...and in the end it did not profit us.

If you don't control your thoughts the adversary will... In the LCM days: ...the adversary will ceate grooves in your brain that become conduits for a devil spirits and all their friends.

Thomas, you have to take Donna Noble!

Something that you could do that would not be confrontational, but might give your friend some thought would be to point out good things about other people you know. Good things they do, good things that happen to them, their kindness, thoughtful actions, how they look out for each other...positive things, things that show friendship or community. Twi isolates its people by coloring those on the outside as evil, or foolish or devil spirit inspired, on a road to destruction or harm, emphasis is on the bad negative things unbelievers experience or do.

Hi LLP. I do remember you from time gone by. Why don't you hop in and share some insights?

Extremely clean small children with cross looking mothers Door knockers with Bibles Meetings with seating in rows of folding chairs Mac and cheese in a box Hamburger stew(1lb hamburger, 1 bag frozen veg, potatos) Wooden spoons Cassette tapes Rushing out the door Framed posters Old cars Bible covers Bibles Sermons Hubby in a suit House cleaning schedules

We heard these tapes twice, once in 90 with 'leadership'( we ran a small town twig) and once in the limb city on an Advanced class weekend. Being in a small town, we were out of the loop. The corps who left in our area--and we only knew a few, none lived in our town--were jerks, and we had no reason to flee with them. We had a nice little twig of families from small towns in the area, hardworking decent people without tons of money. Hubby and I were the only ones that had ever been wow or attended the Rock regularly, and we quit doing the rock when the babies showed up. We wanted to keep our fellowship together, which we did through the fog years until 93/94 when we lost our co-ord status due to debt and mortgage. Neither of us had read Passing of the Patriarch and we heard conflicting views about it. Never heard of the adultry paper until we found GSC. So we were naive, to say the least. We stayed due to personalities, really. The local corps who were jerks left, a couple a great corps folks we knew stayed in--we followed. The freaky deeky devil spirit stuff in the tapes wasn't all that different from tales we heard over the years from believers who dealt with 'devil spirits'. We wanted to believe that the ministy was a true movement of God. We really latched onto the luo and terraso teachings because they made so much sense to our mind frames at the time. We were going to save the Word for our children. Yup.

It was conditional friendship. Out in the real world friendship dosn't have some third party authority looming over the friends with the power to cut off the friendship. When we left TWI the limb coordinator (trying to talk us into staying) said we would lose all our friends, and we did, due to the M&A practice.

One thing about reconnecting that has become so precious to me--I have several elderly aunts who live within a two hour drive from my home, they range in age from 76 to 89. Spending time with them, hearing about their lives during the depression, WW2 and Korea, even taking them to 8 am mass or to lunch(which all the older ladies seem to go to)has been such a blessing. Lives well lived and not without huge challenges. Spending time with them helps me put things into perspective. I was in TWI for twenty years, but I still have alot of life to be lived.

While in TWI there were often things I was interested in doing but coud not due to my ministry time and money issues. I had interests from my pre TWI days I put on hold. After we left I deepened my relationships with my 'natural man' family, which reminded me of who I was without TWI. I read alot, watched TV. We moved to an area TWI would not have allowed because there are no TWI fellowships, and both hubby and I developed hobbies. We reconnected with old friends and I with my many cousins.

I would call that empathy.

Don't enemies seek to harm you? Why would it be good to let yourself be harmed if you had the power to avoid it? And speaking as a mom, if I am harmed, it hurts my children, also. So what is the benefit of that? Love your enemies--can't you do that without letting them harm you?

Someone can believe Way doctrinal points and not be waybrained, i think. Waybrain comes in with the arrogance, the mistreatment of others, the viewing others as enemy, entitlement(leaders) commanding respect not earning it(leaders)...not being able to handle dissent or discussion, the overwhelming need for likemindedness, vilifying those different.

Deleted - off topic

I think a big part of Waybrain is the internal conflict loop way people can experience. "I have the greatest truth in the world today, I have the answers...i ABS/Believe /obey etc...my life is not abundant, health is not wonderful, I have a big need...I'm not perfect enough...condemnation is wrong...i have the greatest truth in the world today, I have the answers..." People renew their minds into denial, because they don't want to examine things too deeply, they pretend in front of the believers that they have it all together, needs all met...a dishonest lonely life.

Horribly boring. Gak.

I think alot depends on where their lives go after they leave. If they slide into a splinter group fellowship that is comfortable they might not feel a need to branch out to churches etc and not change much. When we (in 20 years for me, longer for hubby) left, we had good relationships still with my family, though not with hubby's. So somewhere in the back of our minds through our TWI years we had knowledge that people outside TWI could be 'okay' even while giving the nod to TWI's isolation doctrine. Hubby also retained a friendship from his youth outside TWI as did I. Those connections were so important when we initially left, since we were so isolated in the town we lived in--our every activity except work had been TWI, all our friends were TWI and the cut off of M&A was abrupt. They gave us glimpses of what real people are like, people with friends and interests, hobbies, plans, goals, none of which involved saving for the next Adance Class special or the next branch meeting or cleaning the limb home.

I also had a cyber stalker, which is not fun. I wasn't using my real name at the time but they still managed to follow me around. I'm glad they did not have access to my real name. Also, my last few years in TWi made me wonder if my leadershi+ was all that sane. I am comfortable with a degree of separation.

Good for you going back to college, Kit! I am going back, too(50+)--but i figure I'll be working for many years so why not improve my employment opportunities. I would not have met my husband if not for him being sent wow to my small Montana hometown for six months and then to my Montana college town for another six months. I can't imagine how else we would have ever met. I do wonder how life would have been different if we had left in the late 80s like most of our Way friends. Instead we stayed and ran a tiny twig in a small town...and went through the nineties in a large midwestern city with many LCM wannabees. I'm still trying to see the value of those years, because they all seem like a stupid waste...other than the learning.

Still waiting to see posts where I character assanated your God. I add--plenty of other posters have disagreed with you on different threads--why aren't you hopping on them?

I do not expect you to lie or tiptoe. I do expect to have some idea what you are going off about, and not keeping a topic to the thread at hand makes it impossible for me to keep up, my memory is not that good. Please cutrand paste my character assanations into a post on the thread where I did them, then I can respond. Plus, I am not going to post using your definition of Christianity as my standard.

I've made 10 posts on this thread. Please cut and paste the posts I made that were a character assassination on your God cuz I have NO IDEA what I did to set you off other than posts links to Religious tolerance .org.

This is all the response your post above will get from me. I spent most of my adult life in TWI. I am very familiar with emotional anger driven/frustration driven rants given by authoriTAY in which I am cast as the wicked one. Been there done that. If you want to talk about something with me, you will have to approach me in a far different manner than the above. That is a boundary I have set, so if you plan to ever communicate with me you might keep it in mind. I do NOT consider you as any type of authority. You have an opinion, just like every other poster on this board. And for your information, never once in all my travels in pagan boards or with pagan people have I been ranted at like you have done, twice. I find that encouraging and refreshing.

No subset of any religion is in a majority.

Here in our country Christianity has the most members, of course. World wide I believe the largest faith is Roman Catholic, which I consider Christian, some do not. On GSC the large majority are Christian according to the surveys done around here. Religious tolerance.org has lots of statistics on faith numbers