Bramble

Not every surgery can be bloodless, Starbird. Especially not emergency surguries on accident victims with severe internal injuries. You still haven't answered why my husband's life and our family's lives would have been better off if they hadn't given him transfusions, and he died that day, as your 'godly' law demands...because you can't. I doubt very much that a small town er in the late 60's had all your new fangled blood products that are okay to your God. So, by your law, his family should have let him die...your God's Will and all. Looks cruel and unloving to me.

Haven't figured out how to answer my question, have you? Just how would my husband and family have been better off if he had bled out on the operating table, as Your God Wills? Why would your God want a young man dead rather than to accept a blood transfusion? What is so bad about a blood transfusion? Because some people get illnesses from tainted blood? Some people don't. Plus, he was dying! Some health care workers get ill from contactrwith infectious patients--say an accidental blood stick. Maybe they should quit working in health care? It is just easier to ignore the inconvenient facts. Just another cruel hoop for people to jump through to prove themselves to some legalistic group and diety, IMO.

I have never run into the bully type vegetarians, though I know several. I tend to see people who want to preach at me --for whatever reason--as not really interested in me the person at all, but in me as a possible new vessel for what ever it is they are preaching. Distasteful, and those will be people I avoid. A hold over from TWI, I guess. I have a brother who rarely eats meat, though he will eat at a family dinner like Christmas. His reasons are health and environmental. He is also enviably thin and in great shape in his forties.

Seems to me that blood transfusions added about 40 years to my husband's life so far. Why would your God be upset about that?

My husband would have died following an accident without huge blood transfusions while they did surgery to repair internal injuries. In fact, his heart stopped due to blood loss and had to be restarted on the operating table. The blood of strangers saved his life, and no, he never aquired aids or hepititus from the blood. He didn't develop some type of weird personality by having two souls in his blood. What he did do was grow up. We met and married many years following this transfusion, and we have kids. What Loving Father God would rather a young life be gone than for that boy to have a blood transfusion and live? Sounds to me to be another legalistic law that doesn't really help anyone. A big ol' hoop to jump through to prove your love for your God.

The Wap advanced class. LCM: this verse would remind him of that verse, then some other verse--oh and this that and that other thing! It was a 'new' kind of teaching. Yup, the insane kind. Did any of you have to do 'blabb school'? Where you released all the wonderful stuff building up in your hearts from Craig's fine teaching? I have to say, VP was quite a show man, with the right dramatics at all the right times to get his points across. He must have rehearsed, thought about the things he wanted to emphasise etc. LCm was more like a manic epiluo from the mouth experience.

I was in TWI most of my adult life so I was very shocked when I attended a mainline denomination, and they did an annual budget meeting with the congregation--full disclosure, how much was spent for this or that, how much on ministers salaries etc. It was handled by a local acct. firm in addition to the church treasurer etc. Everyone present was handed a packet that they could take home with them and there were certain things brought before the congregation for a vote, including a vote of confidence or no confidence for the pastors. Also each weekly bulletin handed out at the door by the usher contained the previous Sunday's collection total, a monthly total, and the general monthly budget need. I will never again belong to a group that runs on donations but doesn't give full disclosure to the givers like that. I don't know if CFF does or doesn't, but that's one of the things I'd check.

In the nineties there was the teaching that wrong thoughts created grooves in your mind, and those grooves became conduits for devil spirits. Controling your thinking was a big deal.

What is it with these off shoot folks and their name calling??? Makes you wonder. Do they treat each other like that, or only the rank unbelievers? Hmm, as I recall, In TWI they treated their underlings like that...

Dr Weirwille very clearly taught in PFAl that a child died because of his mother's fear/negative believing. Even though some one else ran their car into him, the fearful mother was the reason the child died. Fear and negative believing were the flipside of the law of believing for the goodies. Saw many people over the years get the cold shoulder from TWi leaders/believers because they had needs or illness or negative happenings. If your child had a series of ear infections, that was a reproof session. It all started with the Law of Believing, PFAL

I know there are Christians out there who are able to practice their faith and not attribute corruption and evil to all others of different faiths or no faiths. IMO, the idea that 'my way is the only right way, all others are corrupt' is a great flaw in any religion. I think it leads to all kinds of bad things...

Why would a parent want a child to remain dependant--don't they want their child to grow up? I don't even know what dependance on God is, or why it would be a good thing, nor have I seen being a non Christian automatically means life o'crap. Or Christians having an automatically marvelous life. Everyone has joys and tragedies., stengths and weaknesses, ups and downs. Though in TWI this was not acknowledged, and 'downs' were not acceptable... I think that what humans really need is to be part of a caring social group--family, friends, community, where people give and take, help each other through the downs, rejoice together in the up times. That doesn't require any single religion.

As I recall the TWI of the nineties, there were no victims. People who have illness and calamity bring it on themselves with weakness, slothfullness, hardheartedness, not obeying the mog, or whatever. Just like the fearful mother made that driver smash her kid, somehow all your problems are caused by you. It's the TWI Law of Believing at work. Perhaps griffp believes this. And since truly horrible things haven't happened to him...

Do you remember how busy we were doing the work of the ministry? Fellowship nights, witnessing nights(different from fellowship nights) listening to the mandatory tape of the week, memorizing the special retemories of the week, getting up early to do your 30 min thing, preparing the exactly ten minute long teaching--oops, I mean sharings--based on the tape or the book or the class segment du joir. Then there were those Adv class grad study weekends, branch meeting which ended up taking awhole day--set up, meeting, clean up...and those mag articles to 'study.' Oh, and those 'fun' fellowships, always geared for adults. The little kids could color...for two hours. Yup, that is meeting the needs of a three year old. They need to listen remember and obey, by golly. And God help you if the three year old acted up! *shudder* I would much MUCH rather live like everybody else, take care of my family etc!

I've used http://www.pdfonline.com/index.htm. It was super easy and free.

Ahh, so that mother's fear really did kill that little boy? Her fear caused her son adndthe driver of the vehicle that hit him to make mistakes? So then, if I'm believing, I can make other people do what I want??

I admit it! I'm not doing much. I'm not witnessing daily(I no longer believe in witnessing.) None of the 5 daily basics, though my family's financial needs do require me to work 40 hr so I can give to them. Sometimes there's some left over for the food bank or katrina folk. I haven't done any Biblical research in years and don't feel a gap I don't follow a god who requires quotas or preformances...I'm not doing the Christian thing as taught in TWi at all. What I am doing is working to see that my little circle--my family, myself, friends-- are where my best efforts, heart, strength and resources are put.

I was just thinking about this topic on my way home from work. I have my husband and one girlfriend from my Way days(20 yrs.) Most of those friendships were conditional... Another person, an Innie, contacts me several times a year, but I think she wants us to go back to TWI. Still I can at least count her as a friend! In the past few years I have reconnected with all my college friends, which has been fun. In fact several of us are meeting in our college town this summer.

Too bad TWI could't shovel out a couple million a year for college scholorships for the children of Way believers who contributed all that money. But that would be under the category of helping people.

Well, there are a few differences. For one, normally a person seeks out a fortune teller or psychic or card reader or what ever and pays them money up front. They don't just show up in your life claiming spiders are coming out of your nose(or your spouses') The teller doesn't claim to be speaking the Words of God. Sometimes they even say that they could interpret things incorrectly and there could be another meanings... The teller is not someone who has spiritual authority over your life in your doctrinal belief system. The teller is probably not someone who holds sway over the particular religious group you are with and you don't have to obey them or else. Your particular reading is more than likely confidential, either because no one knows you had one, no one cares, or no one see it as fodder to use against you. A teller tends to make more $$$ if they make people fell hopeful empowered and/or happy about the future.

Ask yourself--who trained and ordained these leaders? What do they think about obeying leadership? What's their doctrine? Do they have any type of greivance proceedings if leaders get out of hand? Are you strong enough and able to deal with/discern when your personal boundaries are jumped? Have you trained yourself to listen and obey with out thinking until later? Have you untrained yourself? Is their an attitude/belief that wholeness can be quick fix if only you do/take/listen/obey to this class/leader/teaching etc?

Great Points, skyrider. And what about aging--and the health issues that can accompany it? Retirement, limited incomes...will they be there for you when you're old? Or will they abandon you for your 'lack of believing'?

I have a kid who is goth lite--lots of black clothes etc. Funny thing is--since the black eyeliner of rebellion showed up, the grades(which were never bad) have gone up even higher, and rebel child spends much free time writing fiction and poetry to incense and music of choice. It could be so much worse.

I never could figure out why two adults who were both home all day, with teen age children, couldn't keep they're own house and yard. Instead they needed 6 volunteers --people with full time jobs and families--nearly every weekend to give up half a Saturday to take care of them.

Your fellowshipping sounds warm and positive, Trust&Obey. That's the kind I like, too. I think alot of trouble can be avoided in more formal settings if people would give up on the pyramid of leadership. Does that ever stay healthy?