Yeah, it's funny. I put up with so much and was soooooooooooooooo sold out and brain deep in the Kool-Aid. Did so many stupid things.
I had already *pretty much* left mentally at that point, anyway. But - having him SHOW UP AT MY JOB without a phone call, where he knew my husband wouldn't be (my man has NEVER been brain deep in the Kool-Aid like me - probably because he was raised Catholic) WAS JUST CREEPY. And then to be so cold hearted and horrible to say that this baby that I had waited FOREVER to have (because I was waiting to find the perfect man IN THE HOUSEHOLD) wasn't a GOOD THING?? (as if maybe I should DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT??.... That was IT for me!
**edited because sometimes I don't make any sense... even to me!
Mine was when the family corps coordinator told me in no uncertain terms to pack up and go to town to pick up my "homosexual" son (who's not homosexual, but if he were I'd love him just the same) and get that contamination off "their" campus...
Today I'd like to thank that man and all who lied to make that markandavoidance possible. I don't believe I'd have ever left what I thought was an honest-to-God biblical research, teaching and fellowshipping ministry.
Today I'd also like to tell you that I now attend a normal church and have been invited to "give my testimony," which I did in January and since I did that I've been invited to a SCHOLARSHIP to a 3-year real college program and am becoming a real minister in a denomination that actually helps people and loves people!!! Imagine that!
The way took all my money plus the money my "spiritual partners" contributed and kicked me out - on false charges and to this day, over 15 years later, the ones who did that never have told me where this idea originally came from.
So the final straw was a false accusation and I never was allowed to face my accuser or even say one word.
Getting back the freedom to think my own thoughts has been beyond words cool. Being invited by a real ordained minister who actually PASTORS his flock to participate as a minister, which is what I went into the family corps for and now I understand a whole lot better about restoration of that which the locusts have eaten and good ol' Job.
Thank you twi for throwing me out so I could now live free and actually have a more than abundant life!
I forgot to say - Hi JJ - I look forward to meeting your wonderful baby that OBVIOUSLY is a good thing - good to see ya 'round again!
The final straw........wow, yeah, that's a fantastic question!
For me it was our Limb Coordinator sliding up next to me and replying "it looks like she's about ready for me?" pointing at my then 16 year old daughter.
I went from shock to rage to shock to wondering if I could have my own coffee pot and all my books in prison to rage to "yup this is is, I gotta figure out how to get us outa this joint"
And so I did.
There were plenty of other "almost last straws" along the way; more so after my husband died under their lack and instruction. But knowing what that Limb Coordinator meant, knowing what was going on with LCM, I knew I had to get us the fluck out and asap, no matter the cost. And it was plenty.
...the infamous clergy meeting. When the reports started trickling to me as to what occurred there, I knew that the fat lady was singing. These guys were totally lost and didn't leave enough bread crumbs to find their way back. I walked away and never looked back.
I started to unravel when The Forehead's Allen affair came to light. My final straw was when Rosalie took the time from busy schedule to have John Rupp harass me to the point that I had to fall back on their harassment policy to get it to stop. That was when I finally saw how mean spirited they really are at the director level.
I started to unravel when The Forehead's Allen affair came to light. My final straw was when Rosalie took the time from busy schedule to have John Rupp harass me to the point that I had to fall back on their harassment policy to get it to stop. That was when I finally saw how mean spirited they really are at the director level.
it always kinda seemed like John Rupp was Rosie's lapdog to me.
it always kinda seemed like John Rupp was Rosie's lapdog to me.
Harassment policy??? I'd like to see that!
He is the biggest "yes ma'am" I ever saw. Lapdog is putting it mildly. The harassment policy they have is pretty standard in that it extends from sexual harassment to include all forms of harassment. It lays out procedural steps. So as a system of redress, they could get creamed in court if they don't follow it. On the other hand it protects them from folks making unfounded claims. it's really a double edged sword.
I had one foot out the door for a while. waiting and KNOWING that the loving household would apologize to all the people wrongfully accused and hurt by lcm. my ex's backbiting over our divorce and watching people turn their backs on me, as a single mom with no financial help from my ex, treating me coldly and him with warmth and welcome, drove me further out the door. then sitting by a branch coordinator in 2006 during a conversation on TWI's internet policies and realizing the guy was an ignorant loud-mouthed puppet and that the apologies I believed an honest group of people would issue weren't ever, EVER going to come... I stepped all the way out that day, afraid as I was of what "the adversary" was going to do to me and afraid my kids or I would die because I was leaving the "household" but not willing to be part of god's "household" if his "household" was such an awful place.
it was the best decision I ever made. getting divorced was almost as good, since joining TWI and marrying my ex were the dumbest things I've ever done.
Mine was when the family corps coordinator told me in no uncertain terms to pack up and go to town to pick up my "homosexual" son (who's not homosexual, but if he were I'd love him just the same) and get that contamination off "their" campus...
When I read stuff like this, I'm reminded of why I virtually ignored religion and Christianity for most of my adult life. Hatred of homosexuals is hardly unique to the Way ministry. Bigotry of any sort repulses me.
For me it was our Limb Coordinator sliding up next to me and replying "it looks like she's about ready for me?" pointing at my then 16 year old daughter.
I went from shock to rage to shock to wondering if I could have my own coffee pot and all my books in prison to rage to "yup this is is, I gotta figure out how to get us outa this joint"
We didn't really have a final straw like you all actualy we left long before the LCM crap, but we had seen lots by then. We left with tail between legs feeling like we had some how failed the ministry. that we were not good enough.
Hubby was having trouble getting work and got harrassed about that and about how we were running the Twig and about Me as I was not Corps and I tended to not follow the rules very well.
One night we were laying in bed talking and I told him how sometimes I really wished we were not twig leaders or anything just plain people and then appologized for saying it.. then he asked me what I thought about us leaving.. and I asked if he meant the State we were in? and he said no I mean the ministry .. HE offered to stay in the ministry if I wanted but things were really starting to get ugly where I lived out west.
Actually to be honest they probably were always ugly but now that I was married to Corps I got to really see the ugly side of the ministry..
The ministry was just starting to switch from tollerance of Gays to witch hunting them.. LCM was just announced to be VP's replacement not put in power yet just announced he would be in charge.
Also the beginings of the whole devil spirits in everything teachings had just come out in a STS tape, Not having been to an Advanced Class I had not heard that before. I believe it started at Advanced Class 79? Also the LEAD accident had happened and i was still stunned that we had not prayed for them as a Limb when we had a get togehter a few days after it happened and it was announced... I also had my own doubts about VP and questions about a few things I had heard so when Dear Hubby wanted to bail I was more than happy to follow suit. We left in the middle of the night a couple days later scared we would be killed on the road. But we weren't and it would be nothing but better once we left.
We had talked about leaving two years before we did, I wanted to leave but hubby didn't know where else we would go, what we would do. So we stayed and things just got worse and worse--being watched for a mistake or an error so we could jumped, the threat of loa always over our heads. Knowing the limb coord would back our HFC up, that we had nowhere to turn, knowing they(leadership) were trying to divide us(I knew, hubby didn't figure it out until the end).
We spent a long vacation visiting my family, a thousand miles away from fellowship, with people who were thrilled we were there, glad we could get there(my dad was terminal). We had the best time, our kids played with my sister's kids for hours, nothing special, swimming, playing badminton. Hubby helped my dad replace the deck(actually did most of it). Low key and pleasant. It was the first time we'd really relaxed in a couple years.
Then we returned to our home, the fellowship. The contrast was huge--how cold they were to our kids, to us, how demanding. They didn't love us or like us, there was no joy--which we had seen with my 'natural man' family--and we finally were able to see that.
After we left the load of stress that lifted was amazing. No way we would ever go back to that.
For me, the reasons were cummulative, but I guess this section from my story, An Affinity for Windows, says it in a nutshell:
"I began to understand that fundamentalism held the Way hostage in its research efforts. But expecting the Way to change was like expecting an oak tree to grow tulips – it's impossible. Its nature can't permit it."
I didn't leave The Way exactly, because I ended up in a twisted splinter group in Minnesota that devoloped after the shiny forehead's demand for letters of loyalty.
For the sake of my marraige and having been weened on Wayville's dogsoldier doctrine I left a long time after I knew my splinter was completely rotten, but my head was also jumbled up by some twisted Way versions of loyalty to leadership for God's sake too.
To make a long story short they kicked me out after moving my wife and son out of my house and also firing me from my job with one of the leadership folks. I kept my house for seven months with them all around me but ignoring me.
My husband took the class in 1974. I took the class in '79. While I felt roped in and pressured after signing the card, he paid for the class, which made it ok. We got married in 1980 despite the lack of support from our fellow twig members. At first, I really wanted to be a part of TWI, but my husband had no desire to be that involved, which turned out to be a blessing. I have always found it difficult to give myself over to religious organizations, but I really liked the (supposed) de-emphasis on "legalism". However, that wasn't a reality. Anytime our level of participation in TWI got higher, I just didn't like what I saw. I didn't like how our family was treated because we weren't all sold out, but we really didn't fit in with regular church (which we tried). I couldn't get past the whole trinity thing. Technically, we were "in" until someone gave me a packet of letters in 1987 that grew into about 500 pages - then we jumped to an offshoot - which technically we were "in" until January of 2005. However, we started sending our kids to a church in 1993 and my husband started attending the church in '97. I started going regularly in 2001. We continued to financially support the offshoot until we reached a logical conclusion, which was when I was no longer the offshoot's computer tech consultant.
I was never sold out with TWI, but finding out that the sexual behavior that I had observed was not isolated (as I was assured it was) and that it was sanctioned from the top was the breaking point for me. We continued to receive stuff from headquarters (letting our subscriptions run out) until we received the homosexual rant from LCM. I called HQ and asked them to remove us from the mailing list. I can't even tell you when that was, other than sometime before July of 1991. I broke ties far quicker with the offshoot.
I have no doubt that had I gotten as deeply involved as others that I would have had a much harder time. It was that lack of involvement that didn't make the offshoot seem so bad - and I'm not so sure that any of it is all that bad as long as one keeps some sort of balance. I think every religion organization is culty at the core. I've just found that as long as I keep some sort of distance that I can keep it from taking over.
So...VPW, when confronted with obvious errors in his work would flat-out deny them?
This is a long complicated story. The short answer is yes. Sometimes it wasn't that clear cut. Sometimes rationalization or double-talk was involved. Sometimes he wasn't confronted. By the time I left research in 1986, he'd been dead over a year. His authority lived on, however. For instance, when I asked W*lter Cum*mins, the head of research, whether George Lamsa misled VP on Aramaic issues (which could be a way to explain the errors in the Eli Eli interpretation), he told me VP was more spiritual than any of us. That was supposed to mean that no matter what question we might ask, in the end VP had the final word. The appeal to his spiritual insight, often made both by himself and others like W*lter Cum*ins, kept questions at bay. Or else the questioner was kicked out and a smear campaign began.
Evidence of this was when several in the 8th Corps raised questions about "the end times" and pointed out VP's research had holes in it. Although I don't happen to agree with what they were claiming any more than I accept VP's theology (if you can call it that), what I think is atrocious is the fact they were kicked out and publically shunned. That tells you how closed a system TWI was and still is.
In my view, TWI left me, I didn't leave it. TWI claimed in the early 1970s to be open to new insights, new things learned from the Bible and would change when they found "new light." This appealed to me. I have the information sheet handed out by The Way that states this claim. This so-called promise was not kept.
But to be fair, it was silly of me to believe it. I should have asked the hard questions like: who decided what to change and when and how to let followers know of the changes. etc. But since teachings were taught as "the truth" how could you go back and change them? How can you change what you once taught was the "truth?" That would mean truth changes and that idea was the opposite of what they taught. But at 18 years old and hungry for answers, I swallowed the promises without thinking critically.
The original so-called open-ness I liked might have existed on the surface and may have actually happened in small twigs, but officially with PFAL on tape and books printed, it became impossible to change anything. No processes were in place for making changes to any of that.
But you know what? That is all irrelevant because in the end, in my view, VP's approach to the Bible was to harmonize (or in other words make up his own interpretation of) scriptures in order to avoid accepting any contradications or errors or different points of view found in books like the gospels, for instance. He bent over backwards to support the "inerrancy" doctrine that he and other Fundamentalists honor without question. Inerrancy at all costs! For me, the cost was too high. Sometimes it cost the reputations and years of effort of people who loved truth.
In my view, the TWI system of belief, with inerrancy of the scriptures at its heart, is a defensive one, based on fear. It fears questions and other ways of valuing the Bible. There are plenty of threads here about the TWI so-called research, so if you want to search for them, you'll find more on this topic.
I was wondering about VPW's qualities as a person. I wonder why so many people seemed to love and respect him so much.
My ex-Way friend still holds a great deal of respect for VPW's work. But then again, her judgement stinks.
I think if you search around here you'll find plenty on his qualitites as a person. I think he fits the criteria of a sociopath (you can find definitions on the web). He could be charming and funny, and that helped him manipulate us. I interpreted his boldness and abusive language as being "bold for God's Word" like the O.T. prophets. How dumb of me.
IMO love and respect for him depends on a person's belief in his being "the man of God for this day and time" and his teaching the "accuracy of the Word." Until a persons gives up those ideas, the worship continues, I think...
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soul searcher
Interesting that you should post this. I was wondering today what it was that finally drove you out.
Just amazing. What was this moron thinking? I mean what THE HELL was he thinking?
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JavaJane
Yeah, it's funny. I put up with so much and was soooooooooooooooo sold out and brain deep in the Kool-Aid. Did so many stupid things.
I had already *pretty much* left mentally at that point, anyway. But - having him SHOW UP AT MY JOB without a phone call, where he knew my husband wouldn't be (my man has NEVER been brain deep in the Kool-Aid like me - probably because he was raised Catholic) WAS JUST CREEPY. And then to be so cold hearted and horrible to say that this baby that I had waited FOREVER to have (because I was waiting to find the perfect man IN THE HOUSEHOLD) wasn't a GOOD THING?? (as if maybe I should DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT??.... That was IT for me!
**edited because sometimes I don't make any sense... even to me!
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bowtwi
Mine was when the family corps coordinator told me in no uncertain terms to pack up and go to town to pick up my "homosexual" son (who's not homosexual, but if he were I'd love him just the same) and get that contamination off "their" campus...
Today I'd like to thank that man and all who lied to make that markandavoidance possible. I don't believe I'd have ever left what I thought was an honest-to-God biblical research, teaching and fellowshipping ministry.
Today I'd also like to tell you that I now attend a normal church and have been invited to "give my testimony," which I did in January and since I did that I've been invited to a SCHOLARSHIP to a 3-year real college program and am becoming a real minister in a denomination that actually helps people and loves people!!! Imagine that!
The way took all my money plus the money my "spiritual partners" contributed and kicked me out - on false charges and to this day, over 15 years later, the ones who did that never have told me where this idea originally came from.
So the final straw was a false accusation and I never was allowed to face my accuser or even say one word.
Getting back the freedom to think my own thoughts has been beyond words cool. Being invited by a real ordained minister who actually PASTORS his flock to participate as a minister, which is what I went into the family corps for and now I understand a whole lot better about restoration of that which the locusts have eaten and good ol' Job.
Thank you twi for throwing me out so I could now live free and actually have a more than abundant life!
I forgot to say - Hi JJ - I look forward to meeting your wonderful baby that OBVIOUSLY is a good thing - good to see ya 'round again!
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Shellon
The final straw........wow, yeah, that's a fantastic question!
For me it was our Limb Coordinator sliding up next to me and replying "it looks like she's about ready for me?" pointing at my then 16 year old daughter.
I went from shock to rage to shock to wondering if I could have my own coffee pot and all my books in prison to rage to "yup this is is, I gotta figure out how to get us outa this joint"
And so I did.
There were plenty of other "almost last straws" along the way; more so after my husband died under their lack and instruction. But knowing what that Limb Coordinator meant, knowing what was going on with LCM, I knew I had to get us the fluck out and asap, no matter the cost. And it was plenty.
Amen, Box and Jave, freedom is wonderful !
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GrouchoMarxJr
The final straw?...
...the infamous clergy meeting. When the reports started trickling to me as to what occurred there, I knew that the fat lady was singing. These guys were totally lost and didn't leave enough bread crumbs to find their way back. I walked away and never looked back.
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OldSkool
I started to unravel when The Forehead's Allen affair came to light. My final straw was when Rosalie took the time from busy schedule to have John Rupp harass me to the point that I had to fall back on their harassment policy to get it to stop. That was when I finally saw how mean spirited they really are at the director level.
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Bolshevik
final straw? . . . um . . . cult is family, in a way you can never leave.
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JavaJane
it always kinda seemed like John Rupp was Rosie's lapdog to me.
Harassment policy??? I'd like to see that!
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OldSkool
He is the biggest "yes ma'am" I ever saw. Lapdog is putting it mildly. The harassment policy they have is pretty standard in that it extends from sexual harassment to include all forms of harassment. It lays out procedural steps. So as a system of redress, they could get creamed in court if they don't follow it. On the other hand it protects them from folks making unfounded claims. it's really a double edged sword.
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potato
I had one foot out the door for a while. waiting and KNOWING that the loving household would apologize to all the people wrongfully accused and hurt by lcm. my ex's backbiting over our divorce and watching people turn their backs on me, as a single mom with no financial help from my ex, treating me coldly and him with warmth and welcome, drove me further out the door. then sitting by a branch coordinator in 2006 during a conversation on TWI's internet policies and realizing the guy was an ignorant loud-mouthed puppet and that the apologies I believed an honest group of people would issue weren't ever, EVER going to come... I stepped all the way out that day, afraid as I was of what "the adversary" was going to do to me and afraid my kids or I would die because I was leaving the "household" but not willing to be part of god's "household" if his "household" was such an awful place.
it was the best decision I ever made. getting divorced was almost as good, since joining TWI and marrying my ex were the dumbest things I've ever done.
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soul searcher
When I read stuff like this, I'm reminded of why I virtually ignored religion and Christianity for most of my adult life. Hatred of homosexuals is hardly unique to the Way ministry. Bigotry of any sort repulses me.
You shoulda knocked him out.
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waysider
No final straw for me. I just drifted away, unnoticed.
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Shellon
Yeah, I shoulda but I was quiet then.
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JavaJane
Shellon, I wanted to throw up when I read your post. I would kill a MF. EVIL. These people are EVIL.
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leafytwiglet
We didn't really have a final straw like you all actualy we left long before the LCM crap, but we had seen lots by then. We left with tail between legs feeling like we had some how failed the ministry. that we were not good enough.
Hubby was having trouble getting work and got harrassed about that and about how we were running the Twig and about Me as I was not Corps and I tended to not follow the rules very well.
One night we were laying in bed talking and I told him how sometimes I really wished we were not twig leaders or anything just plain people and then appologized for saying it.. then he asked me what I thought about us leaving.. and I asked if he meant the State we were in? and he said no I mean the ministry .. HE offered to stay in the ministry if I wanted but things were really starting to get ugly where I lived out west.
Actually to be honest they probably were always ugly but now that I was married to Corps I got to really see the ugly side of the ministry..
The ministry was just starting to switch from tollerance of Gays to witch hunting them.. LCM was just announced to be VP's replacement not put in power yet just announced he would be in charge.
Also the beginings of the whole devil spirits in everything teachings had just come out in a STS tape, Not having been to an Advanced Class I had not heard that before. I believe it started at Advanced Class 79? Also the LEAD accident had happened and i was still stunned that we had not prayed for them as a Limb when we had a get togehter a few days after it happened and it was announced... I also had my own doubts about VP and questions about a few things I had heard so when Dear Hubby wanted to bail I was more than happy to follow suit. We left in the middle of the night a couple days later scared we would be killed on the road. But we weren't and it would be nothing but better once we left.
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Bramble
We had talked about leaving two years before we did, I wanted to leave but hubby didn't know where else we would go, what we would do. So we stayed and things just got worse and worse--being watched for a mistake or an error so we could jumped, the threat of loa always over our heads. Knowing the limb coord would back our HFC up, that we had nowhere to turn, knowing they(leadership) were trying to divide us(I knew, hubby didn't figure it out until the end).
We spent a long vacation visiting my family, a thousand miles away from fellowship, with people who were thrilled we were there, glad we could get there(my dad was terminal). We had the best time, our kids played with my sister's kids for hours, nothing special, swimming, playing badminton. Hubby helped my dad replace the deck(actually did most of it). Low key and pleasant. It was the first time we'd really relaxed in a couple years.
Then we returned to our home, the fellowship. The contrast was huge--how cold they were to our kids, to us, how demanding. They didn't love us or like us, there was no joy--which we had seen with my 'natural man' family--and we finally were able to see that.
After we left the load of stress that lifted was amazing. No way we would ever go back to that.
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penworks
For me, the reasons were cummulative, but I guess this section from my story, An Affinity for Windows, says it in a nutshell:
"I began to understand that fundamentalism held the Way hostage in its research efforts. But expecting the Way to change was like expecting an oak tree to grow tulips – it's impossible. Its nature can't permit it."
Shamelessly, I'll give you the link to it
:
An Affinity for Windows
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JeffSjo
I didn't leave The Way exactly, because I ended up in a twisted splinter group in Minnesota that devoloped after the shiny forehead's demand for letters of loyalty.
For the sake of my marraige and having been weened on Wayville's dogsoldier doctrine I left a long time after I knew my splinter was completely rotten, but my head was also jumbled up by some twisted Way versions of loyalty to leadership for God's sake too.
To make a long story short they kicked me out after moving my wife and son out of my house and also firing me from my job with one of the leadership folks. I kept my house for seven months with them all around me but ignoring me.
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Tzaia
My husband took the class in 1974. I took the class in '79. While I felt roped in and pressured after signing the card, he paid for the class, which made it ok. We got married in 1980 despite the lack of support from our fellow twig members. At first, I really wanted to be a part of TWI, but my husband had no desire to be that involved, which turned out to be a blessing. I have always found it difficult to give myself over to religious organizations, but I really liked the (supposed) de-emphasis on "legalism". However, that wasn't a reality. Anytime our level of participation in TWI got higher, I just didn't like what I saw. I didn't like how our family was treated because we weren't all sold out, but we really didn't fit in with regular church (which we tried). I couldn't get past the whole trinity thing. Technically, we were "in" until someone gave me a packet of letters in 1987 that grew into about 500 pages - then we jumped to an offshoot - which technically we were "in" until January of 2005. However, we started sending our kids to a church in 1993 and my husband started attending the church in '97. I started going regularly in 2001. We continued to financially support the offshoot until we reached a logical conclusion, which was when I was no longer the offshoot's computer tech consultant.
I was never sold out with TWI, but finding out that the sexual behavior that I had observed was not isolated (as I was assured it was) and that it was sanctioned from the top was the breaking point for me. We continued to receive stuff from headquarters (letting our subscriptions run out) until we received the homosexual rant from LCM. I called HQ and asked them to remove us from the mailing list. I can't even tell you when that was, other than sometime before July of 1991. I broke ties far quicker with the offshoot.
I have no doubt that had I gotten as deeply involved as others that I would have had a much harder time. It was that lack of involvement that didn't make the offshoot seem so bad - and I'm not so sure that any of it is all that bad as long as one keeps some sort of balance. I think every religion organization is culty at the core. I've just found that as long as I keep some sort of distance that I can keep it from taking over.
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soul searcher
Great story, Charlene. Thank you for posting that link.
So...VPW, when confronted with obvious errors in his work would flat-out deny them?
Me being me, I wouldn't have lasted very long in TWI. They probably would have kicked me out after a week.
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penworks
This is a long complicated story. The short answer is yes. Sometimes it wasn't that clear cut. Sometimes rationalization or double-talk was involved. Sometimes he wasn't confronted. By the time I left research in 1986, he'd been dead over a year. His authority lived on, however. For instance, when I asked W*lter Cum*mins, the head of research, whether George Lamsa misled VP on Aramaic issues (which could be a way to explain the errors in the Eli Eli interpretation), he told me VP was more spiritual than any of us. That was supposed to mean that no matter what question we might ask, in the end VP had the final word. The appeal to his spiritual insight, often made both by himself and others like W*lter Cum*ins, kept questions at bay. Or else the questioner was kicked out and a smear campaign began.
Evidence of this was when several in the 8th Corps raised questions about "the end times" and pointed out VP's research had holes in it. Although I don't happen to agree with what they were claiming any more than I accept VP's theology (if you can call it that), what I think is atrocious is the fact they were kicked out and publically shunned. That tells you how closed a system TWI was and still is.
In my view, TWI left me, I didn't leave it. TWI claimed in the early 1970s to be open to new insights, new things learned from the Bible and would change when they found "new light." This appealed to me. I have the information sheet handed out by The Way that states this claim. This so-called promise was not kept.
But to be fair, it was silly of me to believe it. I should have asked the hard questions like: who decided what to change and when and how to let followers know of the changes. etc. But since teachings were taught as "the truth" how could you go back and change them? How can you change what you once taught was the "truth?" That would mean truth changes and that idea was the opposite of what they taught. But at 18 years old and hungry for answers, I swallowed the promises without thinking critically.
The original so-called open-ness I liked might have existed on the surface and may have actually happened in small twigs, but officially with PFAL on tape and books printed, it became impossible to change anything. No processes were in place for making changes to any of that.
But you know what? That is all irrelevant because in the end, in my view, VP's approach to the Bible was to harmonize (or in other words make up his own interpretation of) scriptures in order to avoid accepting any contradications or errors or different points of view found in books like the gospels, for instance. He bent over backwards to support the "inerrancy" doctrine that he and other Fundamentalists honor without question. Inerrancy at all costs! For me, the cost was too high. Sometimes it cost the reputations and years of effort of people who loved truth.
In my view, the TWI system of belief, with inerrancy of the scriptures at its heart, is a defensive one, based on fear. It fears questions and other ways of valuing the Bible. There are plenty of threads here about the TWI so-called research, so if you want to search for them, you'll find more on this topic.
Cheers.
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soul searcher
Thanks, Pen. I have read many of them.
I was wondering about VPW's qualities as a person. I wonder why so many people seemed to love and respect him so much.
My ex-Way friend still holds a great deal of respect for VPW's work. But then again, her judgement stinks. :)
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penworks
I think if you search around here you'll find plenty on his qualitites as a person. I think he fits the criteria of a sociopath (you can find definitions on the web). He could be charming and funny, and that helped him manipulate us. I interpreted his boldness and abusive language as being "bold for God's Word" like the O.T. prophets. How dumb of me.
IMO love and respect for him depends on a person's belief in his being "the man of God for this day and time" and his teaching the "accuracy of the Word." Until a persons gives up those ideas, the worship continues, I think...
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waysider
Wierwille was like one of those charming con men you see on T.V. who gain the trust of unsuspecting, lonely widows.
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