Undertow - Escaping from the Fundamentalism and Cult Control of The Way International

[Rocky]

1 hour ago, Mike said:

 

Yes, the VAST MAJORITY of the ancient peoples that produced the prophets of God, were told by those same prophets that "their beliefs about the origin, nature, and purpose of the world and humanity ..." were all screwed up, and that they needed to come back to the minority point of view, which is God's Truth.

It doesn't appear from that comment, Mike, that you got the intended meaning of Waysider's comment on which you replied.

Wierwille had an inkling about the significance of the cultural issues of the time (Orientalisms), BUT there had to have been huge gaps btwn what he imagined and the actual cultures. As I understood it and him, the Orientalisms were interpreted as if they all came from one point in time. 

But what was the actual duration between when the first books to have been adopted into the CANON and the last? There had to have been cultural changes in that time frame.

Further, the premise of Avalos' scholarship seems to realize the entire way to view those writings is anachronistic as of now.

Not only so, but technology advances since the advent of the printing press (in western civilization, around the year 1440), have been unfathomably HUGE. IOW, the paradigm under which you try to interpret God has shifted well beyond what your (our) imagination(s) singularly and collectively have even begun to grasp.

Wierwille may have imagined some of it, but not very much.

So, I surmise/infer/conclude that Charlene's Undertow book barely scratches the surface of the spirituality changes we've encountered in the last 50 or so years.

Therefore, while your claim about what "prophets of God" may have been trying to get people to come to grips with is still far short of reality. I can't say you're entirely off track, just still far, far short of the goal.

[OldSkool]

2 hours ago, Mike said:

 

Yes, the VAST MAJORITY of the ancient peoples that produced the prophets of God, were told by those same prophets that "their beliefs about the origin, nature, and purpose of the world and humanity ..." were all screwed up, and that they needed to come back to the minority point of view, which is God's Truth.

Agreed. 

[waysider]

2 hours ago, Mike said:

 

Yes, the VAST MAJORITY of the ancient peoples that produced the prophets of God, were told by those same prophets that "their beliefs about the origin, nature, and purpose of the world and humanity ..." were all screwed up, and that they needed to come back to the minority point of view, which is God's Truth.

Circular reasoning.

[WordWolf]

Avalos was saying that any respectable scholar with an ounce of brains must acknowledge that there's no such thing as Divine Miracles, and the God of the Bible as understood by anyone is legendary and fictional, and the entire Bible should be tossed on the scrap-heap of history as not relevant to today.

He lost me at "There's no such thing as Divine Miracles."  I'm well aware there ARE such things as Divine Miracles.  If I am correct, then something is producing the miracles- which he says is impossible, and that means someone exists he insists does not.  IF they exist in accordance with a plain reading of the Bible, then by themselves they lend credence to the idea that the Bible is not simply a fictional book of legends, but rather an account of the divine as ordered by The Divine, and means far more than Avalos would imagine.  

Avalos would, no doubt, consider me deluded, in error and undereducated.   As for people like Avalos, who so blithely dismiss any experience of the Divine, I'm not interested in impressing them.

Everyone's free to take their pick- of either position or some other position.

[Rocky]

59 minutes ago, WordWolf said:

I'm not interested in impressing them.

Everyone's free to take their pick- of either position or some other position.

Nor am I either interested in impressing Professor Avalos or demanding or even recommending anyone choose sides. I don't necessarily view it as an either or proposition. OTOH, as it says somewhere in II Corinthians, only God knows what's in the heart of another human. 

[penworks]

Love that quote from Alan Watts. His work has meant a lot to me over the years.

[penworks]

By the way, one thing I like about The End of Biblical Studies is the well researched information about the many Bible companies, university classes on the Bible, and the tons of Christian churches promoting Bibles that keep the cycle of studying ancient Scriptures going to the exlusion of other writings. 

I think it's good to read a book before we criticize or discard it. 

During my post-Way journey, I learned I could actually live a good, ethical, and valualbe life without reading or staying hooked on the Bible. That's just me. I realized VPW had brainwashed me into thinking I could not live without "The Bible," (that term is meaningless because there are so many kinds of versions of Bibles there isn't just one Bible). I found I had been addicted to having a Bible be the centerpiece of my life. I let myself consider the fact that there were millions of good people over centuries and centuries who lived loving and productive lives before there were ever any Bibles in existence. 

This is not to say there aren't many good and valuable lessons found in Bibles. For myself, I just had to acknowledge what these Bibles were before I attached value to them. Finally, I stepped back and saw that Bibles are anthologies of ancient writings by men, arranged in a certain order, which can vary. So, too, does content of Bibles vary. I asked myself whether they were helpful for me today? In what way are they useful to modern man?

Just for the record, here's where I'm "at" these days:

Charlene’s Post-Cult Nonreligious Alternative | Charlene L. Edge (charleneedge.com)

Edited July 21, 2023 by penworks

[Rocky]

9 hours ago, penworks said:

This is not to say there aren't many good and valuable lessons found in Bibles. For myself, I just had to acknowledge what these Bibles were before I attached value to them. Finally, I stepped back and saw that Bibles are anthologies of ancient writings by men, arranged in a certain order, which can vary. So, too, does content of Bibles vary. I asked myself whether they were helpful for me today? In what way are they useful to modern man?

As to Alan Watts, a wikipedia page about him enlightens.

And on the day of his (Tony Bennett's) passing, this from one of the great gifts to humanity highlights for me, perhaps a tangential and clandestine theme of Undertow.

 

[Rocky]

10 hours ago, penworks said:

Love that quote from Alan Watts. His work has meant a lot to me over the years.

And from your blog post about your Post-Cult Nonreligious Alternative, this paragraph resonates with me. 

The liberal arts education I sought counteracted the thought-stopping, cliché-ridden indoctrination and ignorance I’d taken as “truth” all those years in The Way. Education gave me a broad landscape where I could roam and question without fear of being told I was wrong, nonspiritual, or possessed by the Devil. I learned to question and be open to new ideas without being afraid of them. My curiosity woke up. I wrote in journals and I read anything I wanted to.

[Rocky]

7 hours ago, Rocky said:

And from your blog post about your Post-Cult Nonreligious Alternative, this paragraph resonates with me. 

The liberal arts education I sought counteracted the thought-stopping, cliché-ridden indoctrination and ignorance I’d taken as “truth” all those years in The Way. Education gave me a broad landscape where I could roam and question without fear of being told I was wrong, nonspiritual, or possessed by the Devil. I learned to question and be open to new ideas without being afraid of them. My curiosity woke up. I wrote in journals and I read anything I wanted to.

 

To people stuck in their own dull Wierwille-ite existence, where "twig fellowships" have had the same format for decades, I would refer you/them to Einstein's insight: 

 

That and IMAGINATION.

Edited July 22, 2023 by Rocky

[Rocky]

If we embrace wabi-sabi, we can more easily grasp the impermanence of our experience in Victor Wierwille's cult. 

[penworks]

Along these lines, I think of the philosopher Hereclitus saying the only thing for certain is change. Something like that.

Speaking of change ... here's a little peek into Way archives: 25th Way Anniversary brochure. Notice the PFAL "endorsement" quotes, especially one by W*alter C*ummins.

 

1443088419_25thannivTWI.pdf

Edited July 24, 2023 by penworks

[OldSkool]

2 hours ago, penworks said:

Along these lines, I think of the philosopher Hereclitus saying the only thing for certain is change. Something like that.

Speaking of change ... here's a little peek into Way archives: 25th Way Anniversary brochure. Notice the PFAL "endorsement" quotes, especially one by W*alter C*ummins.

 

1443088419_25thannivTWI.pdf 3.8 MB · 5 downloads

Thanks for posting that brochure....boy what a shameless fluff piece pushing PFLAPPY...Walter's comment is so very revealing and I think we see from the beginning that VPW was busy setting himself up as some great one...sad.

[Nathan_Jr]

2 hours ago, penworks said:

Along these lines, I think of the philosopher Hereclitus saying the only thing for certain is change. Something like that.

Speaking of change ... here's a little peek into Way archives: 25th Way Anniversary brochure. Notice the PFAL "endorsement" quotes, especially one by W*alter C*ummins.

 

1443088419_25thannivTWI.pdfUnavailable

Thank you, Charlene.

The Walter Cummins quote  supports a recently asserted apologia. Research is for verification, not discovery. It's a verification ministry, not a research ministry. The research should support victor's imagination. (The apologist said this with a straight face.)

And the "endorsement" directly following Walter's! Throughly vs thoroughly. Wow.

Did you have an OED at the research department? 

 

[penworks]

Yes, there was an OED in the research room.

[Mike]

10 minutes ago, Nathan_Jr said:

Thank you, Charlene.

The Walter Cummins quote  supports a recently asserted apologia. Research is for verification, not discovery. It's a verification ministry, not a research ministry. The research should support victor's imagination. (The apologist said this with a straight face.)

And the "endorsement" directly following Walter's! Throughly vs thoroughly. Wow.

Did you have an OED at the research department? 

 

 

Hello Nathan_Jr.  

I'm your friendly, unnamed apologist, I think.

You are getting it right.  There is no way the Bible could be untangled by ORDINARY sense knowledge research.  God had to step in to give enough revelation to get the ball rolling on such a massive untangling project.

To think that the Bible could be untangled with ORDINARY sense knowledge research is arrogant academia on parade.  It demonstrates complete ignorance of the great power that Adam gave to the god of this world.  The tangling up of the Bible was done by great spiritual force, and great spiritual force is necessary to untangle it.

There ARE many times where ordinary senses research IS sufficient, once the spiritual untangling (PFAL) is used.

So both methods were to be used in the Research Dept, best as I can see. But it seems this was not well understood by all members of the staff.  I remember talking with 2 of them in 1978 and they were bent out of shape over the spiritual part of the research.  

The next year the Jul/Aug Way Magazine had some corrections to this, and VPW again explained the way research was supposed to be re-searching what God had taught him. None of us got it.  It took me another 20 years to see this circa 1998.

Several times VPW put out strong hints that I never followed up on with questions.  Several times VPW said on the weeklyt SNT tapes that someday he expected to find a manuscript that would VERIFY what God had taught him.   Once he said that we probably would NOT find a manuscript, but that we should still believe what he was teaching.

He tried to tell us, but we did not hear it.

 

 

 

[Mike]

25 minutes ago, Nathan_Jr said:

Did you have an OED at the research department? 

 

I am having trouble understanding what this OED means.

Oxford English Dictionary seems to not fit the context.

 

[Nathan_Jr]

6 minutes ago, penworks said:

Yes, there was an OED in the research room.

The OED is so helpful, maybe essential, if one is using the KJV as a study Bible, it seems to me.

Elizabethan English is different, as you know. The OED shows this. It provides definitions and usages for that period. Divine revelation is not required to sort out throughly and thoroughly.

 

[Mike]

So we are talking about the Research Dept having an Oxford English Dictionary definition of the word "research" posted on the wall there?

Re-defining the word "research"  was very openly done by VPW for the way WE at TWI would use that word.   Verification was major and discovery was minor.  This was explained to us several times and it seems we did not get it.  I admit to this myself. 

Until 1998 I was totally committed to using sense knowledge techniques to unscramble the Bible.  I finally GOT IT that such a job is humanly impossible, due to the devil's overwhelming power in the realm of the senses.  Spiritual intervention is necessary at times to break the adversary's lock on the scrambling.

Edited July 24, 2023 by Mike

[Nathan_Jr]

Yep. It's not research at all. That is clear.

Inventing definitions is required. That is also clear.

Got to MAKE it fit.

No one missed it.

Edited July 24, 2023 by Nathan_Jr

[So_crates]

40 minutes ago, Mike said:

 

Hello Nathan_Jr.  

I'm your friendly, unnamed apologist, I think.

You are getting it right.  There is no way the Bible could be untangled by ORDINARY sense knowledge research.  God had to step in to give enough revelation to get the ball rolling on such a massive untangling project.

To think that the Bible could be untangled with ORDINARY sense knowledge research is arrogant academia on parade.  It demonstrates complete ignorance of the great power that Adam gave to the god of this world.  The tangling up of the Bible was done by great spiritual force, and great spiritual force is necessary to untangle it.

There ARE many times where ordinary senses research IS sufficient, once the spiritual untangling (PFAL) is used.

So both methods were to be used in the Research Dept, best as I can see. But it seems this was not well understood by all members of the staff.  I remember talking with 2 of them in 1978 and they were bent out of shape over the spiritual part of the research.  

The next year the Jul/Aug Way Magazine had some corrections to this, and VPW again explained the way research was supposed to be re-searching what God had taught him. None of us got it.  It took me another 20 years to see this circa 1998.

Several times VPW put out strong hints that I never followed up on with questions.  Several times VPW said on the weeklyt SNT tapes that someday he expected to find a manuscript that would VERIFY what God had taught him.   Once he said that we probably would NOT find a manuscript, but that we should still believe what he was teaching.

He tried to tell us, but we did not hear it.

 

 

 

First off, Saint Vic said in PLAF when God gives revelation it's complete. So, if God told him there was a manuscript I would think, to make the revelation complete, he would also tell him where to find it.

Second. I would think if God had anything to say to Saint Vic he would  say, "What are you doing to my daughters?"

[Mike]

9 minutes ago, Nathan_Jr said:

Yep.

I see you might be classified as a “Platonist” when it comes to words.

 

The way I am using the word “Platonist” here may not be in your dictionary, because it is only in a relatively sparsely populated group that I got it from.  This group is very small; it is theoretical mathematics.

In mathematics there is an ongoing debate that seems to never get settled, a little like free will in philosophy never gets resolved.

The math debate is: 
Are numbers and the math relationships between them INVENTED by man or DISCOVERED by man?

 

A similar, but far less deep a debate happens occasionally in the realm of letters: do men INVENT definitions or do they discover them?

The idea that numbers exist independent of man is called Platonic because it seems Plato felt this way.   But for letters it is much more easily seen that definitions of words are invented and re-invented by men continually. Language evolves, but math theorems do not evolve.

 

A dictionary tells us how people in the PAST defined words.  Most often there are several different ways listed in a big dictionary. 

But a dictionary has NO AUTHORITY over us as to how we must use words in the future. 

It may be possible to tell us if we will have great or mild difficulty in communicating to people with a new definition, though.

 

Neither you nor the OED can forbid anyone from re-defining a word for use in a small group.   Trying to forbid me or VPW in this reveals your weak and defective understanding of the whole ball game.

[So_crates]

8 minutes ago, Mike said:

A dictionary tells us how people in the PAST defined words.  Most often there are several different ways listed in a big dictionary. 

But a dictionary has NO AUTHORITY over us as to how we must use words in the future. 

It may be possible to tell us if we will have great or mild difficulty in communicating to people with a new definition, though.

So. If the past has no authority over how we use words in the future, why go back to ancient Greek?

8 minutes ago, Mike said:

Neither you nor the OED can forbid anyone from re-defining a word for use in a small group.   Trying to forbid me or VPW in this reveals your weak and defective understanding of the whole ball game.

You've shown your weakness and defective understanding of the whole ball game.

To get a clue, read 1984.

[Mike]

12 minutes ago, So_crates said:

First off, Saint Vic said in PLAF when God gives revelation it's complete.

I do not know what you are referring to here.

If you give me a few more details and a few key words I can find it in the transcript of the class.

I know for sure that VPW taught that the revelation of the mystery was NOT all at once for the Apostle Paul.  He said that was an evolution of revelation there.   That seems to contradict your memory of the class that you posted.

What you posted does not compute for me at all.

Are you sure it was the foundational class that you heard this?

 

[Nathan_Jr]

I have never forbidden anyone from using their imagination and arbitrary whimsy.

Language changes. It's the only constant of language. Not sure if evolve is the scientifically precise or mathematically exact word. But, hey, word choice is a personal matter, I suppose, like word meanings.... or genus species identity... or race identity.

Hey! Use your imagination. Go buck wild with it! No one can forbid you that.

Edited July 24, 2023 by Nathan_Jr
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