By the way, Mike, if you're ever in the UK you are welcome to come to my church or any of the associated churches, see what we do, spend time with any one of our ministers or staff, ask any questions you want about the work we carry out. I'm sure your practical help would also be welcome in cooking meals, distributing food parcels, StACCtion days (service within the community), sitting with the lonely and dispossessed and chatting to them. Hey, you could even pray with people from time to time.
The church financial accounts are also easily accessible and any questions you want can be asked of our Treasurer about those.
We've found our good works very effective. But come and see !
Thanks for the invite.
I actually do believe you. Last week I was just talking about MORE efficiency in learning toward doing all the things that Jesus Christ did and greater.
I know I do better the more I turn my focus off the TWI negatives and onto the positives of the Word.
My 5 years of daily exposure to the TWI negatives was all I could handle, and I just wanted to live the positives.
Just as I believe you can do SOME good with daily exposure to such negatives coming here to GSC, I also believe the current folks at TWI-4 can do some good, karmicly immersed in some past negatives daily.
For myself, for you and all GSC people working and ministering the Word, and for all the grads in TWI now, I wish and pray for maximum acceleration toward more accuracy, more love, and more power.
Plus I thank you for the tone I feel from you letter.
I wanted to say the same tone thanks to WordWolf, but my time is very scarce this week. Maybe soon I can be back to continue this positive trend.
This is just my observation / opinion of what goes on at Grease Spot - in response to some who may have a more myopic perspective...and I'm thinking in terms of my overall Grease Spot experience – since joining in 2006 – though of late, there hasn't been as much activity as there use to be (for various reasons: people move on, lose interest, become involved in other things, etc.).
To describe one's visit to Grease Spot as daily exposure to negatives makes me think of two things: 1. maybe that person shouldn't come here every day and 2. look at some other forums like in Open (general discussion of anything), the Movies, Music, Books, Art forum, Matters of Faith (doctrinal stuff) or Humor – just to name a few options. There's a lot more to Grease Spot than exposing the dark underbelly of the beast.
About The Way forum does tend to be negative just because many of the experiences, as well as ideas and views on certain issues regarding a harmful and exploitative cult are not very pleasant. However, to me it seems like this has been a natural development of the forum. And I should add that it's not always negative. There have been many threads that have discussed the question of did you throw out the baby with the bath water – I think there was even a thread by that name. I even started a thread TWI Memories: good, bad and indifferent – and lots of folks contributed posts that covered all three aspects...
...and for that matter, many positive experiences, ideas and views have been posted in About The Way forum - just proportionately not as much as the negatives - probably just works out that way naturally given all the variables of each individual person, how much they were involved, what if any TWI programs they participated in, etc...and from what I've observed it seems the threshold for experiencing the brunt of bad stuff from a harmful and exploitative cult is if the person was in one of TWI's programs like the way corps, WOW, fellow-laborers, etc. ...
...ever wonder why TWI-followers who have never gone through any of these programs never complain about the manipulative, controlling and deceptive tactics of TWI? They are unaware of the inner workings of a harmful and exploitative cult - what it takes to keep this thing running...It's like that movie Soylent Green - a dystopic future of overpopulation and consumerism - we find out about the truth of the evil food processing company The Soylent Corporation - that soylent green is people!... DVD Bonus Feature
The inner workings of TWI are known by the people who work in the "factory". TWI is a cult of personality - a cult of victor paul wierwille...in my way corps training we ate, slept, and breathed PFAL and all things wierwille...it was a wierwille clone factory...alternate ending for Soylent Green parody - Charlton Heston is being dragged out of the Rock of Ages big tent while yelling "TWI is wierwille-clones" .
...anyway...enough digression...
back on the positive side - I've noticed sometimes Grease Spotters expand on something "positive" or valid from their TWI experience in the doctrinal forum - which is really cool to check out - you get to see in technical details why some folks did not throw out the baby with the bathwater.
What these other forums indicate to me is that there's a whole lot more to Grease Spotters than just what they've discussed in About The Way...speaking just for myself, I've broadened my horizons on so many aspects of life because of music, TED talks, books, humorous videos, jokes, Bible resources, personal Bible studies, secular books and wisdom, viewpoints, and personal philosophies that folks have shared in those other forums.
I started off this post by saying this was just my observation / opinion of what goes on at Grease Spot - in response to some who may have a more myopic perspective. That is my way of giving them the benefit of a doubt – that they just haven't looked at the big picture of all that goes on here. Sometimes it's very difficult for me to give someone the benefit of a doubt – to accept what they say as true or that they deserve my trust when I see clear evidence in their choice of words that they just want to guilt me into feeling that I've done something wrong by criticizing wierwille, PFAL or TWI.
Edited by T-Bone this is the dark underbelly of my post
So . . um . . . is the "where's your believing" phrase a form of Way-Shaming?
In my experience, it was. It was used by one person, who used it in the sense of "we don't think, we believe and use that to solve problems instead!" Then again, he was an idiot, but I'm sure you'd guessed that by now.
Oh, crikey, I knew a girl years ago, due to sit her end of school exams at age 18 or thereabouts. Hadn't done much study or preparing for the exam, too busy attending fellowships and helping her father "move the word." She said she was believing to pass and God would give her the answers, because what she was doing was Godly and more important than studying.
Talk about taking the lord's name in vain...! I don't know what her results were, have never been in touch with her since.
This talk of believing made me think of an old incident in early 80s: one rainy morning I was driving my vehicle to work – entering the on-ramp of the freeway – traffic was heavy, slowed down by the rain – I came to a complete stop near the end of the on-ramp waiting for an opening; I had a portable cassette player on the seat and was listening to a Sunday Night Teaching tape; suddenly * kabump * I was rear-ended - the ramp was pretty slick and the driver behind me just slid into my vehicle...no one hurt – no serious damage – we swapped insurance and driver license info – everything worked out okay with insurance companies...no big deal...
...or so I thought...
My Twig coordinator who was way corps heard about it. At the next Twig – she actually brought up my little fender-bender incident and began grilling me to find out where my head was at during that time. At one point I chuckled and said my head was in a good place because I was listening to a Sunday Night Teaching tape when it happened...I'll never forget her intense demeanor and line of questioning – like we had to get to the bottom of this and find out where I blew it in my believing or if I was out of fellowship...Geez Louise...she finally backed off as I stuck to my guns – I confidently said I did nothing wrong, these things happen...I think what may have really saved my butt from the beating of the week was that this was still a few years before I went in the way corps – and maybe she thought it was a waste of time for corps to use their Gestapo tactics on "some non-corps dimwitted believer"...what nonsense to think that we are in control of everything.
My Twig coordinator who was way corps heard about it. At the next Twig – she actually brought up my little fender-bender incident and began grilling me to find out where my head was at during that time. At one point I chuckled and said my head was in a good place because I was listening to a Sunday Night Teaching tape when it happened...I'll never forget her intense demeanor and line of questioning – like we had to get to the bottom of this and find out where I blew it in my believing or if I was out of fellowship...Geez Louise...she finally backed off as I stuck to my guns – I confidently said I did nothing wrong, these things happen...I think what may have really saved my butt from the beating of the week was that this was still a few years before I went in the way corps – and maybe she thought it was a waste of time for corps to use their Gestapo tactics on "some non-corps dimwitted believer"...what nonsense to think that we are in control of everything.
You were being falsely accused.
She confabulated a scenario where you were in the wrong.
You stuck to your guns and didn't feed them supply in that situation.
But no matter how convincing or confident they may sound, never accept their false accusations.
Oh, crikey, I knew a girl years ago, due to sit her end of school exams at age 18 or thereabouts. Hadn't done much study or preparing for the exam, too busy attending fellowships and helping her father "move the word." She said she was believing to pass and God would give her the answers, because what she was doing was Godly and more important than studying.
Talk about taking the lord's name in vain...! I don't know what her results were, have never been in touch with her since.
I recall a woman telling me the same thing. I know what her results were: not good!
This talk of believing made me think of an old incident....
A typical Way-brained approach. It couldn't just be that it was raining; after all, YOU weren't the one who hit another vehicle, you were the one who was hit. The Way method was always find a way to overthink every aspect of life and make you get down on yourself for not believing.
A typical Way-brained approach. It couldn't just be that it was raining; after all, YOU weren't the one who hit another vehicle, you were the one who was hit. The Way method was always find a way to overthink every aspect of life and make you get down on yourself for not believing.
Yes that happened a lot... but usually over coffee in the 1970s
I saw a few big-wigs do it, but mostly it was us peons. I never saw it in a SNS tape or Mag article.
That was an area that needed a lot of fine tuning. I'm still on that for myself.
A typical Way-brained approach. It couldn't just be that it was raining; after all, YOU weren't the one who hit another vehicle, you were the one who was hit. The Way method was always find a way to overthink every aspect of life and make you get down on yourself for not believing.
Yup – allthe bigwigs (TWI leadership from the top down in the hierarchy of wierwille-sycophants) handled situations that way because they were taught to do so by wierwille himself – this was a major premise in PFAL – "you know what killed that little boy, it was the fear in the heart and life of his mother "
Yup – allthe bigwigs (TWI leadership from the top down in the hierarchy of wierwille-sycophants) handled situations that way because they were taught to do so by wierwille himself – this was a major premise in PFAL – "you know what killed that little boy, it was the fear in the heart and life of his mother "
I've heard this said 10,000 X in my life. The stupidity is apparent but now the sick pleasure derived from the suffering of others is apparent.
Reminds me of the wooden spoon. The look they gave you.
I've heard this said 10,000 X in my life. The stupidity is apparent but now the sick pleasure derived from the suffering of others is apparent.
Reminds me of the wooden spoon. The look they gave you.
Yeesh !!!! In the Family Corps it seemed like the wooden spoon was the only rule for faith and practice. I was never a strict disciplinarian and always felt there were better options than corporal punishment...I was a big advocate of sentencing bad kids to time-out...kids do not have an accurate sense of the passage of time - we can only imagine the agony they suffered during their time of incarceration – not knowing exactly when they could get back to doing something fun...FYI to parents: 15 minutes in time-out is equivalent to 15 hours in kid-time.
Here's another one of my silly pictures to commemorate the exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think of discipline according to the power of time-out:
I have no idea what this post means. "The intensely tone"? "Mighty Fighter of the Evil Forces"?
It was a typo. Should read "The intensely negative tone"
I have turned to the positive tones, like Ephesians twenty something positive verbs in the first chapters.
"Mighty Fighter of the Evil Forces" is another sarcastic title, similar to "Bad Guy Busters" like the comedy movie "Ghost Busters."
I see it in politics all the time, and here, where the important work in life is identifying the evil ones and magnifying them, distributing collateral damage to those who are exposed to the flood of negatives.
The world is so full of evil (and so are we from Romans 2) that it is easy to get inspiration to spot the bad guys and magnify the details of their evil. But what does that really DO for people, besides warn them that "there's ANOTHER one of them." ?
It's hard to spot the good guys, especially when all of them are tainted (just like us) with evil. It's hard to magnify the details of the good they exemplify. It's hard to pass on the positives to a cynical world. It's THIS job we should be occupying most of our time. A little bad guy busting on the side may be called for a times.
Here is what I find about all of us having to deal with in our old man nature in Romans 2. We should be busting these things that come within us being born to Adam's race behind enemy lines:
As it is written:
“There is no one righteous, not even one
there is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.”
“Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit.”
“The poison of vipers is on their lips.”
“Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.”
“Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and misery mark their ways, and the way of peace they do not know.”
. . .
The world is so full of evil (and so are we from Romans 2) that it is easy to get inspiration to spot the bad guys and magnify the details of their evil. But what does that really DO for people, besides warn them that "there's ANOTHER one of them." ?
It's hard to spot the good guys, especially when all of them are tainted (just like us) with evil. It's hard to magnify the details of the good they exemplify. It's hard to pass on the positives to a cynical world. It's THIS job we should be occupying most of our time. A little bad guy busting on the side may be called for a times.
. . .
I think Matthew 10:16
In the spirit of Jung, you have to know your shadow . . . or you will do more harm.
Lots of positivity talk is to make folks drop their guard.
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cman
Thinking back at some of the places I worked, fear was used a lot. Like fear of getting fired or doing something the wrong way, or somehow shamed. TWI went further than that, trying to get deep in you
cman
Funny he said that in the class but promoted fear through the way tree, turning the tree upside down and killing the leaves. As Bolshevik said somewhere back a few posts, fear was institutionalized.
OldSkool
Yep, and thats total BS. That is probably based on the law of believing, which traces it's roots back to the the new thought metaphysics movement made popular by Phineas Parkhurst Quimby then traces t
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Mike
Thanks for the invite.
I actually do believe you. Last week I was just talking about MORE efficiency in learning toward doing all the things that Jesus Christ did and greater.
I know I do better the more I turn my focus off the TWI negatives and onto the positives of the Word.
My 5 years of daily exposure to the TWI negatives was all I could handle, and I just wanted to live the positives.
Just as I believe you can do SOME good with daily exposure to such negatives coming here to GSC, I also believe the current folks at TWI-4 can do some good, karmicly immersed in some past negatives daily.
For myself, for you and all GSC people working and ministering the Word, and for all the grads in TWI now, I wish and pray for maximum acceleration toward more accuracy, more love, and more power.
Plus I thank you for the tone I feel from you letter.
I wanted to say the same tone thanks to WordWolf, but my time is very scarce this week. Maybe soon I can be back to continue this positive trend.
Thank you for sharing your heart, Twinky.
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T-Bone
This is just my observation / opinion of what goes on at Grease Spot - in response to some who may have a more myopic perspective...and I'm thinking in terms of my overall Grease Spot experience – since joining in 2006 – though of late, there hasn't been as much activity as there use to be (for various reasons: people move on, lose interest, become involved in other things, etc.).
To describe one's visit to Grease Spot as daily exposure to negatives makes me think of two things: 1. maybe that person shouldn't come here every day and 2. look at some other forums like in Open (general discussion of anything), the Movies, Music, Books, Art forum, Matters of Faith (doctrinal stuff) or Humor – just to name a few options. There's a lot more to Grease Spot than exposing the dark underbelly of the beast.
About The Way forum does tend to be negative just because many of the experiences, as well as ideas and views on certain issues regarding a harmful and exploitative cult are not very pleasant. However, to me it seems like this has been a natural development of the forum. And I should add that it's not always negative. There have been many threads that have discussed the question of did you throw out the baby with the bath water – I think there was even a thread by that name. I even started a thread TWI Memories: good, bad and indifferent – and lots of folks contributed posts that covered all three aspects...
...and for that matter, many positive experiences, ideas and views have been posted in About The Way forum - just proportionately not as much as the negatives - probably just works out that way naturally given all the variables of each individual person, how much they were involved, what if any TWI programs they participated in, etc...and from what I've observed it seems the threshold for experiencing the brunt of bad stuff from a harmful and exploitative cult is if the person was in one of TWI's programs like the way corps, WOW, fellow-laborers, etc. ...
...ever wonder why TWI-followers who have never gone through any of these programs never complain about the manipulative, controlling and deceptive tactics of TWI? They are unaware of the inner workings of a harmful and exploitative cult - what it takes to keep this thing running...It's like that movie Soylent Green - a dystopic future of overpopulation and consumerism - we find out about the truth of the evil food processing company The Soylent Corporation - that soylent green is people!... DVD Bonus Feature
The inner workings of TWI are known by the people who work in the "factory". TWI is a cult of personality - a cult of victor paul wierwille...in my way corps training we ate, slept, and breathed PFAL and all things wierwille...it was a wierwille clone factory...alternate ending for Soylent Green parody - Charlton Heston is being dragged out of the Rock of Ages big tent while yelling "TWI is wierwille-clones" .
...anyway...enough digression...
back on the positive side - I've noticed sometimes Grease Spotters expand on something "positive" or valid from their TWI experience in the doctrinal forum - which is really cool to check out - you get to see in technical details why some folks did not throw out the baby with the bathwater.
What these other forums indicate to me is that there's a whole lot more to Grease Spotters than just what they've discussed in About The Way...speaking just for myself, I've broadened my horizons on so many aspects of life because of music, TED talks, books, humorous videos, jokes, Bible resources, personal Bible studies, secular books and wisdom, viewpoints, and personal philosophies that folks have shared in those other forums.
I started off this post by saying this was just my observation / opinion of what goes on at Grease Spot - in response to some who may have a more myopic perspective. That is my way of giving them the benefit of a doubt – that they just haven't looked at the big picture of all that goes on here. Sometimes it's very difficult for me to give someone the benefit of a doubt – to accept what they say as true or that they deserve my trust when I see clear evidence in their choice of words that they just want to guilt me into feeling that I've done something wrong by criticizing wierwille, PFAL or TWI.
Edited by T-Bonethis is the dark underbelly of my post
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waysider
I just come here for the coffee and cookies.
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Bolshevik
So . . um . . . is the "where's your believing" phrase a form of Way-Shaming?
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waysider
If you spoke in tongues more, you would know the answer.
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T-Bone
did someone say Way-scamming ?
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Bolshevik
Ah yes. . . if it didn't work . . . Try Harder . .
Got me. Spiritually. Right between the eyes.
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WordWolf
In my experience, it was. It was used by one person, who used it in the sense of "we don't think, we believe and use that to solve problems instead!" Then again, he was an idiot, but I'm sure you'd guessed that by now.
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Twinky
Oh, crikey, I knew a girl years ago, due to sit her end of school exams at age 18 or thereabouts. Hadn't done much study or preparing for the exam, too busy attending fellowships and helping her father "move the word." She said she was believing to pass and God would give her the answers, because what she was doing was Godly and more important than studying.
Talk about taking the lord's name in vain...! I don't know what her results were, have never been in touch with her since.
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T-Bone
This talk of believing made me think of an old incident in early 80s: one rainy morning I was driving my vehicle to work – entering the on-ramp of the freeway – traffic was heavy, slowed down by the rain – I came to a complete stop near the end of the on-ramp waiting for an opening; I had a portable cassette player on the seat and was listening to a Sunday Night Teaching tape; suddenly * kabump * I was rear-ended - the ramp was pretty slick and the driver behind me just slid into my vehicle...no one hurt – no serious damage – we swapped insurance and driver license info – everything worked out okay with insurance companies...no big deal...
...or so I thought...
My Twig coordinator who was way corps heard about it. At the next Twig – she actually brought up my little fender-bender incident and began grilling me to find out where my head was at during that time. At one point I chuckled and said my head was in a good place because I was listening to a Sunday Night Teaching tape when it happened...I'll never forget her intense demeanor and line of questioning – like we had to get to the bottom of this and find out where I blew it in my believing or if I was out of fellowship...Geez Louise...she finally backed off as I stuck to my guns – I confidently said I did nothing wrong, these things happen...I think what may have really saved my butt from the beating of the week was that this was still a few years before I went in the way corps – and maybe she thought it was a waste of time for corps to use their Gestapo tactics on "some non-corps dimwitted believer"...what nonsense to think that we are in control of everything.
Edited by T-Bonetypos - these things happen
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Bolshevik
You were being falsely accused.
She confabulated a scenario where you were in the wrong.
You stuck to your guns and didn't feed them supply in that situation.
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Oakspear
I recall a woman telling me the same thing. I know what her results were: not good!
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Oakspear
A typical Way-brained approach. It couldn't just be that it was raining; after all, YOU weren't the one who hit another vehicle, you were the one who was hit. The Way method was always find a way to overthink every aspect of life and make you get down on yourself for not believing.
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Mike
Yes that happened a lot... but usually over coffee in the 1970s
I saw a few big-wigs do it, but mostly it was us peons. I never saw it in a SNS tape or Mag article.
That was an area that needed a lot of fine tuning. I'm still on that for myself.
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Bolshevik
I was going to joke about not seeing thing on audiotape.
Are you taking the blame for leadership?
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T-Bone
Yup – all the bigwigs (TWI leadership from the top down in the hierarchy of wierwille-sycophants) handled situations that way because they were taught to do so by wierwille himself – this was a major premise in PFAL – "you know what killed that little boy, it was the fear in the heart and life of his mother "
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Bolshevik
Sadism by inducing self-flagellation. Another form of obtaining narcissistic supply.
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Bolshevik
I've heard this said 10,000 X in my life. The stupidity is apparent but now the sick pleasure derived from the suffering of others is apparent.
Reminds me of the wooden spoon. The look they gave you.
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Bolshevik
Perhaps fear was never about fear. It was about pleasure.
Huxley over Orwell.
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Mike
I'm not a doctor, but I do look like one on the radio.
No, I don't want to bear their crosses. I just want to fine tune my understanding so I can better pass on the good stuff.
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Bolshevik
You said you saw a few big-wigs "do it" . . . can you describe "it"?
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T-Bone
Yeesh !!!! In the Family Corps it seemed like the wooden spoon was the only rule for faith and practice. I was never a strict disciplinarian and always felt there were better options than corporal punishment...I was a big advocate of sentencing bad kids to time-out...kids do not have an accurate sense of the passage of time - we can only imagine the agony they suffered during their time of incarceration – not knowing exactly when they could get back to doing something fun...FYI to parents: 15 minutes in time-out is equivalent to 15 hours in kid-time.
Here's another one of my silly pictures to commemorate the exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think of discipline according to the power of time-out:
Edited by T-Bonetypos were in time-out
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Mike
It was a typo. Should read "The intensely negative tone"
I have turned to the positive tones, like Ephesians twenty something positive verbs in the first chapters.
"Mighty Fighter of the Evil Forces" is another sarcastic title, similar to "Bad Guy Busters" like the comedy movie "Ghost Busters."
I see it in politics all the time, and here, where the important work in life is identifying the evil ones and magnifying them, distributing collateral damage to those who are exposed to the flood of negatives.
The world is so full of evil (and so are we from Romans 2) that it is easy to get inspiration to spot the bad guys and magnify the details of their evil. But what does that really DO for people, besides warn them that "there's ANOTHER one of them." ?
It's hard to spot the good guys, especially when all of them are tainted (just like us) with evil. It's hard to magnify the details of the good they exemplify. It's hard to pass on the positives to a cynical world. It's THIS job we should be occupying most of our time. A little bad guy busting on the side may be called for a times.
Here is what I find about all of us having to deal with in our old man nature in Romans 2. We should be busting these things that come within us being born to Adam's race behind enemy lines:
As it is written:
“There is no one righteous, not even one
there is no one who understands;
there is no one who seeks God.
All have turned away,
they have together become worthless;
there is no one who does good,
not even one.”
“Their throats are open graves;
their tongues practice deceit.”
“The poison of vipers is on their lips.”
“Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.”
“Their feet are swift to shed blood;
ruin and misery mark their ways,
and the way of peace they do not know.”
“There is no fear of God before their eyes.”
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Bolshevik
I think Matthew 10:16
In the spirit of Jung, you have to know your shadow . . . or you will do more harm.
Lots of positivity talk is to make folks drop their guard.
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