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Hi, this is Penworks. My heart goes out to you, Becoming Me. You have great courage. Take good care of yourself.

It's not about my views. It's about the scholarship of textual criticism. Every single case of forgery pretends to he written by someone who is not the author. It's silly to look at the "signature" as proof of authorship. Using a fictional example is a valid form of explaining how it works. But if you'd prefer a factual example: Hitler's diaries claimed to be written by Hitler but were not. The Book of Mormon claims to be written by people who were not its authors. The Gospel of Thomas was not written by Thomas The Gospel of Peter was not written by Peter. Colossians and Ephesians were not written by Paul. This is not "Raf's view." This is the position of the majority of mainstream scholars whose study goes beyond "well it says right here Paul wrote it. Must have been him."

If he'd wanted it, he would have taken it. It's your turn.

Is it insane that lcm caused so much hurt? It is not. It is human nature to be able to hurt people, and to be able to manipulate people, and to bully people. What's sad is that lcm had the capacity to skip all of those things, and chose not to. He instead chose to bully, manipulate, and hurt people. That's come out of the mouths of many witnesses, and should be considered a matter of public record. I'm curious what unhealthy thoughts on your part triggered a need to go to a discussion about lcm, where no one had posted for months, and renew interest in it, mainly by a vague suggestion that it was wrong to discuss lcm injuring people. (So, to say it was wrong to discuss him injuring people, you posted in a thread about him injuring people, causing people to return to discussing lcm injuring people. We were all doing other things these past several months before you brought this back up. And if that was some sad attempt to accuse ALL of the eyewitnesses and ALL of the victims of being liars, then it failed.

What does that mean. Dukie? LCM was insane, and caused so much pain and hurt? Because that's the reality. I suffered much because of this man and his perverted teachings. It has stolen many years of my life. It was painful. It isn't now. You will probably find most of the posters on this thread think similarly. We post here of our experiences, not because we hang onto the past in an unhealthy way, but because it seems that many still don't know or understand. It sounds rather like you are one of those people.

I was born in '78. Legend has it that Mom and Dad met in the Corps and didn't like each other. Then they fell in love - and I came along. I grew up on Way albums - not tapes or CDs - and Rock of Ages. My dad led Twig. The years right before and after the family left were really hard. It took 6 or 7 years for Mom and Dad to go to fellowship again on a regular basis - and then it was to hang out with ex-Wayfers and sing the same songs, say the same prayers. Deja vu. I couldn't hack it for long. I was big into Dale Sides for a few years. It's ten years later, and I am happily Catholic. I like the ritual, the quiet, the softness of my church in the morning light. Going through RCIA was hard; it brought up a lot of memories, and I felt vaguely guilty and like I was doing something wrong. My sister helped me through that. She is Methodist and leads the worship team at her church. Mom and Dad... well, they are still kind of loners, I think. I am, too, when it comes to worship. I found the term "love bombing" when I was doing research on TWI - and now I get why I like to be alone in church and why I go to a big place where talking to others and making friends isn't necessary. Someday I will become more a part of my church's community. For now, hearing the Bible without getting sick to my stomach is enough of a joy for me. Overall, I am blessed. At this moment, I am so happy to be able to talk to you all - people who get it. People who get that TWI years gave us some joyful moments and a lot of pain, too. My husband has a hard time identifying with the stories I tell - and my friends get a little antsy when I bring up TWI. It's hard to feel isolated like that - like I did something wrong by being born into a Way family. My aunts and uncles were in TWI, too. About ten years ago, I was at a Dale Sides event, and someone called out my last name. He recognized me because I look like my dad's family. It was a fun moment. I miss that sense of community at times. For me, that is/was one of the hardest aspects of exiting TWI - the sense of loss of community and family. I named my son Jamie. I sing "Love Child" to my daughter. When I am stressed, I sing "In the Garden". I have the fondest memories of women in long skirts and long hair. Picnics. Just writing this is bringing back the names of my childhood. The faces. The joy of family. I am not sure what I am looking for here at GreaseSpot. Maybe I am not looking for anything. I am just glad to be here.

(When logged in, go to the post you want to quote and click the "quote" button at the bottom, like I just did.) I've heard that his peers in the Way Corps didn't buy into him being special- and he resented that. I think my comment about NOSTALGIA propping him up (temporarily) goes along with what you said about a (small) group of people who liked him (people on the field, who didn't know him beyond his official face.) So, yes, OLD wayfers who refuse to move on, OLD wayfers with no group to work with, stuck in the past, living off nostalgia of "the good old days", afraid even to embrace newer technologies as they refuse to embrace other Christians. That appeals to a small, ever-shrinking group with no hope of recruiting new people. That's a self-correcting problem over the long run. Imagine the "appeal" of a static-filled phone hookup to a teenager from now. It's sad if he hasn't learned any important life lessons of maturity or humility or even repentance, but there you go. BTW, you might see my post as "angry" because you're angry. I have less anger for lcm- who was completely duped by vpw, who ruined lcm for any honest work and warped his thinking- than I do for vpw himself who did such things..... and I don't actually ever feel anger for vpw despite his rapes, druggings, frauds, plagiarisms, charlatanisms, and so on. Then again, I can coldly post in brutal honesty- like calmly discussing how many women vpw drugged before molesting or raping versus how many he just molested or raped while they were conscious.

Thanks, everyone, for the welcome. I find that through these difficulties, others’ compassion is pure gold. I love that several of you are here to help the rest of us - thank you! Taxidev and Waysider, I would say I’m atheist when I’m angry and agnostic when I’m calm. It’s wonderful that so many perspectives are represented here. That’s how we learn, right? I’m finding lately that some of the things I still struggle with have so much to do with cult practices - “us vs. them” being one of them. It seems to me that served the purpose of keeping people trapped. At the same time, I do believe the people that promoted these ideas - the leaders of the 90s, at least, were true believers. I’ve run into people who assume/believe they all had nefarious intentions, but in knowing some of them, they believed the, um, stuff they were spreading. Doesn’t really make me any less angry, but...perhaps slightly more compassionate. T-Bone, I’ve read Undertow and really loved it. I think Penworks was both direct and compassionate in her telling, and I so appreciated that. Pretty much every person who has been a major influence in my early life is or was in twi. There’s so much of the love I’ve experienced mixed in with basically abuse and violation, and that’s incredibly difficult to separate. Anyway, I tend to ramble, so, thank you all for welcoming me. :-)