waysider

Maybe it's a variation of Stockholm Syndrome.

Theism is a belief that God (or Gods) exists. A-Theism is an absence of this belief. Religion is an organized conglomeration of beliefs. Neither one (Theism or Atheism), in and of itself, constitutes a religion.

Precisely.

Once you join, you're in for life. If they then have kids, are the kids not also part of the group?

There is a rather large cult of motorcycle riders in the USA. They wear special uniforms so you'll know who they are. Many of their activities are already illegal but the group still exists and flourishes. I'm just tossing that out there for thought.

Irony is what strikes me. Wierwille promoted himself as one who disdained privately interpreting scriptures yet he did exactly that by taking this verse out of context and making it say something it clearly does not. He used it to promote the importance of PFAL as a gateway to the "abundance" he saw non-Christians manifesting. (AKA material things) In context, this verse has nothing at all to do with such matters. He cherry-picked it and contorted the meaning to suit his agenda. It was not by accident.

"This class will answer all your questions. All you have to do is sit through 36 mind-numbing hours of blather and ask us again when it's over." how convenient is that? uuuuhhhmmm...............Not so much.

I was newly married and chose to have sex with my wife (In a private setting), rather than clean our FellowLaborer "house". I don't remember how I got found out. It was almost 40 years ago. I think someone must have noticed we hadn't cleaned the house or something. I had to report directly to the limb leader for a butt chewing and a lecture on the importance of obedience to the MOG. I never told the wife because I didn't want her to know we had jeopardized our future in the program. edit: I wanted to make it clear that what I was chewed out for was not the sex part but, rather, not following the MOG's directive explicitly. I can still remember it like it was yesterday, sitting at attention in that little porch office at the limb home and nodding my head in compliance, all the while steaming inside. It was a real turning point for me in giving serious consideration to my loyalties.

"We're talking strictly about marriages here? And as it pertains to the husband alone?" That's what initially sparked the thread but there is certainly room to expand on it.

I think you have raised a valid point. Having talked to you on this forum in the past, I am aware you are quite a bit younger than me and raised in a much different environment. My generation grew up in an environment that, like Wierwille's, was highly focused on the man being in charge, whether it be in business, in finances or in marriage. So, in that respect, Wierwille was a product of his upbringing and his times. What set Wierwille apart, however, from Uncle Joe or Grandpa Cletus or our own fathers was perceived credibility. We gave Wierwille some kind of special credibility that we didn't give to our more familiar examples. It's a bit ironic,really, that by revolting against the status quo, we looked to someone who personified it.

In order to regulate cults, one would first have to formulate a clear definition of cults as a reference point. That might initially seem like an easy task but we've seen from pornography/obscenity regulations how vague and diverse such definitions can become.

....author unknown

This. I hadn't heard that quote since my first wife and I went through pre-marriage counseling, back in the mid '70s. It's sick...dedicating your life to the promotion of an abusive organization instead of pledging yourself to your spouse. And then, showing us how to do that by demonstrating defective marital techniques. No wonder so many Way marriages came apart at the seams.

" Would things have been different without the drinking? Toxic behavior prevented?" It's all interwoven.Some of the toxic behavior involved alcohol abuse and some of it didn't involve alcohol abuse at all. Maybe some of Wierwille's unacceptable behavior was alcohol fueled and, then again, maybe he would have behaved poorly even when he was sober. I don't know. What I do know is that people who were at the lower end of the pecking order saw those who were at the higher end of the pecking order demonstrate a manner in which they treated their spouses. And, so, there was a kind of attitude present that said this must be the acceptable way to behave. It wasn't.

This discussion seems to have gone in an unintended direction. My point was that many of us pattered our behavior, as it relates to interpersonal relationships, after examples that were toxic at the core. Because of the perceived importance of the position he filled, Wierwille should have been an example of how a husband should treat his wife. Instead, he was.....something else. So, when things went down the crapper, for some of us, we were left wondering how the modeled example failed us. Shortened version: Trying to be the kind of husband that TWI prescribed was a recipe for failure. Fortunately, some people like to improvise on recipes.

Meta

TWI, to my thinking, is a way of life, dictated by the doctrinal teachings of The Way......magic thinking, jibber-jabber babbling, observance of unorthodox customs and proprietary vocabulary..... Some TWIers associate directly with the mother ship while others have been relegated (voluntarily or otherwise) to penal colonies, strewn hither and yon, known as splinter groups. There are also rogue outliers who pledge no vow of allegiance to any particular band of loyalists but still choose to live the prescribed lifestyle independently. Did I mention they're "The Best!"?

It's not just a modern thing. When I took the class in 1972, drugs were very much taboo in The Way. The story they gave was that drugs open some kind of trap door that allows debil spirts to enter your mind. A couple years later, when I was in FellowLaborers, alcohol was strictly forbidden. We weren't even allowed to keep beer in our communal "houses". That was a peak period of growth for The Way so I don't think enforcement would be effective.

Fracking, on the other hand, does produce radioactive waste. To what degree it will impact the environment is an ongoing source of controversy. HERE

Try referring to it as an MLM . That's what it was. People understand what MLM's are. Add that it had a religious twist , if questioned further, selling classes and books, etc..

“We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.” ― Joseph Campbell

“The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.” -Nietzsche

One of the most enlightening things for me, when I discovered GSC, was that I discovered I was not alone in wondering why I had seen so many discrepancies, incongruities, inconsistencies in both doctrine and behavior when I was involved with The Way. Stated more simply, I found myself saying, "Wow!, I wasn't the only one!" It was so hard to talk to anyone while still involved because we had been specifically instructed (session #5 of PFAL) to NEVER allow ourselves to give introspective thought to the materials we were studying or the lifestyle we were living. (Having done all..Stand!") We were conditioned to believe that nothing good could come out of honest, suspicious questioning of Way Theology. Looking back, I think that may be part of why "outsiders" don't understand how we could have been so thoroughly hoodwinked. It was a catch 22. Greasespot is a place where honest discourse can take place without fear of falling from grace like Eve did for simply "questioning". When you relinquish your ability to think critically, you enter a dark place that's hard to escape.

My story is probably too long and boring to read. I'll just cut to the chase...Date and Switch.

While it's true we have an abundance of these particular resources, What often gets overlooked is that we do not have an abundance of usable water. We need to be extremely cautious about how we extract these resources so that we avoid the catastophic results we have seen from past efforts. Ohio, for example, is still struggling to remedy mistakes that were made in the mining industry a hundred years ago. Without potable water, it's all meaningless conjecture.