potato

I'm glad the husband has a supportive therapist who recognizes that he doesn't have anger issues. things got a whole lot better for me when I started seeing a therapist post-marital-assault/pre-twi-exodus... in fact, I doubt I would have had the strength to leave my marriage if I hadn't been seeing a good therapist who helped me see that I was used to being used as a punching bag for all sorts of people and I didn't deserve it.

even if he started going for the wrong reason, it sounds like he's being supported and validated in a therapeutic relationship and personally I'd encourage him to keep going because he's surrounded by people who are delusional.

and yeah, it sounds like a set-up to split up the marriage. why twi wanted some people together (like me and my ex) while they work to separate others is a puzzle I can't figure out. seems like the magic formula is the bully in the relationship must be pro-twi. beyond that they don't seem to care from what I can see.

"believers" aren't "the best".

ceasing to tithe does not rain down tragedy on my family.

I don't "know that I know that I know" and nobody in their right mind does.

those three came about in quick succession and then I was able to escape.

Oh, and never discuss the food. Big no-no.

that's because by the time you got to eat it, the most polite thing that could be said is "this bratwurst might be good if it were still warm".

when having checks printed, the husband's name is at the top because he's the head. (it's a no-no to consider yourself equal to your husband or to organize names alphabetically if it puts a wife's name at the top.)

a wife must take her husband's last name. failure to do so is an insult to god. (it's a no-no to keep your birth name no matter how attached you are to it.)

when both husband and wife work full-time, the man is allowed to rest after work if he wants to. (it's a no-no for a woman to refuse to serve her husband or care for her children or neglect the house no matter how tired she may be.)

god will bless a woman who stays with an abusive husband. look what he did for Abigail. (it's a no-no to object to being physically, verbally, or emotionally abused. if Abigail could take it for god, so can you.)

this has been on my mind for a while. my ex worked for 3 different leader-owned businesses over the course of our marriage.

the first one was fine. he worked for very little but the leader's goal was to teach him how to go off and be a self-employed window washer, not an employee. that was back around 1990.

the second was awful. my ex went to work for him under the table for really low pay, then the leader got relocated and "sold" his window washing business to my ex, but would come back to the area without notice to do the lucrative jobs. basically he made my ex pay to have the customer then didn't let him do the work to earn what he was supposed to get. my ex put up with it for a year and made excuses for the leader.

the third was worse yet. long hours, dangerous working conditions, lots of injuries that were blamed on lack of believing, and NO HEALTH INSURANCE. oh, and my ex was told that they could afford to pay him more (pay was about 60% of state average in a high cost-of-living area) but that they couldn't see the point because the government would just take it for taxes, and they also felt that they paid enough that we could get our own self-insurance. meanwhile they used corporate funds to build and furnish a 5,000 s.f. home for themselves. they pressured the wives of their employees to go get jobs so we could all be more abundant (or to fatten up the ABS contributions... I always kind of felt there was a TWI mandate to force both spouses to work whenever possible to increase ABS).

I've worked a lot of crap jobs, but expectations when working for "believer" businesses were so much higher while pay and benefits seemed so much lower than I generally found outside of TWI, plus people outside of TWI wouldn't dream of being as verbally abusive to their employees as the third TWI employer was.

did anyone else end up with the same impression?

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.

how arrogant they were to think they had the right to force anyone to cross a state line. the only legal right TWI had was to order a person off privately-held property, and if someone was a tenant with any kind of contract it's likely they broke a dozen laws every time they did that.

so, so glad I'm out.

I read a couple of the comments. same old vpw-worshippers but at least I saw a little dissent going on. some people still know how to think. the majority seem to be unaware that vpw was teaching stuff put together by other people.

godzilla is bad-foot and japanese... so... yeah. I would never play a video game with... oh, wait. an awful but pretty awesome thought just crossed my mind. maybe I would play a video game like that, if it played out like house of the dead. hellz yeah.

I'm not a christian. I decided after I left TWI that every one of the assumptions I'd formed while inside required thought and testing. after a while it didn't matter so much and I dropped the christian label. what did matter to me is developing the character that I admired in others, which meant I had to stop the being what TWI had brainwashed me to do.

today I try to be more compassionate and patient than I was in TWI. I'm definitely more honest and truthful than the leaders I served under (except for one couple I know who has since left).

in all of my encounters with leaders in TWI, only that one couple stands out in my mind as decent human beings. the rest did "the word" TWI style.

She actually blamed the way corpse household. Crazy as it sounds.

it IS crazy, but I know that's TWI style. someone high on the ladder screws up, they get to blame it on anyone occupying a lower rung that they want.

I would like shiftthis to know that a region coordinator told me in 2004 not to call the police on my then-husband when he assaulted me. he scared me into keeping my mouth shut by convincing me the state would take my children away from me. what he did was ILLEGAL and did indescribable harm to me and my children. that dumbass is still a coordinator.

[*]Rosalie confronted the way corpse at the 2000 advanced class special in Dallas Texas.

She blamed the way corpse for not speaking up and confronting Craig Martindale for his loud and abusive ways and also for not confronting him about his philandering ways. Nice, eh?

seriously? I mean, SERIOUSLY??? what is she, stupid? the only reason she had anyone to talk to at all is because they were the ones who didn't say anything. if they had, they would have been thrown out with everyone else who disagreed with him.

whatEVER! dumb beyotch. GOSH.

I guess these days,....... you have to be born into the household via the first birth, otherwise you're not allowed into the house?

or be ready to give up your evil ways on the porch before you're allowed to enter.

you avoided my question and got stuck on my statement of belief.

sounds like it's ok for gays and lesbians to attend fellowships with TWI as long as they stay in the closet. or was lcm right to "purge" the "ministry" as he did? after all, he ran off thousands of "homos" hiding amongst the faithful and contaminating the "one true household".

p.s. I don't consider a "homo lifestyle" to be something people need to be "delivered" from.

I have a feeling the "official" announcement was made to a few select leaders and was passed down as instructions to teach the kinder, gentler TWI (in other words, brainwash everyone into believing that LCM was the only problem and the RR was the salvation of TWI because of her "feminine" touch). I observed the change in attitude from so many people simultaneously that it's logical to conclude that there was a paradigm shift in twi dogma and wayspeak that originated at the top.

and yes, I do believe that "kinder" and "gentler" are buzzwords that the upper echelon deliberately chose and passed down to the lowly via the "faithful" way corps or via the region/limb leaders to the way corps. people in twi are so used to limiting expressive language that all it would have taken is using those words a few dozen times over the course of a few weeks to describe the "new" twi for the words to take hold as wayspeak and pretty much permeate every attitude of the "faithful".

I'll add my reply from the other thread:

<snip>

Shellon i dont believe that someone attending a way ministry fellowship on a regular basis wrote you that letter. that goes against everthing the ministry does in this day and time. i would like to know who wrote you that letter because that is out of line. anyone talking to or treating someone in that manner is either not thinking about what their saying or they are being a jerk and trying to bad mouth the ministry.

sorry, shiftthis, but TWI is a whited sepulcher. the same people who lied and abused are still very much in twi and influencing people. wolves in sheep's clothing is what they are. I stayed long after LCM got booted, waiting for the wrongs to be addressed and for some apologies to be issued to people who more than deserved them. IT NEVER HAPPENED. the wrongs were swept under the carpet and never talked about, and if it ever came up in conversation the asker was admonished to forgive, that it's a NEW, KINDLER, GENTLER MINISTRY AND WE'RE ALL SO BLESSED TO BE PART OF THIS NEW EXCITING TIME. exciting??? 'scuse me while I barf.

TWI is not kindler and gentler, they just learned some lessons the hard way about allowing leaders to coerce and rape. I think the only thing on their agenda is to avoid any more sh1t sticking to them. they tried to keep us off the internet, to keep us in isolation so we wouldn't know that the true consequence of leaving is FREEDOM, and I heard the anti-internet talk from leaders in 2006, I heard the denial in 2006, and I was put down for disagreeing with them. it was 3.5 years ago that I left, and I hear it hasn't changed.

TWI is like a sick family with a pedophile uncle. they punish the kids for talking about it and pretend the uncle is normal and tell everyone what a great family they have.

<snip>

Shellon i dont believe that someone attending a way ministry fellowship on a regular basis wrote you that letter. that goes against everthing the ministry does in this day and time. i would like to know who wrote you that letter because that is out of line. anyone talking to or treating someone in that manner is either not thinking about what their saying or they are being a jerk and trying to bad mouth the ministry.

sorry, shiftthis, but TWI is a whited sepulcher. the same people who lied and abused are still very much in twi and influencing people. wolves in sheep's clothing is what they are. I stayed long after LCM got booted, waiting for the wrongs to be addressed and for some apologies to be issued to people who more than deserved them. IT NEVER HAPPENED. the wrongs were swept under the carpet and never talked about, and if it ever came up in conversation the asker was admonished to forgive, that it's a NEW, KINDLER, GENTLER MINISTRY AND WE'RE ALL SO BLESSED TO BE PART OF THIS NEW EXCITING TIME. exciting??? 'scuse me while I barf.

TWI is not kindler and gentler, they just learned some lessons the hard way about allowing leaders to coerce and rape. I think the only thing on their agenda is to avoid any more sh1t sticking to them. they tried to keep us off the internet, to keep us in isolation so we wouldn't know that the true consequence of leaving is FREEDOM, and I heard the anti-internet talk from leaders in 2006, I heard the denial in 2006, and I was put down for disagreeing with them. it was 3.5 years ago that I left, and I hear it hasn't changed.

TWI is like a sick family with a pedophile uncle. they punish the kids for talking about it and pretend the uncle is normal and tell everyone what a great family they have.

then I'll make a t-shirt out of it.

I would ask 10 educated Germans to translate that and see what came back.

maybe I will!

Potato - you have it backwards - James' organization is making the case into one of church doctrine. He can correct me if I'm wrong, but what he seems to be saying is that because the HRV that he wrote is essentially the doctrine of his religious organization, that it supersedes anyone's claim to copyright under the first amendment of the constitution.

yes, I get that James' organization is making it into a case of church doctrine, and after analysis, I think he has a point. it's a translation of scripture, not a creative work like a novel. churches use a lot of the same language and hold beliefs in common that permeate religious life. it follows that any translation is going to end up infused with it and two groups translating the same texts should have similarities, and in the case of religious texts I'd expect strong similarities, unless their goal is to create a new version that goes beyond a translation into a dogmatic interpretation.

TWI is treating this as a simple copyright violation and that Mr. Trimm plagiarized a good portion of its Aramaic NT for his HRV.

I got that. if he didn't plagiarize, he can prove it to the court. I just see a lot of irony that an organization like TWI that believes there's only one right way to interpret scripture is claiming ownership of a translation. now anyone else who translates the texts and comes up with something too similar has infringed copyright and must invent a new version, which guarantees TWI can point fingers and ridicule the less perfect version as inferior because TWI got it right but no one else can.

like I said, I could ask 10 educated german speakers to translate "in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth" and see what comes back.

p.s. I think TWI is stupid.

James, I think I see the direction you're taking with this and I see your point. I would hope that you have some documentation of TWI's own doctrine that there is only one right way to interpret scripture, because working backward from that as you've worked forward in your argument one should logically conclude that if one works with language as it is commonly used, the two "versions" would of necessity be strongly similar, even using identical words/sentences, if both groups of translators use sources in common, speak the same language, and have established similar standards of correctness.

how many ways, in German, could one translate "in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth"? I bet if I ask 10 educated german speakers, I'll get 10 virtually identical translations.

TWI is claiming ownership of a translation of scripture by saying it's an interpretation of scripture and therefore any other translation/interpretation of scripture should be significantly different because interpretation is based on church doctrine.

can no one else see the hypocrisy in that argument? TWI, who maintains there is only one correct interpretation of scripture, in order to defend their version now says their interpretation can't be the only correct one, because it should all depend on the doctrines of the church as to how the translation/interpretations read?

TWI is making the case into one of church doctrine, which is why the argument to throw out the case is valid. if they focus on the issue of copyright infringement (which is properly heard in federal court), all James has to do is demonstrate that the similar/identical passages are most likely to be translated the way they are by various scholars or to find an older source out of copyright that does translate that way, and the court rules for him.

Shellon, thank you for sharing that email. it is a perfect example of the hateful attitude that permeates the fabric of TWI, and proof that the "kinder, gentler TWI" that leaders tried to convince me existed when I decided to leave 3.5 years ago does not exist as anything more than a fantasy in their heads. reading it made me so happy and relieved that I cut ties.

Lately they've changed their thinking. It used to be that the Bible was worshiped because it took the place of the absent Christ. In their lives Christ was considered as absent. Now it seems that they've elevated the organization above that....making twi take pre-eminence in their lives.

I was involved for 20 years and during that entire time TWI "the one true household" was the object of worship. if the bible was ever an object of worship, that era passed long ago with only occasional lip-service. TWI>bible>god is not a recently developed dogma, but a long-standing one.

Shellon, I hope to read good news about your daughter later. I'm a mother who the hateful and ignorant in TWI could easily point to and say my family was destroyed because I walked away, but I know the true causes of the problems we've had to face, and none of them have to do with devil spirits. all the real problems I take care of today spring from having gotten involved with TWI in the first place, like the ongoing post-divorce drama of the narcissist I stayed married to 15 years longer than I should have, caring for an emotionally disturbed child who suffered from TWI-approved abuse, and going through PTSD treatment to get over years of spousal and cult abuse. the rest of my life issues are pretty run-of-the-mill and far milder than the stuff I had laid at my door every day in TWI.

it was always about how much better we were than worldly people and yeah, there was plenty of criticizing people who had left or who wouldn't listen to the "word" we were speaking.

there was also plenty of backstabbing other "believers" when they weren't around.

the very best, though, was when I was getting divorced and the mother's day "teaching" was on Abigail and what a great woman she was because she put up with so much abuse from her husband and still stood by his side and that's why god was able to bless her so much.

sorry, gonna go barf now.