Rocky

18 hours ago, Charity said:

Hi Rocky, I would never want anything purged from GSC so I need help understanding what you mean.  Thanks!

Let me put it this way, with many first hand records of abuse by twi leadership, if you were in their shoes, would you feel welcome here?

On 2/9/2025 at 3:21 PM, Charity said:

Such a forum may never take off, but it might be worth a try.  Yes/no?

Oh my, Charity! Without purging from GSC all of the things so many have said about twi over the last couple of decades? I can't imagine.

https://www.cultfacts.com/cults/the-way-international

First 2 paragraphs are much as twi might describe itself.

Third paragraph:

They also adopted a hierarchical educational structure which many say is used to exercise excessive control over its members. "The Foundational Class on Power for Abundant Living," serves as an entry point into a system that encourages participants to climb a ladder of increasing commitment and involvement, a structure often compared to pyramid schemes [not unlike Scientology]. Members who commit to the Way have reported severe sleep deprivation, isolation from families, and other forms of control from church leaders, which have led them to drop out of school, quit taking medicine, or prepare for a prophesized nuclear holocaust.

Some of their worst abuses started to come to light after former members launched lawsuits against the organization. In addition to concerns about psychological manipulation and financial control, former members testified about a widespread coordination of up to fifty leaders[aka conspiracy] to assist in and coverup the sexual abuse of female members at the hands of the presidents and high-ranking leaders. Court documents and media sources reported that girls as young as thirteen are shown pornography and trained in how to provide sexual gratification while being taught that a woman's purpose is to give sexual pleasure to men. Victims revealed how leaders used the guilt of disobeying God and fears of death to coerce them into submission. Meanwhile other trusted leaders told them how privileged they were to be able to satisfy such great men of God.

At it's peak, The Way was considered the second largest cult in America, with up to 40,000 members. While membership declined significantly in the 1990s, the organization still exists today, remaining curiously quiet about their abusive history.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=is+the+way+international+a+dangerous+cult&atb=v353-1&t=chromentp&ia=web

On 1/17/2025 at 12:40 AM, WordWolf said:

He really did NOT see the people as anything other than revenue sources.  

He really did NOT see the people as anything other than revenue sources.  

That's right! It's also like when owners of major league sports teams... they need "butts in seats."

"...emerged into full fruition..." [iow, HAPPENED] CULTS make their own language to help cement the unseen chains around the followers. What C A R P!

15 hours ago, Nathan_Jr said:

"Dearest Saints

           God bless you abundantly.

What we commonly recognize as the first Rock of Ages emerged into full fruition in August 1971..."

 

You can view the full letter from Vern here: https://www.reddit.com/r/theway/s/ecdSvJaYDS 

 

Apparently 368kb is beyond my photo posting limit.

 

 

Yawn... 

Steven Hassan interviews attorney Carol Merchasin

Includes but is not limited to religious cults. Bottom line: The Way International has historically done at least some of this, whether or not it still does.

NOTE: it's still understandable at 1.75x or even 2.0x... to save you some time.

19 hours ago, Stayed Too Long said:

To be honest, today the influnce of cults on our society, is minimal compared to all the other cons going on in the world.

I'm not sure you have any data to back up that claim. However, that no one on this thread claimed cults are the only source of undue influence and coercion. 

19 hours ago, Stayed Too Long said:

My point is cults aren’t the only ones being shady.

Shady or good ideas? rhetorical question.

3 hours ago, Stayed Too Long said:

This is certainly nothing new and not limited to cults. Salesmen use the obits, wedding license notices, new home sales documents, etc. to contact prospective clients to sell them their products.
If a young couple applied for a marriage license they might be contacted about buying a life insurance policy or stocks to protect their future.

If someone purchased a new home a salesman would contact them about homeowners and car insurance. 
They could contact a recent widow about covering their cars mechanical and electrical systems as their husband handled all this prebiously.

You could say the sales person was contacting them at a vulnerable time, but if the widows  transmission went out next week, she would be thankful for the coverage.

It seems to me the Corps studied the book, “How To Win Friend and Influence People,” and adopted it’s principles to their goals of winning folks to the class.

Good ideas will always be used for bad outcomes. 

 

 

Perhaps you skipped the YT video. Hassan studied undue influence and has written about it.

That's the point of this discussion thread. Yeah, to make a sale, one has to find potential buyers. But the entire ministry of The Way International was about undue influence and high demand practices.

1 hour ago, penworks said:

Thanks for this, Rocky.

As for tactics TWI used in the past to find prospects. In the 1970s, one big time leader I won't name, told us to comb throught the obituaries to find the names of families who'd lost loved ones so we could approach them, offer "comfort," and try to sign them up for the PFAL class. I found that piece of advice so revolting I never did it. At least I had some good sense tucked in my mind somewhere back then ...

It's entirely possible whoever it was just connected a few dots to the plot of Paper Moon with Ryan and Tatum O'Neil. 

I have now listened to the entire hour long YT clip. I sped it up to 2x. It was still very clearly understandable.

Most importantly, I believe this is one of the best discussions I've heard about UNDUE INFLUENCE in the 35+ years since I left TWI.

Hassan and Boyle-Laisure parse out some VERY important legal and psychological/behavioral issues that clearly implicate Victor Wierwille and Loy Craig Martindale as cult leaders.

Robin Boyle Laisure teaches at St. John's University School of Law https://www.stjohns.edu/law/faculty/robin-boyle-laisure

On her faculty page, she lists her books and articles.

This one got my attention: Undoing Undue Influence: How the Doctrine Can Avoid Judicial Subjectivity by Omitting the Vulnerability Element

The YT video also mentions things that have been taught in Way Corps training and sexual coercion by way of drugs.

For example (but NOT limited to this practice), having trainees write autobiographical information (i.e. from Birth to the Corps) that to be used for psychological manipulation (e.g. shaming).

Steven Hassan interviews law professor Robin Boyle-Laisure.

Witnessing and Undershepherding? Cults CAN purchase prospect information on young adults online.

Does anyone have any inside information on whether TWI has, openly or in a clandestine manner, tried do this kind of prospecting?

On 12/4/2024 at 12:47 PM, Raf said:

I'm going to butt in and say that Christians and non-Christians alike have used the term "original" loosely in reference to the existing Greek manuscripts, and no one is suggesting these were the first manuscripts written by the original authors. We have copies of copies of copies, and while there are hundreds of discrepancies, most are minor. I wouldn't get hung up on the use of the word "original" in this context.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55271743-forgery-and-memory-at-the-end-of-the-first-millennium

2 hours ago, Charity said:

If you want to share some of the other choices you see that are available, I'd be happy to read them.

Recognizing the complexity of life and the fact there's more answers or ways of looking at the matter doesn't mean I know what other options might be. 

Life is complex despite with Johnny Townsend claimed 40 to 50 years ago. I can tolerate that complexity even if I'm uncertain of the paradoxes enough to articulate them.

Townsend, IMO, was spouting cult propaganda back then to present shiny objects to distract young people like us (well, we were young then) to keep us from thinking outside of the overly simplistic box that Victor Wierwille had us confined to at the time. 

18 hours ago, Charity said:

I was requesting biblical answers simply because the question had to do with biblical doctrine - whether once saved/always saved (Eph 1:13) or salvation through faithfulness (Heb 3:12-14; Matt 24:13; James 2:17) is accurate.

Sorry, my response in my previous comment is the closest I can get to "assessing the accuracy" thereof.

18 hours ago, Charity said:

Thank you for sharing the passage - I'm going to pass on it for myself.

I'd like to ask for clarification though on how you take this passage to mean because of things you have said in the past about the bible.  Do you follow verse 1 literally; i.e., do you accept all of God's words (which is implied) and store up all his commandments (also implied) within?  And do you believe you understand the fear of the Lord and that you have found the (not "a") knowledge of God?

I'm asking in a sincere way.

 

I have framed my answers to several questions/comments/posts on GSC the last few years thus: the bible is an anthology of stories. Do I take those stories literally? Definitely not. Do I believe I understand... anything... adequately or fully? Of course not.

The closest those stories come to factual truth, IMO, is taking them as human records of the times (histories) of humans in the context of the lives and cultures (anthropology and archeology) at the time they were recorded.

2 hours ago, Charity said:

Why did an all-knowing, all-wise and all-powerful divine being, when wanting to make known his one and only perfect will to all humans for the thousands of years he knew would eventually exist and across thousands of languages and dialects (which he's responsible for because of the Tower of Babel incident) and cultures that would spread throughout the whole world, choose to do so in a written way that has proven to be so confusing and contentious and cherry picked?

You present that question as if it is factually true. Why do you think it's true? I'm not so sure. 

I'm more inclined these days to think that humankind made God in its own image rather than the other way around. Bottom-line: I don't take your question as a true premise.

2 hours ago, Charity said:

My only response to YOU, Rocky , is that whatever other choices there might be, they should come from the bible as that was the context in which I was speaking.

I don't see your question as being a problem, but demanding (or even mildly suggesting) I should only answer with something from the bible is not something I'm willing to do.

However, my go to (favorite) scripture now and for a long time up to now is Proverbs 2:1-5.

My son, if you accept my words
    and store up my commands within you,
2 turning your ear to wisdom
    and applying your heart to understanding—
3 indeed, if you call out for insight
    and cry aloud for understanding,
4 and if you look for it as for silver
    and search for it as for hidden treasure,
5 then you will understand the fear of the Lord
    and find the knowledge of God.

So, take it or leave it. 

As an addendum, I found this article on Scientific American's website today on the topic of curiosity. Take it, also, or leave it. What you accept is not in my control.

Quote

 

The desire to learn is partly a preference for novelty: we tend to seek out new information and experiences, and that adds to what we know. We also like to reduce uncertainty. Information can bring food, safety, relationships, and other physical rewards. But scientists now believe these drives combine into a more complicated urge that can be critical to learning, even when—perhaps especially when—there’s no immediate payoff. We are just curious.

We’re often curious in a particular way: we want to learn more about things we already know a little bit about. “You can think of curiosity as the process that guides the acquisition of knowledge,” says neuroscientist Celeste Kidd of the University of California, Berkeley. We internally track how well we are learning, or our learning progress, and learning comes more easily and is more enjoyable when curiosity is high. Following our instincts appears to be a particularly rewarding way to explore the world. “If you feel positive after learning something, then you now understand the joy of learning, which motivates you to learn next time,” says educational psychologist Kou Murayama of the University of Tübingen in Germany.

 

One is either curious and wanting learn, or not.

1 hour ago, Charity said:

 

If you feel like answering, which of the two choices above do you accept as accurate?

I'm not speaking for WW, only myself. Those two options are not nearly the only choices available.

Aren't YOU, dear Charity, responsible for using your critical thinking and analysis skills to make judgments as to what you should believe? As WW noted, we don't have a textbook we can open that provides simple, clear ideas on how to cope with or balance life's complex problems, whether philosophical problems or practical, everyday living problems.

Isn't that kinda what traps a lot of people in dogmatic life situations these days?

16 hours ago, WordWolf said:

Disagree.

I'm only speaking for myself here, but I think the real problems with understanding stem from 2 things. The smaller problem is expecting the Bible to be a textbook written for a modern audience. We, here and now, would prefer that, but it would have been impenetrable for centuries.  (Different styles benefit different people and work better for different times and different mindsets.)

The larger problem really is having preconceived notions about what it is SUPPOSED to say, and cherry-picking to try to support that rather than read the whole thing to find out what it actually says.  That's actual work, and requires one to double-check one's denomination. (Then again, I was already starting to do that while in twi before the splits happened, and I wasn't in terribly long.)   If you're taught, say, there's Heaven, Hell, Purgatory and Limbo, then if you even open your Bible, you're likely to just look for something that might look like it supports precisely that position, rather than making the effort to get the whole picture from the Bible.

A tertiary problem is awful translations- but a lot of those stem from a translator with the larger problem. I've found that reading an interlinear often corrects those pretty easily and painlessly.

Not necessarily an exhaustive list, but those are very real factors. Thanks WW.

2 hours ago, Charity said:

However, I did not see myself as invulnerable or all-knowledgeable.  Just the opposite - I hated myself and wanted desperately to know God's love.

That's not mutually exclusive with/from young people believing they know-it-all and/or take risks they shouldn't. 

On 12/1/2024 at 10:26 AM, waysider said:

The point is, the human mind craves easy solutions for complex problems. That explains why we fell so hard for VPW's shtick.

I fell into Victor's trap at age 19. That was 50 years and about 5 weeks ago.

Young people don't have as much of a data base between their ears from which to draw on to combat cult seduction, even if they've been taught critical analysis/thinking skills. It's no wonder young adults have often been those most vulnerable.

We think (at that age) we're both invulnerable, and all-knowledgeable. Sometimes it takes a lifetime of lessons in the School of Hard Knocks to begin questioning those easy solutions for complex problems.