Rocky

Should we guess as to what their excuse for that condition will be?

Yes. I get it. Your sentiment echoes the blurb I wrote for Undertow. I grieve with you. May your heart be led to put your recollections into a memoir like Charlene or Kristin have done. May grace and comfort accompany on whatever journey you choose for the rest of your days.

If you had, you wouldn't be the man you are now. You wouldn't have the insight from which to light the way out of the darkness you actually now do have.

Largely because young people don't have nearly as much memory built by experiencing the abuse. Therefore they haven't built/received the wisdom necessary to withstand the onslaught. I think of something OldSkool posted not long ago on a different thread about realizing the bull$hit Rosie was spewing from the head table at lunch time about the lawsuit settlement with the Allens. OldSkool was able to recognize it most likely because he had enough relevant lived experience.

yes

Not at all. CRT is explicit. However, she does deal extensively with racial and other biases. The theory of implicit bias as opposed to actually holding chosen prejudices is that implicit bias is the result of culture. Psychologists have developed test instruments to help people recognize whether/if they hold particular implicit biases. If your SIL has studied the issue, she may have either meant that you were born into a culture in which it's difficult to not internalize implicit racial bias. Then again, she may not have studied it. In essence, if she actually said/believes/d you're racist because of how you were born, that's a short cut and not in line with current scientific understanding of how we internalize implicit bias. My mother, rest her soul, over the last couple of decades of her life associated with Blacks and I believe overcame some or all of that bias, but still held implicit bias against Hispanics. From my youth and her much younger adulthood (in upstate NY, and her upbringing in Northern Arkansas), would make racist jokes about blacks. I may have mentioned this on GSC before, but my first real exposure to diversity was USAF basic training and beyond. I did encounter an integrated 8th grade situation but my interactions weren't as friends or close associates. Basic training was in the summer of 1974. Later, I worked with diverse populations in Arizona state government. I had Black men and white women supervisors. None of that bothered me. But I've caught my self having some implicit bias toward Blacks. Because I can be mindful about it, new habits can get built in my gray matter.

Let me clarify, please. Those are two separate thoughts. "This" as I wrote it was about when I first learned about the idea of examining my life, it was from Peck's writing.

Something something about the unexamined life. This goes back, for me, to M Scott Peck's books from the 1980s and 90s. The Road Less Traveled was about a person becoming aware of what his/her attitudes and beliefs are. There has been much research by social psychologists since then. Thankfully.

Jessica Nordell's book was published in September 2021. It does not, in its index, have an entry for "cult," or "sect," or "religion." But while reading the introduction and first chapter I could not help but recognize TWI, Wierwille and Loy Martindale as it defined bias that operates independently of and often controls a person's decisions without the person even recognizing or realizing it has done so. IOW, implicit bias usually happens when we are on auto-pilot. Years ago... well, I'll digress (instead) Have you ever wondered about Wierwille being so locked in on things like The Thirteenth Tribe? Even though it had nothing overtly to do with biblical research and teaching? Or the Myth of the Six Million? Or about Loy's obsession with and hatred of LGBTQ+ people? Of course TWI's implicit bias toward gays didn't start with Loy. And it took me YEARS of mindfulness to suppress and hopefully eradicate that implicit bias in my own mind.

So very true. Thanks OldSkool.

This lovely poem, I pray, I hope, will take at least a little bit of the sting out of someone who has endured the brutality of Mark and Avoid by anyone in TWI.

Duh! Of course. How silly of me.

verb transitive To incite; urge on; encourage. verb transitive To irritate; grill; provoke. verb intransitive To be eager, prone; hurry. verb transitive To make as if to strike; argue (with); strive after; try to obtain. verb intransitive To strive onward and upward. I've never heard (or read of) anyone using the word ert before! Almost surprising because some people may have considered me an erter at times in my life.

I remember being able to buy 7up (I loved it) from a vending machine for a nickel (or maybe a dime), when I was a kid. But I'm confident my parents never put any of it (or anything with caffeine) in my baby bottles. However, years later, decades really, the realization of tooth damage from Diet Mt Dew, and progressively becoming sensitive to consuming anything with sugar in it opened my eyes just like when I left twi I could see much more clearly and learn so much more.

Nailed it.

I can't speak authentically about what it is now... but yeah, you're probably right.

Is that better?

aka subterfuge. noun Deception used to achieve an end. noun A deceptive stratagem or device.

Well, starting at the top, IF they authentically believed that, wouldn't their lives show the fruit of the spirit? I mean, I don't believe God would require people to be perfect in order for them to show such results, but come on. The "final authority?" And what does the bible say about whose responsibility it is to make the determination? From the very beginning, The Way International was ALL about judging whether someone else measured up to being right." That's foundational, IMO, to undermining everything godly about that subculture. They might not be able to recognize it or realize it in their own lives because the people who have identified the practicalities (how to actually live it) of what they claim to be twi's fundamental beliefs may not even be involved in church organizations.

Massively inauthentic. They can't get honest with themselves about anything that could help them. If they did, I suppose they'd probably have to fold up the tent and go home.

I find it much easier to figure out GSC forum posting and editing on my computer rather than on my phone. Your mother, if I understand your post correctly, is a fairly new follower of TWI? Undertow is a great first effort to clue your mother in on what The Way is all about. As to getting her to see the truth, that's a difficult question. For me, it took 12 years and plenty of friends leaving the group before I did. Love your mother, listen to her and try to understand what The Way provided her that made her decide to be a part of it.

I believe one (actually MANY) can reasonably infer, given the lack of substantive effort to reflect and get honest about why the organization has tanked, especially in the US, at minimum, the directors are clueless about that and much more. They appear to have no way to examine their processes and procedures, let alone the underlying dogmas they refuse to rethink. Academic researchers, though not focused on biblical studies, do not necessarily contradict Christianity as practiced in bible times. They can and may sometimes do, however, provide a NEW way to look at the problems churches (including fundamentalist cults/sects such as twi) recognize and address their problems. Victor's life and example was followed much more than what he taught from the bible. And the way he lived his life WAS contrary to godliness. Notably, writings in the 1980s/90s by M Scott Peck and much more recently, Brené Brown's Atlas of the Heart, Dacher Keltner's tome on The Power Paradox, and Susan Cain's exquisitely insightful book, Bittersweet: How Suffering and Longing Make Us Whole give much more practical understanding about those problems and how to figure out solutions that can work... but they won't work if the leaders/groups don't get honest about the problems in the first place.

hmmmm... idk.

Has it occurred to anyone that the expression at issue on this thread may have been meant as nothing more than a figure of speech? IDK, but it seems plausible.

There's a difference between rational and logical, though they can overlap. The bible IS a book of stories. I didn't make that up and I'm not saying that the stories are untrue. Stories, however, are not based on logic. Yet, even when they are not based on logic, the can still be rational. Story noun In lit., a narrative, either true or fictitious, in prose or verse; a tale, written in a more or less imaginative style, of that which has happened or is supposed to have happened; specifically, a fictitious tale, shorter and less elaborate than a novel; a short romance; a folk-tale. logic noun The study of the principles of reasoning, especially of the structure of propositions as distinguished from their content and of method and validity in deductive reasoning. rational adjective Having or exercising the ability to reason. adjective Consistent with or based on reason or good judgment. In this way, I'm NOT denigrating the bible, but I emphatically believe Wierwille's approach to the bible was kittywhompus to begin with despite his explicit claims to the contrary.