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TWI's Shift Toward Evil


skyrider
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The investigation of the Penn State/Sandusky evidence has crystallized to excoriate the leadership and institution. By all accounts, "The report is a horrifying account of individual and institutional failure, based in part on a “culture of reverence for the football program that is ingrained at all levels of the campus.”

So, too, is the growing evidence against The Way International.

Here at this Greasespot Forum, with 131 pages of threads and posts......destruction of lives is twi's legacy. Books have been authored by many who detailed the horror that they experienced at that hands of twi's leadership. Podcasts have been recorded to clarify viewpoints of the cult-mindset, the manipulation and the exploitation of years in twi service. With testimonies of sexual predation, rapes, abuse and driven to suicide surface from time to time, there are also a plethora of accounts illustrating the destruction of self and soul and family.

Perhaps, those who scoff at twi's association towards evil.....might gain a deeper perspective of institutional failure by reading the following article. From my experience, I think the "shift toward evil" took place in the heart of wierwille before The Way, Inc. ink had dried from the incorporation paperwork. But, that's me. And, as the marching corruption increased its numbers, the destructive evil increased exponentially.

For those who read: see any similarities to twi's institutional evil?

Click Here - Penn State Shift Toward Evil

Penn State’s Shift Toward Evil

Peter Wehner | @Peter_Wehner 07.13.2012 - 12:46 PM

During the last half-century, you’d be hard-pressed to find many programs in college football that were more respected than Penn State or a coach who was more revered than Joe Paterno. But all that they had achieved now lies in ashes. To understand why, one need only read the results of this investigation into Penn State’s sexual abuse scandal.

The seven-month investigation, based on 430 interviews and some 3.5 million documents, excoriates the university’s leadership – including then-Head Coach Joe Paterno, President Graham Spanier, Athletic Director Tim Curley, and Vice President Gary Schultz – for covering up allegations of sexual abuse by Assistant Coach Jerry Sandusky. (Last month Sandusky was found guilty on 45 of 48 sex abuse counts.) This happened in part because they were concerned about negative publicity.

“Our most saddening and sobering finding is the total disregard for the safety and welfare of Sandusky’s child victims by the most senior leaders at Penn State,” said former FBI Director Louis Freeh, who led the investigation. “The most powerful men at Penn State failed to take any steps for 14 years to protect the children who Sandusky victimized.” The report highlights a “striking lack of empathy” for the victims. And the investigation shows that Paterno, who died in January, was an integral part of an “active decision to conceal.” It appears as if the former coach of the Nittany Lions not only lied to reporters but to a grand jury as well. (Paterno insisted he had no knowledge of a 1998 police inquiry into child molestation accusations against Sandusky, his assistant coach.)

The report is a horrifying account of individual and institutional failure, based in part on a “culture of reverence for the football program that is ingrained at all levels of the campus.”

Consider just one incident. In 2000, a janitor at the football building saw Sandusky assaulting a boy in the showers. According to Freeh, “The janitor who observed it says it’s the worst thing he ever saw. He’s a Korean War veteran. … He spoke to the other janitors. They were awed and shocked by it. But, what did they do? They said they can’t report this because they’d be fired. They were afraid to take on the football program. They said the university would circle around it. It was like going against the president of the United States. If that’s the culture on the bottom, God help the culture at the top.”

What appears to have happened is that otherwise good men, when confronted with evidence that they had a monster in their midst, decided to cover up the crimes in hopes of protecting their reputations and those of their university. That decision began a chain of events that made them complicit in unspeakable acts.

This is not the first time individuals and institutions have turned a blind eye toward, and then become complicit in, malevolence. It occurred in the Catholic Church as well, as this 2004 report showed. The reasons such things happen are extremely complicated. It starts, I suppose, with — to invoke a word that is increasingly out of fashion these days — sin, which touches all of us to one degree or another. Human beings are a mixture of virtue and vice, of nobility and corruption, of good intentions and depraved motivations. Within every person lies competing and sometimes contradictory moral impulses and currents. It was Solzhenitsyn, in reflecting on his time in the Gulag, who wrote:

Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart, and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. Even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained; and even in the best of all hearts, there remains a small corner of evil.

The challenge of civilizations has been to set up institutional arrangements that take into account the human condition and channel it in ways that encourage the good and place a check on evil. What this means is that in our universities, in our churches, and in our political systems – in virtually every human institution – we need checks and balances. We need accountability. And we need transparency. The concentration of power — when combined with pride, arrogance, ambition, and fear — can lead even impressive people to act in unjust and repellant ways.

What happened at Penn State was a massive institutional failure combined with massive personal failures. In the process, crimes were committed. Reputations were destroyed. A university was shamed. And worst of all, children were abused and scarred for life.

This is not a new story, or even the worst story we have seen. But it is sickening enough. At Penn State, the line through the human heart shifted dramatically in the direction of evil.

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Zero tolerance for child abusers. Zero tolerance for those who willingly cover up for the abusers. It's that simple. Don't make it hard.

The PSU scandal describes an abuser who began in the physical realm. TWI describes an abuser who began in the spiritual realm. Both wilfully manipulated the innocent.

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quote: Perhaps, those who scoff at twi's association towards evil.....might gain a deeper perspective of institutional failure by reading the following article.

I agree with Excie; as long as the catholic church still exists, twi won't even get on the radar. I bet Jerry Sandusky never got anyone born again.

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I agree with Excie; as long as the catholic church still exists, twi won't even get on the radar. I bet Jerry Sandusky never got anyone born again.

Oh, so as long as twi is on par with the catholic church......."twi won't even get on the radar."

Who's "radar" are you talking about here?

Who's "radar" is more important.....man's or God's?

The article is explicitly clear about the NEED for institutional "checks and balances" to uphold and maintain

accountability, transparency, and curtail abuse. Of course, most of us know how wierwille structured twi and

stacked his platform of power. Sheeesh, even run-of-the-mill churches had established church boards for more

accountability from their ministers.

Yeah, I suppose johniam's post has a point. Twi is just another sin-laden institution! :doh:

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I bet Jerry Sandusky never got anyone born again.

Oh, now that justifies the sexual predator. Get them born again and then molest them. Yep - molest! That's exactly what the 50 something Wierwille did to the late teen and early twenty girls in his flock. But, hey, he got them born again. :realmad:

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Oh, now that justifies the sexual predator. Get them born again and then molest them. Yep - molest! That's exactly what the 50 something Wierwille did to the late teen and early twenty girls in his flock. But, hey, he got them born again. :realmad:

Why bother, O.S.?

It's just a diversion to take the focus off of VPW's misbehavior.

Besides, from what I remember being taught, back in my Bible study days, "people" can't get "people" born-again, anyhow.

(That's supposed to be someone else's job.)

Edited by waysider
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quote:

I agree with Excie; as long as the catholic church still exists, twi won't even get on the radar. I bet Jerry Sandusky never got anyone born again.

johniam,

That is absolutely not what excie is saying.

It has nothing to do with the greatness or insignificance of the organization or not. Is a sin less a sin because it was done in small church rather that a large one? Is a sin less a sin because because it was done by a believer rather than an unbeliever?

Whether someone is raped or molested by a priest, by Sandusky, by uncle harry or daddy or by vp, is the damage to that persons body and soul any less?

Who will God hate more, a 'natural man' molesting someone, or someone who is proclaiming himself to be god's personal representative who is molesting a child of God?

Matt 18:6

But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were drowned in the depth of the sea.

Now, if that weren't enough in itself, way teachings were that if a man of god allowed the devil just a little opening into his life, it set things up for the devil to get bigger and more evil into the man-o-gods life.

That may just have something to do with why twi started out so sweet and became progressively more legalistic and evil as it matured into RosyLie's personal vision of twi.

Edited by dabobbada
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Who will God hate more, a 'natural man' molesting someone, or someone who is proclaiming himself to be god's personal representative who is molesting a child of God?

not only that...he told them they were serving God by serving 'The Man of God'. Just makes me want to scream!

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ohman the "catholic church" setting up a board for retraints or balances makes me throw up. that's because of personal experience

how sad that any of us in any church, school, daycamp, political org, university, cult, family, shrink's office, etc., etc., has to endure the abuse and assault of those they trust

i personally will carry damages from.... oh you get my gist

love,e

so much does not make it on the radar

but i am glad that we've come along way in the last 30 years or whatever

Edited by excathedra
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Oh, so as long as twi is on par with the catholic church......."twi won't even get on the radar."

Who's "radar" are you talking about here?

Who's "radar" is more important.....man's or God's?

As far as you are concerned, it's man's radar. I bet it burns you that Penn State gets all this publicity and twi doesn't. Waysider says when does evil become relevant? I don't know, but twis evil isn't as relevant as Penn State's.

The article is explicitly clear about the NEED for institutional "checks and balances" to uphold and maintain

accountability, transparency, and curtail abuse. Of course, most of us know how wierwille structured twi and

stacked his platform of power. Sheeesh, even run-of-the-mill churches had established church boards for more

accountability from their ministers.

Yeah, I suppose johniam's post has a point. Twi is just another sin-laden institution! :doh:

So you admit that you think the catholic church is a "sin laden organization"? All those millions of people put in the box of 'sin laden'? When are you going to stop obsessing about what you can't control and live your life?

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So you admit that you think the catholic church is a "sin laden organization"? All those millions of people put in the box of 'sin laden'? When are you going to stop obsessing about what you can't control and live your life?

johniam......did you not read my post?

The point being.....institutions, universities, churches, political orgs, etc NEED "checks and balances"

for accountability, transparency, and to curtail abuse. Men in positions of power find ways to enforce more

power and leverage over people via hidden agendas and corruption. The ways of man are evil.

Wiewille structured twi WITHOUT any such accountability......no surprise there. He had worked in the church

structure before and was bristled by church board authority. Remember? Wierwille didn't like to be held

accountable to them. And, when the Van Wert church removed wierwille's name from the historical clergy registry,

it seemed to only fuel his distaste.

Yes, twi was sin-laden......just look at its founder.

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The point being.....institutions, universities, churches, political orgs, etc NEED "checks and balances"

for accountability, transparency, and to curtail abuse. Men in positions of power find ways to enforce more

power and leverage over people via hidden agendas and corruption. The ways of man are evil.

My viewpoint lately is that is because institutions are set up by man not God, despite man's ego-laden opinions about how their particular institution is indeed God's main and only vehicle on earth to get His will done. That's man's delusion and hubris talking.

Christianity is not for institutions. It is for the common man. The poor, downtrodden, sin-laden common man. It is meant to be shared, for free. Not for a man to build up his own tower of Babel based upon it.

If Jesus came to virtually any institutional Christian organization based upon his name today like he did on earth as a simple man 2000 yrs ago, he would probably be cast out, much like he was by the Pharisees and rejected by Israel and their institutional religious systems and structure of the time.

So my conclusion is pay no attention to the false posturing of man and the institutions he sets up in God's name. We already have a mediator, and that's one for the common, the downtrodden, the broken. And he mediates for free. We don't need another mediator like RFR, the Pope, or any other form of local egotist leadership setting themselves up as a false mediator, interjecting themselves between man, Jesus Christ, and God. Where you see a religious hierarchy, there will be evil. Run the other way. Hang out with the sinners, like Jesus did, and keep your heart pure.

Edited by chockfull
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My viewpoint lately is that is because institutions are set up by man not God, despite man's ego-laden opinions about how their particular institution is indeed God's main and only vehicle on earth to get His will done. That's man's delusion and hubris talking.

Christianity is not for institutions. It is for the common man. The poor, downtrodden, sin-laden common man. It is meant to be shared, for free. Not for a man to build up his own tower of Babel based upon it.

If Jesus came to virtually any institutional Christian organization based upon his name today like he did on earth as a simple man 2000 yrs ago, he would probably be cast out, much like he was by the Pharisees and rejected by Israel and their institutional religious systems and structure of the time.

So my conclusion is pay no attention to the false posturing of man and the institutions he sets up in God's name. We already have a mediator, and that's one for the common, the downtrodden, the broken. And he mediates for free. We don't need another mediator like RFR, the Pope, or any other form of local egotist leadership setting themselves up as a false mediator, interjecting themselves between man, Jesus Christ, and God. Where you see a religious hierarchy, there will be evil. Run the other way. Hang out with the sinners, like Jesus did, and keep your heart pure.

Yep.....the egotistical, bureaucracy-laden pyramids of man are institutionalized evil built on the backs

of enslaved and common man. Pharisees, kings, and priests alike are rulers and enforcers of evil.

Simply put, the scriptures answered this when Jesus said......

Mar 8:15 And he charged them, saying, Take heed, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, and [of] the leaven of Herod.

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I attend two churches and know of goings-on in several others. They ALL have child protection policies and appointed Child Safety Officers who I'm quite sure would treat any allegations of abuse very seriously. I am confident that complaints would be listened to and acted upon.

... I find that very reassuring - coming from TWI, you can see why.

In addition, most business organisations seem to have such policies and in places I've worked, complaints are taken very seriously. Too seriously, sometimes.

It befits all of us to be watchful of abuse of any kind and to see that action is taken to prevent it. You and me. All of us.

If you see someone bullied in your workplace, what do you do?

Like those janitors - turn a blind eye? Or report it and stand fast in the face of perhaps some abuse yourself?

How confident do you feel about anti-abuse policies and procedures in your church, your workplace? If you're not happy about any procedures - or there isn't one - start working NOW to get better procedures and policies established.

Otherwise, you're passively assenting to the abuse. Which makes you an abuser.

The culture in your workplace - is partly about YOU in your workplace, your church, whatever. Help to make it a good one.

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"If you see someone bullied in your workplace, what do you do?"

Unfortunately, in the U.S., there is not really much of anything you CAN do. Unlike the U.K.,it's perfectly legal here UNLESS you can prove that it's being driven by a bias against a protected class of worker or as retaliation against a whistleblower.. And, the burden of proof is on you, as the one being bullied. It's deeply entrenched in the American workplace, often encouraged by upper levels of management if it translates into (perceived) higher production levels or (perceived) profit increases. HERE is a link to a site that elaborates on the problem.

This post may seem off topic but I really don't think it is. Fear of retaliation is often what drives people to turn a blind eye. Without laws to hold retaliation in check, this sort of thing will never stop. We saw what happened in TWI when there was no protocol in place to deal with such things.

Edited by waysider
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Waysider, the article you linked contained this sentence: "Every employer has an anti- harassment policy to comply with laws." And of course some groups are specially protected.

Yes, we have laws in the UK. Some better than others. Policies we must have. It's difficult to take a case to the Employment Tribunal, and stressful. Many prefer just to give up quietly and find other jobs, places to be.

It always takes people standing up to bullies, people promoting a culture of decency, to ensure that rights, policies, procedures, anti-discrimination, etc are carried out properly. And bullies ... bully. Intimidate. Question is: do you assert your rights, or support those who are asserting their rights? Or do you turn the other way - "not notice" that it's happening - for fear of consequences to yourself?

(FYI I've worked in several environments like this. It's really unpleasant. Made me very ill, in one place. But nothing you could actually put your finger on and say, it's unreasonable, as a single act. But cumulatively... I wussed out then, low level grumbling with all the other staff. But now? Maybe I'd deal with things differently. Or maybe not.)

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Many people have a misconception of what constitutes harassment. It is NOT against the law to "harass" an employee, in the dictionary, semantic sense of the word. It can only be legally classified as harassment if it violates specific laws, like those that prohibit discrimination against a protected class or persons who expose unsafe and/or illegal activities. Compounding the issue, in all 50 of the United States, an employer can terminate you at any time, for any reason, so long as they don't overstep any legal restrictions (protected class, whistleblower, etc.). In fact, they really don't even need to have any reason at all. They could, theoretically, simply say, "I don't like you, you're fired" and there is nothing you can do about it, short of invoking some sort of pre-employment contract or something of that nature. That is why employers insist you sign an "at will" agreement before they will employ you.

What does any of this have to do with the topic at hand? Well, we live in a culture where this sort of atmosphere has become the norm for many workplaces and organizations. People know that if they blow the whistle or simply speak up, retaliation is an almost certainty. The system discourages speaking out for what you know is right, especially if you are not 100% certain that your suspicions are accurate.

The linked article details a study that showed it to be virtually useless to confront the bully, go to their superior, go to HR, etc.

Businesses and organizations are simply not going to change because "it's the right thing to do". Until there are laws with some teeth in them, this attitude is going to fester in our culture and facilitate all sorts of heinous acts without recourse. We need to get to the very core of the issue and create an environment where people know they can do the right thing without being penalized.

...............................................

From the article that started this thread:

"The challenge of civilizations has been to set up institutional arrangements that take into account the human condition and channel it in ways that encourage the good and place a check on evil. What this means is that in our universities, in our churches, and in our political systems – in virtually every human institution – we need checks and balances."

Edited by waysider
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i went to a church sunday for the first time in 22 or 23 years

it's called the grace church i think and every time i pass it i read their little billboard and it's always so nice

the church was tiny and ugly

the pastor was a young black/white man (kind of both)

the people there (20 or less) were: quite a few old folks, an asian couple (when she put her hand up during the singing, it was lovely, you could tell she was giving praise), a rough looking tatoo guy, and a little mix of everything else

it was so nice - i can't believe i went to church

they praised and thanked jesus every other second. you could tell they think jesus is god, but it took nothing away from their worship and love

they had a time where you could give praise and prayers. you would give a praise about something good in your life (there were a lot of those) and you could say a prayer out loud. after that the pastor reiterated everything, thanking god and praying to god

sweetest people i can't tell you

their singing was awful and loud and absolutely beautiful

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"The Joe Paterno statue was removed Sunday morning from its pedestal outside Beaver Stadium, and it will be stored in an unnamed "secure location," Penn State president Rodney Erickson announced. Erickson also said the Paterno name will remain on the university's library.

Shortly before dawn in State College, Pa., a work crew installed chain-link fences to barricade access to Porter Road outside Beaver Stadium and covered the fence with a blue tarp.

The work crew then removed the 7-foot, 900-pound bronze statue by forklift and placed it into the lower level of the stadium. Erickson released his highly sensitive decision to the public at 7 a.m. ET Sunday."

Will twi ever remove the victor paul wierwille statue from their auditorium?

Of course not......the twi-public outcry has hardly moved in its intensity.

Twi-ers, splinter groups and many ex-ers are STILL indoctrinated in vpw-idolatry.

<_<

.

Edited by skyrider
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