Cool Waters....I guess I am thinking about how it was our excitement that sold pfal...it was our wholesome image that told people that the way ministry was a good place to be....
There were thousands of us with the best of intentions inviting people to learn about God...running classes in our homes....promoting wow adv. class and corpes...talented teachers...inspired musicians and artists.....
and NOW we find out that we were putting folks in harms way....the sinister forces waiting to indulge themselves at these peoples expense....these people who TRUSTED us!
We had the BEST of intentions....and yet we lured people into what turned out to be their destruction....
College plans were abandoned....families were ignored....a lifetime of struggles for many of us.......
They looked at us....they saw good hearted earnest christians and so they bought into twi.
All that work that I thought I was doing for God....all of the sacrifices made....and now I find out that I was merely a tool to impliment consumption and destruction of others...
The *good* in twi....seems to have aided in the beguiling of people.... Idon`t know if I can apreciate any of the good because it is what blinded me to the harm that was being done.
If the *good* was what enabled the bad to function...does that mean that the *good* was really Bad?
[This message was edited by rascal on March 11, 2004 at 17:31.]
Thought this post (the whole thread, really) was worth seeing again.
I agree with vickles...the whole thing was a fantasy in our minds.
My grandmother used to tell me, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions." The bible talks about the blind leading the blind into a ditch.
You know I would hate to beleive that the 11 yrs. with TWI was worthless. There where a lot of good healthy moments. And by experiance there was alot of painful moments and now know that the doctrine was shaded and harmful. Does that make me a spiritual perpitrator? Hell no! Like many I beleived in what I was taught. Yes I was brainwashed and often times then not ...confussed. And I do take responcibility for being an instriment or pone in the sceem of things. BUT some how in the insanity of it all there has to be meaning and spiritual significense to it all. I beleive there is.-
Viktor Frankl wrote a book about his time in a concentration camp during WWll."Man's search for meaning" In it he ponders the question, "What is the meaning of all this suffering and death." His conclusion was each individual has to go through some form of self-actualization and find the hidden truths of his existance. {Actually he said more then that but it is the some and jest.}-
For me I needed TWI because I was a basket case any way. It kept me alive for a long time. But when I think of all those years in "christian service"I realized NOW I am able to recognize when inspiration hits and when God is at work in me. Even when it was shrouded in questionable beliefs."Love[God] never fails." I think we all really loved God and wanted what was best for people. We were deceived into beleiving TWI had the best product on the market.-
I am still up for helping Gods people...But now I do it more catiously and answer to no man. TWI taught me that in a negitive but profound way.So I guess if I let TWI get the best of me and I shut down spiritually then I guess that 11 yrs. was a waste and there is no meaning to our suffering or our existance. I hope you do not find this to aggressive. I mean well.
Oh I do not believe for one minute that our lives were wasted. It may sound simplistic and I do not wish to minimize any of the tragedies and sorrows endured, but we went down that road and this is where we are now. Older and wiser. Glasses off. And with a clearer understanding of what love really is and what it is not. Some people never come to that realization. Some of us learned it the hard way. (Speaking from personal experience here.)
I,too, used to think the road to hell was paved with good intentions until I heard a TV preacher (gasp) make the comment that nothing could be further from the truth. "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." The good intentions we had came from a purity of heart, OUR hearts, not from TWI, or any other church, or organization, or teaching. That counts for everything with God. We did the best we knew to do at that time. Oh indeed, mistakes were made, but our motivation was not to hurt. Our motivations sprang from that purity of heart.
CW you know what was going through the heads of those of us in Alaska that weren't part of the in crowd--
We were afraid, And we were depressed, and we didn't know who we could trust, and 1/3 the time we believed we deserved the bad in our lives because of our lack of believing, and 1/3 the time we were just plain mad and the other 1/3 too numb to care.
But there were still good people amoung us--Spaghetti dinners held at each others houses on the spur of the moment with no leadership invited. Of course we caught H*ll for it later on but they were fun.
I think in some areas of the country, that were just too samll to be of much consequence in terms of overall income generated, there were probably good people as leaders and the love of GOD was preached before the legalistic BS permeated all it touched.
I believe that GOD judges the intent of the heart and if your labors in TWI were designed by you to bring other grafts to the true vine and you did this with honesty and a pure heart--that GOD in his infinite mercy and wisdom will reward you for those efforts no matter the vehicle you were riding on.
Looking back from over 25 years of being out, I can't say that I ever experienced anything that I could classify as "evil." Stupid, yes. Lots and lots of stupid.
Of course, I was never in any kind of leadership position at all. I was just the nut on the way tree. I had no contact with New Knoxville except for an hour wandering around the farm at the ROA.
If I had to describe most of the people where I was, they would be "nerds." Except for a few exceptions, good little boys and girls who never stepped out a line, especially in anything involving twi, no matter how hard I tried to push them.
I enjoyed the twig meetings and coffeehouses, but I hated the pressure to take classes and witness and go wow and do the colon cleanse. If you didn't do those things, you weren't walking the walk. If they had just left me alone to be the nut on the tree, I might have stayed longer, but probably not because of personal stuff.
When I was in, we were all supposed to aspire to the Holy Grail of the Advanced Class. To reach that pinnacle of spiritual success, one had to complete something called "home studies" a fill-in-the blank exercise in way doctrine. I did the first one, got marked down for putting a comma in the wrong place, threw it in the trash and never did another one. No spritual perfection for you!!!
The only way corps people I ever met were some passing through on their way to somewhere else,like Bo Reahard or Randy Anderson. I've been told I met Martindale, but he must not have made much of an impression on me, because I have no memory of it. Our leaders were all college kids my own age or a little older. Even the limb leader was in his 20s, and this was one of the twi "hot spots" Greenville, NC.
Different times, different places, different experiences. When I first discovered Waydale, it was hard to connect the stories that I read there with the collection of dorks and twerps that I knew. When I heard that Rosalie was president, I almost fell out of my chair. When I knew her, she could barely run a twig.
That was my experience. Doesn't mean I don't believe what happened to other people just because I never saw it.
I am now learning that ALL my experiences in life were allowed by God to happen to mold me into the person I am today to be utlizied for His purposes and glory.
So I look back at twi and use this thought to gauge how it affected me.
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CoolWaters
Thought this post (the whole thread, really) was worth seeing again.
I agree with vickles...the whole thing was a fantasy in our minds.
My grandmother used to tell me, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions." The bible talks about the blind leading the blind into a ditch.
This is what twi was and is.
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imbus
You know I would hate to beleive that the 11 yrs. with TWI was worthless. There where a lot of good healthy moments. And by experiance there was alot of painful moments and now know that the doctrine was shaded and harmful. Does that make me a spiritual perpitrator? Hell no! Like many I beleived in what I was taught. Yes I was brainwashed and often times then not ...confussed. And I do take responcibility for being an instriment or pone in the sceem of things. BUT some how in the insanity of it all there has to be meaning and spiritual significense to it all. I beleive there is.-
Viktor Frankl wrote a book about his time in a concentration camp during WWll."Man's search for meaning" In it he ponders the question, "What is the meaning of all this suffering and death." His conclusion was each individual has to go through some form of self-actualization and find the hidden truths of his existance. {Actually he said more then that but it is the some and jest.}-
For me I needed TWI because I was a basket case any way. It kept me alive for a long time. But when I think of all those years in "christian service"I realized NOW I am able to recognize when inspiration hits and when God is at work in me. Even when it was shrouded in questionable beliefs."Love[God] never fails." I think we all really loved God and wanted what was best for people. We were deceived into beleiving TWI had the best product on the market.-
I am still up for helping Gods people...But now I do it more catiously and answer to no man. TWI taught me that in a negitive but profound way.So I guess if I let TWI get the best of me and I shut down spiritually then I guess that 11 yrs. was a waste and there is no meaning to our suffering or our existance. I hope you do not find this to aggressive. I mean well.
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way back in the 70s
Oh I do not believe for one minute that our lives were wasted. It may sound simplistic and I do not wish to minimize any of the tragedies and sorrows endured, but we went down that road and this is where we are now. Older and wiser. Glasses off. And with a clearer understanding of what love really is and what it is not. Some people never come to that realization. Some of us learned it the hard way. (Speaking from personal experience here.)
I,too, used to think the road to hell was paved with good intentions until I heard a TV preacher (gasp) make the comment that nothing could be further from the truth. "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." The good intentions we had came from a purity of heart, OUR hearts, not from TWI, or any other church, or organization, or teaching. That counts for everything with God. We did the best we knew to do at that time. Oh indeed, mistakes were made, but our motivation was not to hurt. Our motivations sprang from that purity of heart.
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templelady
CW you know what was going through the heads of those of us in Alaska that weren't part of the in crowd--
We were afraid, And we were depressed, and we didn't know who we could trust, and 1/3 the time we believed we deserved the bad in our lives because of our lack of believing, and 1/3 the time we were just plain mad and the other 1/3 too numb to care.
But there were still good people amoung us--Spaghetti dinners held at each others houses on the spur of the moment with no leadership invited. Of course we caught H*ll for it later on but they were fun.
I think in some areas of the country, that were just too samll to be of much consequence in terms of overall income generated, there were probably good people as leaders and the love of GOD was preached before the legalistic BS permeated all it touched.
I believe that GOD judges the intent of the heart and if your labors in TWI were designed by you to bring other grafts to the true vine and you did this with honesty and a pure heart--that GOD in his infinite mercy and wisdom will reward you for those efforts no matter the vehicle you were riding on.
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Dot Matrix
Way back
I love what you said...
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way back in the 70s
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Pirate1974
Looking back from over 25 years of being out, I can't say that I ever experienced anything that I could classify as "evil." Stupid, yes. Lots and lots of stupid.
Of course, I was never in any kind of leadership position at all. I was just the nut on the way tree. I had no contact with New Knoxville except for an hour wandering around the farm at the ROA.
If I had to describe most of the people where I was, they would be "nerds." Except for a few exceptions, good little boys and girls who never stepped out a line, especially in anything involving twi, no matter how hard I tried to push them.
I enjoyed the twig meetings and coffeehouses, but I hated the pressure to take classes and witness and go wow and do the colon cleanse. If you didn't do those things, you weren't walking the walk. If they had just left me alone to be the nut on the tree, I might have stayed longer, but probably not because of personal stuff.
When I was in, we were all supposed to aspire to the Holy Grail of the Advanced Class. To reach that pinnacle of spiritual success, one had to complete something called "home studies" a fill-in-the blank exercise in way doctrine. I did the first one, got marked down for putting a comma in the wrong place, threw it in the trash and never did another one. No spritual perfection for you!!!
The only way corps people I ever met were some passing through on their way to somewhere else,like Bo Reahard or Randy Anderson. I've been told I met Martindale, but he must not have made much of an impression on me, because I have no memory of it. Our leaders were all college kids my own age or a little older. Even the limb leader was in his 20s, and this was one of the twi "hot spots" Greenville, NC.
Different times, different places, different experiences. When I first discovered Waydale, it was hard to connect the stories that I read there with the collection of dorks and twerps that I knew. When I heard that Rosalie was president, I almost fell out of my chair. When I knew her, she could barely run a twig.
That was my experience. Doesn't mean I don't believe what happened to other people just because I never saw it.
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def59
I am now learning that ALL my experiences in life were allowed by God to happen to mold me into the person I am today to be utlizied for His purposes and glory.
So I look back at twi and use this thought to gauge how it affected me.
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