Chasufarley, I'm pretty much same mode of your thinking.If he had lived longer he would have had some major apologizing to do, but he may have very well done so, no-one knows.
I seem to remember him saying near the end of his life that he felt like such a f*** up, maybe referring to what he had done and people he had hurt.
Do y'all see what I mean about the mixed feelings?
Uh, sorry, no I don't.
The guy was a flakey, twisted, self-absorbed conman. The fact that he found some superstitious drivel to claim as his own, and that we were once young and gullible enough to buy into his (plagiarized) B.S. does nothing to mitigate that reality. He was one sick puppy.
I don't care if he was really good at "preaching" (and, in retrospect, I really don't think so), or could play the role of "patriarch" really well, or could play the harmonica, or any other goddam thing, it's entirely irrelevant to the fact that he was a consciousless sociopath...
I understand this and I know you understand why. It is all apart of our journey, what to keep, what to throw out, how to "mentally file" it. After 5 years, every single day, I still am sorting it out, I know you are too.
I did know him and liked him. I worked closely with him on a few occasions and had other one-on-one time with him, and he spent quite a bit of time with us at the Indiana Campus. He always treated me and my son and the rest of my family with respect and kindness. (And no, before anyone says it, that doesn't mean the reprehensible things he did are negated by that.)
I knew nothing about the shenanigans going on behind the scenes, and when I heard from women I knew and respected about the things he did to them, I was angry at him for not controlling his lusts and behavior. But by then he was long dead, so I couldn't tell him so.
Despite that, I'm still thankful for what I learned in PFAL. I don't still believe all of it, but that class really woke me up. I had never respected God except when I was a child, and I no longer thought God gave two hoots about me until I took that class.
I know, I know, he was sloppy in documenting his sources. He had enough education to have done a better job of that, but the bottom line is that the man could teach the Bible in a way that reached me. For whatever reason, he got through to me with the message of God's love and goodness and power like no one ever had.
Unlike many who post here, I wasn't a teeneager looking for a father substitute or someone to idolize or a group to make me feel I belonged. I was a young divorced mother who was yearning to know whether I could have a real relationship with God and who needed to get my act together so I could be a good mom. I wasn't disappointed.
There was recently a thread about Billy Graham and what an honorable man he is. I have no reason to doubt that, and I'm glad he could gain such acclaim without giving in to the temptations that come with it. But Billy Graham never reached me. I watched him on TV with my parents. I even went to one of his crusades. To me it was just another Baptist altar call, only in a stadium, and I'd been through a number of those. No substance. Take it on faith because I say so. It left me cold.
So anyway, I figure God's capable of dealing with VPW. Whether the good things he did will be wiped out by the bad things he did, I don't know. But I trust that God does.
I would agree I think as kids we learned early on it takes such a big person to poke fun at other people. Each person has a life to live and choices to make for which they will one day have to answer for. That said there is great benefit to speaking truth or facts unembellished by personal slurs. The benefit of your experiance can help others in making informed decisions. If you have benefited from teaching by way of VPW then enjoy your healing. I have had some teachers in life that have done some less than admirable things and yet still, at the end of the day the truths they taught still are valid. 1 + 1 will always equal 2 no matter who adds it up.
I was not a drugged-up hippie kid from a bad background when I found TWI. But like Linda Z, something in PFAL grabbed my attention and showed me that God and I could have a personal relationship....with or without a church involvement. That was such an eye openener!
I didn't suffer abuse from VP nor any leadership. TWI took 20 years of my life, but when I left it behind, the one thing I didn't leave was knowing that I have a personal relationship with God. As I think back, I think that I really cemented that belief because of the simple believers I met, rather than VP.
I understood to keep what was good, and to give what was junk back to TWI. And I've also learned to trust my gut and to know that God is at work all around me. I will never put myself in a box ever again...nor will I do that to my Lord.
Hell, I have mixed feelings about my children. Sometimes I love 'em and sometimes I want to kill 'em.
One thing we were taught in the way was that it's all one way or the other. It's not. Life is good, bad, neither, both, sometimes all of the above and sometimes none of the above.
And another thing we weren't taught - there's a difference between feelings and opinions. And judgement is another thing all together.
vpw would never have been as "successful" as he was in getting people to follow him, to pay him money, to dedicate their life to his ideas and to get naked for him if he didn't inspire a lot of possitive feelings.
Mixed feelings are part of life. You can get into problems when you mistake feelings for judgements.
The Michael Jackson trial is going on right now. It has been revealed that Michael slept in the same bed with many children over the years. He probably sexually molested some of them, though probably not all of them. He has also given thousands of dollars to individual kids and helped generate millions to feed the starving.
If you were a child whose life had been saved due to Jackson's largesse, how would you feel about him? If you had received all that aid, and Jackson invited you to Neverland, wouldn't you just be thrilled to go? If he then invited you for a "sleepover," wouldn't you still trust him? If he touched you briefly, would you be suspicious?
And if you find out, years later, that Jackson touched a lot of little boys, how would you feel about him then? And how would you feel about your cancer treatment that he helped pay for?
Just thinking, and as 3Cents said, it isn't all one way or the other.
Chas, I never knew the man either. He was long gone by the time I got involved and hardly ever spoken about except for the classes and I think I got involved during the last couple of years before WAP came out. I never took his advanced class, just craig's.
To me he was mostly just the guy who started TWI. I first took PFAL in a girl's living room on audio cassettes while she fixed dinner for her kids and visited with her husband at the end of the day. I liked the way he talked and how easy it was to understand what he was saying. I enjoyed having answers to questions, but now I question the answers I did get. The rest of the "good stuff" that I do hold onto I already learned in church and from my family.
TWI taught us that everything is black & white and P*ul Brook* once told a class of us that the more of the word we learn the more black & white everything becomes. I still have to fight that in my own brain today.
I can understand those who only saw the good side of vee pee and those who really do feel like TWI saved their lives. I can also understand the nostalgia for the good times in TWI because many people did have good times. Many people didn't. It's okay to have good and bad feelings.
Me? I feel that I came out of TWI worse than when I went in. I went in healthy, with a generous portion of self-esteem and with hope and optomism for the future. I came out with health problems, a broken marriage, a biological clock nearing time to sound the alarm, self-esteem issues, depressed and wounded. On top of that, I didn't learn anything about God that would make me think it was worth it. The only good things I can see from my experience is my undying devotion and love to my family for never giving up on or leaving me and getting to meet so many wonderful people through GSpot. :)-->
OK, the man was charasmatic, so was Jim Jones. He taught the Bible in such away that it was uplifting and made you "feel" good, so did Jim. He was portrayed as The Man Of God, ditto. He was the absolute authority, ditto. Need I go further?
I've heard, seen and met werewolf. He use to get personal with WOWs. My theory is they were his lambs for the slaughter.
The uncanny thing about werewolf that I laugh to this day was how he would read and teach the Word. At some point he would run his right hand over his brow as if to remove his well-groomed hair from his eye. This would happen as he paused to make a remark about his teaching. So maybe that wasn't funny. What was funny were all the people who would imitate him to a 'T!' It seems everyone was a Weirwille incarnate.
A piece of advice to that baldheaded bonehead...IT DOESN"T WORK IF YOU HAVE NO HAIR!
I have the same mixed feelings. I took Foundational PFAL in 1977 and back then there were so many people ( big support system) that any concern was dealt with quickly plus most of us on the field didn't know about the inner circle. My people needs were met by others on the field; good loving people I had no reason not to trust. VPW had no direct effect on that at all. I, too, received a lot of healing.
I met the guy, I knew the guy, I spent time with the guy...
I won't refute the positive experiences that many have attested to...if you liked pfal and you think it helped you....great.
Personally, I will not forget that he lied in God's name...that he used and abused people in God's name...that he made himself rich in God's name...that he made himself to be some "great one", in God's name.
In my opinion, pfal was about half wrong...and he stole it from other people and claimed it was his own...MANY of the teachings were designed to control people and get their money...(Christians should be prosperous, etc.)
It's hard for me to overlook those thngs. It's not a matter of being unforgiving or being bitter...it's simply a matter of being honest. That's who he was, that's what he did. I've been out for 17 years and I am way past all of this in my life...it's ancient history with very little, if any, emotional impact on me anymore. Should God forgive him?...Of course (or we would all be in trouble)...but I wouldn't put him in charge of a "Christian" ministry again.
The biggest clue many of us should have honed in on was when VP Barnum was portrayed as the prophet chosen to teach the word like it hasn't been taught since the apostle Paul. So basically, God who is perfect, neglected His Word for 2000 years until a satanic spawn could interpret it accurately? So Jesus' ministry was put on hold until this fart of a man could interpret it?
Man were we lucky! What would have happened if we lived in the 1800s? We were doomed, because the false messiah hadn't ordained his profit$$$$!
Wierwille is part of the dirty bathwater. Keep the "baby," if that's how you view what you learned, but don't confuse the new baby with an old, self-serving, lecherous fraud of a false prophet.
If he were alive today, he'd be walking around the grounds with his bathrobe open, just as he so often did on TWI's official boom-boom bus whenever he could lure some attractive female aboard.
At his core, the great pretender was a greasy predator.
TWI taught us that everything is black & white and P*ul Brook* once told a class of us that the more of the word we learn the more black & white everything becomes. I still have to fight that in my own brain today.
There's nothing wrong with looking at life through a black and white angle. Sometimes life IS black and white. Consider this statement:
quote:
You can get into problems when you mistake feelings for judgements.
Indeed, and that's how religion continues to be the billion-dollar industry that it is, despite the fact that it produces nothing.
geo.
"Religion is a billion dollar industry that produces nothing." That ISN'T a black and white statement? Uh huh.
Black and white thinking can either blind or illuminate depending on how it's used. People in TWI sometimes use black and white thinking inappropriately, like accusing people of having devil spirits when they just need a good dose of TLC. TWI also taught us to use black and white thinking to cut through peoples' BS, like in PFAL when VP pointed out the double standard of "up north if you smoke you go to Hell, but down south those bretheren were smoking like fiends...SAME BRAND!" I suspect George made his comment for the latter reason.
Everybody uses black and white thinking at their discretion.
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Allan
Chasufarley, I'm pretty much same mode of your thinking.If he had lived longer he would have had some major apologizing to do, but he may have very well done so, no-one knows.
I seem to remember him saying near the end of his life that he felt like such a f*** up, maybe referring to what he had done and people he had hurt.
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George Aar
Uh, sorry, no I don't.
The guy was a flakey, twisted, self-absorbed conman. The fact that he found some superstitious drivel to claim as his own, and that we were once young and gullible enough to buy into his (plagiarized) B.S. does nothing to mitigate that reality. He was one sick puppy.
I don't care if he was really good at "preaching" (and, in retrospect, I really don't think so), or could play the role of "patriarch" really well, or could play the harmonica, or any other goddam thing, it's entirely irrelevant to the fact that he was a consciousless sociopath...
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Radar OReilly
Chas,
I understand this and I know you understand why. It is all apart of our journey, what to keep, what to throw out, how to "mentally file" it. After 5 years, every single day, I still am sorting it out, I know you are too.
Love,
ror
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Linda Z
Good question, Chas.
I have mixed feelings, too.
I did know him and liked him. I worked closely with him on a few occasions and had other one-on-one time with him, and he spent quite a bit of time with us at the Indiana Campus. He always treated me and my son and the rest of my family with respect and kindness. (And no, before anyone says it, that doesn't mean the reprehensible things he did are negated by that.)
I knew nothing about the shenanigans going on behind the scenes, and when I heard from women I knew and respected about the things he did to them, I was angry at him for not controlling his lusts and behavior. But by then he was long dead, so I couldn't tell him so.
Despite that, I'm still thankful for what I learned in PFAL. I don't still believe all of it, but that class really woke me up. I had never respected God except when I was a child, and I no longer thought God gave two hoots about me until I took that class.
I know, I know, he was sloppy in documenting his sources. He had enough education to have done a better job of that, but the bottom line is that the man could teach the Bible in a way that reached me. For whatever reason, he got through to me with the message of God's love and goodness and power like no one ever had.
Unlike many who post here, I wasn't a teeneager looking for a father substitute or someone to idolize or a group to make me feel I belonged. I was a young divorced mother who was yearning to know whether I could have a real relationship with God and who needed to get my act together so I could be a good mom. I wasn't disappointed.
There was recently a thread about Billy Graham and what an honorable man he is. I have no reason to doubt that, and I'm glad he could gain such acclaim without giving in to the temptations that come with it. But Billy Graham never reached me. I watched him on TV with my parents. I even went to one of his crusades. To me it was just another Baptist altar call, only in a stadium, and I'd been through a number of those. No substance. Take it on faith because I say so. It left me cold.
So anyway, I figure God's capable of dealing with VPW. Whether the good things he did will be wiped out by the bad things he did, I don't know. But I trust that God does.
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WhiteDove
Chas
I would agree I think as kids we learned early on it takes such a big person to poke fun at other people. Each person has a life to live and choices to make for which they will one day have to answer for. That said there is great benefit to speaking truth or facts unembellished by personal slurs. The benefit of your experiance can help others in making informed decisions. If you have benefited from teaching by way of VPW then enjoy your healing. I have had some teachers in life that have done some less than admirable things and yet still, at the end of the day the truths they taught still are valid. 1 + 1 will always equal 2 no matter who adds it up.
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Rejoice
I was not a drugged-up hippie kid from a bad background when I found TWI. But like Linda Z, something in PFAL grabbed my attention and showed me that God and I could have a personal relationship....with or without a church involvement. That was such an eye openener!
I didn't suffer abuse from VP nor any leadership. TWI took 20 years of my life, but when I left it behind, the one thing I didn't leave was knowing that I have a personal relationship with God. As I think back, I think that I really cemented that belief because of the simple believers I met, rather than VP.
I understood to keep what was good, and to give what was junk back to TWI. And I've also learned to trust my gut and to know that God is at work all around me. I will never put myself in a box ever again...nor will I do that to my Lord.
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My3Cents
Hell, I have mixed feelings about my children. Sometimes I love 'em and sometimes I want to kill 'em.
One thing we were taught in the way was that it's all one way or the other. It's not. Life is good, bad, neither, both, sometimes all of the above and sometimes none of the above.
And another thing we weren't taught - there's a difference between feelings and opinions. And judgement is another thing all together.
vpw would never have been as "successful" as he was in getting people to follow him, to pay him money, to dedicate their life to his ideas and to get naked for him if he didn't inspire a lot of possitive feelings.
Mixed feelings are part of life. You can get into problems when you mistake feelings for judgements.
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George Aar
Indeed, and that's how religion continues to be the billion-dollar industry that it is, despite the fact that it produces nothing.
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shazdancer
I won't equate Wierwille to Hitler.
But I will compare him to Michael Jackson.
:D-->
The Michael Jackson trial is going on right now. It has been revealed that Michael slept in the same bed with many children over the years. He probably sexually molested some of them, though probably not all of them. He has also given thousands of dollars to individual kids and helped generate millions to feed the starving.
If you were a child whose life had been saved due to Jackson's largesse, how would you feel about him? If you had received all that aid, and Jackson invited you to Neverland, wouldn't you just be thrilled to go? If he then invited you for a "sleepover," wouldn't you still trust him? If he touched you briefly, would you be suspicious?
And if you find out, years later, that Jackson touched a lot of little boys, how would you feel about him then? And how would you feel about your cancer treatment that he helped pay for?
Just thinking, and as 3Cents said, it isn't all one way or the other.
Regards,
Shaz
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Belle
Chas, I never knew the man either. He was long gone by the time I got involved and hardly ever spoken about except for the classes and I think I got involved during the last couple of years before WAP came out. I never took his advanced class, just craig's.
To me he was mostly just the guy who started TWI. I first took PFAL in a girl's living room on audio cassettes while she fixed dinner for her kids and visited with her husband at the end of the day. I liked the way he talked and how easy it was to understand what he was saying. I enjoyed having answers to questions, but now I question the answers I did get. The rest of the "good stuff" that I do hold onto I already learned in church and from my family.
TWI taught us that everything is black & white and P*ul Brook* once told a class of us that the more of the word we learn the more black & white everything becomes. I still have to fight that in my own brain today.
I can understand those who only saw the good side of vee pee and those who really do feel like TWI saved their lives. I can also understand the nostalgia for the good times in TWI because many people did have good times. Many people didn't. It's okay to have good and bad feelings.
Me? I feel that I came out of TWI worse than when I went in. I went in healthy, with a generous portion of self-esteem and with hope and optomism for the future. I came out with health problems, a broken marriage, a biological clock nearing time to sound the alarm, self-esteem issues, depressed and wounded. On top of that, I didn't learn anything about God that would make me think it was worth it. The only good things I can see from my experience is my undying devotion and love to my family for never giving up on or leaving me and getting to meet so many wonderful people through GSpot.
:)-->
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signals
OK, the man was charasmatic, so was Jim Jones. He taught the Bible in such away that it was uplifting and made you "feel" good, so did Jim. He was portrayed as The Man Of God, ditto. He was the absolute authority, ditto. Need I go further?
I've heard, seen and met werewolf. He use to get personal with WOWs. My theory is they were his lambs for the slaughter.
The uncanny thing about werewolf that I laugh to this day was how he would read and teach the Word. At some point he would run his right hand over his brow as if to remove his well-groomed hair from his eye. This would happen as he paused to make a remark about his teaching. So maybe that wasn't funny. What was funny were all the people who would imitate him to a 'T!' It seems everyone was a Weirwille incarnate.
A piece of advice to that baldheaded bonehead...IT DOESN"T WORK IF YOU HAVE NO HAIR!
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dmiller
It's the thought that counts!
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johniam
I have the same mixed feelings. I took Foundational PFAL in 1977 and back then there were so many people ( big support system) that any concern was dealt with quickly plus most of us on the field didn't know about the inner circle. My people needs were met by others on the field; good loving people I had no reason not to trust. VPW had no direct effect on that at all. I, too, received a lot of healing.
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nervecurve
Signals,
Bitterness will eat us up....forgive and move on!
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signals
Actually, nervie, perhaps it is you that should forgive and move on! After all: I know not what I do!
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nervecurve
Signals,
This why I spoke up, so you know what to do.
When we are so deeply in this bitterness it blinds us and we do not see as we should. I know I was there.
Our Heavenly Father has the answer and it does not matter what our background.....We can be made whole from past hurts.
Then we can help others, not rehearse their hurt to them but maybe show a way out of it.
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signals
I have Mr. Shapiro on the phone now, and he says my bitterness deserves compensation.
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signals
therefore In God We Trust!
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rascal
tooo funny signals :-)
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GrouchoMarxJr
I met the guy, I knew the guy, I spent time with the guy...
I won't refute the positive experiences that many have attested to...if you liked pfal and you think it helped you....great.
Personally, I will not forget that he lied in God's name...that he used and abused people in God's name...that he made himself rich in God's name...that he made himself to be some "great one", in God's name.
In my opinion, pfal was about half wrong...and he stole it from other people and claimed it was his own...MANY of the teachings were designed to control people and get their money...(Christians should be prosperous, etc.)
It's hard for me to overlook those thngs. It's not a matter of being unforgiving or being bitter...it's simply a matter of being honest. That's who he was, that's what he did. I've been out for 17 years and I am way past all of this in my life...it's ancient history with very little, if any, emotional impact on me anymore. Should God forgive him?...Of course (or we would all be in trouble)...but I wouldn't put him in charge of a "Christian" ministry again.
Mixed feelings?...Not for me.
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signals
The biggest clue many of us should have honed in on was when VP Barnum was portrayed as the prophet chosen to teach the word like it hasn't been taught since the apostle Paul. So basically, God who is perfect, neglected His Word for 2000 years until a satanic spawn could interpret it accurately? So Jesus' ministry was put on hold until this fart of a man could interpret it?
Man were we lucky! What would have happened if we lived in the 1800s? We were doomed, because the false messiah hadn't ordained his profit$$$$!
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excathedra
i did know him and i feel worse for the experience
ps. i do feel good about god, but i knew him before i ever met vp
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satori001
Wierwille is part of the dirty bathwater. Keep the "baby," if that's how you view what you learned, but don't confuse the new baby with an old, self-serving, lecherous fraud of a false prophet.
If he were alive today, he'd be walking around the grounds with his bathrobe open, just as he so often did on TWI's official boom-boom bus whenever he could lure some attractive female aboard.
At his core, the great pretender was a greasy predator.
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johniam
There's nothing wrong with looking at life through a black and white angle. Sometimes life IS black and white. Consider this statement:
quote:
You can get into problems when you mistake feelings for judgements.
Indeed, and that's how religion continues to be the billion-dollar industry that it is, despite the fact that it produces nothing.
geo.
"Religion is a billion dollar industry that produces nothing." That ISN'T a black and white statement? Uh huh.
Black and white thinking can either blind or illuminate depending on how it's used. People in TWI sometimes use black and white thinking inappropriately, like accusing people of having devil spirits when they just need a good dose of TLC. TWI also taught us to use black and white thinking to cut through peoples' BS, like in PFAL when VP pointed out the double standard of "up north if you smoke you go to Hell, but down south those bretheren were smoking like fiends...SAME BRAND!" I suspect George made his comment for the latter reason.
Everybody uses black and white thinking at their discretion.
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