In Reply to: i'm not sure.. posted by ray on July 14, 2004 at 19:21:47:
Based on what I saw of leadership behind the scenes (far less than you have seen I am sure) there was a huge difference between the way people were viewed and dealt with or talked about versus how they were talked to (via pseudo concern) to their face. Duplicity is a characteristic of Family cult leadership. They are known by all of us to be blatant liars. Remember? We were told to lie for "security reasons" about things "the system would not understand.." Sure, I believe there is an element of delusion regarding what she may believe, but I don't for a moment believe that the questions in letters of the past (like IRFer's Beware) or current letters in which Jesus seems to be on a conference call and always expounding in agreement with "Mama" are not to some degree staged. i believe the response via the letter IRFer's Beware was well thought out and edited for the point it wanted to make.
Berg was pissed that so many took him up on the offer to become 10 percent tithers and so, look here, the choice was actually a test of dedication and the punishment for choosing the wrong door was death, desertion, etc. That is pretty psychopathic imo. You have to have a very hardened psyche to do and say those kinds of things to people.
Another point is that people were supposed to understand that "suggestions were ORDERS". If mo "suggested" something, you better take it as an order.