Bear with me here. But remember how Berg constantly said that salvation was "all by grace" but that Heaven was a very class-conscious place? He would be sitting around the very throne of God as one of the 24 elders, and churchy Christians who rejected the Law of Lust would be relegated to the bottom boiler-room basement of Heaven where they be shining the shoes of the saints in "shame and everlasting contempt" forever? Yeah, like that really sounds like Heaven alright. Everlasting shame? The good sexy saints upstairs in heaven with their noses up in the air self-righteously for eternity holding these puritanical Christians in contempt and distain and disgust for all eternity.
That was Berg's weird thought. Now here was what hit me the other day: Berg often talked about how he was a sinner and "too sexy" etc. and "God was mad at him". You know that was the ragged remains of his conscience bothering him. But he pushed so hard on the Family doing the "good works" of witnessing. Do you suppose that he felt that it was like a plus and minus system, sort of like one of those game shows where you're trying to earn a big dollar amount, but you make a wrong guess and take a hit, lose some cash, etc?
So do you think (if you worked Berg's theology out to its end result) that it looked something like this? Let's look at the case of Jonathan Revolutionary and his total game score:
Believed in God's prophet, David (42,000 points); forsook his wife and kids for the cause (31,000 points); distributed 32,000 pieces of lit (18,000 points), mass witnessed to 300,000 (13,000 points), led 40 reluctant sinners in a sinners prayer tho they never knew what they were doing (12,000 points), lying for the Work's sake (6,000 points), and other sundry faithfulnesses to the Family (another 22,000 points). So Jonathan Revolutionary gets to heaven and finds that he can turn in his 144,000 points of good works that he can now turn in for a mansion.
This gets him a deluxed gold trim mansion in the select neighborhood of Heaven, 14 rooms, a 44' by 68' swimming pool full of water of Life, a tree of Life in his back yard and 4 sexy women a day to make love to. But uh oh, we haven't yet deducted the minus points!
Subtract 11,000 points for selfishly misinterpreting the Law of Love in ways never intended; subtract 22,000 points for not giving his all all the time to the Family, including having to be sent to a Victor's camp because of rebelliousness; subtract 3,000 points for suntanning; subtract 4,000 points for drinking over his wine quota; subtract another sundry 10,000 points for general disbelief, selfishness, etc. and that's a grand total of 50,000. Subtract that from 144,000 and you get 94,000 points.
Jonathan Revolutionary is now looking at a middle class semi-gold mansion in a lower class neighborhood quite a ways down in heaven, no tree, no pool and only 1 heavenly houri a day to have sex with.
Bottom line: all the horrible things done in the Family are of no account as long as your "plus" total of works exceeds your "minus" total. I really truly wonder if that was what he beleived. Any thots?