In Reply to: Yup... posted by Kathy on July 18, 2003 at 12:54:29:
Wow, you two have opened up a huge subject here. Not just getting out at age 50 - 60 with no job skills but with children & grandchildren in the group still -- & on top of it half your brain still pickled with Family indoctrination. AND having self-condemnation heaped upon you from years of cult indoctrination that tells you you are now a "backslider." Man oh man.
And on top of it knowing they've done some crappy stuff, maybe even crimes, and trying to deal with that. Well, they can always try to make ammends and apologize privately to those they've hurt. As a Christian they should do that. But trying to do anything beyond in the way of making ammends, they're just going to be struggling financially to keep themselves afloat. What a future David Berg has given them!! Some of it they deserve, they've made their bed and they'll have to lie in it, but not everyone is guilty, and even in the midst of the very guilty who deserve the life they've chosen, or who deserve prison, are many who really do deserve a new chance at life.
A lot of people will be just getting out of the Family in time to collect old age pension. But it doesn't have to be bad! Even a future that involves major life changes, a bit of financial hardship and starting over, is far preferable to growing old in the Family. THERE when they begin to need medicine for their age-related ailments, they'll get prayers that won't work. Better to get out and enjoy what years they have left, and be alive and in enough health to live them. Freedom at any age is worth it.
Frankly, they'd better start planning ahead before the day they get the "Dear Joe" letter from M&P informing them that they have been declassified because of no longer pulling their weight. The Family will ALWAYS cut loose people when they've squeezed all the toothpaste out of the tube, and no longer have any use for them.
By the way Kathy, you DO get to be part of Berg's torture team after all, at least the way I read the Scriptures. "If your enemy thirst, give him a cup of cold water, for by so doing you will heap coals of fire on his head." I think a lot of us have given lots of years to Berg's cause, we've tried to help the many refugees from the Family wiht more than just a glass of cold water. We're picking up years of ruined, wrecked lives and we've got truckloads of burning coals to dump on Berg.
I just hope others get out and don't go down, down down with the sinking ship.