In Reply to: Do all things always work together? posted by Miguel on August 05, 2003 at 07:02:54:
What an interesting discussion! I'm so glad we are tackling the very building blocks of mind control that The Family used on us - the literalism and concision of bible verses. Such verses really were used to the extreme to convince us of "God's will."
About Ro. 8:28, I do believe in the bigger picture, that what may seem bad for us can be something good. Somehow I do believe that things do work out for good for those who love Him and are doing their best. But I also believe God lets us choose. God has, but doesn't exercise 100% control, or we wouldn't have choice and He/She wouldn't be God. I believe it's spot on to say it's all about cooperation with God's will and redemption when we screw up. How else do we learn from choices and mistakes, if we don't get our slate cleaned everytime we mess up? I like the quote from Matrix II. "You are here to find out why you made the choices you made."
I agree with Kathy that God allows us to pretty much try out whatever belief we want. It's a bit like if you design a test to prove light consists of particles and ruling out the possibility it is a wave, the test will pass with flying colors. Conversely, if you design a test for proving that light must be waves and rule out any possibility that light is made of particles, the test WILL ALSO pass. So God sets things in motion, and WE GET TO DECIDE something fundamental about the laws of the universe, like whether light is waves or particles.
To say it was 100% a mistake to join, is like for a parent to say that one of their children was a mistake. It may have been that in the moment of passion, but the child is here, and needs all you can give it. The attitude that the child is a mistake certainly doesn't help the parent, the child or his/her relationship with the child. By the same token, hind sight is always 20/20. We can 2nd guess all we want, our decision to join and get sucked into something for years. But it's done, it's over. We gave a chunk of our lives doing it. Saying it was all 100% black is probably not the most constructive way to learn from it, find peace and forgive ourselves. I believe that joining The Family was no small thing for most of us - you really had a to weigh things out and make a decision, albeit often uninformed, that you wanted to give your life to do some good. It was buying into a deception, yes, but I'm sure many of us were pretty sincere and made a conscious choice to serve God the best we knew how for that time.
Still, all our journeys are different, and there is no one-size-fits-all formula for recovering from and/or processing our experience. It might help some to be a little more positive, and others a little more negative, about their Family experience.
I know that when I joined I had already been working as a volunteer, and had rediscovered Jesus after a brief period with drugs and Islam. I would say Jesus was with me and I definitely had a relationship with Him before during and after The Family. I would say as Kathy wrote in her article, that the same Jesus who watched with disappointment as I joined, held my hand as I left. In fact, if there ever was a time my spiritual life moved forward in leaps and bounds, it was from leaving The Family.
So I'd emphasize, God was MORE with me in my decision to leave The Family, than when I joined.
Still, I will never be able to say that everything in The Family was black - I had some beautiful children born while in The Family, and met some wonderful people. But for the amount of long lasting good I did, I might as well have been working any job and not saying I was a missionary. Nowadays I don't pretend I'm a missionary, but I feel the little I do, whatever it is, goes so much further and is so much more genuine and lasting than the "help" The Family taught us to give people.