In Reply to: Re: well... posted by Joseph on October 05, 2003 at 15:50:08:
I am sure many also relate to having nothing other than the clothes on their backs upon joining. That was the case with me. What was hard for me was being forced to contact my parents and write letters ( censored and content dictated by leadership until I got it right...)and ask for money for "Bible College" at TSC.
I know there were many that gave up their education, their homes, money etc. I had pretty much given up on all of that before i joined as a teen. In some ways the family provided a sense of comparative safety. There was at least a pretense of love and "family", kinda on par with what a pimp gives a girl on the streets. Who would know how things would TURN OUT. Same could be said of drugs and gangs. They provide a need and create a far bigger problem. I never knew that alcohol, for example, could be so comforting and courage building only to make me dependent and needy for it, like our lungs are for oxygen to breathe. I did not know it was addictive. Most people when they start doing something like drinking or drugging have no clue in the beginning of what it would later do. There is that sense of being in control only to be overcome by the supposed remedy. Overcome and devastated. It is no small wonder to me then, that something that presented itself as "Christian" and the "perfect solution to all the world's problems" and "the highest calling", ad infinitum, would all the more seem like a solution to all lifes problems.
As someone else once said (something like this): 'Alcohol abuse [or use of other drugs, or membership in the family or gangs]is just a symptom of underlying problems.'
I truly believe this. For FG, the heart of the matter does not begin with the family, though to varying degrees, any one or combo of the above took a chunk out of my life, or maybe your life..
Berg himself was not born in a cabbage patch. He came from a family with plenty of troubles. The difference, imo, is that he was a psychopath, and Maria had to feed that and/or feed into it to keep her position. Now she has taken his place in the "psycho- drama". What is that saying? 'Absolute power corrupts absolutely'?