In Reply to: thanks! posted by porceleindoll on August 21, 2004 at 00:50:58:
I think some of the motives you suggested are probably the ones, but there's probably more to it than that. For example, I don’t think that everyone who quotes a verse when praying is trying to manipulate God. It all depends on attitude, and as long as you’re not looking upon God as your slave (“command ye me”) or a personal genii or household elf, as long as you recognize that he is God, then it’s fine.
A lot of people very sincerely quote verses as promises to claim because they have legitimate needs and want them to be met. But the difference is when we assume God is basically “under contract.” When we get demanding and angrily insist to God that he “must” do something, then we’ve assumed the master-genii position. It’s easy to slip into this mindset because Berg had this attitude and ingrained it in us. In fact, sometimes he went SO that far Maria had to “explain” that we couldn’t do the same thing. Do you remember him cursing God out in a letter back about 1990, and his tone was so poor me and cursing that Maria came out with a commentary that basically said, “Don’t follow Dad’s example. Only HE can get away with talking to God this way because of his great maturity and his years of knowing God.” Yeah, right...
I quote verses sometimes myself, but the difference is that I’m aware that God is God and I'm not. Just because I want a certain job situation or personal situation to work out and even feel that it absolutely has to work out, I don’t assume that I know the situation as fully as God. So although I explain my needs and let him know I’m expectant and trusting him to help me, I leave him space to decide what to do. I don’t end my prayers with, “Now do it, God! Do it! DO it!” I try not to even talk to my children in that tone of voice, no matter how naughty they are, so why would I talk to the creator of the universe in that angry, demanding tone?
You asked, “Do you think that trying to control God then through the Bible's verses stems from a desire for power as well as fear? Power because people desire it, and with the power of God at your disposal you can be a magician yourself, bringing it to the level of witchcraft?” I suppose some people could have been motivated by pride, though I’m hard-pressed to think of people in or out of the Family who had that motive, apart from Berg himself who boasted that he had more power than Merlin the magician, and nothing was too good for him. Most of the people, including myself who used to do the “command ye me” thing were probably more motivated by what you mentioned—fear, tied into insecurity. And that ties into your next thought, “fear because if God can't be controlled through His Word then who knows what He will do and when He will lash out or not be there for you when you need Him?”
As I understand God, he can be unpredictable—at least from our perspective, because we don’t know all the pieces of the puzzle he’s working with. But as humans we generally like predictability and security and don’t like “surprises”—some of us more than others. A lot of that security and predictability is built into our world. God has set a lot of basic natural laws in place so that if you work hard you will prosper more than a lazy person, and entire nations that work had will prosper more than nations that are more laid back.
Of course, it doesn’t always work like that. There’s always the X factor to throw us for a loop. Even in a steady, secure job, contracts fall through, people cancel, we get laid off jobs or sick and suddenly we wonder how the bills are going to get paid when things seem beyond our control. I take comfort in knowing that God is big enough so that to him the X-factor is not meaningless confusion or uncontrollable. He can see exactly what’s happening and what it will take to fix the situation and more than that, he has the power to do it. And like I mentioned earlier, when I really desperately need a solution and pray, there is a pretty dramatic jump in prayers getting answered, compared to my day-to-day prayers.
What disturbs me is that many poor, struggling families with lots of kids in the cult were practically LIVING in the X-factor zone with little or no guaranteed security, and they prayed sincerely and desperately for God to help them and often he did and often he didn’t, and they just struggled on in their poverty and misery thinking it was “God’s will.” Whereas it was Berg’s unjust Family system. When you are coerced into giving away all your labor for free, tithe heavily on all the money you get, and are under direct orders not to use the money you collect for food, clothing, shoes, children’s dental and medical needs—but all that money has to go to HQ for Berg to blow on insane projects, and then he turns around and says, “Trust God to supply your needs” — it’s highway robbery. In my opinion, “the laborer is worthy of his hire”, the very money he or she raised, and THAT was supposed to be used to supply needs. But instead all the money was sent off to HQ and the poor families were left to pray desperately and expect God to “do miracles” when instead they needed to get out of such a corrupt, exploitative system.
The same applies to fathers responsibility to their children. Fathers are supposed to look after their children but Berg said, “They’re not your children, they’re all OUR children.” He took that to the next step saying, “Quote this verse to God, ‘If any will not look after his own, he is worse than an infidel’ and since they were all GOD’S children and we supposedly did not have to feel personal responsibility to care for them any more, then God was the one who was worse than an infidel if he didn’t meet their needs. So children were thrust out into the X-zone to meet their most basic needs for father and mother, home security, and dental/medical needs. Berg took most of the income we garnered and said, “trust God.” He broke down family structures and parental responsibility and said “trust God.” I would like to have seen him endure that kind of situation! He’d be screaming curses by the end of the first day.
Anyway, all that to maybe explain why so many families in the Family went through totally unnecessary hardships when they were trying to trust God, when in a sane world they should not have been forced into such desperate situations in the first place. But things weren’t always on the desperate edge and often there was a measure of “security” living in a normal Home, and then the other factors came into play.
I think other motives for the “command ye me” attitude is greed and impatience. Some people wanted nice things they didn’t actually need because they can’t quite tell the difference between needs and wants, largely because Berg taught them that way. They figured they were the 110%ers, they were “It,” they were at the very center of God’s will for the Endtime, and the entire world was basically there at their disposal, revolving around every little decision The Family made. Following Berg’s ego-centric worldview, they felt we were the best of the best and deserved the best. How many people lived that way, I don't know.
And following Berg’s example of angry impatience, they too felt that things had to happen right now. Remember him praying in “Prayer Against Our Enemies” where he cursed God and said he was no God because he didn’t alleviate the situation for the Palestinians immediately. Berg cursed God out, said even the devil and the antichrist were more righteous than God, all because God didn’t do exactly what Berg wanted when Berg snapped his fingers. This example is extreme, but it filtered down through the cult and permeated our thinking. We may have been a lowly dishwasher, but we were still part of a movement that was “It” and God was at our beck and call.
I’m not saying everyone had this attitude all the time, and on the other hand when some poor Victor was going through retraining and breaking and the lesson being drummed into their heads was “submit, submit, submit” and “sign a blank sheet of paper” the sales pitch was “You are submitting to GOD” so then of course we didn’t make any kinds of demands on God. Our prayers were more like, “If you think me worthy to continue living, I will be happy to lick the boots of David.” But the bottom line was we were really submitting to leaders, and when the “total submission” state was past, then we were generally back to demanding God do this or that because he had promised to.
Sorry for rambling. These are some thoughts on the subject and I can’t claim they’re entirely correct but just how I see things.