In Reply to: Cruden's Concordance posted by Jules (reposted) on October 11, 2004 at 02:29:17:
That's a good question. I'm a Christian, but no, I don't see those who have abandoned Christian faith after the Family experience as backsliders, especially SGs but including FGs. The point is we had an extremely toxic 'Christianity' in the Family, and many members had such horrific experiences. Are you really rejecting Christ as he really is, or simply a toxic caricature of Jesus presented by a pedofile prophet? How can you be 'backsliding' if you never really had the real deal in the first place?
Parents can say, 'well we gave our kids God's word and John 3:16' so despite a few unfortunate mistakes & excesses, they got the real thing. I have to wonder, especially when those so-called unfortunate mistakes were deliberate abuses & standard Family policy. It's like giving someone a glass or water and mixing in some poison and then saying, 'Well, we gave our kids the good water.'
I think doubting the kind of Jesus and God that you were taught to believe in in the Family is perfectly natural and a sign of sanity. After all, it was doubting the party line & asking rational questions that got us each out of a controlling cult. The Family loves to use the term 'backslider' to describe someone who loves the world more than God and their fellow man, someone who is selfish or not whole-hearted, but when you get right down to it, a 'backslider' is even a Christian who loves the Bible more than the Words of David. You could leave the Family, start a missionary organization and literally raise the dead back to life and they'd still consider you a backslider because you no longer kiss the paps of David.
The thing is, so many verses like the one you quoted, 'having not received the love of the truth' are so loaded with Family meaning, so much false meaning, that we have a hard time even knowing what triggers they cause to people. In the Family, even sincere Christians outside the group 'didn't recieve the love of the truth' because the FAmily had more truth so-called than anyone on earth, especially the Law of Love, and that so called pinnicle of 'truth' brought in years of grief and abuse that you know so well.
I agree that the Family was really into the 'some save by fear' type of witnessing. They were also into fakey mass evangelism: anyone who raised a hand was counted as saved in their bloated stats. I've heard totally insensitive 'witnesses' where a sister jabbered off the salvation spiel then finaly asked if the guy wanted to pray a prayer and when she finaly gave him a chance to speak he said that he'd heard it all before and already prayed the prayer.