Posted by long time exer on July 24, 2011 at 00:51:59
In Reply to: Re: to concretely explain what i was saying posted by Skep on July 23, 2011 at 17:19:03:
In the early days, I guess a Christian might say he presented as an "angel of light". It would have been only a very select few that would know about his molesting at least Faithy in her childhood way before TF was started. That behavior indicates someone who was depraved before the family ever started. It wouldn't matter to me how much he "witnessed" or prayed with others, because in a way that was more harmful than having no religion at all when committing those crimes that he later made doctrine.
I never met him in person, but I think that the distance he put between himself and the youth that joined (most of them anyway) was part of what made him less likely to be doubted and to help erect the pedestal he sat upon as well as to be idealized rather than realized for what he was.
He was supposed to be so humble and such a servant of God and yet he was self serving from the beginning and reaching out and screwing up lives early on. It's just that much of this was "selah" in early days and his children and a handful of charismatic leaders were the most prominent.
Looking back at his writings, it is hard to see him as having been a sincere Christian. His first letters were ones like "I Gotta Split" and "The Bahai Temple Shrine Prophecy" and they weren't mass printed and distributed but were read as literal letters at first and there was no diarrhea of letters seen as falling from the mouthpiece of God. He was a toilet. He even said so in a later writing. But the letters were not numbered, put in books or distributed or even read to all until later.
I am talking about his presentation in early COG. His kids and their partners and a few couples of early leadership would talk about him sometimes, but most readings and studies were from the Bible. Even from Wurbrandt and Frankl.
"Cult" was a new buzzword largely applied to non-Christian movements and not widely used.
There was no internet and FreeCog was not even prominent yet.
But basically, imo, he was always a predator and some of his leanings were right from his mama who faked her miracle testimony because she could not have gotten pregnant, had a child while she was supposedly on her death bed. He learned how to sell religion and promote commercialization of religion at an early age, using exagerration and deception to appear to have a grander "testimony" to present self as being sooooo special to God.
And btw, early COG had a lot of hippies because "hippy" was what was cool when I was a kid. Also, not all that joined COG in early days were hippies. Berg was pro Israel and said he was Jewish from his mother's side and he dreamt of starting a kibbutz in Israel. In early days there were VietNam war veterans (while the war was still going on), a policeman, a baptist preacher and others that were not hippies that were members.
I can't think of one generation of American youth in my life time that hasn't centered around sex, drugs and rock and roll (or the latest music craze). To marginalize all as some sort of mansonian hippy sociopaths, depraved youth is just not an accurate representation of the youth drawn to the Family in early days.
We were just plain youth.