Posted by blue on August 07, 2011 at 09:48:37
In Reply to: Re: atf, one size does not fit all posted by Skep on August 05, 2011 at 00:36:41:
To Skep: You leave some questions, IMO:
I question your default linking ex-members past life in TF to what presently ‘make some people react badly to the non orthodox’. (I assume you think of yourself as non orthodox).
LTE also mentioned... “At this board, I don't say things to be controversial”. But reading here one may just get the idea that the whole conventional/controversial spectrum is inverted.
How do you define non orthodox? And what does it mean to react badly, in this case? Is it to denounce someone’s hypocrisy and evil doctrines, f.x.?
What if some of these ex-members have made their decisions here volitionally, by their own careful research and thus informed choice? After all, many of us have been exers for decades by now, but I do also concede effects *can* last for decades.
As far as I can tell, TFI (apart from steeped in occult practices) was (is?) also in many ways non orthodox, breaking away from some traditional values a la French Revolution style, perhaps even with the same origins. Is it thus fair to conclude your perceived non orthodoxy is derived from your past TF experience and life?
By what authority can you denounce others for their hypocricy and evil, while you at the same time subscribe to the ‘live and let live’ teaching and the doctrine and that ‘people with those reactions have their own path’, or, as LTE put it, ‘what is right for me may be wrong for someone else’? According to your belief by implication, eventually any or all these other ways may turn out to be just as good as yours. So why even judge anyone?
IMO, whether or not one is a christian has nothing to do with by what label we go by; it has everything to do with one’s deeds and who/what one is committed to, our position. Cultural christianity is dominant today, but that has little to do with christianity as expressed in the Bible for example.
Of all the faults and flaws with TFI, I would say the one that was at the base of much of the degenerate and outright demented behaviour was the lack of essential education and understanding, i.e the general dumbing down. (And I am not talking of conventional education, for it is as ridiculous as it was in TF, if not worse). For the life in TF to function the way it did, a general dumbing down was imperative. In history, all revolutionary outfits depended on the stupidity of the followers, for all revolutionary activity is in the early stages first and foremost to the advantage for the leaders. When the carnage is over among the followers then it begins among the leadership.
Alexander Pope is credited as saying that ‘a little learning is a dangerous thing’. In TF we were subjected to a little learning, just enough to think of ourselves as masters of everything, but for the most part not nearly enough to love and appreciate Jesus, who supposedly was the reason we were there.
Having left this ‘safe’ (TFI) environment all these things exposed themselves through many people’s bitter hatred for anything to do with not only TF itself, but also Jesus and in many cases any perceived christian position on any issue. I think this is a tragedy of magnitude, but nonetheless a natural fruit of TF.