Idealistic, vulnerable, and finally, compartmentalizing.


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Posted by MG on August 09, 2011 at 17:44:14

In Reply to: Re: atf, one size does not fit all posted by long time exer on August 09, 2011 at 11:48:28:

My reaction to this thread is to describe what it was like for me when I was a member.

I’ll start with what I was like before I joined, because that what I brought with me after I became a member. As a teenager in the mid-60's I was very idealistic and got caught up in the civil rights movement. It was a real education for me mainly because of the black friends I made, they'd have a good laugh at how naive I was about things but they put up with me. That same idealism got me into the hippy drug sub-culture in '67 & '68. But way to many psychedelics did a real job on me, and I ended up the proverbial barefoot, strung-out, spaced-out, lost, homeless hippy. Meeting the COG I became an instant recruit ....I was "high on Jesus" and at last in a working commune. I'd been in more than a few, I had even been part of an attempt to open a commune in '68 with my first "family" of very idealistic hippy compatriots. But nothing ever really worked and if there were any partial successes they were short-lived. So the main reason I became an on-the-spot whole-hearted “early-Church” Christian hippy follower of Jesus is because of having being bowled over by the reality of the COG's successful communal lifestyle.

Mentally I couldn't have been more vulnerable. Emotionally and philosophically I was tailor made for the rebellion against man's systems, economic, religious and social. My anger, my frustrations, my all could be channeled into the goals and promises of Jesus’ return and the Millennium which would be following the soon to come destruction of America, followed by the AC world government and Great Tribulation. Underlying all of that was the calling of being one of the elect, a privileged chosen one who was a member of the family of the End-Time prophet Moses David Brandt Berg. When I had children this extended to them and all children born and raised in the COG whose calling was to have been chosen to be the greatest force for the cause of God that the world was ever going to see. Then the Law of Love came, followed by the FFing letters, and soon enough the Devil Hates Sex, the Davidito book and all the rest. When I had any questions about it, I wasn't going to let them keep me from the "high calling" and remaining faithful as a disciple who, if I left the group, would lose any and all rewards and who would be left with nothing but eternal shame and contempt

I wasn't a leader, and I never ended up in the kind of situation as happened to some, where they were expected to share with someone underage. Also, as far as I know there was no adult/underage sharing in any of the homes I belonged to. Visiting another home once, where leadership lived, I saw things that strongly indicated that that took place in that home. I remember being relieved that I was able to leave and didn't have to stay there. But I didn’t give myself the space to question it. Why? Because the End-Time prophet had said in that in God's eyes, if it's done in love, then it's pure and ...well you all know the speil and the rest of the vomit.

I did what I think many of us did: we compartmentalized our reactions to Berg's pedophilic teachings. That’s why when we got the statement making any such practices to be stopped I remember being very relieved. Even though Maria after the fact said that the practices of themselves were in no way sinful in God's eyes. But the fact was is that they were forced to send that missive for adult/child sharing to stop because at one of the first teen camps in Mexico when they told the teens to write freely about what their biggest personal problems and trials were, just about everyone of the young girls wrote that the thing that they were the most freaked out about was having be


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