|
The Children of God
The Inside Story By The Daughter Of The Founder, Moses David Berg by Deborah (Linda Berg) Davis with Bill Davis, 1984
There are many people in contemporary society, hungry for "freedom," who argue that those who adhere to Christian morality are "misguided old prudes" inhibited by enormous complexes."Sex is great," the critics say."A person should have the freedom to express himself fully in this area. The old puritanical taboos and phobias that have been placed on sex are wrong, limiting, and narrow-minded. Total freedom of sexual expression is 'natural' and, of course, anything natural could never cause problems or be wrong." Some who say these things could not condone my father's actions, yet his life illustrates absolute sexual freedom. What my father and others in society consider natural, is actually perverted and quite unnatural. There is written within the nature of sex itself a law; and that law determines what is moral and immoral, natural and unnatural. Moses David is working against that law and living in conflict with it. Consequently, sex has turned against him and is destroying him. Even many who would shrink from my father's lawlessness do not fully understand the nature of sex. What is it? What are the laws that govern it and keep it honorable? The nature of sex has as its ultimate fulfillment new life. Creation. The sex drive is the urge to create. E. Stanley Jones writes, "The primary end of sex is the procreation of children and their nurture in an atmosphere of love."112 Sex is, indeed, a marvelous God-given urge. It is a wonderful privilege, to be a part of the creation process. We learn from history, however, that procreation is not the only purpose for sex. A baby is not the only commendable expression of the sex drive. Jones says further concerning sex: Some of the greatest work in the world is done by those who, when denied, voluntarily or otherwise, the normal outlets for sex, turn the tides of this strange power into creative activity in other ways. Their sex life is not suppressed, but expressed in other channels. Abstinence then can be health, provided the abstinence of sex on one level is practiced in order to loose it on another level. If sex is just dammed up with no outlet on any level, then it may prove a source of conflict and frustration. The way is always open in some direction for sex expression; so conflict is not necessary.113 At about the age when youth are most likely to join a cult (seventeen to twenty-five), the sex urge is in fact at its height. The desire to create, to build, to reform, to improve society is very strong. At the same time, most of these youths find themselves in college or the beginning stages of a career. When the sexual drive is high, what direction should it take? It seems likely that God has designed this creative urge to heighten precisely at the time a person is preparing the foundation of his life's vocation. To direct these youthful desires and passions into the energy of becoming a doctor, a salesman, a craftsman, or a teacher would seem not only logical, but extremely powerful. Yet look what my father has created: an organization that vehemently directs its youthful members to release their creative energies in immoral and perverted practices. The concept of sex sublimation is not at all new, nor is it restricted to Christian morality and teaching. Napoleon Hill, a famous contemporary writer, speaks of the mysterious power and importance of sex sublimation in his best-selling book, "Think And Grow Rich". Hill is not writing from a Christian perspective, but from the platform of "success principles." Concerning the development of genius he writes, Far from becoming geniuses because of great sex desires, the majority of men lower themselves, through misunderstanding and misuse of this great force, to the status of the lower animals.114 Reading Hill's book, I was amazed by his insight into certain spiritual laws. He recognized quite clearly that sex has written into it a moral code, even though he doesn't call it by name. He recog- nizes that within the nature of sex there exists a certain cause-and- effect principle, and specific negative effects result when sex is pushed beyond its natural boundaries: A sex-mad man is not essentially different from a dope-mad man! Both have lost control over their faculties of reason and will-power. 117 Note that Hill draws a parallel between sex and drugs. What accompanied the free-love era of the late sixties and early seven- ties in the counterculture? An abundant use of narcotics and alco- hol, which destroy a person's natural drives and motivation. Drugs and immorality—common bedfellows—destroy the positive, natural, creative forces God has placed within us. They form a losing combination. E. Stanley Jones writes, Where do we wage the battle? Where do our problems with sex begin? E. Stanley Jones suggests that problems begin when the natural pleasure surrounding procreation becomes detached from its ultimate purpose and becomes an end in itself. Pleasure for pleasure's sake is self-serving. Once a man starts down the road to selfish sensual fulfillment, there can be no positive end. What began as pleasure will become precisely the opposite. Jones writes, Has there ever been a society more liberated than ours? Perhaps Sodom and Gomorrah or ancient Corinth. But today's freedom of expression rivals theirs. Sex is practiced even in the elementary grades by a significant percentage of children. One young girl told me, "If you haven't done it by the time you are thirteen, then there is something wrong with you, you're weird." Yet people are becoming more and more empty of joy. They continually seek new thrills and new relationships. But as the search intensifies, the pleasure decreases. People quickly become burned out, frustrated, or begin seeking "strange flesh." Many direct their energies along the path of perversion. Why? Because, as Jones puts it, "there is an immoral way to use sex, and there is a moral way. And that way of moral use is written into the constitution of sex!" He adds, "The very nature or reality of sex is Christian, and this nature is working against society's unchristian sex attitudes."120 I had never looked at sex from this perspective. I had always understood that immorality was a matter of breaking one of God's laws. But the truth goes deeper than that. Immorality violates the nature of sex itself. Indeed, the moral code written into the nature of sex is the same moral code we find in Scripture. This concept of the nature of sex is not widely understood and accepted in society, and it is even misunderstood in traditional Christianity. The prevailing view is that sex existed in an amoral way since the beginning of life. Then, at a certain point in history, we received the Ten Commandments and the laws of Moses, and later we received the four Gospels and the Epistles. The impression is that sex came first and then a moral code; the Scriptures and Christian morality were placed over sex like a straitjacket, confining its natural purposes and limiting its potential to the narrow-minded views of Purtian morality. In other words, sex had absolute freedom until scriptural morality came along and stifled it. But this view is wrong, as E. Stanley Jones explains. The same Being who wrote the Scriptures created sex. Logic tells us that it is improbable that God first created sex, and then later on realized that He needed some rules to govern its use. Sex and its moral code were created simultaneously. The moral codes we see in Scripture are not an outer covering for sex, but rather mirror what has always been there. To contradict scriptural morality is to transgress the very reality and nature of sex. So sex dually issues a warning: "Stop using me in ways I was not designed to be used." Jones writes, . . . Sometimes I almost go crazy in the night, I get so terrified and so paranoid! It doesn't really seem to matter how much I pray and cry to the Lord and agonize and fight and battle, or even try to drink to drown my fears . . . My God what horrors and nightmares I have!122 There is a formula that states that true freedom comes through power, and power through discipline. Society, like my dad, is drastically losing sight of this formula. Power comes by discipline alone. It is the type of power that grants an individual the freedom to do what is right. Christian discipline brings an individual into a sphere of existence that greatly enlarges the positive potential of life. Moses David has led his disciples in precisely the opposite direction. Instead of learning power and discipline over sin, they have been systematically taught to respond instantly to whatever lustful desire arises. Consider this illustration: A Peruvian girl told me of her experiences in Caracas as an "FFer": "It was so bad just going out every night and going to bed, that I had to drink at least a half a bottle of bourbon in order to go out there; most of the time they carried me out of the clubs." This girl eventually burned out and left the Family. One year later, she rejoined and is now "serving Jesus full-time" and Flirty Fishing. Why did she go back? To answer that question is to understand the consequences of immorality and the evil power of Moses David's doctrines. Cults seek to destroy the individual, as we have already seen. Moses David has used a two-pronged approach to accomplish this goal within the Children of God. The first means he has used is the Mo Letters. By declaring these the Word of God, he has stifled the creative mental powers of his followers. They no longer have to think for themselves, read the Bible and apply it dynamically to their personal lives, or do any form of creative prayer. Their only function is to read the Mo Letters, let Mo do all the communicating with God, and follow what Mo writes. It is simply a question of obedience. Their minds are to be like computers, and he's the programmer. Any new data and information will enter their minds only through his work. They are little more than uncreative robots. What, then, is happening to all their creative energies and urges? Certainly they have them? Indeed, they do. Many of the COG disciples joined at a time when they were quite eager to change the world, to enact social and spiritual reform. In the beginning of the movement, these energies were sublimated into the practice of witnessing. That was the chief activity of most disciples until 1974. In the early spring of '74, the disciples began practicing litnessing—selling literature on the streets. One disciple told me that for two and a half years after he joined the COG in January 1972, he never touched a girl; moreover, he never desired to do so. He and many like him were directing their creative energies into Bible study, witnessing, and litnessing. This was the case for many members until Mo began to stage his sexual revolution. Then things began to change. What became of the disciples' creative energies then? This is the second prong of Moses David's attack. Mo gradually introduced more and more sex material into his letters. Since Mo Letters did all the thinking for the disciples, they naturally began to think more on sex. Their thoughts increasingly turned from activities of the mind and spirit toward sensuality. It was a Mo Letter that lit the spark, and each new Mo Letter fanned the fire. The youths were set up! Instead of spending eight or ten or twelve hours a day witnessing to lost hippies, they began Flirty Fishing. All with the same self-sacrificing spirit, and all in the name of Christ. The process by which Mo's revolution became full-blown is instructive, for it is the same kind of evolutionary process that we can see in contemporary American society. Television is doing to today's youth what the Mo Letters did to the disciples of the COG. A steady diet of sexual themes saturates the mind until one doesn't realize how far he's come. As the first step, my father introduced the concept of "sharing," that is, helping out brothers or sisters in need. If they needed sex, go ahead and share with them. This was only right, seeing as how it would be an "unselfish" act. Anything unselfish would be a loving act and therefore pleasing to God. Next came sharing with those outside the Family in special circumstances. This was done in order to make them disciples—to bring them into the Family. Maria pioneered this with Arthur. That led to the development of Flirty Fishing as doctrine—special "truth" revealed to Moses David as a means of "winning souls to Christ." As time went on, the question of lesbianism arose."There is nothing in Scripture that forbids it," Mo explained."If it is done in love it's okay, although it is not God's highest order."125 Then came the concept of child sex: let children do whatever they want. Masturbation was greatly encouraged and considered a healthful practice. Then child-adult sexual activities were introduced: child molesting. This was pioneered by Maria's illegitimate son, Davidito. Letters were published picturing him engaging in sex acts with his adult childcare worker, Prisca (Sara).126 Eventually homosexuality was brought into question. Mo said go ahead, but only do it in love; it wasn't God's highest order.127 (There was such an outbreak of homosexuality that he later had to counter that order with a reprimand.) Then came group sex. Mo encourages communion services to be followed by group sex.128 It is fine to involve the children. Many members of the cult will write home to their parents telling of their work in winning souls and other traditional practices such as, "We had a communion service"—which really means they had an orgy. Next came incest. Mo revealed publicly his long incestuous relationship with Faithy. The directive followed that families should practice incest with their children, just like Mo.129 Is there a limit? One can see from this progression, occurring in less than a decade in a closed society, that immorality just doesn't stand still. Nor does it satisfy or bring lasting pleasure. It grows and steadily becomes more perverse and wicked. Sex most certainly contains within it a moral code and a self-destruct princi- ple. What form of sensual pleasure lies beyond what the COG are now doing? What form of perversion lies beyond incest, sodomy, and child abuse? I do not care to put that answer in print. One mother, an ex-disciple of the COG, explained to me that she believes it will be the children born into the movement who will become the real Frankenstein's monsters. Those children raised in the COG will have nothing to fall back on, having never known any other morality. She says, "They'll grow up believing you can do anything in the name of Jesus!" Just as Mo is denying his followers the power to create, to sublimate their creative urges into useful, positive activities, so too our society, with its drive for sexual freedom, is diverting and subverting the positive creative urges of our youth through the print and broadcast media. We are raising a generation of people intent upon seeking only a pleasure principle. This desire is self-destructive. The God-given creative urges are being drained from our youth through the bowels of sensuality. Society is following too closely in the footsteps of the COG. Indeed, sex is a wonderful servant, but a terrible master!
|
Responses
to this article:
6
Last response dated:
Dec 3, 2004
read/post
responses
[ homepage ]
