Posted by In-house Editor on November 20, 2003 at 07:21:31
In Reply to: Re: Yes Berg allowed it "according to your faith" posted by Whoa on November 19, 2003 at 19:41:01:
In the closed spiritual environment of uncritical fundamentalism which Berg taught his followers to live in, he was/is able to freely misuse biblical scriptures for his own designs. He ignored the social, historical and cultural contexts in which sacred scriptures were originally written and extrapolated meaning to situations that had nothing to do with the intent of the text.
An example of this is Mt. 25:45 ("Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me"), which applies to a specific context and set of conditions, that said nothing about the case of a woman who didn’t want to engage sexually with another woman; yet he was able to use it in "The Girl Who Wouldn't" to make a case for how Toni should have "gritted her teeth and borne" the sexual advances of Lori/Keda. (All this is based on his deep misunderstanding of lesbian sexuality. See the commentary for "The Girl Who Wouldn't!" under "Berg misunderstanding basic lesbian sexuality."
He also (mis)used his mother, a nurturing figure, quoting her to argue for FFing - a person who by Berg's own accounts would never have condoned such a doctrine nor his predatory sexual activities:
"My mother used to say, 'DON’T TELL ME YOU BELIEVE IN SOMETHING IF YOU’RE NOT DOING IT! You believe in prayer as much as you pray and you believe in witnessing as much as you witness!' So I say, you believe in FFing as much as you FF, you believe in sex as much as you do it, and you believe in love as much as you love!"