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In Reply to: Re: Shulamite posted by kerry on May 21, 2002 at 21:16:52:
Thanks for coming here to share this. You know that you are welcome here, and I hope you will be able to tell us how it really was. Did you break off all ties with the Family after that?
I am sorry that I was one of those who stayed on after reading something like that, that I allowed myself to overlook what Berg was really like. I hope you will forgive me/us (those that stayed on after this letter) for being so blind. I don't think all our thinking faculties were intact. We had been conditioned, and so used to reading from one source and believing "everything" we read.
Sometimes I don't think we actually believed everything, but whatever we couldn't deal with or console with our own instinct and intuition, we compartmentalized (labelled them "doubts" as we were taught), and put it on a back-burner (to be dealt with later). That is how we were conditioned - to suspend our own thinking, and "get going for god."
I know when I read that letter with my wife, I was shocked, but I didn't quite know about what - somehow it didn't have the desired effect on me. Then before I knew it, some VSes came by and made sure that the letter couldn't be misunderstood - the prophet had said get back to the "mission fields" and that IRFing was luke-warmed half-heartedness, and God would strike me down if I didn't obey, etc. And all of a sudden, we were supposed to be so "out of tune", and got so busy trying to get back on the mission field, that we "accepted" Berg's far-fetched assumptions as the word of God. I hate myself for being so weak as to not see earlier that he was an opportunist: "Aaah... a murder... now to find a way to implicate IRFers, I'm tired of their stingy monthly gifts, I want more, I want full-fledged tithes." Berg was successful enough on working on my ego to want to be part of something great, not miss out, not miss the boat on being part of this great dedicated endtime final true pure... baloney...
Anyway, I didn't mean to get tripped off talking about me. I hope that you are in an better situation now, with the love and support you need. Somethings we may never get the answer to in this life. If anything though, what we can do here and now, is set the record straight. Perhaps we can do that with your help.
Please do tell us what happened and what we can do for you and yours.
