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In Reply to: All these posts from Berg are making me sick posted by Acheick on June 21, 2002 at 07:19:13:
I just posted this on "Crossfire" but will repost it here, as I think it shows why we have to deal with such muck. I wrote:
WG, I question whether you are sincerely seeking an answer to take back to your cousin or have deliberately limited the information she gets so that she will arrive at the conclusions you want her to. I would caution you of the serious consequences of manipulating a babe in Christ.
You admit she isn’t aware of the height and depth of the scriptures, nor the full horror of the issues, so it’s sad that you refuse to do justice in either case. You claim to know the Bible well and have even gone on record as stating that others are jealous of your knowledge of the Bible.
Yes, Jesus talked a lot about forgiveness, and it’s good your cousin has that basic issue down. But the Old and New Testaments also talk a lot about speaking out for the cause of the oppressed and not saying, “I didn’t know, Lord.” There are strong warnings in Proverbs to those who choose to willfully turn their eyes away when they see injustice. As a new Christian, your cousin hasn’t had a chance to wrap her mind around such things yet, but you certainly know better.
There are also severe warnings to those who defend abusers. The Bible says, “Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil.” The Bible also says woe to those who “condemn the innocent and justify the unrighteous.” Defending David Berg while criticizing SGAs who are in mental agony and considering suicide is exactly that.
Lamentations says, “Arise, cry out in the night for thy young children which faint for hunger at the top of every street.” The Old Testament talks about lifting up our voice like a trumpet” and “showing Israel her sins.” Jesus Himself said that since he came, hypocrites “had no more cloak for their evil deeds.” How do you rip away cloaks of hypocrisy unless you speak out against it? Read Jesus’ (“negative, bitter, unforgiving”) comments in Matthew 23, and you’ll see a God who hates evil and does not hesitate to speak out against it, over and over again. Read his comments about the scribes and Pharisees from one end of the Gospels to the other.
You say you personally didn’t suffer much in the Family. Some of us didn’t either. Many of us on this board are not SGAs but feel “driven by the Spirit” to be “an advocate for the oppressed” who have suffered. It is judgmental to self-righteously tell abuse victims to “get over it and forgive. Look! So-and-so forgives! Why can’t you?” Instead of poo-pooing the suffering of others, we should seek to validate it.
If you want to accomplish something positive and bring healing, you have to deal with the issues first. No valid Christian counselor would attempt to put a band-aid of forgiveness on a festering wound. That’s not a solution. It’s negligence and lack of concern.
Jeremiah 1:10 says it is necessary to “root out, and to pull down, and to destroy, and to throw down”, THEN “to build and to plant.” In this case, “the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but spiritual, mighty to the pulling down of strongholds.” So long as Berg’s teachings are a stronghold, we must speak out against them.
You ask me, it's pretty sad when WG can listen to post after post of Berg's sexually-abusive writings and reasonings from a professional, Rocky, who deals with sexuall-abused kids and crime, and he STILL doesn't listen.......so I have to quote the Bible to help him see those things are morally wrong. And even that won't work if his mind is not open.
