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In Reply to: At what point did you leave? posted by porceleindoll on September 09, 2002 at 20:14:34:
I think I always had some measure of thinking ability functioning. At different stages I was more or less brainwashed. But the brainwashing is voluntary. You can't be hypnotized if you resist it, and you can't let a cult take over you thinking and decision-making unless you give it over to them willingly. "Think think think and you'll stink stink stink" Berg said.
All throughout my experience, I was aware that to function well within the COG I had to surrender my thinking. It was called yielding and submitting as you know. I was always keeing a check on myself, telling myself "OK, your going to allow this to happen now, it means you are going to let yourself be influenced this way", "OK if you go along with Moses David is the endtime prophet and he speaks the word of God then you are allowing yourself to swallow anything including things that might be wrong". I think I was doing that so that I could find my way back.
I was always made to feel that if I wasn't happy, it was because I wasn't adequately yielded or in the right place. They called it being in the center of God's will as you know. So each time I tried to solve my unhappiness with being more sold out and following closer and being more hardcore. After only couple of years, I had infiltrated inner circles of inner circles. I met top leaders and was involved in selah projects, but things still weren't working out. They were still controling my life in a way that I didn't feel happy. SO they told me the answer was to get back on the field witnessing. So I did this in 3rd world countries where the genuine missionaries were supposed to be.
Same story. Still couldn't feel satisfied with the things I thought were wrong. I told myself that it was because I was used to special treatment and should get down to basics. It was all hush hush but I was reputed to have come from the inner circle and was given some kind of extra respect I didn't ask for. So leadership decided my attitude was unhealthy and proceeded with their enforced breakings and humiliations.
So on and on the cycle went. I realized that everything we were doing on the field added up to much ado about nothing. We were living off of people and giving nothing much of value in return. At the end of many years of futile service, I realized that I was not being a productive human being but a leach. So I left. I more or less had my thinking faculties intact, but the things that made me aware I had to leave were many.
My children were getting older and getting short-changed of an education and life as a child.
I was tired of pretending, playing "man of God."
I saw through the enforced breakings as politics.
I saw how far the F. was willing to go to protect its leaders and its name at the risk of the little guys.
I saw clearly that Berg was really after our money.
I didn't believe he was the end-time prophet anymore.
More and more failed prophecies.
I saw Berg's double-speak and contradictions and lost respect for him.
There is too much. Let's just say I felt stronger and stronger about these things until I finally left, for the sake of me and mine.
