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In Reply to: 'The Family's Policy on Lying & Deception' posted by Coordinator on January 21, 2005 at 00:42:28:
in A Rose By Another Name!, letter 1858, Berg again discussed lying and deception. In this case, he was arguing the morality of hiding their identity from people who would reject them if they knew who the Family really was, and what their actual policies and practices. Now he condoned deception to simply avoid rejection. Berg reasoned:
1. All the false cults & religions try their best ... to deceive first with genuine truths in their original sales pitches.
2. So you say, “Isn’t that what we’re doing when we come in under seemingly false pretenses & pretending not to be who we really are? Aren’t we deceiving & lying & trying to do the same thing they’re doing?”—No! We are not wrapping up lies in some truth. We’re wrapping up a whole lot of Truth & all Truth with a little bit of camouflage, a tiny bit of deceit or decoy work ... so they won’t necessarily recognize that it’s the same people with the same Message.
3. We are simply coming in & doing our best not to reveal our exact identity, the identity we’re best known by, our unpopular identity, our bad-publicity identity image ...
5. Let me tell you, all through the Bible there was a lot of concealment & cover-up used for the sake of security! (Maria: It wasn’t exactly deceit, though, was it?—Because we usually think of deceit as being something evil.) Let’s not call it deceit, let’s call it secrecy.
6. Therefore it is certainly wise for us to conceal our identity as far as being linked or associated with certain names of certain groups which have received a lot of very bad, adverse publicity ...
16. So if sometimes you have to be, as the guy said, “Red like a radish”—look red on the outside, look a bit dragonish on the outside or even a little bit wolfish—in order to make them think you are one of them ... appear to be somewhat like them, this is not contrary to Scripture. Josh always used to use the Scripture, “As deceivers yet true”—& that’s true! (2Cor.6:8) We can’t go around broadcasting to everybody exactly who we are.
19. So call it what you will. If you want to call it deceit or false pretenses or whatever, we are the true sheep. We’re not trying to lead them into a false cult, a false religion or a false doctrine.
20. I mean, a sheep by another name is just as sweet! Right? And a rose by another name smells just as sweet. If the Devil has made what was once a good appearance into a bad appearance, then just change it!—Change the name, change the appearance, change the looks, change the operation!
23. So oddly enough, as Satan often operates as a wolf in sheep’s clothing, we may sometimes have to operate as sheep in wolf’s clothing!
