|
In Reply to: The reason I'm sceptical posted by Observer on February 25, 2006 at 00:22:04:
I was a charter member until I left 5 years ago in Spring 2001. I just skimmed through some of the posts above and I want to throw in some comments based what I saw and experienced in regards to the Family's attitudes about getting medical treatment and the Family Aid Fund.
Things changed somewhat with the Charter. People were given more liberty to make their own decisions about their health and their children's. But the "pressure" that's it's better to "have faith for healing" without going to the doctor and medicine still came down from the top in one way or another. Just like the letter "Go for the Gold" ...Maria and Peter perpetrate Berg's ideas about God's Highest Will then there's what's second best and all the rest. A very dear friend in the Family of ours was diagnosed with cancer, and even though we'd moved to another part of the world we corresponded regularly with her for the several years she lived until she passed. She was on a roller coaster of being prayed for and getting all the prophecies about healing, about God's Highest and having faith, but her decision was to go for the medical treatment. How could that pressure and feeling like her faith had failed have been of any help?
Only 5 years ago when I was still in. it was as if you're on your way to becoming a Fellow Member if you have a serious illness and you're not following the "Pill or Pilgrimage" doctrine of healing, trusting God and rejecting medical treatments. Even if you weren't actually becoming FM, your decision to take the medicine and follow doctor's orders in light of the mind-set-group-think of "God's Highest Will" was a compromise of your faith in one way or another. Even if no one specifically said the words, it was felt. And often enough people would say it. I heard a top leader say in public about someone who decided to go for chemo therapy, "I don't know what's wrong with them, what's wrong with their faith." And that was after post Charter.
The Family Aid Fund ….not a very good insurance policy. The most I personally saw paid was $4,000.
I heard about it helping here and there with similar amounts, sometimes for a medical emergency, usually for evacuation emergencies. The instances of this were not very frequent, and the resources of the so called Family Aid Fund didn't stretch very far and were given out only sporadically in a few exceptional situations.
In conclusion, in a certain sense things are perhaps a little bit better in the Family, and you can go to the doctor, but in the spiritual hierarchy of things, if you do you're going down the ladder. I know of a Charter member who recently became FM, primarily due to the fact that she had started regular medical treatment for a chronic disorder. She's on her own now, after a lifetime in the group, living on public assistance, with no help at all from that wonderful "Church of Philadelphia" ...the Family.
