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In Reply to: Let Me leave you with this posted by Smiley on April 28, 2006 at 00:25:00:
Many of us have taken the time to learn how to think critically and reason logically because we see that our lack of skills in that area made us extremely vulnerable to cultic mind control.
1) The right to religious freedom does not include the right to commit crimes in the name of your religion with no consequence whatsoever.
2) If you commit a crime because your religious convictions, you must be prepared to pay the consequence. This is a major principle of non-violent resistence to social injustice.
3) At this point in history, the primary consequence to TFI for crimes committed by its leadership and large numbers of its membership is the stigmatization of its reputation as a missionary organization. As a force for good in the world, TFI lacks legitimacy among mainstream Christians and international social welfare development workers for very good reasons that won't be resolved by "I'm sorry."
4) Tim Peters' affiliation with TFI taints his professional reputation as an aid worker & missionary and raises legitimate questions about his trustworthiness as a servant in Korea. Obviously, you accept that premise or you wouldn't come here to defend him & his work.
5) If Peters' ministry suffers as a consequence of his affiliation with TFI, that is entirely due to choices he has made. There is nothing hateful or malicious about exposing the questionable affiliations of an individual who solicits funding from the public. Fully informed people can decide for themselves whether or not to support Peters' ministry through FCF. Potential donors have a right to know that FCF is subject to a liability suit being brought by victims of TFI's "unloving discipline." When Peters' fails to give his donors a full disclosure of his affiliations, he raises legitimate questions about his trustworthiness.
If you choose to draw conclusions like:
"You don’t mind destroying the good to get at the bad, including all the children. You would rather see them in an institution and their parents in jail then to have them live happily with their parents, regardless of whether or not their parents FFed, or were guilty of crimes you accuse them of,"
...PLEASE support your accusation with evidence. I don't know of anyone on this site who has advocated such an idea since 1993, and I have no idea where you got the notion that this is a goal of people in the exer community unless you're being propagandized by TFI apologists. You seem to have a lot of pre-conceived notions about who we are, what we think, what our motivations are, and what we want.
The major reasons why TFI parents were able to regain custody of their children following the raids in the early 1990s is precisely because NO ONE in the child welfare or juvenile court system really thinks its a good idea to take children away from their parents and put them in institutions. The primary goal of child welfare and juvenile courts is to keep families together. The willingness of TFI parents to clean of their act convinced authorities (such as Justice Ward) that they were "good enough" to have custody. That doesn't mean there isn't still a very grave risk of abuse for children being raised in TFI and that their rights are not being violated. It ONLY means that the most heinous violations of their safety and well-being have been neutralized. It also means that TFI parents only cleaned up their act after extremely unpleasant external pressure from the system. They didn't do it on their own initiative.
My intention is not to destroy TFI, but to support those who serve as advocates for children being raised in that organization and similar types of high-demand groups. If you want to know more about issues concerning the basic human rights of children being raised in such groups, visit www.safepassagefoundation.org
