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In Reply to: Re: Intimidation posted by intimidated no more on September 24, 2006 at 11:16:32:
The distinction I make between greed and fear as the principal factors of staing in the cult is because we, as humans, tend to avoid punishment and pain and tend to seek rewards and gain benefits. Not everybody joined, stayed and became an abuser of sorts. But I would say that people can take a lot of abuse if they fear that stopping it will create worse conditions or if they expect to gain something that out weights the negatives. Not everybody would have the same combination of these two.
I am not greed to this day. I'd say that the vast majority, if not all, of those who appear in these boards, are not greed. On the other hand, I knew many who in the cult were excelled at seeking to improve their lot through pushing others down. I call this greed. I doubt these people show up to mingle with us poor mortals, even if they left the cult. They are probably busy building their own empires and having greed work for them. After all, many people believe greed is good.
You touch on many interesting points and I would love to systematically go through all of them, for example, your comments on how you did not yield to Berg but to Jesus. To do justice to this topic alone would need lots of exchanges.
In another post I confess of my yielding to the doctrine of One Wife, and know how strong the hold of what we “believe” is, but it is not as strong as my beliefs on some of the basic doctrines that come straight from the Bible. None of those are easy to encapsulate but they are definitely stronger and more clear than what came to us from Berg. The point I am trying to make is that very few of us knew the Bible unless we spent time reading it and mulling over it. As you, I had the advantage of not knowing anything about it, which that means I was not contaminated by the interpretations of other churches about this or that.
But another point I now consider beneficial was that I grew up in a church that believes in some sort of prophetic ministry but not in replacement of God’s direct contact. That I knew from the first day. I accepted that Berg might be a prophet and that he might prophesize but I waited to see whether his prophecies would be true or not. As we all know he turned out to be a false prophet. I never gave him right or control over my soul even as much as I might have agreed with some of his writings. I never saw him as more than a man, just like me.
And then, with each stupid new doctrine, move or comment (“we have to help Gadafi”, “send me more money”, “I am a gypsy king”, “don’t eat sugar”) I realized he was no prophet at all. I settled for him being a person with good will. His status gradually deteriorated until he became a common criminal in my eyes.
I wonder how many people have a deteriorated view of Berg but do not leave the cult because of fear. You ask about greed in consideration of the Spartan condition of how we lived. That’s precisely the point. Did you ever notice the lofty living conditions of the leaders? I don’t know how one could have missed those perks. And then there were some who were leaders and others who were leaders.
(I hope you catch the difference in tone here :)
