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In Reply to: Re: Dialogue? posted by Peace on December 03, 2009 at 09:49:07:
Well, of course you all are right. P&M are working with their assumptions, with their goals, with their idea of self-preservation. They know their audience and are primarily addressing them.
There is the regular foot-soldier member families, there is the elite selah members that pretend to be anything-but-family-members, there is the elite public members in charge of high level PR, there is the circle of close supporters and potential supporters, including the ex-member community, very far from the center.
They can do this in double talk because they know us well. They made us into a type of robot while we were there and until we broke away. But the lessons stayed and we understand them just as much and as easier as they understand us. They knowus but we also know them. We know what is behind the words because it works both ways. There is no doubt about it.
When we walked away from their one-rule fits all mentality, we grew up and matured in the freedom that God intended for us to have. His real freedom to even choose wrong and make mistakes.
Whether Christian or not, we can exercise our freedom to choose. They don't understand freedom but their last letters have been an indication to me that they may be starting to understand. Or at least to be willing to consider that they were wrong.
But in so doing they are making a new mistake. They may be slowly moving away from where they once were but they are addressing us as if we were still there. They don't realized we have grown up and are matured, some of us even mature Christians.
And they don't know how to communicate than talking down, ordering with the tone, controlling while appearing aloof. This is because they haven't realized that we have grown up. Or if they do, they don't know how to speak to us.
It is as Thinker says, I am giving them the benefit of the doubt, that in their simplistic baby steps they are actually trying to communicate that they know they have no clothes, and they want to get dressed. They just don't know how.
But I am not cutting them any slack, I am asking them to reassure us, exmembers, that they are sincere but in a different way you are.
And the reason is equally simple. If they haven't changed, we are taking away from them their argument that we are enemies of their followers. We don't hate their followers, the simple people who are sincerely trying to do some good within their simple means. What we are against is the horrible doctrines they have advanced, promoted, supported and have not denounce, reject and retract.
That is what P&M don't know how to do but at least they have realized that they need to change their culture, and don't know how to do it.
There are many things they don't know how to do, but some of us do.
And I am simply recognizing that their avoidance to discuss some points shows their fear. They are afraid of the truth.
By publicly pressing them on this point and not leaving the table, we are sending the ball back to them and accomplishing two important things.
1) We are showing that we are not the monsters they have portray us to be, and
2) That we can teach them to be sincere, open, honest, critical of their mistakes, etc.
Without remorse and corrective action there is no true repentance.
Without justice, there is no peace.
Peace.
