In Reply to: Re: Hi and welcome! posted by Bognor Regis on October 11, 2006 at 01:23:38:
The idea The Family markets is how they helped so many drug addicts. Well let's examine just how many people people Berg supposedly helped kick the drug habit.
Drug users only stop when their old lifestyle is replaced by something new. Living drug free usually requires a support system. I am certain that not that many hippies got witnessed to, and then went back home to their old crowd and then gave up drugs all of a sudden. The Children of God had no 24-hour crisis centers and drug couseling follow-up. Their ultimate one-size fits all solution for everything was for people to join them.
So how many drug addicts did Berg and the Children of God help rehabilitate through full-time membership? The answer might be found in some simple demographical facts - how many people had their lifestyes replaced with the Children of God's?
In 1968 there were 35 adherents in Huntington Beach.
In 1969 at TSC, there were 200.
Up until 1972, after an infusion of hundreds of Jesus People Army adherents, their numbers were 1400. Fact: not every one of these 1400 came out of a drug using past.
When the group spread out across the globe in 1973, they had already de-emphasized recruiting radicals and drug users. They no longer staged sackcloth demonstrations and talk was more about God's love than decrying the evil system. They had toned down the anti-establishment rhetoric and begun focusing on recruiting the educated and privileged, with less personal problems and baggage than drug users.
You have to ask yourself, what Berg ultimately did with his adhrerents, what he used them to accomplish: prositution, dishonest living and running scams, internal turmoil, broken lives, broken families, incest, coercion, blackmail, manipulation. Members willingly helped Berg achieve all this mayhem, hanging on to his every word and seeking his approval. Addictions are all too often given up, only to be replaced with other addictions and dependencies. Addictive personalities are vulnerable to manipulation.
http://www.exfamily.org/children-of-god/history/index.shtml
In my case. I kicked drugs and alcohol before I even met and joined. My relationship with Jesus was a result of my own journey from childhood.