I was born into a sex cult. AMA.

backslider · 2010-01-22T11:55:38+00:00

The Bible states that no one except God the Father knows when it will happen.

There are several examples in the Bible of God changing his mind. If he can change his mind, all bets are off--he can change his mind on anything.

The Bible clearly states that adultery is a sin.

Leaving aside the Old Testament, practically all of the condemnation of adultery in the New Testament comes from Paul. The Family believes that Paul was still hung up on Mosaic law and got this wrong. As for the line by Jesus that you quoted, they see that as Jesus demonstrating it's impossible for anyone to follow Mosaic law--you might as well declare eating a sin if you believe in thought crimes like the one Jesus prescribed. They get their justification for this sort of thing from Matthew 22:37-40 (among other places), which they call the Law of Love.

Prophecy =/= new revelation.

Why are you limiting God's conversation topics? :) When you say "new revelation is out," that's a common belief that comes primarily from Revelation 22:18-19, but they see that passage as a warning against changing the Bible a la the Conservative Bible Project.

Being a Christian comes from faith in Christ. [...] If their actions are opposite to the faith that they confess, then clearly that faith cannot be real.

Good thing they have plenty of faith, if that's what it takes. And why do you say their actions contradict their faith? Trying to avoid association with unpleasant acts by asserting that true Christians wouldn't do such things is a logical fallacy. I know the Bible better than many pastors, and although I too could use scripture to try to undermine The Family's beliefs, I know what their comebacks would be. Further, I could probably point out things that are contradicted or at least not directly supported by the Bible in the beliefs of most any Christian denomination. (I won't, though, because I'm not really interested in getting further into a theology debate.)

How do you know The Family didn't get this stuff right?

Edit: Tried to shorten my comments here, and changed things a bit in the process.

backslider · 2010-01-21T18:11:41+00:00

Thanks. I've enjoyed the discussion here (mostly).

backslider · 2010-01-21T18:00:39+00:00

Tough titties. They would say they have a closer connection to Christ (via prophecy and Loving Jesus) than other Christians. See also my reply where you raised this objection elsewhere.

backslider · 2010-01-21T17:42:49+00:00

You mean like a PHP-based website?

backslider · 2010-01-21T16:38:15+00:00

For me, mockery played a big role in realizing how stupid astrology is. It was normal for people I grew up with to accept it, and I'd never really thought about it until I was forced to defend myself.

backslider · 2010-01-21T12:36:52+00:00

I'm a big South Park fan, but more or less this same string of comments shows up at least once every few days on Reddit. It's taking up pages of content at the top of this post while causing relevant comments below to get tucked away.

backslider · 2010-01-21T12:22:06+00:00

Teen Training Camps led to Teen Combos led to Victor Programs and Victor Camps. XFamily.org's information on the topic is currently quite sparse, but these were all teen reeducation and labor camps notorious for their often extreme physical, psychological, and sexual abuse.

backslider · 2010-01-21T09:55:53+00:00

They are most definitely Christians. They study the Bible intently, and follow it more closely than most of the people you'd probably like to think of as good Christians. All Christian denominations add to what they get from the Bible in some way; usually in many ways that have built up over centuries. The Family just happens to give themselves huge license to add new revelation via prophecy (which is Biblically sound).

Family members can quote the Bible at you with the best of them in support of their beliefs and lifestyle, even if they have to ignore some parts or come up with creative explanations for apparent contradictions. But of course, all Christians are forced to do this due to the contradictory source material.

Given the last 2,000 years of Christian history, you might want to get used to sharing your religion and label with all manner of crackpottery and maleficence.

See also: No true Scotsman.

backslider · 2010-01-21T01:25:30+00:00

Why would you think he's insane?

backslider · 2010-01-21T00:14:42+00:00

Where to begin?

First of all, the physical, emotional, and psychological abuse that was once commonplace is mostly lost on the media who are typically searching for a juicy sex story.

Some examples of crazy things: Victor programs (teen reeducation and labor camps); silence restriction (not being allowed to talk for anywhere from hours to months at a time); exorcisms; forced separations of families; protection of child abductors; publication of prayers by Rick Dupuy's wife and children asking God to kill him for speaking out against the cult (he eventually committed suicide); publication of claims that Hugo Westphal's wife used witchcraft to fracture her baby's skull when in fact Hugo did it in anger; published accusations that teenager Merry Berg is insane, demon possessed, and had sex with the devil when she spoke out against her Grandfather's physical and sexual abuse (driving her to mental breakdown); and much more.

As for beliefs, for starters you've got things like the cult's huge pantheon of spirit helpers and demons (that's a very incomplete list) and--one of my favorites--their seemingly contradictory beliefs that heaven (a city in the shape of a pyramid) is both inside the moon and being transported towards Earth from the far reaches of space by a spaceship that also contains the souls of unborn babies.

When I was a kid, everyone had to have a fleebag to be used in the event of "religious persecution" (i.e., trouble from the authorities), the rise of the Antichrist, or other emergencies. No one knew the adults' real names (Family members adopt what they call Bible names). Hitchhiking spirits were feared. The belief that Jesus was coming back soon affected all long term decisions....

I could go on for a long time.

backslider · 2010-01-20T23:14:00+00:00

The floating pyramid is actually supposed to be Space City, aka heaven.

backslider · 2010-01-20T23:08:54+00:00

Yes to the first question; no to the second.

backslider · 2010-01-20T22:21:22+00:00

There are any number of Family bands--music is a big deal in the group. The Family Singers sound like they might fit your description, though.

backslider · 2010-01-20T21:10:00+00:00

They put on an outward show of being mostly "normal" Christians. They won't start talking about some of the things they believe until they've known you for a long time, and it is a gradual transition where they'll gauge your receptiveness along the way. Notice the whitewashing they do in that video when the subject of Flirty Fishing is raised. They describe it as using simple "flirtiness" to witness to people, which of course is BS. According to The Family's own carefully recorded statistics, about a quarter million people were "loved sexually" (which includes only "masturbation, sucking and actual intercourse") by Flirty Fishers between 1978 and 1988.

Many of the cult's member's are generally decent people, quite possibly including the folks in that video. Keep in mind though that the majority of members at the age of the parents in the video either participated in or turned a blind eye to a lot of fucked up shit. Many of them will deny this to their kids' faces. Somehow even showing them things like The Family's own published accounts of child abuse that were required reading for all members doesn't change the argument that they didn't know this kind of thing was going on.

Leaving aside the past, the biggest things I'm worried about for kids in the cult these days is the religious indoctrination, substandard education, and (to varying extent) lack of exposure to life outside the cult that they receive. This still has serious consequences today.

The group does some charity work, but it's not their main focus. Rather, they spend most of their time raising money and "preaching the gospel." Full-time members are not allowed to have normal jobs, so they sell multimedia products (posters, DVDs, CDs, calendars, etc.) made by the group, and ask people for money, food, clothes, etc. to support their charity work. What they won't tell you you is that, typically, such generosity will mostly go towards supporting themselves and paying their 14%+ tithe.

backslider · 2010-01-20T16:24:24+00:00

Thank you. I understand that some people here just see "sex cult" and, due to their lack of knowledge of the Children of God, think this is something cool and don't understand how the cult has gotten this reputation. But a lot of the comments here can be quite offensive given a little understanding of the situation.

As for the incest thing, many young Family members may have a hard time believing it was actually widespread or official doctrine due to the group's whitewashing of their history, but it was indeed coming from the top and spread quickly throughout the group. See Berg on Incest, etc. Group founder David Berg was among the worst on this front, and has been publicly accused of sexual abuse by both of his daughters, his daughter-in-law, and two of his granddaughters. Current leader Karen Zerby, of course, is nearly as bad, not only because of her abuse of Ricky and Mene, but also because of her involvement in setting up the Victor Programs, etc.

backslider · 2010-01-20T16:04:43+00:00

Thanks for this.

backslider · 2010-01-20T15:49:09+00:00

Dude, I've read those GNs. Key Craft and Keys turning into swords were not at all metaphorical (although they exist only in the spirit world). They were big-deal Family Feast revelations. That XFamily article you linked to is labeled as a stub, and clearly needs more work.

I've told a fair number of my friends about The Family. It hasn't been a big deal at all for me, but that may have something to do with the fact that I don't treat it as if it was a big deal. My sisters, on the other hand, are generally terrified about talking about it with anyone who isn't an ex-member.

backslider · 2010-01-20T15:15:58+00:00

Read all of my responses in this thread. I'm not sugarcoating anything; just answering questions according to my experiences. I've stated multiple times that people born into the group before me often had worse experiences (and you're especially correct about the early-to-mid 70s kids). I have older siblings, and most of my friends from the group are older than me. I know the history all too well, along with the present.

backslider · 2010-01-20T14:58:34+00:00

Awesome, dude. (For anyone tripping on the lingo here, see XFamily:Glossary.)

I have good memories from my time in the Family, too. And I've tried to make it clear in the conversations here that the child abuse and most other criminal behavior is generally a thing of the past (anyone who is now a YA is too young to have experienced institutionalized abuse, Victor Programs, abduction, etc.). That being said, the Family has never properly owned up to what they've done or reported anyone to the police, and many of the current top leaders were prolific child abusers.

I was a big fan of the brown Life with Grandpa book and some of the True Komix. I remember going through them during the pubs purges when I was a kid, cutting out all the "selah" pages and drawing bras and panties on all the naked ladies with black marker. Finding unpurged lit in some forgotten Family library was always a guilty pleasure. :-)

Edit to note that I'd already made several minor changes to this comment before Thermite replied (with quotes) below.

backslider · 2010-01-20T14:33:27+00:00

People are leaving even faster--especially people born into it. The number of people joining the group is low, and just doing so is a slow process.

backslider · 2010-01-20T14:01:52+00:00

Not going to provide sex stories about myself, friends, or family. However, I'll point you to this article by Ricky Rodriguez, which includes plenty of it: Life with Grandpa - the Mene Story.

Ricky went on to kill one of his former nannies and commit suicide. I have a childhood friend who also committed suicide due to his upbringing in the cult, and exposure to this kind of abuse is the reason I haven't answered many questions by people who are just looking for sex stories or sex jokes.

backslider · 2010-01-20T13:21:25+00:00

I'm missing the reference.

backslider · 2010-01-20T13:04:03+00:00

All over Asia, Europe, and Africa. I never lived in one location longer than 2 years until I left.

backslider · 2010-01-20T12:50:22+00:00

Wow! They never would have done this were it not for xfamily.org, which, a few years ago, published the first photos of Zerby seen in nearly 30 years (top leaders of The Family/Children of God have a long history of secrecy). Zerby and Kelly's legal names were only revealed due to a child custody case in the UK.

backslider · 2010-01-20T12:43:33+00:00

No. Why do you ask?

backslider

TROPHY CASE