barbtries a blog

Wednesday, June 12, 2002

CHURCHORCULT

This site is possibly the one i've been looking for. anyway it looks like i won't be going back to sleep after all.
I'm getting closer to doing something. Just something! After reading an article at the LA CoC's page I was just too pissed not to let someone know. so I posted the following over at ExIcoc :

This morning, after visiting the LA website and reading "The Vision Series: Fruit in the Workplace" by Alicia Crank on the LA CoC's website, i was so pissed i wrote this in the feedback form before i thought better of sending it:

i find it disgusting that your 'church' pervades every aspect of a person's life so fully. my dear friends who are in the LA CoC are pariahs to most of their lifelong friends because they have forgotten how to relate in any way that is not infected by your cult. If i had to work with someone jamming their personal religious agenda down my throat 40 hours a week - well, i wouldn't. one of us would have to go.
But you don't really care whether your members do well in their careers, correct? work is just one more opportunity to lure disciples into your cult.
Disciples who all started out being 'people' as in human. Humans should be allowed to be human. people were made to work and learn and play and do any number of things. your cult's tunnel-visioned insistence on perpetual proselytizing by members validates a concept of people as less than or more than human. But people are always going to be human. and that is not a crime nor is it a source of shame.

I almost did send it, but am so fearful of making this situation worse instead of better. i am so angry at this so-called church.

Because by choice i do not practice a religion, i've always been less than receptive to any evangelization [i.e., i'm not always nice to the jehovah's witnesses at my door]. so there has never really been any danger of me becoming a "disciple" of the Kip McKean & Cohorts Cult.

However, a dear friend of mine since childhood has been a member for more than the past 10 years. During those years we have spent very little time together. Can anyone guess why?

At first she wouldn't stop trying to get me to go to her "church" but over time i assume she [and her discipler - i only this year realized that she has had someone discipling her for all of these years] recognized that i never was going to go there.

One thing that has always angered me about any unsolicited proselytizing is that i don't go knocking on doors trying to change what you believe, why do you do it to me? Also of course her life did not go on without "church," so there were progressively less opportunities for us to spend time together.

However, we are friends in the truest sense of the word - which is to say for life. When my daughter was murdered last July, my friend was there for me and so was her daughter, who is also fully entrenched in the cult mentality and had wasted several proselytization efforts on my daughter. This is how I came to study this destructive cult so diligently over the past few months.

When i found a letter from my friend's daughter on my daughter's grave stating, "i would happily change places with you" i was alarmed [my daughter was 21 when she was killed and my friend's daughter will be 23 this month]. it would be more FAIR for me to die instead of my daughter, so if i expressed such feelings it is understandable, but i was saddened and worried when i found that letter from one so young.

I recalled Newsweek's characterization several years ago of the church as a "benevolent" cult and a TV expose that said they believed they are the "one true church." I was concerned at how depressed this young grieving woman sounded and decided to learn whether it was, as i suspected, because she was convinced that my daughter had been remanded to hell to burn forever.

After extensively studying the ICOC on the web, conversation/email with a former member, and [as tactfully as possible] questioning my friend and her daughter, I do believe that this young woman is suffering from not only that delusion and what it implies about her childhood friend, but feelings of responsibility because she never got my daughter to join.

Is there a former member on this board who can advise me whether I may be correct? and what may be the long-term effects of these beliefs on this person? Whether there is anything i can do to address the situation? Since my daughter's death this girl's life has derailed. She did not achieve grades high enough to maintain her status at a local university, lost her apartment, and is staying somewhere while her belongings are in storage. If nothing else i do not see that their membership in this "church" has given my friend or her daughter any confidence spiritually or any comfort or wisdom regarding the tragedy of my daughter's murder. beyond that i am convinced that they are victims of a destructive cult. Is there anything that I can do? I've lurked on this board for weeks afraid to let my friend know that i was educating myself about her "church," but now i have talked with both her and her daughter and asked about kip's "sabbatical" and "dating," even the "OTC" aspect. Not that either one admitted anything but satisfaction and contentment with their "church."

Now I understand why my friend has been "tired" every time I spoke with her for the past decade. What really distresses me is her apparent blindness to her daughter's struggle.

It is very interesting that the daughter denies believing that the ICOC is the "OTC" [but she would never consider dating anyone outside of the "church"], and her mother will not state so for the record...yet, when i found the letter that should have been a warning regarding her daughter's emotional health, my friend said, "oh i know exactly what she means, don't worry about it." i think they both DO subscribe to the "OTC" concept, as well, obviously, to the "ends justifies the means" approach to sharing with others about their "church." which is to say that our long history as friends has apparently not kept either of them from deceptive and elusive responses to my questions, if not outright lies.

My friend's daughter hounded my son so hard after my daughter's death that he finally told her she would have to stop calling although it distressed him to do so.

Any advice or help would be so welcome. i apologize for the length of this post. Gulp!, and thank you ,

The responses and more of my concerns later...

Thee Alumni - DisfellowshipedIt's amazing...the depth of information on the ICC appears bottomless

- posted by barbara @ 6/12/2002 03:58:00 AM

Comments: Post a Comment

<< Home

Who am i, what am i
A picture's worth

moon phases

I stand on the sand, and I'm rocking grief to sleep in my arms.

issues
Poetry roll
Comments by: YACCS

About Me