[Jay]

One of the things that I hate about this subject is the fact it's so central to the local church culture and behavior. We could even say it's a driving force in the LC. From a very young age my mother was giving me fear with this concept. Which I don't think was good in hindsight. I believe it to some degree damaged my psyche. My older brother also had a large fear of the darkroom and he says it caused psychological damage, and now he doesn't believe God is real. Whether it's part and parcel of a method of control may be or may not be, but for sure it's one of the major themes in the recovery

With that said I believe it's true. It's biblical and makes perfect sense when reading the Bible in context as a whole. But it's something that is so permeated in the recovery that I would say it causes divisions. There are like an "inner circle" of recovery members in probably just about every locality who for whatever reason are more gung ho than the rest. And probably in these ones minds they are the overcomers of that locality. And I've heard brother Lee say as much. He's said that the overcomers are smaller in number and not everyone in the recovery will be an overcomer and etc. Like I said I feel like it's a point of division and judgement. I myself have been judged like this before

I remember one time in Bellevue when I first moved there from Spokane, the elder there at the time (he's since passed) would watch football games at home. And sometimes he would talk about it in the meetings. It was odd to me coming from Spokane because the saints in Spokane were not worldly like that. I think the majority of them didn't even own televisions. And at the time I was of that same mind. I felt like TV was just solely the world. And I still somewhat do feel that way. But also I've since learned a lot about asceticism and have eased up on my feelings about certain things. But to be sure it's definitely the world, and it's definitely worldly programming. It's just all in how you take it in I suppose. But back to the story, so at that time the leading elder was talking about football games, and I heard about it and felt it was odd and in my heart I felt like something was really wrong with that. But I was new to that locality and I was trying to fit in and I remember I tried to talk to this older brother about a football game and he goes "You'll have plenty of time to talk about football in the darkroom." And man did that irk me. I think to this day that's probably the single worst thing anyone in the recovery has ever said to me. It was his tone and the way he said it. And it was just the hypocrisy of that locality that got to me. Here you have elders who watch TV, own TV's, and openly talk about sports after the meetings, and yet you have another brother saying I would go to the darkroom if I watched sports. Crazy

Looking back I realize that there was just a really cliquey culture there and I realized later that the eldership there was wrong on many levels and it affected the young people in certain ways that made them act elitist. It's not that they shunned me totally or anything but just certain behaviors that they had was really elitist and exclusive and I often felt uncomfortable and judged. It was the first time I really experienced a negative church life culture. But that one instance really stood out and I'll never forget that

But yeah it's something that I think is so central to Lee's ministry and so central to the impetus for the entire recovery that kind of all burgeons into the cult like behavior that we all recognize at this point. But it's a true doctrine that unfortunately many in Christianity do not know about for whatever reason. I usually come across two camps of believers in modern Christianity-the camp that believes everyone will be raptured and go directly to heaven. And the camp that thinks a believer can lose their salvation. Sadly neither of these camps are correct. And the latter is extremely damaging. Imagine believing that you can lose your salvation. Think how horrible that concept is to someone who is for instance struggling with sin. Just how much extra energy and pain and suffering, and consternation they must feel believing that. It's very very sad, and there are many out there who not only believe it, but they propagate it. Very troubling