Quote:
Originally Posted by bearbear
Thank you Dave. Your prayers will definitely help since there may not be many praying for her outside of her family. She trusted her life with the LC, but the LC spit her back out and treated her like a leper due to mental illness. Yet I shouldn't have said her life is ruined. It may seem so, but we believe God still has a plan for her life and will pray for her healing from hurt and betrayal.
Actually during one of the winter or summer trainings they made an announcement that anyone "with psychological problems should not apply to the FTTA", suggesting that my sister in law was not the only person to develop mental illness during the training. The irony was my sister-in law probably along with many others was perfectly healthy before going into the training. She was a normal happy and joyful person who loved Jesus. After she left, she became a totally different person and the joy and happiness left her completely and she was later diagnosed with schizophrenia (had to be hospitalized and given life-long medication).
Yet along with what aron said, I agree the FTTA isn't a place to find rest or be rehabilitated. As they themselves say, it's a place "to get trained", therefore anything goes. The FTTA is a Witness Lee cloning factory that only takes model LC saints as input to mold them into hardcore soldiers for the "Lord's Recovery". Any saints with defects and don't fit the standard model are to be thrown away and discarded.
Matthew 11:28
"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest."
The only good thing to come out of it so far was that it opened my wife's eyes to what the LC leadership was really like in the hypocritical way they and the elders of my LC treated my sister. It opened the door for me to share all my feelings with my wife and lead her into reading more of LCs history. After we left, we even got calls from my wife's aunt (her and her husband are elders of an LC in Texas) telling her "not to blame the ministry" for what happened to her sister. In their eyes, even though they were family they couldn't bring themselves to blame the ministry which was beyond reproach. If something went wrong, my sister-in law was to blame and not the toxic environment in the FTTA and the absence of love in the LC elite.
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It's heartbreaking to hear stories like this. What also is troubling is that it seems these kind of stories are much more common than LC leadership would like anyone to think. I can think of a number of people I know in the LC who have been under severe mental duress as a result of LC involvement. Actually, one of the reasons that I have distanced myself from the LC (though still being involved) is because I was beginning to feel like certain stresses of the LC were having an adverse effect on my mental heath.
I wish I could go more into detail in regards to some of those I know in the LC. Simply put, I have seen some who have had panic attacks, severe depression, pent up anger, and the list goes on. Something that is a common factor in all of these situations is that LC elders and BB's do not accept any responsibility for their involvement in these things. Furthermore, what is saddening, is that many times these individuals end up blaming themselves for their problems.
Back when the CRI published their "We Were Wrong" journal, something that they lauded the LC for is the "dedication" of its members. I think they said something like the LC is one of the most dedicated groups of Christians that they have seen. On the surface this sounds like something good, a positive attribute of the LC. From my point of view, this is actually quite a big problem. When such a high level of devotion/dedication is expected, that those who can't measure up are consequently put in a position where they feel like they are inferior. I know that some in this position will just end up feeling discouraged, however, this can easily be the beginning of a much worse mental decline.