[OBW]

Ohio,

I agree that those leaving the church do not need a 12 step program. Well at least most do not. But it is not for the same reasons as you.

A 12 step program addresses your personal issues that have driven you to become your own problem. For the most part, that is not the problem with the LC. It is not about recognizing our own failures and turning it over to a “higher power.”

Instead it is about failure to assert your own sensibilities when they are offended. It is about failure to listen to your own good mind when it says “that is not what the scripture says.”

Instead of a 12 step program, a crash course in critical thinking centered around scripture, with the examples all coming from Lee’s teachings would be excellent. We need desperately to be deprogrammed — not in the manner of those “kidnap and deprogram” guys, but in a setting more like a classroom where the personal esteem of those being corrected rises with every personal discovery that they do have their own anointing and can trust their own understanding of scripture. (I do not mean to say “lean on our own understanding” but to point out that as John said in 1 John, we have an anointing and can recognize truth and also recognize error.

“Hi, I’m Mike and I still struggle with leftover scriptural error from 14 years in a personality cult.” At some level I can say that after over 21 years. But if I had immediately begun to question Lee’s teachings and search the scriptures, I might not still be finding as much LC garlic still hiding in the corners of my house.