How to help people whose friends and relatives are active members of the LC

[aron]

Originally Posted by aron

The most effective brainwashing is where the mark doesn't realize that their brain has been taken over. It must be set up carefully to be effective. The Local Church version requires two things. First, get them to agree that there is a God in the universe...Then... select some parts of the Bible that will guide your "mark" to take the bait. Put your "mark" in a heavy, emotional scene where people are screaming these special words, shaking, men are crying, women are drooling and slumped over, and get the mark to wave their arms and shout the special words.

Once the mark has created an emotional response to your special words, you've got them... That special feeling you got, was an indicator that you'd been had. But as long as you could point back to a few Bible verses, you never knew you'd been taken for a ride.

The way to see that this is all a con is where Lee says that only his chosen verses are "revelatory", and that others are "natural" and "fallen". So you think you are following the Bible, but really you're following those parts of the Bible which Lee has chosen as a vehicle for his con. Believe me, there is a big difference. But until you see the difference, you'll never know that you've been had.

I testify to its effectiveness; when I left the Local Churches, and went "back to Christianity", I spent several years trying to convince the poor, fallen, moo-cowing Christians in "the denominations" and "the free groups" of the superiority of the Lee vision. It took years to read the Bible without "Lee glasses" on. Every time I read the Bible I had Lee's commentary in my head, and when I read scriptures that Lee hadn't commented on, my mind simply went back to the "controlling verses" that I was familiar with. There was no way for me to think critically about what I was reading, and no way further into the divine revelation. I believed that Lee had presented us with the "high peak" and there was no way to go further.

So, given that it took me years to shake this stuff out of my brain, after leaving the Local Church program, think how hard it is for someone who's fully in the indoctrination program? Tuesday night prayer meeting, Thursday night home meeting, Friday night college meeting, Saturday morning "ministry" meeting, and of course Sunday is the Lord's Table meeting. And in all those meetings, and in private conversations, is the constant reinforcement of how superior this teaching is, how everyone else's is poor, dark, divided, fallen and so forth. And you constantly hear how dangerous it is to be "individualistic", and think for yourself. You gotta give them credit, they have a pretty effective system.