- Topic
I think I'm out. at the church that i go to everything is lies. I notice how everybody, even though they smile at the members, they are the first ones to talk behind their back. Everything has to be reported, everything has to be said. Now we have Zion University, we are not allowed to tell anybody. Also they started Joshua's Movement, we have to preach to 5 people every day, tell our deacon who will tell the pastor and then they add it, like a competetion between churches. It seems more like the hunger games in here than in a church of christ.
The sermons are not making sense, a lot of lies, a lot of verses taken out of meaning. They made videos called the armor of god where they try to say that everything people say in the internet is a lie. Misisonary Victor made one video talking about Ron Ramos, the same video of the truewmscog and then they made it into an Armor of God video. For the first time I saw the whole ron ramos video and I can understand it now, I don't think he is lying. I know about the abortions. I understand what he means when he said "its not what is said but what is not said".
I'm still so scared to leave though… I don't know if its satan tricking me or if im really not in the truth
Disturbed wrote:
Information control of course. They will not tell anyone that she died! There will be more more visiting trips to Korea. How else will the non Korean speakers find out? Hopefully since she's chairperson of We Love You foundation there will be some media about it and somehow we will get word.
If there were visiting trips to Korea they'd find out easily
I think they will have an answer for everything because it's in their nature to lie. Liars will always come up with something because they are always listening to respond. You just have to find the holes in their argument. The fact that they did not "clean up" all of the "contradictory" parts of Ahnsahghong's green book shows you that there are "holes." Case in point, Ahnsahnghong wrote that if any of a church's doctrine proves to be false, then it's ALL false. This church is destined to fail because they can't even "damage control" a book they published.
They are careless with the cleanup but I believe they are that way only because they control who gets to buy the books. As long as the books stay in the hands of members, they don't really care because the members are brainwashed not to see contradictions.
Their real problem, which they fail to see, is the members who get out.
Questioninginla wrote:
Hobbit wrote:
My friend doesn't have a title but has a lot of "faith". What I'm doing is studying a lot and getting to understand why is the church a cult. After I'm planning to start slowly to tell my friend about some thing that don't make sense. Hopefully my friend will get to the same conclusion. If it doesn't work, then ill leave.
I'm really wasting my life and I can feel how I'm wasting my years. I was reading the comments of the people lying for the church… While they are lying they are the ones being affected. I don't think I can take much more
imo, concentrate on the controls moreso than doctrine. why? the psychological research is clear that once people develop an attitude/behavior/new worldview, new information (information contrary to what has been taught and reinforced) has a high chance of creating what is called cognitive dissonance. in layman's terms, this means that the brain is trying to make sense of something that is….confusing, for lack of a better term. thus, emotions will rule and default to the group for support. I suspect that by "faith" that this means that this is what it is called, but in a pseudo-religion faith is cohesiveness to the group, conformity, and obedience. Only use doctrine where you find contradictions and ask your friend what they think of these contradictions; this forces people to think; do not answer for them. Part of the process that high-control groups do is altering the neural psychology, which lessens "upper cognitive" thinking, or critical thinking. When one no longer critically thinks then one can be easily manipulated by fear and other primal emotions.
getting back to cognitive dissonance, new information has a tendency to simply be re-arranged to lessen one's cognitive dissonance. I will use something not related to religion/faith as an example. Mary has decided to date both Todd and Jim for two weeks. Mary decides at the end of two weeks that she likes both men equally, but she decides to stop dating Todd and to continue dating Jim. Mary will end up liking Jim even more, convincing her that she made the correct choice. However, this is a basic psychological result of cognitive dissonance that any psych major should be aware of from psych 101.
as it relates to your/your friend's situation, cognitive dissonance can end up reinforcing your friend's "faith" and create an even stronger bond to the group, even though it is the result of an internal psychological process and not derived from bona-fide religious faith; the stimulus is missappropriated. And this is the problem with high-control groups. things are internalized. You'll hear "I make my own decisions" ad nauseam. I know psych and sociology majors and graduate degree holders that have been or are in high control groups and even they couldn't/don't recognize what was/is happening. Which leads us to information control….there are way too many ways to bind people and each pillar of control reinforces 2-3 others.
all of that being said, having a fellow "dissenter" ups the chances for success.
but realize all of the influence around you is vastly outweighing your influence if you are in a group setting. for obvious reasons, you want to be 1-on-1.
emil is wise to recommend an education of what happens to people that leave.
Best of luck to you, Hobbit.
About the controls..
I'm having a conversation with someone who [supposedly] studied with the WMSCOG briefly, accepted their belief, then quickly changed his mind. Here's a response I gave to one of his messages..
Renita C Payno
You write like a robot.. Or like that skinny dude from The Big Bang. Remember how they wanted to give you certain studies in a certain order? That's because those studies make sense in a certain kind of way. They give you something you probably haven't heard of and explain it. Once you agree that what you learned is true, they conclude that it came from Ash. This is where rational thinking is encouraged. BUT once you get into other more bizarre studies, the ones that prove [directly] their belief Ash is the Christ it doesn't quite make sense, especially when it's cross referenced with the foundation found in the NT. This is where they encourage you to discard your own opinion.
I love analogies so I'll give you one.
My daughter believes everything I say, usually. I've taught her the names of the animals and their associated sounds. Other kids are also learning the same thing so she is concrete in her belief that I know what I'm talking about. Let's say we come across a monkey, a new animal to her
I tell her it's a dog. She looks confused because she knows what a dog is, I taught her! I give this explanation,
It's a dog, it just looks different and makes a different noise but it's the same thing. I'm the mom, you're the kid. I know more than you. This is definitely a dog.
The problem, however, is when my daughter isn't 100% sure, she'll ask my mom or her teacher which I absolutely treasure about her. She would come back and tell me that it's not a dog, but a monkey.
This is what the WMSCOG does. This technique isn't a part of their doctrine but it's learned. The members that have become teachers don't realize they're doing this. But people who are critical thinkers like my daughter tend to walk away from this church. I was a critical thinker at 1st. They had to do a lot of studies with me to get me to believe Ash and Zahng were God. It took over a year before I actually believed Ash was God and almost 2 years to believe Zahng was God.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.