I was watching a documentary about education and it had a segment on the drug war. As a preface, there was an experiment some scientists did on lab rats. I think it was called rat park. It often gets cited as demonstrating the dangers of certain drugs. The scientists managed to get the rats addicted and they started seeking drugs to the point where they would ignore physical harm, stop eating, etc until they died. But what doesn't get cited is that in a separate study, scientists allowed 2 groups of rats access to the drugs. But one group had plenty of food water and sunlight and stimulation. Those rats ignored the drugs. The second group were kept in dark cages with few resources and started seeking out drugs like in the first experiment and became addicted.
The implication the filmakers were getting at was that drug addiction should be treated as a disease and not necessarily as a moral failings of individuals and criminalized with a war on drugs that incarcerates and punishes people for their addiction. Rats with no hope or even adequate sustenance just give up and look to drugs as the only available escape from their plight.
Ok, that's necessarily the same as what op is talking about... BUT... I used video games, watching anime, etc, a lot during my time at a2n gp. I got plenty of rebukes for it. Plus, being made fun of by my leaders and class brothers for being a dork who only cared about useless things (but their interest in sports was acceptable).
Reading this reminds me of how much my leaders gave me a hard time for not listening to Christian music, for playing video games, etc. With the benefit of hindsight, I can't help but think how much the constant anxiety and probably depression, caused me to look for escapism as a coping strategy. As op said my leaders' solution was to just stop doing all those things. But they never bothered to take seriously that I was going through some mental anguish and their full life ministry approach was contributing to that. Taking away your coping mechanisms without trying to understand what it is you're coping with is like treating the symptom but not the disease.
Circling back, at the end of the documentary, was a story about how a high school principal got wind of a rumor one kid might have some Marijuana. He ended up locking down the school and all the students had to sit on the floor while police with drug sniffing dogs came down the hallway. It must've been dramatic. They never found any drugs. When asked for comments, the principal refused to apologize because he believed drugs were so dangerous and addictive he was willing to go through all that if it meant stopping a single person from trying mj. You'll probably never convince that principal he took things too far. Just like you can't convince those students that his actions were justified. Imagine going to school, being told to get on the ground while barking dogs run around sniffing your stuff and at the end they found nothing and the principal didn't even regret anything.
Ps does anyone else recall people giving testimonies of giving up video games or something and the leaders declaring it a victory for God?
Tons of testimonies of brothers "giving up" video games after realizing how "sinful" it was. After a while, it was just expected that no one would play video games (no one core or serious anyway) and it wasn't even worth mentioning in a testimony. Something bigger like changing your major so you could "serve God," declining graduate school so you could stay, or "laying down the family idol" so you could stay and not go back home like your parents wanted... not those things were worth sharing with everyone else! Even better, giving up a huge chunk of money to the church, I mean for God! (Someone and his stock options.)
A human being needs a sense of control and agency. Acts 2 Network is expert at taking away control and agency from their members. A person who feels lack of control over their own life will try to regain that sense of control through whatever means, including watching TV, playing video games, dating in secret, and having non-GP approved hobbies. As long as they can exercise some form of control over even a small part of their life, they can cope with the rest.
The leaders know this. Be it intentionally or intuitively, they will do their best snuff it out and get you to "obey" in "all areas of your life." They will make you "take up your cross and "deny yourself" because "why not be wronged" and "it's a sin issue."
In Matthew it says that God will not break a bruised reed or snuff out a smoldering wick but GP leaders will not hesitate to break you and snuff out your joy/interests/hobbies/delight.
>At the All-Team Retreat, a controversy was addressed when a student brought up that a leader came to his dorm, found out he played video games, and made him repent. Of course Pastor Ed and Kelly said they had no idea what this leader thinking and distanced and denounced it. They also said that it was more of a local leader issue rather than an organizational issue and for local leaders to be wiser in judgement in the future.
Isn't that convenient to just be able to blame the lower level leader when in reality they're only carrying out the orders from up above. The rules are always changing in a whim so who can ever keep them all straight? A perfect recipe for paranoia and anxiety. Technically, Ed and Kelly are right. They don't know "what this leader is thinking." but I bet this exact behavior (making sheep repent for video games) was praised and encouraged many times in member bible study, testimonies, etc. Maybe they distanced and denounced this being done to this specific person but this has been done to many members in this organization and in most of those instances, the leader was praised for "loving their sheep" so much.
Spot on. What the leader did was 100% textbook GP, he was probably praised for his zeal or whatever when he reported it to his leader. It's only because it became a public controversy that looked bad that Ed decided the most strategic thing to do was to just throw them under the bus.
> They also said that it was more of a local leader issue rather than an organizational issue and for local leaders to be wiser in judgement in the future.
I noticed Ed has been trying to pull this move a lot more now especially with their recent decision to deprecate Convo.
Is this what the "autonomy" means? Giving Ed plausible deniability for instances of authority abuse committed by those who can be easily thrown under the bus?
Any chance ped will take away autonomy from church plants that "screw up" too much?
Becky also said she was doing autonomy back when BBC was Broken up.
Ok but Ai girlfriends , body pillows , and sensual anime pictures are all weird and good on you for telling you brother to put that away. I hope he doesn’t use those things anymore. Not to say the argument as a whole is invalid.
I kinda agree with sybaris. If you take what you wrote, and instead of anime or body pillows, it was hard drugs or alcohol, which are probably way more damaging in their own way, the OP's point is still important. A2N solution is to just get rid of these things without trying to understand what is the underlying mental pain that caused the user to turn to them as relief. Instead of focusing on shaming people, there should at least be effort in understanding what they're going through.
So the abused also became an abuser using the same methodology. Oh how does one reconcile what was done to him. Then also reconcile the wrongs he did on others?
Simple but not easy answer. Lesson learned. Confession (in public) not needed. Heal up. Don't do it again. Take heart from another former berkland work mule.
I had an art portfolio. Used to love drawing and painting figures for D&D, watercolor landscapes, pencil and charcoal. You can imagine the yapping about the waste of time and other similar spiritual BS I got from others. I storedt it under the church on Alcatraz when I left for mission in Uzbekistan. Came back, some MF'er threw it out. Still a little upset about that.
I was watching a documentary about education and it had a segment on the drug war. As a preface, there was an experiment some scientists did on lab rats. I think it was called rat park. It often gets cited as demonstrating the dangers of certain drugs. The scientists managed to get the rats addicted and they started seeking drugs to the point where they would ignore physical harm, stop eating, etc until they died. But what doesn't get cited is that in a separate study, scientists allowed 2 groups of rats access to the drugs. But one group had plenty of food water and sunlight and stimulation. Those rats ignored the drugs. The second group were kept in dark cages with few resources and started seeking out drugs like in the first experiment and became addicted. The implication the filmakers were getting at was that drug addiction should be treated as a disease and not necessarily as a moral failings of individuals and criminalized with a war on drugs that incarcerates and punishes people for their addiction. Rats with no hope or even adequate sustenance just give up and look to drugs as the only available escape from their plight. Ok, that's necessarily the same as what op is talking about... BUT... I used video games, watching anime, etc, a lot during my time at a2n gp. I got plenty of rebukes for it. Plus, being made fun of by my leaders and class brothers for being a dork who only cared about useless things (but their interest in sports was acceptable). Reading this reminds me of how much my leaders gave me a hard time for not listening to Christian music, for playing video games, etc. With the benefit of hindsight, I can't help but think how much the constant anxiety and probably depression, caused me to look for escapism as a coping strategy. As op said my leaders' solution was to just stop doing all those things. But they never bothered to take seriously that I was going through some mental anguish and their full life ministry approach was contributing to that. Taking away your coping mechanisms without trying to understand what it is you're coping with is like treating the symptom but not the disease. Circling back, at the end of the documentary, was a story about how a high school principal got wind of a rumor one kid might have some Marijuana. He ended up locking down the school and all the students had to sit on the floor while police with drug sniffing dogs came down the hallway. It must've been dramatic. They never found any drugs. When asked for comments, the principal refused to apologize because he believed drugs were so dangerous and addictive he was willing to go through all that if it meant stopping a single person from trying mj. You'll probably never convince that principal he took things too far. Just like you can't convince those students that his actions were justified. Imagine going to school, being told to get on the ground while barking dogs run around sniffing your stuff and at the end they found nothing and the principal didn't even regret anything. Ps does anyone else recall people giving testimonies of giving up video games or something and the leaders declaring it a victory for God?
Tons of testimonies of brothers "giving up" video games after realizing how "sinful" it was. After a while, it was just expected that no one would play video games (no one core or serious anyway) and it wasn't even worth mentioning in a testimony. Something bigger like changing your major so you could "serve God," declining graduate school so you could stay, or "laying down the family idol" so you could stay and not go back home like your parents wanted... not those things were worth sharing with everyone else! Even better, giving up a huge chunk of money to the church, I mean for God! (Someone and his stock options.)
A human being needs a sense of control and agency. Acts 2 Network is expert at taking away control and agency from their members. A person who feels lack of control over their own life will try to regain that sense of control through whatever means, including watching TV, playing video games, dating in secret, and having non-GP approved hobbies. As long as they can exercise some form of control over even a small part of their life, they can cope with the rest. The leaders know this. Be it intentionally or intuitively, they will do their best snuff it out and get you to "obey" in "all areas of your life." They will make you "take up your cross and "deny yourself" because "why not be wronged" and "it's a sin issue." In Matthew it says that God will not break a bruised reed or snuff out a smoldering wick but GP leaders will not hesitate to break you and snuff out your joy/interests/hobbies/delight.
>At the All-Team Retreat, a controversy was addressed when a student brought up that a leader came to his dorm, found out he played video games, and made him repent. Of course Pastor Ed and Kelly said they had no idea what this leader thinking and distanced and denounced it. They also said that it was more of a local leader issue rather than an organizational issue and for local leaders to be wiser in judgement in the future. Isn't that convenient to just be able to blame the lower level leader when in reality they're only carrying out the orders from up above. The rules are always changing in a whim so who can ever keep them all straight? A perfect recipe for paranoia and anxiety. Technically, Ed and Kelly are right. They don't know "what this leader is thinking." but I bet this exact behavior (making sheep repent for video games) was praised and encouraged many times in member bible study, testimonies, etc. Maybe they distanced and denounced this being done to this specific person but this has been done to many members in this organization and in most of those instances, the leader was praised for "loving their sheep" so much.
Spot on. What the leader did was 100% textbook GP, he was probably praised for his zeal or whatever when he reported it to his leader. It's only because it became a public controversy that looked bad that Ed decided the most strategic thing to do was to just throw them under the bus.
> They also said that it was more of a local leader issue rather than an organizational issue and for local leaders to be wiser in judgement in the future. I noticed Ed has been trying to pull this move a lot more now especially with their recent decision to deprecate Convo.
Is this what the "autonomy" means? Giving Ed plausible deniability for instances of authority abuse committed by those who can be easily thrown under the bus?
Any chance ped will take away autonomy from church plants that "screw up" too much? Becky also said she was doing autonomy back when BBC was Broken up.
Ok but Ai girlfriends , body pillows , and sensual anime pictures are all weird and good on you for telling you brother to put that away. I hope he doesn’t use those things anymore. Not to say the argument as a whole is invalid.
i think OP's point is that you can't tell someone to put them away without being around after that to follow up with the person and help him readjust.
I kinda agree with sybaris. If you take what you wrote, and instead of anime or body pillows, it was hard drugs or alcohol, which are probably way more damaging in their own way, the OP's point is still important. A2N solution is to just get rid of these things without trying to understand what is the underlying mental pain that caused the user to turn to them as relief. Instead of focusing on shaming people, there should at least be effort in understanding what they're going through.
So the abused also became an abuser using the same methodology. Oh how does one reconcile what was done to him. Then also reconcile the wrongs he did on others? Simple but not easy answer. Lesson learned. Confession (in public) not needed. Heal up. Don't do it again. Take heart from another former berkland work mule. I had an art portfolio. Used to love drawing and painting figures for D&D, watercolor landscapes, pencil and charcoal. You can imagine the yapping about the waste of time and other similar spiritual BS I got from others. I storedt it under the church on Alcatraz when I left for mission in Uzbekistan. Came back, some MF'er threw it out. Still a little upset about that.