Seven Indicators of Abusiveness

[Note: This post appeared on the one of the several 2x2-related Internet news lists; contributed here with permission.]

Seven Characteristics of an Abusive System

contributed by Lee Fryer

All my statements here are generalizations; it is only through sizing up matters broadly that it's possible to arrive at meaningful diagnosis. The "truth" I knew growing up is what I would consider to be "truth-lite". My family traveled so I saw and heard of the more outrageous tyranny and rules proliferation. Sometimes, since I have family in the 2x2, and because many friends have qualities, and because no one is perfect, I feel guilty to level these charges. However, this is how I generally conceive the 2x2.

Children are raised in a "climate of superiority"; it's 2x2 culture against the world. Breeds conceit and/or contempt and/or indifference for fellow humans and /or self-loathing in certain personality types.
Parents, too often, abrogate their authority to workers. Workers have foolishly obliged.
Workers don't stay with friends and strangers where they go preaching. In effect, they "live" in the homes of those who "open their homes", violating the trust, sanctity, sacred intimacy, and the sacred father and the sacred mother figure. Family dynamics that are supposed to be concentrated , realized, and personalized within the family are trampled. An average child risks losing his identity up to or having it morphed by a system his parents have inordinately worshiped.
Workers' preaching fails to distinguish our Savior God from the reasonable role of the church in bringing the message of God's salvation. Persons who would bond positively with God bond negatively to the church.
Arbitrary , legalistic, non-essential rules aborts development of the conscience towards responsibility to right and wrong and sound, proportional, critical thought and action. 2x2's have sacrificed priceless quantities of love and joy to rules that embitter.
2x2 thought and action is too often warped by fear, the kind the devil would like us to have, which is self-concerned in it's nature, not God-fearing and people-loving. Nobody can tell me this won't negatively impact almost anybody proximate.
Finally, what would convince me this is not a system I would want to be in community with is their disregard for historical honesty and their failure to disclose William Irvine and his company. There is an enmity in kind between this sect and Christianity resounding from their conspiracy to kill what Providence once spoke. William Irvine, the one from whom they owe their identity and existence, was scandalized and sent packing. It's great irony. They had so much pride in their founder at the start. They could have learned a lot if they'd reflected seriously over the two decades the sect had emerged. With the passing of their blemished founder, as they denied and censored speak of him , went the opportunity for a proper humbling and learning of this lesson: Put your faith in God, not His creation. Yes, it was, and still is sinful that William Irvine was abandoned to an unmarked grave.