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Love Family 1983 Breakup Letter |
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After meeting secretly for several weeks in the summer of 1983 in the Eastern Washington, a group of Love Family members drew up this letter to present to Love with our many grievances. Below is copy of this letter, with signatures. This letter was presented to Love Israel in a final attempt at rescuing the pending disintegration of the majority of the Love Family. When Love was handed the letter he read about one or two lines before throwing it to the ground. Needless to say Love ignored it all and one by one each individual tried their own personal attempt at speaking with Love. By the end of the summer the community dropped from about 350 people down to about 50 people. |
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Dear Love, We have some important things to say to you. We understand the coldness of anything put in writing. For this we apologize and ask that you please read the entire letter before responding. We can imagine how easily this letter could be misunderstood, and we hope that you will be able to appreciate that it comes from our love for you and our Family. We pray that you can forgive any offence this causes. We believe that you have alienated yourself from the general family to such a degree that the very existence of the Family is in serious jeopardy. We see three basic areas that you have alienated yourself: Spiritually, Socially and Economically. Spiritually you have abused your power of absolute authority by making yourself all too often an exception to your own directlives, agreements and advice. This abuse has resulted in a feeling of contradiction and hypocrisy impossible to respect and has left your word, the backbone of our government, something to doubt rather than depend on. You have transgressed the laws of God by using fear and oppression rather than love as the power behind your word and by fostering lies and deception within and without the Family. You have been acting as someone led by desires for power and wealth rather than love and charity. Socially you have alienated yourself by acting without and against counsel in matters that effect all of our lives and holding yourself infallibly above criticism and, contrary to your own belief, consistently finding blame in others outside yourself rather than looking to yourself for the cause. You have withdrawn yourself from, and show little or no involvement in, the daily life of your people, over which you hold absolute authority. |
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You have displayed a lack of basic human respect toward
others as fellow members of the Body of Christ. You have strongly inhibited an
atmosphere of honesty and openness, while fostering a sense of secret society,
alienating one friend from another. We can no longer take part in a government of oppression and deceit and maintain a sense of righteousness and integrity towards God and our people. Economically you have separated yourself from your people by exercising a privilege (denied by you to others) to gain and use large sums of money for personal pleasure. This money call "not the Family's money" thereby placing yourself outside Commonwealth. In contrast to your own advice you spend beyond your means and obligate your people beyond our means. In matters of great importance to our people you neglect to deal with your responsibility and are unable to trust authority to others to handle the responsibilities. This is creating an organization that has potentially serious legal and consequences for our people and for you, personally. In conflict with your dream of creating an ideal government supported by loving free-will offerings, you have created a feeling in your people that they are being over-taxed to feed an insatiable appetite. We are left with a feeling that regardless of much money we can afford to give you it is never enough. This clearly draining people of their inspiration to give. At the root of all these problems is a gap between absolute authority and unfulfilled responsibility we believe this exists because we have been trying to perpetuate a belief in Love’s infallibility, which is not true. There is a tremendous amount of pain and confusion created by trying to support this concept. It hurts each one of us in our relationship with you, with each other, in our marriages, with our children and especially in our relationship to the world around |
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us. It is making a mockery of our Church and our Faith in Jesus Christ. We ask you to, in all aspects of life, relinquish authority to those who are responsible. In particularly, we ask that you divorce yourself from all business, as you have often suggested, and direct yourself towards caring for people. We ask acknowledgement of the fact that you are no more free from the consequences of your actions than any other person in God's creation. We also ask for an apology for your gross self-indulgence and your oppression of people, especially women, and your making of "agreements" and "laws" for your people that you do not keep. We ask this because we believe these issues have destroyed people’s confidence in you and respect for you as the Head of our Family. We ask you to do this out of love for your people and because we believe that this is vital to our continued life together. By casting yourself as an infallible God you have created a burden that is impossible to bear, especially for you. Yet, as God's servant you have succeeded at bringing us together, for which we are eternally grateful. This letter is meant as an act of hope. A hope that we can regain the strength that comes from each person deals and rebuilds a more firm foundation for our continued growth. |
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