Ray Franz's book left me with the impression that the GB believes they are God's Organization. Any deceit on their part (misquoting other sources, flawed reasoning, conflicting stances) are all with the intent to keep the "flock of God" serving that organization. It seems as if they truly believe it.
Gina and I have talked about this alot. The biggest hole in the "they know they're a cult" theory is the big mistakes they make if they were actually trying to do that. Think of the better ways they could indoctrinate children. If they had "sunday school classes", like other churches, they could concentrate on indoctrinating the kids. Rather than leaving it to the whims of the family heads, they could see to it that three times a week, the kids heard the "truth" in their own language. But instead they blow it, raising generation after generation of kids that remember little of their early Kingdom Hall days besides sitting still and getting shushed and being bored.
There are other glaring mistakes I've noticed, but I don't remember them. And I'm sure there's tons I've missed.
Why didn't we realize it? How could we possibly not know we were in a cult/high-control-group? The training from the very outset taught us to immediately turn away from anyone trying to "lure us away" from the "Truth". Remember the "Truth" book -- the "blue bomb"? It warned newly interested folks that their friends and family would try -- with your best interests at heart -- to dissuade you from your new faith, but God expects you to 'obey him as ruler rather than men.' Very quickly, we were sucked into believing that it was God himself that wrote the literature, and anyone disagreeing with it was disagreeing with God.
It's amazing we bought into it. And equally amazing that once in, we were able to escape.
Dave
