A comment that I posted elsewhere months ago regarding the use of the UBF-ism, "true rest":
28th-Jul-2006 03:10 am (UTC) - "true rest" and "true freedom"
The UBF-speak that most of us are familiar with includes phrases such as "true rest" and "true freedom." They mean "constant work for the group" and "obedience and subservience to the group's leader(s)," respectively. Rest is almost always equated with laziness in sermons and other forms of teaching. Freedom is equated with permissiveness and moral decay. You can hardly hear the words "rest" and "freedom" without that adjective "true" in front of them.
In their teaching and sermons, Jesus' attempts to rest and vacation with his disciples were ALWAYS interrupted by things like crowds of "sheep," Jesus' many "one-to-one" appointments with his disciples, and the occasional need for Jesus to appoint a new UBF-style "director" of the remote region that he happened to be visiting with his disciples. Never mind that there were probably interludes of real uninterrupted rest and time off with his disciples that are not recorded in the Gospels. Never mind that Jesus actually saw the necessity of physical rest for both himself and his disciples.
Here are some examples of UBF's "true rest" and its "therapeutic" effects from a previous discussion:
* Andrew and his elder brother Ivan were down with influenza and temperature above 39C. Yet, they were commanded to attend a meeting. Ivan did not attend the meeting, therefore his wedding was postponed. Andrew – being younger and not so courageous to decline – attended the meeting that lasted after midnight when there was scarce public transport. After that, he got a sever pneumonia and later bronchitis, which healed completely only after leaving UBF, because in UBF he had never enough time to rest and recover.
* Before conferences, they had 15 different meetings a week in Kiev (in Heidelberg, it was similar, by the way) where they had to come to the center
* Those who wanted to visit their parents in the summer holidays were publicly dispraised
* Those members who attended other churches in Kiev were considered “lost sheep” [must not be "true rest" if you "keep the Sabbath holy" in a different church]
* You could not be in a good standing with UBF without attending *all* meetings
* One shepherdess was told to come to a meeting, although she had fever and her infant at home
* When the wife of the leader left the hospital in order to attend a UBF meeting, though she was on a drip, this was presented as exemplary behavior
* If you leave Kiev and visit another church in another town, you are denounced by the leader [Again, the "true Sabbath rest" must only be in UBF.]
Only after you leave UBF do you learn that "rest" in the Bible may actually mean rest and "freedom" may actually mean freedom.
A reputable teacher knows and teaches that Jesus himself is a Christians' true Sabbath rest. But in UBF, with the holy importance given to the Sunday meeting(s) and equating it (and only it) with "keeping the Sabbath holy," I did not once hear that Jesus is our true Sabbath rest, in my decades spent there. UBF effectively turned Jesus' teaching on its head and made Sunday my least favorite day: Man was made for the Sabbath, not the Sabbath for Man.
