Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Word's To Choke On




Words to Choke On

Dennis Diehl - EzineArticles Expert AuthorWillful ignorance is a disease. The problem is that those who have it and choose it as a course in living, don't believe they do have it.  I read The Journal, a compilation of all the theological wranglings, ideas, opinions, declarations and contradictory truths in the Churches of God and really in all religion, and note the same thing I noted as a kid..."All these perspectives contradict and they can't all be right."   The authors, however, believe that everyone else, but themselves, is wrong.  If they just use bigger letters and brighter colors in their pronouncements, the wise will see that they alone are on the true path and need your support. 


To some, God has a puzzle to solve and only the wise can solve it. To others, the Elijah has come and gone and only the chosen have been left to close up the house.  It's really kinda nuts.  In all cases, however, no one is ever just simply wrong.  We can't know the day or hour of Jesus return, but darn it. that does not mean we can't know the month or the year and I will be recalculating that for us all by weeks end. 

Pious conviction with marginal information is not our friend, and sanctified ignorance is still ignorance.

I have met a lot of people who are never wrong. They never take back that which they spoke which proved to be either stupid, inane or simply wrong. They waffle, redefine and deny, but they are never wrong. These people are incapable of saying "oops," much less, "I'm sorry," You find them everywhere. They might be a pastor, a politician, a CEO or a President. They might be your mother- in-law, father-in-law, dad, mom, brother or sister. Of course, it could be you, but you won't notice that. One common thing they share is that they are NEVER wrong. Of course they are wrong, misinformed or just plain stupid in the way they view and filter their world, but they are never wrong in fact. Their inability to say "I am sorry," or "I was wrong," is legendary in the family, the church, the office or the government and the damage inflicted on those that fall victim of these people can be humorous, mildly annoying or catastrophic.

Ron Weinland, who believes he and his wife are the Two Witnesses of Revelation, Dave Pack, who alone is the only true Apostle of the still tiny Sliver Church of God, Gerald Flurry, who just knows he is "That Prophet" and sole heir to truth...are never wrong.  You have never heard any of them after a time utter those words.

Harold Camping of the May 21st, 2011 Rapture debacle is never wrong and won't admit it. Rather, as most, redefines the mission, declares it was a spiritual event and not a physical one and "you people misunderstood."  And then turns right around and sets another date in the Fall. 

Politicians who call people names and then say they didn't, or knew it was an insult but claim being oblivious to the fact, are this kind of which I speak. Men who can't come up with anything better to say than "she's ugly" and then waffle around trying to come up with another reason as to why they say such stupid things fit the bill too. "Im sorry, I was rude and wrong," will do just fine. After years of being told we are going to "stay the course," we now are being told that never meant this or that when it did as it was thrown back in the faces of those that asked about rethinking the course.

The average American is not stupid when they hear the answers given to questions by those that really don't want to give the answer. We even mostly know the answer before we ask the question and we certainly can tell when the answer given is not the real answer. How many "oops, sorry about that," have we heard after these great observations and declarations? How many White House press briefings can you listen to before you realize either, "the guy is lying," waffeling or they must think we are absolutely brain dead and stupid.

Let's have some fun seeing where "I'm sorry, I was mistaken," never seems to reveal it's graceful presence.

"Now that the combat phase of the war in Iraq is officially over, what begins is a debate throughout the entire U.S. government over America's unrivaled power and how best to use it."
(CBS reporter Joie Chen, 5/4/03)

"Congress returns to Washington this week to a world very different from the one members left two weeks ago. The war in Iraq is essentially over and domestic issues are regaining attention."
(NPR's Bob Edwards, 4/28/03)

"Tommy Franks and the coalition forces have demonstrated the old axiom that boldness on the battlefield produces swift and relatively bloodless victory. The three-week swing through Iraq has utterly shattered skeptics' complaints."
(Fox News Channel's Tony Snow, 4/27/03) I think we can see why Tony may have gotten the job White Press Secretary...

"The only people who think this wasn't a victory are Upper Westside liberals, and a few people here in Washington."
(Charles Krauthammer, Inside Washington, WUSA-TV, 4/19/03)

"The war was the hard part. The hard part was putting together a coalition, getting 300,000 troops over there and all their equipment and winning. And it gets easier. I mean, setting up a democracy is hard, but it is not as hard as winning a war."
(Fox News Channel's Fred Barnes, 4/10/03)

"The war winds down, politics heats up.... Picture perfect. Part Spider-Man, part Tom Cruise, part Ronald Reagan. The president seizes the moment on an aircraft carrier in the Pacific."
(PBS's Gwen Ifill, 5/2/03, on George W. Bush's "Mission Accomplished" speech)

"We're proud of our president. Americans love having a guy as president, a guy who has a little swagger, who's physical, who's not a complicated guy like Clinton or even like Dukakis or Mondale, all those guys, McGovern. They want a guy who's president. Women like a guy who's president. Check it out. The women like this war. I think we like having a hero as our president. It's simple. We're not like the Brits."
(MSNBC's Chris Matthews, 5/1/03)

"If image is everything, how can the Democratic presidential hopefuls compete with a president fresh from a war victory?"
(CNN's Judy Woodruff, 5/5/03)

"It is amazing how thorough the victory in Iraq really was in the broadest context..... And the silence, I think, is that it's clear that nobody can do anything about it. There isn't anybody who can stop him. The Democrats can't oppose--cannot oppose him politically."
(Washington Post reporter Jeff Birnbaum-- Fox News Channel, 5/2/03)

Often those who find it difficult to say "I was wrong," or "I am sorry," are very quick to accuse everyone else of that inability, only to later have to eat the proverbially crow, though it still always tastes like steak to them.

"I'm waiting to hear the words 'I was wrong' from some of the world's most elite journalists, politicians and Hollywood types.... I just wonder, who's going to be the first elitist to show the character to say: 'Hey, America, guess what? I was wrong'? Maybe the White House will get an apology, first, from the New York Times' Maureen Dowd. Now, Ms. Dowd mocked the morality of this war....

"Do you all remember Scott Ritter, you know, the former chief U.N. weapons inspector who played chief stooge for Saddam Hussein? Well, Mr. Ritter actually told a French radio network that -- quote, "The United States is going to leave Baghdad with its tail between its legs, defeated." Sorry, Scott. I think you've been chasing the wrong tail, again."

And we're waiting to hear a few words of apology from a few people as well... It's always good for those given to high fiveing themselves before the time to think before they speak and remember that labeling people for their caution, disagreements, observations, intuitive and gut feelings about that which no one else seems to be thinking about, can come back to haunt them. Too much enthusiasm for "see, see, we're right, you're wrong," and all the backbiting that goes along with it has a way of showing up again to challenge the braggarts. We all have done it and we all do it, but when the stakes are as high as they are these days for all of us, the inability to say, "I am sorry," I was wrong," or "I made a mistake," is no statesman like quality. It can lead to everything from economic disaster to death, and it was not necessary.

"Over the next couple of weeks when we find the chemical weapons this guy was amassing, the fact that this war was attacked by the left and so the right was so vindicated, I think, really means that the left is going to have to hang its head for three or four more years."
(Fox News Channel's Dick Morris, 4/9/03)

"This has been a tough war for commentators on the American left. To hope for defeat meant cheering for Saddam Hussein. To hope for victory meant cheering for President Bush. The toppling of Mr. Hussein, or at least a statue of him, has made their arguments even harder to defend. Liberal writers for ideologically driven magazines like The Nation and for less overtly political ones like The New Yorker did not predict a defeat, but the terrible consequences many warned of have not happened. Now liberal commentators must address the victory at hand and confront an ascendant conservative juggernaut that asserts United States might can set the world right."
(New York Times reporter David Carr, 4/16/03)

"Well, the hot story of the week is victory.... The Tommy Franks-Don Rumsfeld battle plan, war plan, worked brilliantly, a three-week war with mercifully few American deaths or Iraqi civilian deaths.... There is a lot of work yet to do, but all the naysayers have been humiliated so far.... The final word on this is, hooray."
(Fox News Channel's Morton Kondracke, 4/12/03)

Oops...Can we all give a collective Homer Simpson "Doh!".
"This will be no war -- there will be a fairly brief and ruthless military intervention.... The president will give an order. [The attack] will be rapid, accurate and dazzling.... It will be greeted by the majority of the Iraqi people as an emancipation. And I say, bring it on."
(Christopher Hitchens, in a 1/28/03 debate-- cited in the Observer, 3/30/03)

I'm sure some of these commentators have since admitted to having been a bit prematurely enthusiastic for that which, to date, has proven to be one the biggest miscalculations in American history. The "V" word has even been spoken by the man who we may have hoped had learned something from his generations experience with Vietnam. Of course most of us are not privy to other agendas besides spreading freedom around the world.

Ministers are not above the inability to say I am sorry or I was wrong either. I pastored in a denomination that was never wrong from the top down, but always wrong from the bottom up. Come to think of it, that sounds like the government too at the moment or maybe all moments. Countless, and I mean countless ministers have predicted the exact time that Jesus would return and have been wrong, oh let's say...100% of the time.

Whole denominations have mislead the faithful on a myriad of topics but to say "We're sorry, we were wrong," is just not something even the humble in Jesus can come up with very often. Saying one is sorry is usually something that occurs only after one is caught or trapped.

It's has taken over 400 years to absolve the then heretic Galileo from thinking the earth revolved around the sun and that the sun, not the earth, was the center of the solar system and the sun revolved around us.  After all, the Bible says that "the power of God is from the rising of the Sun until the going down thereof," so it is the sun that moves. Christians never think that this scripture also indicates that to the author, God, like the Sun was only powerful during the day and had to yield power to forces of darkness at sunset.  That may because God IS the Sun.

 Churches hold on to their fables and apologies way beyond what most normal institutions do. How long will it take to apologize when Church officials decide that Limbo is not the place where the unsaved babies go, like they know, when they announce this reality to the faithful? You can bet you will hear things like, "It was never a doctrine," or "It never was an official teaching," but you won't get away with that kind of "we're sorry," with the average person who was either tormented or only mildly comforted by this when they lost a child prior to the arrival of the sprinklers.

Too many ministers have the subconscious belief that if they are wrong, God will correct them and, of course, any apologies or admissions of wrongness will be spoke privately to the deity. They will, however, announce to you that they have done this, but you will never really know. Ministers need to apologize to people for it is people they offend and not a Deity. 

Some of us can't say we are sorry or we were wrong because we falsely believe that somehow it a weakness to admit such things. More than one psychologist has noted that "Fool me once..shame, shame...on...you," is not so much a gaff as the deeply psychological inability to say "shame on me," which is another way of not being able to admit to being wrong or a committing a misstep. To choke on the words expressing shame, sorrow, apology or being mistaken is not a good sign when we are talking about mature leadership. To come across as anything less than human is not going to win points with the not as stupid as one might think average church goer or American.

We lie when we can't admit we are wrong, mistaken or perhaps have another agenda that we do not wish
disturbed. I think Americans are beginning to believe that this last reason is more the case with Iraq and perhaps Iran. Even church goers are beginning to question the motives of those that demand too much of their money for the Lord and remind you that you can be "dismembered" when you ask uncomfortable questions about doctrine or the Bible itself. "Just trust me," is no longer going to work among the informed. Like Snickers, the Internet is a gift from God Himself. One can do their own homework and come to their own conclusions using far more information than that just supplied by the Guru, Apostle, Witness or Priest.

We live in a time where Presidents, Politicians and Pastors who have the inability to say that they have been misguided, unguided, mistaken and plainly wrong is endangering not only our intellectual health, but our lives on the planet. Suck it up guys. Just say it when it dawns on you. Allow it to dawn on you from time to time. "I was wrong, I am sorry."

When was the last time you heard your executive, judicial, senatorial, congressional or pastoral leaders say "I was wrong," "We were wrong," "I am sorry"? From "I did not have sex with that woman," to "those weapons of mass destruction must be around here somewhere," just saying "I'm sorry," seems the hardest thing to do. Give it a try anyway before you kill us all spiritually and literally.

Dennis C. Diehl
DenniscDiehl@aol.com

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

The Armstrongist leaders are worse than useless. It is difficult to believe that they have any faith in the Bible at all. They all know they lied and deceived, and yet... the Scripture says that liars will not enter into the Kingdom of God. If this is so, none of them will make it because they stubbornly refuse to admit that they lied and then they took the money.

The authors of "Take Back Your Life" call such cult leaders sociopaths. Here's a quote:

Particularly through skillful use of rhetoric, such a leader persuades his needy audience: "Follow me and I will take care of you. Together we can make a new beginning and create a new society. The fault is not within us but out there, and the only barrier to the happiness, peace, and prosperity we deserve is the outside enemy out to destroy us." This is eerily like Herbert Armstrong saying at the Feast of Tabernacles in 1972, Follow me, I will lead you into the Kingdom of God. He's dead now. Soon, many of these other evil wicked men will be dead too.

Another quote: It seems as if these leaders come from a common mold, sometimes light-heartedly called the "Cookie-Cutter Messiah School."

It does not seem to shame them in the least that the Armstrongists cannot even begin to measure up to the original monster End Time False Prophet Apostle.

But then, if they admitted they were wrong, they would put their salary and retirement at risk, and few things are more important than that.

Herbert Armstrong is one of the greatest religious leaders of the 20th Century to produce divisions. His erstwhile hirelings seem determined to follow his example.

It's no wonder such men produce a new crop of atheists each year....

Michael D. Maynard said...

Dennis,

On this topic I agree with much of what you write.

As I see it a part of the problem stems from an educational system in America that dumbs-down the youth and does not teach critical and analytical skills so individuals can evaluate issues based on the facts and make decisions on the merits of the facts thus making informed decisions.

Logic skills are also not widely taught so people in general lack the tools to logically arrive at good decisions.

Ergo, Proof Texting in the Worldwide built that religions false theology, which is not difficult to determine if approached logically, providing one is literate and has a Bible.

Common sense, another powerful tool, seems to have evaporated and replaced by something else, maybe peer pressure and sheep mentality. The masses mindlessly following the latest pop culture trend.

Whether Politics or Religion. it is easy for leaders to mislead because the folks are so preoccupied with entertainment and just don't care, they want some one else to do the hard thinking for them, so they (we) end up with the leaders they (we) deserve.

Religious thrive on ignorance as we know. The Catholic Church during the middle ages outlawed the ownership of the Bible by lay members. Not to mention most people were either illiterate or spoke vlugar languages and did not read or write Latin. The only Bible availabe, the Latin Vulgate, was too expensive to buy and the lay members could not read Latin. Only the Catholic Priests did. So the Catholic Church totally controlled the membership. Even the church services were in Latin, so no Catholic could even understand what was read or taught. But Guttenbern really messed up the Popish party in Rome when people started reading the Bible for themselves and realized they had been lied to.

Gutenberg, his Bible, and his printing press was like the internet in our time.

Today again the frauds have been exposed. What was hidden is now brought to light and the religions that manipulated and controlled peoples lives through deception are being thrown off.

I know this is why Me and many others are streaming out of the Churches of god that came out of Armstrong's Worldwide.

Information is power!

Let the bleeding continue in churches, there are fewer excuses for being ignorant on religion or politics these days. Good article.

I am sorry, and I was wrong. And I hurt a lot of people I loved in the process.

Michael

Allen C. Dexter said...

"I am sorry, and I was wrong. And I hurt a lot of people I loved in the process."

I can say "Amen" to that.

All I can be happy about is the fact that I turned away when my error became apparent.

I hurt no one cleaning, installing and repairing carpets. Nor have I hurt anyone performing marriage ceremonies for people who wanted to commit to a life of loving each other.

In a couple more years, I can say that half of my life has been a good life that benefited rather than hurt others.