Good Night WCG-Gracie/A Few Final Thoughts
To begin with, this letter is for me and perhaps part of my own life experience and healing after a 26 year run as a Pastor in the Worldwide Church of God. I came to the Church philosophically at the age of 16, having grown up Presbyterian in a very stable and loving family. The teachings of the WCG appealed to me and made more sense if one was to read and take the Bible as a fundamentally true document in all the areas that it claimed to express it's truth. The world of the 60's was chaotic. Presidents were assassinated, politicians were gunned down and civil rights protesters and leaders were being beaten, hung, drawn and shot. The Middle East was on fire as were many American cities. The Bible seemed to say that the end of something was near. I was also young and naive, but with wonderful intentions.I went to Ambassador College against the wishes of my parents, who simply allowed me to make my own decisions. What a wonderful concept, allowing your kids to make their own religious decisions, even though I recently told my dad, now near 90 and a former elder in WCG, that I wish he had slapped me silly for even thinking of going. Of course, at that time, that would have only proved to me that it was the right thing to do since I was being opposed and at the time, I just knew I had to be there. I had to study and wanted to see the world through the eyes of the Church. It just seemed right to me and any ego loves believing that God himself was doing the calling. I was not drawn by the Armstrong personalities at first. There were many times at college where they annoyed me and I knew that what was spoken so brilliantly and with charisma, was in fact, not actually true, or simply speculation about the times in which were living. The information is what caught my attention. I was a very serious thinker at a very young age. There are reasons for that that I now understand completely, but I spare you.
And so I went to Ambassador. I wanted to be a pastor and even though I heard that God had to call you and, of course, the administration had to choose you, I studied as if it was all up to me. I had a 3.96 grade average. I enjoyed studying the Bible. I simply wanted to know "the truth". I got corrected for hair too long and not enough attendance at basketball games. I didn't care about basketball, but to make me show up, they made me be a flag something-or-other in a white coat and I felt like an idiot. I should have said no, but complied. I complied a lot over the next 26 years over more serious topics, though teaching and encouraging the congregation was more important to me than enforcing silly or reckless rules about various topics.
After graduation I went into "the field". Five states, 14 congregations and 26 years later, in a five minute phone call at 9:30 in the evening, I was terminated. Strangely enough, it was the anniversary of my baptism at 19 years old.
Now is the moment I have to be honest about me if I am to continue. I currently am a skeptic as to the origins and history of the Christian Church. That is my business and the result of my own study and perspectives. The WCG experience caused me to really look deeply into origins and I personally found I was not told near the truth about the matter. They didn't know near as much as they pretended to know. I was coming to some of these conclusions during the last few years as a pastor. I can hear some of this skepticism in some of my last Festival sermons. I felt that if a whole church administration can publicly flip an entire organization's belief system and expect compliance, I can certainly entertain the doubts and contradictions I have seen in the Bible quietly by myself. I could have easily walked off with most of the local congregation if I wanted to have years of local politics and doing what Christian Churches do best... argue, judge and fight, but I was done. I will never lose my interest in theology. I still want to know the truth even if it is not the one I set out to understand. I simply will not join another church again. From my perspective the Old and the New WCG was and is ill informed as is all literalist, evangelical and fundamentalist Christianity. That may not be true for you, but it is true for me. My favorite observation is that most Christians are piously convicted but marginally informed. That is true to me.
Most pastoring years were personally rewarding. I did not have to work in large cities playing games with other pastors who had empires to rule and egos to feed. I simply did my job, love those I met, laughed with them, cried with them, married and buried spouses, children and relatives, along with growing churches. I drove approximately one million miles (really) visiting, being a friend and believing I was doing the right thing.
There were lots of guys and families like mine. It's the narcissists that got all the bad press and still do. Towards the end, when every visit turned into a slug fest over what the Tkach's were doing in the Church, any capacity was a burden and not a joy. It was a miserable experience. Your friend one day became your lost friend the next. On top of that, I was in the American Southeast where being judgmental and critical of others not like you has been raised to an art form. Around here, every third male thinks that if he can read and tell a few stories, he is a Pastor. It's one of the few professions where one with no education or meaningful credentials can claim ultimate authority from God, and be someone.
By analogy, I came to a hockey game and at half time, someone came out, melted the ice, put up hoops and demanded I not only play, but coach Basketball, which if you remember...I don't like. Suffering a personal depression and a lot of regret over having given my youth and energy to the ever-changing truth, I made some mistakes that would be considered unacceptable as a pastor. Outside of the ministry and its neurotic demand to "become perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect," it would just be what it was and a common, oft told tale and theme of what I would help many a member with and through. But as a pastor, I could be criticized and I accept that. No one can live the life, feel the feelings or have the thoughts of another. Not in a real world.
At any rate, I stayed to encourage the local congregation. It did not work. The assault on what we must now think and do was relentless and those who did not participate simply had to go. If you were a minister, you simply lost everything and had to reinvent your life after being "uncalled" if being "recalled" and retrofitted did not make you a good little evangelical, hand waving, "cross" eyed, freak. YOU, not I managed to reduce my local congregation from just under 400 very sincere and faithful people to around 25 now meeting in some hokey storefront giving out Halloween candy with scriptures on the wrappers! Oh barf (it was a printable story on spreading the Gospel in the WN) ...winning converts with Scriptural Halloween candy!! It is simply pathetic to see a congregation and a MINISTER reduced to that nonsense. YOU, not I managed to reduce all my previous congregations by 90%+ Nice work.
Anyway...It simply came down to that five minute call one evening out of the blue informing me that I was done in the ministry and that I could call personnel for the details of the severance package. It was six months pay to get a new life and signing off on any future retirement, unless WCG, which means Bernie Schnippert, deems you loyal enough to support. Of course, I was not so that's quite a savings right there.... Perhaps one can imagine the position that puts one in when in my youth, the church had all ministers sign off on Social Security with the promise that "we will take care of you". Well actually you have taken care of me... but good.
My dad worked for Eastman Kodak, has been retired for years and you know, he once bought Fuji film, and Kodak still gives him retirement. Retirement is not based on loyalty. It is based on years of service.
You can't ask people to be loyal to something that was pushed upon them and with which they had little agreement. Most of the people in WCG came FROM where you wanted to go. You can't ask people to change their minds, hopes and faith just because YOU think they should agree with you. Life, much less the human mind does not work that way. Frankly, those of you who "administer" the church, should have left long ago and asked Benny Hinn, TBN , and the Harvest Crock Church to take you in as spiritual refugees. I realize you could not continue to grant yourselves lifetime income and security by doing this, but it is what YOU should have done and left the Church, whose perspective you scorned, alone. If it was wrong for YOU, then leave it, don't destroy it and drive most to despair, skepticism and in some few cases literal suicide. Instead, you made everyone else leave. Now that's power...stupid, self-serving and egocentric power. Benny Hinn has a rule that he does not want people looking him in the eyes. He makes it a rule wherever he goes. He does it as part of his holy farce, fake and failed prophecies ministry because he believes he is more special than others. Perhaps a similar rule would save you all from seeing the pain, hurt and spiritual confusion in the eyes of countless good people, including former ministers who gave just as much and more in some areas a congregant could not appreciate.
You need to remember that the monies you realized in the sale of the campus which you will now "invest" into an almost non existent "worldwide church" and give yourselves and as few others as possible a lifetime income, is labor from the 1950's, 60's 70's 80's and 90's. I'd say you should calculate how much real giving YOU inspired. Real giving, from the heart during your Sheepling of the Sheep and not the efforts of others, whether you agreed with them or not. And you can't count the guilt or habitual giving types. You can only count the purely evangelical fundamentalist "New and Improved Church of God" giving. That's your money to work with. That's the fruit of your labor in "Him" as some say. I'd also like to ask that when you go to eat out, or take a cruise in the fall to not keep an archaic, and Jesus embarrassing non-festival. Or when you pay a mortgage or get a new car or have your health needs taken care of, and do whatever your good Christian Evangelical heart wan ts, you might remember what others might be struggling with just to keep up. I know my own father was able to survive because Kodak had a plan,
I am not so sure about myself at this moment in my life. By others, I include former members also, but mean former pastors with whom I also have had great experience. Please remember when you are tempted to judge or put people in categories of worthy or not worthy, that you're coming to "know" Jesus and reinventing the wheel of truth, and discovering the "old old story", which is older than you can possibly imagine, has cost others a lot. It cost some who were unable to distinguish between the emotional death of their hope and faith and literal death, their lives. That is not a judgment. That is just the way it has been for some.
Being a hard wired sensitive human being (ENFP-let him who reads understand); I understand that feeling and shock. The depression I have wrestled with is really internalized anger, and the sarcasm I am capable of is simply that anger turned sideways. Neither you nor the previous administration were particularly easy people to reason with or explain things to. You are always right it seems, and to date, a rather emotionally cold and calculated group outside your circle and towards those that have reacted to your administration. I have always said when the common folk simply have had enough and say "NO" to childish posturing and the phony authority ministerial administrative types put on, all of a sudden, God inspires a new and better understanding. But in fact, it is simply realizing one can't dismiss the common sense perspectives of educated people and survive.
We get depressed because people don't listen and we lose our bearings with little or no genuine support. You all need to understand that. Personally, I am still amazed that since that one fateful personal call that my career was over, no one ever contacted me again...ever. This is what I mean by cold. I encouraged the local church in my last sermon to continue to support you. I have since regretted the content and misplaced loyalty of my last sermon. I believe that was back when I had just been assured that "we will not be changing" this or that, and it all changed that month.
The emotions that people direct towards the collective "you" for reckless change and indifference to the spiritual and physical sacrifices made by thousands and which now result in your having more money than you need to "do the work", is quite normal. I suspect, as do others, you knew what your losses would be, but did not care, and still don't. Maybe even you don't know why you do and did what you did. Perhaps that would take a professional to sort out.
I don't know the games you played with your Evangelical supporters behind the scenes but I do know that "the Bible Answer Man" and others you have embraced also show a pattern of financial gain through religious manipulation and theological ignorance. Hank Hanegraaf's perspective on evolution and literal human origins is simply ignorant. He is not qualified to write on such topics as if he knew. His mistake as well as that of the Fundamentalist and Evangelical mind-set is to take the text as literally and historically true from the start without question, but that is another whole topic. I can't tell you how many Evangelical type ministers I have met in my other life now that have said, "I know you are right, but I can't teach that, I'd lose my job." Grab a copy of Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism, by John Spong and then try to say the Bible is all harmonious and literally true. It's a very simple read and with your backgrounds, you should be very capable of grasping it's message. The same is to be said of many of the theological articles you now write. Pious conviction with marginal information.
Finally, and I know I will always be able to think of more to say, I wanted to comment on your "Ministry of Reconciliation." While I am all for Black/White reconciliation, it is majoring in the minors at this point. I know how difficult it is to communicate with those you have offended. Or maybe I am only seeing this topic through my own eyes and for you it is not difficult at all. I don't know. I do know that reconciling with races is not your main problem. It is the inability to reconcile with people that has been your undoing.
It may take a few more years, but this lack will leave WCG dead and buried in just about any form. Only a small group of people will have a lot of money. I imagine you can afford to dabble in just about any Evangelical fantasy you choose. You can associate with whoever is the most emotionally satisfying regardless of how anyone left in WCG feels about it and whether it represents their hopes and dreams. I also feel that the new owners of the property are another religious scandal waiting to happen. Men with that much emotion, power, influence and ridiculous religious showmanship wear many masks and cannot maintain all of them all the time. Truly spiritual people don't need others to define them, but Sheeple remember, need Shepherds. I will say that if I hear or see any of you standing with Benny Hinn in the Rededication of the Ambassador Auditorium, to a new and improved God from the last time it was dedicated, I will vomit. It will however prove that the unchangeable God changes often depending on who gets to write the script. It would be a great symbol of everything that is wrong with all those various denominations that know the one true mind of God. God is so often in the image of the men who speak for Him. At any rate, put some thought into who you really might need to reconcile with and see what you come up with. I won't hold my breath.
I thank any and all for listening to me open up and express these things. I realize I can be sarcastic. I realize that I still have anger I don't wish to have and regrets about not speaking up in times past I can only remedy by speaking up now. I also realize I have nothing to loose, which even Janis Joplin defined as true freedom.
I wanted to be a pastor from a very young age. The reasons were probably rather hokey, but they were sincere. The WCG seemed right at the time. I had to be there. I accept responsibility for being there and also for being here now. I simply ask you to reconsider your perspectives and responsibilities. You might be able to dismiss it because " we weren't responsible for the past." I will simply say. I am not talking about the past. That is over and done with. If you can't take some responsibility for the past, then you can't control the money you have now gotten from the sale of the past. It's that simple. I don't expect you take responsibility for the past administration's way of being and doing. But your way of being and doing in the recent past is more than enough for you to take responsibility for and do whatever you really think your new Jesus would do.
Warm regards and thanks for listening,
And so I went to Ambassador. I wanted to be a pastor and even though I heard that God had to call you and, of course, the administration had to choose you, I studied as if it was all up to me. I had a 3.96 grade average. I enjoyed studying the Bible. I simply wanted to know "the truth". I got corrected for hair too long and not enough attendance at basketball games. I didn't care about basketball, but to make me show up, they made me be a flag something-or-other in a white coat and I felt like an idiot. I should have said no, but complied. I complied a lot over the next 26 years over more serious topics, though teaching and encouraging the congregation was more important to me than enforcing silly or reckless rules about various topics.
After graduation I went into "the field". Five states, 14 congregations and 26 years later, in a five minute phone call at 9:30 in the evening, I was terminated. Strangely enough, it was the anniversary of my baptism at 19 years old.
Now is the moment I have to be honest about me if I am to continue. I currently am a skeptic as to the origins and history of the Christian Church. That is my business and the result of my own study and perspectives. The WCG experience caused me to really look deeply into origins and I personally found I was not told near the truth about the matter. They didn't know near as much as they pretended to know. I was coming to some of these conclusions during the last few years as a pastor. I can hear some of this skepticism in some of my last Festival sermons. I felt that if a whole church administration can publicly flip an entire organization's belief system and expect compliance, I can certainly entertain the doubts and contradictions I have seen in the Bible quietly by myself. I could have easily walked off with most of the local congregation if I wanted to have years of local politics and doing what Christian Churches do best... argue, judge and fight, but I was done. I will never lose my interest in theology. I still want to know the truth even if it is not the one I set out to understand. I simply will not join another church again. From my perspective the Old and the New WCG was and is ill informed as is all literalist, evangelical and fundamentalist Christianity. That may not be true for you, but it is true for me. My favorite observation is that most Christians are piously convicted but marginally informed. That is true to me.
Most pastoring years were personally rewarding. I did not have to work in large cities playing games with other pastors who had empires to rule and egos to feed. I simply did my job, love those I met, laughed with them, cried with them, married and buried spouses, children and relatives, along with growing churches. I drove approximately one million miles (really) visiting, being a friend and believing I was doing the right thing.
There were lots of guys and families like mine. It's the narcissists that got all the bad press and still do. Towards the end, when every visit turned into a slug fest over what the Tkach's were doing in the Church, any capacity was a burden and not a joy. It was a miserable experience. Your friend one day became your lost friend the next. On top of that, I was in the American Southeast where being judgmental and critical of others not like you has been raised to an art form. Around here, every third male thinks that if he can read and tell a few stories, he is a Pastor. It's one of the few professions where one with no education or meaningful credentials can claim ultimate authority from God, and be someone.
By analogy, I came to a hockey game and at half time, someone came out, melted the ice, put up hoops and demanded I not only play, but coach Basketball, which if you remember...I don't like. Suffering a personal depression and a lot of regret over having given my youth and energy to the ever-changing truth, I made some mistakes that would be considered unacceptable as a pastor. Outside of the ministry and its neurotic demand to "become perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect," it would just be what it was and a common, oft told tale and theme of what I would help many a member with and through. But as a pastor, I could be criticized and I accept that. No one can live the life, feel the feelings or have the thoughts of another. Not in a real world.
At any rate, I stayed to encourage the local congregation. It did not work. The assault on what we must now think and do was relentless and those who did not participate simply had to go. If you were a minister, you simply lost everything and had to reinvent your life after being "uncalled" if being "recalled" and retrofitted did not make you a good little evangelical, hand waving, "cross" eyed, freak. YOU, not I managed to reduce my local congregation from just under 400 very sincere and faithful people to around 25 now meeting in some hokey storefront giving out Halloween candy with scriptures on the wrappers! Oh barf (it was a printable story on spreading the Gospel in the WN) ...winning converts with Scriptural Halloween candy!! It is simply pathetic to see a congregation and a MINISTER reduced to that nonsense. YOU, not I managed to reduce all my previous congregations by 90%+ Nice work.
Anyway...It simply came down to that five minute call one evening out of the blue informing me that I was done in the ministry and that I could call personnel for the details of the severance package. It was six months pay to get a new life and signing off on any future retirement, unless WCG, which means Bernie Schnippert, deems you loyal enough to support. Of course, I was not so that's quite a savings right there.... Perhaps one can imagine the position that puts one in when in my youth, the church had all ministers sign off on Social Security with the promise that "we will take care of you". Well actually you have taken care of me... but good.
My dad worked for Eastman Kodak, has been retired for years and you know, he once bought Fuji film, and Kodak still gives him retirement. Retirement is not based on loyalty. It is based on years of service.
You can't ask people to be loyal to something that was pushed upon them and with which they had little agreement. Most of the people in WCG came FROM where you wanted to go. You can't ask people to change their minds, hopes and faith just because YOU think they should agree with you. Life, much less the human mind does not work that way. Frankly, those of you who "administer" the church, should have left long ago and asked Benny Hinn, TBN , and the Harvest Crock Church to take you in as spiritual refugees. I realize you could not continue to grant yourselves lifetime income and security by doing this, but it is what YOU should have done and left the Church, whose perspective you scorned, alone. If it was wrong for YOU, then leave it, don't destroy it and drive most to despair, skepticism and in some few cases literal suicide. Instead, you made everyone else leave. Now that's power...stupid, self-serving and egocentric power. Benny Hinn has a rule that he does not want people looking him in the eyes. He makes it a rule wherever he goes. He does it as part of his holy farce, fake and failed prophecies ministry because he believes he is more special than others. Perhaps a similar rule would save you all from seeing the pain, hurt and spiritual confusion in the eyes of countless good people, including former ministers who gave just as much and more in some areas a congregant could not appreciate.
You need to remember that the monies you realized in the sale of the campus which you will now "invest" into an almost non existent "worldwide church" and give yourselves and as few others as possible a lifetime income, is labor from the 1950's, 60's 70's 80's and 90's. I'd say you should calculate how much real giving YOU inspired. Real giving, from the heart during your Sheepling of the Sheep and not the efforts of others, whether you agreed with them or not. And you can't count the guilt or habitual giving types. You can only count the purely evangelical fundamentalist "New and Improved Church of God" giving. That's your money to work with. That's the fruit of your labor in "Him" as some say. I'd also like to ask that when you go to eat out, or take a cruise in the fall to not keep an archaic, and Jesus embarrassing non-festival. Or when you pay a mortgage or get a new car or have your health needs taken care of, and do whatever your good Christian Evangelical heart wan ts, you might remember what others might be struggling with just to keep up. I know my own father was able to survive because Kodak had a plan,
I am not so sure about myself at this moment in my life. By others, I include former members also, but mean former pastors with whom I also have had great experience. Please remember when you are tempted to judge or put people in categories of worthy or not worthy, that you're coming to "know" Jesus and reinventing the wheel of truth, and discovering the "old old story", which is older than you can possibly imagine, has cost others a lot. It cost some who were unable to distinguish between the emotional death of their hope and faith and literal death, their lives. That is not a judgment. That is just the way it has been for some.
Being a hard wired sensitive human being (ENFP-let him who reads understand); I understand that feeling and shock. The depression I have wrestled with is really internalized anger, and the sarcasm I am capable of is simply that anger turned sideways. Neither you nor the previous administration were particularly easy people to reason with or explain things to. You are always right it seems, and to date, a rather emotionally cold and calculated group outside your circle and towards those that have reacted to your administration. I have always said when the common folk simply have had enough and say "NO" to childish posturing and the phony authority ministerial administrative types put on, all of a sudden, God inspires a new and better understanding. But in fact, it is simply realizing one can't dismiss the common sense perspectives of educated people and survive.
We get depressed because people don't listen and we lose our bearings with little or no genuine support. You all need to understand that. Personally, I am still amazed that since that one fateful personal call that my career was over, no one ever contacted me again...ever. This is what I mean by cold. I encouraged the local church in my last sermon to continue to support you. I have since regretted the content and misplaced loyalty of my last sermon. I believe that was back when I had just been assured that "we will not be changing" this or that, and it all changed that month.
The emotions that people direct towards the collective "you" for reckless change and indifference to the spiritual and physical sacrifices made by thousands and which now result in your having more money than you need to "do the work", is quite normal. I suspect, as do others, you knew what your losses would be, but did not care, and still don't. Maybe even you don't know why you do and did what you did. Perhaps that would take a professional to sort out.
I don't know the games you played with your Evangelical supporters behind the scenes but I do know that "the Bible Answer Man" and others you have embraced also show a pattern of financial gain through religious manipulation and theological ignorance. Hank Hanegraaf's perspective on evolution and literal human origins is simply ignorant. He is not qualified to write on such topics as if he knew. His mistake as well as that of the Fundamentalist and Evangelical mind-set is to take the text as literally and historically true from the start without question, but that is another whole topic. I can't tell you how many Evangelical type ministers I have met in my other life now that have said, "I know you are right, but I can't teach that, I'd lose my job." Grab a copy of Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism, by John Spong and then try to say the Bible is all harmonious and literally true. It's a very simple read and with your backgrounds, you should be very capable of grasping it's message. The same is to be said of many of the theological articles you now write. Pious conviction with marginal information.
Finally, and I know I will always be able to think of more to say, I wanted to comment on your "Ministry of Reconciliation." While I am all for Black/White reconciliation, it is majoring in the minors at this point. I know how difficult it is to communicate with those you have offended. Or maybe I am only seeing this topic through my own eyes and for you it is not difficult at all. I don't know. I do know that reconciling with races is not your main problem. It is the inability to reconcile with people that has been your undoing.
It may take a few more years, but this lack will leave WCG dead and buried in just about any form. Only a small group of people will have a lot of money. I imagine you can afford to dabble in just about any Evangelical fantasy you choose. You can associate with whoever is the most emotionally satisfying regardless of how anyone left in WCG feels about it and whether it represents their hopes and dreams. I also feel that the new owners of the property are another religious scandal waiting to happen. Men with that much emotion, power, influence and ridiculous religious showmanship wear many masks and cannot maintain all of them all the time. Truly spiritual people don't need others to define them, but Sheeple remember, need Shepherds. I will say that if I hear or see any of you standing with Benny Hinn in the Rededication of the Ambassador Auditorium, to a new and improved God from the last time it was dedicated, I will vomit. It will however prove that the unchangeable God changes often depending on who gets to write the script. It would be a great symbol of everything that is wrong with all those various denominations that know the one true mind of God. God is so often in the image of the men who speak for Him. At any rate, put some thought into who you really might need to reconcile with and see what you come up with. I won't hold my breath.
I thank any and all for listening to me open up and express these things. I realize I can be sarcastic. I realize that I still have anger I don't wish to have and regrets about not speaking up in times past I can only remedy by speaking up now. I also realize I have nothing to loose, which even Janis Joplin defined as true freedom.
I wanted to be a pastor from a very young age. The reasons were probably rather hokey, but they were sincere. The WCG seemed right at the time. I had to be there. I accept responsibility for being there and also for being here now. I simply ask you to reconsider your perspectives and responsibilities. You might be able to dismiss it because " we weren't responsible for the past." I will simply say. I am not talking about the past. That is over and done with. If you can't take some responsibility for the past, then you can't control the money you have now gotten from the sale of the past. It's that simple. I don't expect you take responsibility for the past administration's way of being and doing. But your way of being and doing in the recent past is more than enough for you to take responsibility for and do whatever you really think your new Jesus would do.
Warm regards and thanks for listening,
Dennis C. Diehl
DenniscDiehl@aol.com
DenniscDiehl@aol.com
25 comments:
Thanks for posting this Dennis. I was a lay member, so I don't share in all the experiences you had, but I agree with your assessment of this pack of bastards.
What really galls me sometimes is that these alleged ministers of grace will now tsk-tsk all of those that no longer attend any church anywhere at anytime, and not recognize that it is THEY who have created that situation.
For once I am speechless...imagine that.
Michael
TTDOCF
I'm not speachless. I see the sincerity and know exactly where Dennis is coming from. It's a past I share in many respects, even though I was never a pastor.
Well what I meant, Allen, was I had too many tears in my eyes to write any more..I have the same hurt and i understand and appreciate what Dennis went through. Many who I love are lost and destroyed for similar reasons.
But in my opinion, not an excise to throw the baby out with the bath water. Dennis was just to good for the WCG, they simply did him a favor by not wasting any more of his life.
Michael
TTDOCF
In my perspective, we're all just folks who for many different reasons were looking for the truth of lifes big questions. It's the role religion which comes in so many different forms and perspectives is for. It alleviates our fear and anxiety over and of death and then what. When someone questions our belief system, we risk the fear and anxiety returning so we fight back.
I think it is just that simple.
In my experience and from my perspective, it is the most sincere and the most introspective who, when they feel or find out they have been had or made a wrong choice when they thought they had prayed it all through and wanted to do the right thing, when trashed, become the most skeptical. (Sorry, record breaking sentence for that thought:) It is the most sincere who become the most skeptical that become the most vocal about how not to ever get screwed like that again. At least that seems to be why I write.
I have never been able to watch others hurt others. Had I been drafted with my number 14 but "saved" by being in theology at Ambassador, I would have stood up in basic training and said,
"excuse me...if we keep this up, someone is going to get hurt."
I don't know what to think about it all now. I know I don't trust anyone and I used to naively trust everyone.
It cost me my marriage, my fault. It cost me my emotional health and that cost me more lost relationships. I have paid for "no one is going to tell me what to do or how to be anymore." And I have paid for that.
I just want peace of mind and so I enjoy the journey of seeking. I am skeptical of finding I suppose.
School starts tomorrow and I teach Psychology of the Body and two Deep tissues classes and for that after all this I am grateful.
Michael, I deeply appreciate your comments and that we at least have mellowed towards each other. This is not a good way to get to know others at the heart level.
Dennis
I meant blogging and answering this or that is not a good way to get to know others in fact.
dd
"I meant blogging and answering this or that is not a good way to get to know others in fact."
I've noticed that too. Too often, blogging comments get unnecessarily adversarial.
"I still want to know the truth even if it is not the one I set out to understand."
In my opinion, you are approaching this the wrong way. In any question, get to the root of the matter, and answer that first. Instead of researching the origins of the bible and Christianity, answer first whether god exists in the first place. Well, that's not entirely efficient either- before answering that, establish whether there is a supernatural realm. That's the first question. If that is not true, then all the other questions are irrelevant.
Paul Ray
Hi Paul, I understand what you are saying. I just don't know how to come to that conclusion either yet or ever.
I can prove to myself that the Apostle Paul was the founder of Christianity (the Gentile Version of today) and not any Jesus. I can find out the real origins of the Bible, who really wrote it and why. I can see hundreds of contradictions and the disharmony of the Gospels.
I can see how Matthew and Paul totally misquote the OT to make it mean what it never meant.
I can see if Paul was a Pharisee, and I have my doubts, he was like no other. He never wrote in Hebrew, didn't think like one, misquotes the Jewish renditions of their own books and uses the Greek versions even where they make their own mistakes in translating the Hebrew versions.
I can prove to myself that "BibleGod" to me is suspect.
I can prove evolution to my own satisfaction.
I can't prove there is not something bigger and more benevolent however.
Why are we the only fully conscious, introspective and critical thinkers on the planet?
How did we as Hairless Apes get to the moon or why?
I can't prove reincarnation. I can read the accounts and have an opinion but I can't prove it. I like it, but I can't prove it either.
In my experience, faith is what we exhibit until the facts inform us and then we can drop it. That is more my experience. So I guess I don't trust that all faith issues will fall to facts eventually and have to be abandoned.
Good comment. Makes me nuts :)
dd
"I can see how Matthew and Paul totally misquote the OT to make it mean what it never meant."
Can you share a couple of examples, I have been studying Paul's writings for nine months for my upcoming book.
That would be of great interest to me.
Michael
TTDOCF
I I Cor 2:6-8 Paul asserted that God's wisdom is secret and hidden from people and only conveyed through a spirit. Understanding is limited to Paul and believers like him and his followers. A gross proof text for Paul's contention is his use of Isaiah 64:3 He said;
"no eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived, What God has prepared for those who love him."
Isaiah says,
"Never has the ear heard or eye seen a God besides you. Who works for the one who waits for him."
The real intent of Isaiah was that Israel has head and has seen what God has done for them. Israel has never heard or seen any other God like God. Nothing hidden here.
Next is 2 Cor 3 :3-18 where Paul makes the fading radiance of Ex 34:29-35 akin to a blindfold and that the fading was the fading of the Torah and the veil or blindfold is still on the Jews to this day.
This is not the context. Moses face shone when he talked to the People and when he talked to God, he was not veiled when he talked of the law. He covered up when he was not speaking of it. The fact was that the radiance pertained to the Divine and should not be used profanely.
Paul used the fading radiance as the passing glory of the Torah. He turned the meaning on it's head. He says the veil keeps Israel from understanding Jesus but that was not the context at all. He just made up a really bad example.
His worst is found in Gal 3:16 where he strains to say that Genesis 13:15 and 25 :7
"For all the land which you see , to you and to your seed I will give it forever"
"unto your see will I give this land.'
Paul tries to say that because "seed" is not plural "as in seeds" (Oh my) that seed was Christ! Of course in the context seed did mean Abrahams descendents. In Paul's mind it did not say "Seeds" plural but "seed" which is one meaning Jesus. Yikes
Feed my sheeps? I think we realize that seed is also plural just as sheep is plural and does not need to be said as "seeds" or "sheeps" This is truly his most lame reasoning.
I guess Abraham in Gen. 22:17 should have said, "I will multiply your seeds" however he said seed.
It's a huge topics and whole books have been written on Paul's torturous misuse of the OT taking so much of it out of context.
As I said, if he was a Pharisee, and a Hebrew of the Hebrew he did not do his homework when he was in class.
I would suggest Antisemitism in the New Testament (Due to Paul's misreading of the OT) by Lillian Freudmann or Paul, The Mythmaker by Hyam Jaccoby among many.
The Book of Romans is replete with Paul's over reaching the context of the OT to show how the Jews rejected Jesus. The Jews rejected Jesus just like we rejected David Koresh who said or was said to be the Messiah etc. The story of Jesus would never fit the concept of the Jewish Messiah and they can't be blamed for being very skeptical about such things as a dead Messiah and bodily resurrection which would have appalled them, and did.
Paul's greatest slight of hand was turning Abraham, the father of the circumcision into the father of the uncircumcised.
Paul also inverted the roles of Sarah and Hagar by turning Hagar and her son into the Enslved Jerusalem and the Jews, while Sarah and her offspring became the free Gentiles "in the Jerusalem that above."
He also used Isaiah 54:1 to make his point and again, it is totally out of context. The context is of Israel coming out of captivity and the glorious future Israel has. It has NOTHING to do with Sarah and Hagar
We would flunk theology if we tried that trick today dd
sorry for the typos. I write out of my head as I think it through and the thinking overtakes the keyboarding and the typos get filtered out. :)
I gesus you userndantd waht I maen..... as now we know that the brain can still get it right if we have just the first and last letters of a word. The brain fills in the rest :)
"I can prove to myself that "BibleGod" to me is suspect."
When you take that into consideration (biblical fallacies) plus the total lack of evidence for the existence of this particular deity, wouldn't you say that it is far beyond simply "suspect?"
"I can't prove there is not something bigger and more benevolent however."
I have to point out what you already know- of course you can't prove that there isn't a supernatural being somewhere out there, just as you can't prove that Biblegod doesn't exist, or Zeus, or leprechauns.
With this logic, it isn't unreasonable to suggest that you should also give some credence to the existence of Zeus and leprechauns ; but you don't, do you?
You may be thinking, "leprechauns are a different story, pal," but they aren't. Think about it. What is the difference between one entity for which there is no evidence and another entity for which there is no evidence? Try to consider this as objectively as you can. There is no difference.
Why do people give one the intellectual boot (leprechauns) but respect and revere the other (Biblegod, Allah, Agnostic Deity, Etc.)?
It is perfectly okay to take a hard, critical look at the evidence, to take that same skepticism you have for Zeus- and apply it to everything else. It is okay to say, "You know what, there is no evidence that X exists. Until some evidence arises, I just can't believe in the existence of X." Even if you want to believe, such as in your case with the Bigger and Benevolent- it's okay not to believe, but yet hope that one day evidence will arise.
"Why are we the only fully conscious, introspective and critical thinkers on the planet?"
Answer: "I can prove evolution to my own satisfaction."
"How did we as Hairless Apes get to the moon or why?"
Answer: "I can prove evolution to my own satisfaction."
"I can't prove reincarnation. I can read the accounts and have an opinion but I can't prove it. I like it, but I can't prove it either."
Even if reincarnation was real, you'd never know for sure, so what's the point?
"In my experience, faith is what we exhibit until the facts inform us and then we can drop it."
I prefer "I don't know" or "here is a hypothesis based on what limited evidence we have, but it's just an idea." Faith is when you go a step beyond and say "I believe that my idea is true." And it isn't necessary.
"Makes me nuts :)"
It doesn't have to.
Paul Ray
No Tinkerbelle either? doh...bummer.
"Grandfather....is this some kind of joke?"
:)
It appears that the WCG was a giant machine which existed for only two reasons:
1) To provide Herbert Armstrong with everything he needed, thought he needed and wanted;
2) To continue running and growing to be self-regenerating.
It was no different from other corporate cash machines: Entirely impersonal.
There's something which happens to the humanity of people when they cross the threshold of the Corporation / Government Agency where they work: It is supplanted by robotic thinking which exists only to support the machine.
It's a mistake to rail against the machine. It continues to operate until it doesn't.
While it is true that the people are culpable for being immoral, illegal and unethical; people are responsible for all the evils they do in the name of their Corporate business machine -- but the machine itself has no feeling. It also has the property of crushing opposition.
Unfortunately, once someone like Herbert Armstrong initiates a monster machine and it gets big enough, it takes on a life of its own and even its creator loses control of it.
Gentlemen: Start your engines.
Be warned though, you may not be able to get the brakes to work.
" have been studying Paul's writings for nine months for my upcoming book."
Sounds like an interesting project, Michael. I wish you luck.
Incidentally, you may already be aware of the new publishing avenues open through things like Amazon's kindle. I view these developments as the greatest thing to hit publishing since Guttenberg's printing press.
Obviously you put a lot of thought into these articles, Dennis, and your background brings a lot of experience to the table. We have all been faced with a complex set of issues, but I believe that the central core is, what does one do when one had been under the impression that he or she was "enlightened", only to discover that that was not at all the case? How do you repair the damage, and shed the sense of disillusionment, righteous indignation, and depression? What about those who do not acknowledge the fact that it was all bogus, and those still being attracted to it? There were, for sure, some good souls who tried to do the best they could, considering the package, but those who had concocted it in the first place were false teachers who would have exploited and contaminated any message which they had to offer. That is what false teachers do!
On the topic of enlightenment, I can think of no better reference than Herman Hesse's "Sidhartha". Set in the background of Eastern religions, Sidhartha experiences many of the same thought processes common to all humans seeking to know the meaning of life, and our place in the universe. We often think of asceticism, or spartan living conditions as negatives, particularly if they were forced upon us. However, at one point in Sidhartha's life, he realizes that such things as his fasting skills free him from the domination of others. Che Guevara was also able to utilize this effectively in working for the transformation of his world.
I was never a hippie, but the hippies also seemed to be aware of the fact that the things we attempt to amass, and will protect, can be used to control us. There are still hippies today, living out their Kerouac fantasies, and one can generally find such people on the periphery of universities. They measure the wealth of their lives based on experiences, often working as necessary on a subsistence level, relying on the few things left that are actually free, recycling, doing organic gardening, and volunteering for causes which relate to their philosophies. Generally, they are concerned for the future of the planet.
I believe that in WCG we were programmed to be hypercritical. This can make healing difficult. It can blind us to such important things as the transformation of people's lives.
I believe that healing is a process. Healing begets healing. It is a change of mind frame, allowing one to shed anger, bitterness, and the physical ills which can accompany such sustained emotions. It is a freeing up of the mind, involving forgiveness, a process which chiefly releases the forgiver of emotional burden. And, it feels good! Processing is good. However, eventually, one realizes that all of the processing and emotional baggage from the past is encroaching on one's present. At that bottoming out point, one begins looking for transition into the next stage. For me, the next stage has involved a very fulfilling personal relationship with God, free of the constraints of "religion", and free from those who push and enforce a package of physically orientated doctrines. I've become what you might term a "Godly existentialist", accepting the reality of today as simply being exactly what God intends for me, for His purposes and my education. I try to get through each learning process as efficiently and effectively as possible. Happiness and sadness are temporary emotions, itches which need to be continuously scratched. Inner peace and joy are more permanent, and utimately much more satisfying.
BB
P.S.
Sorry to be so long winded. One more point. I've studied the lives of many luminaries. All of them have some good qualities, and some of them seem downright Christlike. However, Jesus stands out as being unique amongst them, because He is and was the total package, the healer, and ultimate freeer of the human mind. I know how most here are going to feel about this next statement, but I honestly don't know how a person can really experience healing without acknowledging Jesus Christ. Without Him, you can get to a certain point, and then you realize you've reached an impasse
and can't go any further. For some, that may be good enough. I understand. But, it just wasn't good enough for me.
BB
I'm glad your faith gives you some peace, BB. However, I can't get past the fact that Jesus was a fictional invention that grew out of the Council (circus) of Nicea and took over the Roman empire through the stamp of emperor Constantine and the power of Roman arms.
Frankly, Buddha is much more genuine and believable.
What I appreciate about your...... 'heart to heart,' is your desire to move on and put it behind you.
None of us, unless we forgive the 100 pense to WCG/HWA, can be forgiven the TEN THOUSAND TALENTS that we owe Our Creator.
Then, I hope you'll posit this website in the dustbin (if its yours), and that your next website will focus on your 'new Jesus' exclusively.
"Then, I hope you'll posit this website in the dustbin (if its yours), and that your next website will focus on your 'new Jesus' exclusively."
"New Jesus." We've had a new Jesus ever since the Council of Nicea created him under the direction of Emperor Constantine. That "new" creation has been with us for a multitude of bloody, intolerant centuries.
Read the history here: http://www.nexusmagazine.com/index.php?option=com_docman&task=doc_view&gid=70
My new HP laptop crashed two days ago and I am working to restore the files. I see a LOT of stuff I want to comment on here. I will try to get back here tomorrow.
Yeah, as long as the first and last letters of the werds are korek I get it. :<)
Michael
TTDOCF
I never knew HWA. I was the product of the Tkach dynasty from start to finish.
I was educated prior to attending Ambassador. The Ambassador I attended was an accredited university that busted balls if you were below the new standards. The SAT and ACT scores of my graduating class were high, and many classmates came to Big Sandy with impressive credentials in "the world" prior to stepping out into the hot Texas sun.
I thank Joe Sr. for that fact and get pretty agitated when I read blogs rip the "ambassador education" as a joke, or not worth the paper used in the diploma. That may have been the case in the 1940s to 1988, but my classmates were not brain dead Armstrong nimrods. We all busted ass to make the grade, which even impressed those rascally SACS officials.
On the other side of the ledger, the members of the Tkach Dynasty were no angels. Senior lived openly with his mistress while Junior and his petty clique of Imperial boys were as converted as jackrabbits, by any church standard.
Time and time again I read about the Armstrong Dynasty. Sorry, I don't know them and don't care. I spiritually grew up Tkach.
Blogs usually ignore the Tkachs and gloss over their crimes. I thank you Dennis for addressing just a small part of the Tkach Dynasty.
Post a Comment