Comments from a Facebook COG Survivors page:
I went to WCG from my earliest memories til I quit when I was in 12th grade. I can't even begin to tell you how much time I have spent in therapy just to figure out and prove to myself that "I'm not and never was such a bad person"-the way I was made to feel by every person in that church.
From the lead ministers down to all of the deacons-they were all about making you feel miserable and crappy all of the time. This group is supposed to be for survivors but most of what I have read seems to be people still trying to prove some kind of point regarding what we should really believe and follow so let me throw my 10 cents in...the God I follow is supposed to be a loving and forgiving God-not one that makes you feel guilty and miserable because you watched tv after sundown on Friday night.
Every rule we tried to keep are man made rules and guidelines from interpretations made by men who removed parts of the bible along the way if they wanted to have more fun in life. Religion sure can be a powerful brainwashing weapon to young people, or older people, who are impressionable. It's wrong to take advantage of an impressionable mind.
God wants us to be thinkers, not sheep who follow any speaker who seems to know what he's talking about. My dad cheated on my mom the entire time I went to this church. Our deacons and pastors advice? She should make sure she is fulfilling her duties as a wife and maybe that would keep him at home. Excellent leadership from a load of patriarchal idiots claiming to lead in God's direction.
The Guards never seemed to have read I Corinthians 5. If they had, believed it and lived by it, the husband would have been put out of the church for adultery.
ReplyDeleteI had this discussion in Bend, Oregon with Don Haney at the Feast of Tabernacles in 2009 with the Church of God in Peace and Truth. He had a young man -- son of an elder, whose mother attended United -- living with his girlfriend. The young man was not married to the girl and the girl was not at the Feast or interested in religion at all.
Haney was preaching about the Laws, Statutes, Judgements, Testimonies endlessly at the Feast every chance he got and he would go way over the allotted time for the sermon by saying, "I won't end on time" (an extra hour was used) -- so much for not bearing false witness by violating established schedules.
Anyway, I thought it was quite logical to be consistent, so I told him that the young man needed to be put out of the congregation. He didn't see that he should. Did I care? It was a test to see if he was an utter hypocrite and he was.
The great problem with the ministry and leaders of the Armstrongist Churches of God is that the Bible is, at most, a theory, only to be used to support their virtual authority. They have none, of course, but people believe they do because they wave the Bible around and pretend to be of God, which, of course, they aren't -- by any stretch of a very fertile imagination.
They lie to you; then they take your money.
They also hold you hostage and make your life a life of Misery -- not the sort of thing one should expect from Scripture.
And here it is that Dixon Cartright wants me to believe that the Armstrongist churches of God aren't cults. Not a cult?! That's a laugh!