Herbert Armstrong's Tangled Web of Corrupt Leaders

Monday, January 23, 2012

Dennis On: "The Lost Art of Saying "I don't agree""





"Let Every Man Be Persuaded In His Own Mind"
The Lost Art of Saying "I don't agree"
"Be sure to choose what you believe and know why you believe it, because if you don't choose your beliefs, you may be certain that some belief, and probably not a very creditable one, will choose you."      Robertson Davies,'The Deptford Trilogy ' (p477).
Dennis Diehl - EzineArticles Expert AuthorEarly in life, people believe what they have been told and taught to believe by those who have been also so taught before them. For better or worse, most humans on the planet still believe what others have taught them from the beginning as if, by chance, they just happened to luck out and end up being born into a family that absolutely had the final truth on most topics already understood. Of course we know this is not really likely.

But humans are mostly content not to look out and wonder if what they have been told is really true. Most humans, it seems, are not so much interested in truths as they are with comfortable beliefs. Comfortable beliefs don't really have to be true, but they are satisfying as long as one does not think too deeply about them or question the facts or their presentation.


Truth on the other hand can be very uncomfortable and yet while true, pushes the person away from that set of beliefs they were given at birth and expected to abide by. This causes no end of drama, as those who are content with beliefs, do all they can to punish and coerce those who opt for truth over belief.

One of the pitfalls of sitting in just about any congregation of the Churches of God is the phenomenon of an entire congregation seeming to be in 100% agreement with what the minister is teaching and saying every week.  Of course, this is an impossibility in real life, but sometimes the COG experience does not take place in real life.  It can be somewhat surreal at times.  This is particularly true in RCG, PKG and PCG with assorting smatterings in UCG and LCG.  It is emotionally and literally impossible for any group to "all speak the same thing."  Truth or even beliefs simply do not work like that and are filtered differently by each and every member and minister.  All speaking the same thing usually means being in compliance with the ministers view of the world, who he thinks he is and where in the world of prophecy we are now.  Crazy stuff!  

They may over talk to them about how wrong they are, or not speak to them again to punish them for straying outside the tribal beliefs. In some pathetic cultures, they simply kill you and solve the problem of you're influencing others to rethink their own beliefs, given by the tribe. It is not nice to fool Mother Nature, but it is even worse to buck the tribal beliefs and wonder if maybe you have not been told everything.

Today we see that discomfort over beliefs vs. truths in the rancorous debates over evolution vs. creationism. While the facts of evolution are generally true, details to follow, creationism is falling quickly out of favor as the explanation of how life and mostly humans came to be on this planet. The people who defend creationism do so to defend their belief on how God did or didn't do something. Their belief is based on an ancient text. It is also based on the absolute need to defend the inerrancy of the text and reality of God as we have been taught "him" to be in Sunday School.

Science defends evolution based on evidence that there might be more to life than what is contained in ancient texts. They don't claim to understand it, but are willing to step outside a box that creationists aren't, because there is so much evidence that contradicts the Biblical account.


Now creationists are endeavoring to defend the text as being good science, but it simply can't be done anymore. Showing animals in Old Testament stories spotted and stripped poles before birthing so that they produce spotted or striped offspring is something even they will have to admit is not how it works. That's really bad science on the part of the Bible, but made perfect sense to them three thousand years ago. Modern genetics really is the answer to really bad biblical "science."

Other beliefs, based on biblical texts are falling out of favor due to overwhelming evidence that contradicts them. Most honest pastors and theologians know that the birth stories of Jesus are not literally true. Most know, the story of Jesus is not all that unique in human history and the archetype of a dying God/man, persecuted, crucified, dead three days and risen again is not a once told story of Jesus.

Most recognize that the Old Testament did not spring out of vacuum, but rather out of the pagan cultures and Egyptian influences that proceeded it. Most who take the time, realize the concept of God evolves even in the Old Testament right on through the New. The simple Christian, "loving father God" of today is not how it all began. Today we have a difficult time thinking an all knowing, all caring, all forgiving, all everything God would define himself as a "jealous God" who punishes generations of people for the sins of their great great grandfathers. Although literalist Christians are very comfortable with that because, "God says, I believe it, that settles it for me." Whatever is not comfortable to even a literalist is dismissed as your not really understanding the text, or that God, while jealous, is all the other good stuff too. I think if I hear, "for the wisdom of man is foolishness with God", "My ways are not your ways", or "God does not see as a man sees", one more time as a way to bale the literalist out of a pinch, I shall scream :)

With just a bit of time today researching a favorite topic on the Internet, one can find that there is much much more to the story, the facts and the implications of a topic than what they simply had passed on to them from mom and dad who got it from their mom and dad, who got it from ....


Many today are coming to realize that the entire drama played out in the New Testament as the literalized story of Jesus was first played out in the heavens and still is today as the earth rotates around it's axis and around the sun. The rising and setting of the Sun of God in the heavens, which is literally the "light of the world" and literally as the sun, delivers us from darkness, and "in which is no variableness nor shadow of turning" is a type that literalists christians will someday have to come to terms with. It is no coincidence that when Jesus is said to have been born of a virgin on December 25th, at the end of the three darkest days of the year, Virgo, the Virgin precedes the sun rise and thus literally "the Virgin brings forth the Sun."

It is no coincidence that the Lamb is "crossified" in April when the Sun is in Aries,the Lamb, at the junction of the celestial equator and the sun's path across the heavens at the spring equinox (equal night). Humans have seen this story acted out for thousands of years. The entire circle of the zodiac, and the path the Sun/Son takes through it, tells the identical story of the life and death of Jesus and every other God/man in all cultures. The names have been changed to protect the innocent when it comes right down to it.

It has only been since the corporate and literalist church and church fathers demanded the allegory be believed as literal history upon pain of death that all the conflict and heartache of religion began. Taking an allegory and making it literally true is why the Bible seems to have so many problems and is not the harmonious piece of work that the Church would have one to believe. Many of them know it is not, but won't tell you because it does not keep the system alive if people think for themselves.


It is not to a literalist church's advantage for you to realize that a real God does not require you to go through anyone and certainly does not need you to show up at a specific building at a specific time where you learn specific and contradictory truths from the one true minister, and lose about ten percent of your annual income to boot. That's religion.

True spirituality is an inside job. What we see today in literalized Christianity is crowd control and a demand that people stay put in the box and reject any contrary facts in the name of Faith. Faith is what is demanded when the facts start to scare the powers that be. In truth, Paganism = truth when one understands Christian origins. The Christians met the pagans, and in spite of appearances, the pagans won.

So, back to original point.

Most of us had our truths pre selected for us and we simply were expected to carry on the traditions. But we live in a world where information is much more available to show that most likely we have not all been told the truth of many things. Frankly, most won't even bother to look outside their given truths. I know that. Some will look and in horror at being wrong, will retreat back to where it is safe and comfy. Some will be intimidated for a time to not look, though they want to.

Some ministers today are forced to warn their parishioners NOT to go on the Internet and research the real background of their church, religion or sacred story. Whatever you do, don't use the search words "Jesus mythology", or "pagan Christian origins", or "Astrotheology", "Errancy", "contradictions Bible" or a host of other words combined in such a way as to open your mind and infuriate everyone else who does not want you to learn one bit more than the guy, and it's mostly guys, who is the provider of his truth to you.

But go for it anyway, and remember...

"Be sure to choose what you believe and know why you believe it, because if you don't choose your beliefs, you may be certain that some belief, and probably not a very creditable one, will choose you."


Dennis C. Diehl
DenniscDiehl@aol.com

5 comments:

  1. After having left WCG, for a number of years I found little pleasure or enjoyment in carrying on conversations with the occasional members whom I would accidentally encounter, or for that matter, even my own family members who still attended. And the reason was precisely one of the items which Dennis outlined in this latest post. There could not be an honest exchange of opinion. You wouldn't be having a discussion, you'd just encounter the church's programming, which they felt duty bound to repeat (always aspiring to that "right attitude") even when you knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that deep down they probably did have their own opinions. As if this were not bad enough, you knew that these folks also considered you to be deceived, and very possibly under the influence of Satan.

    What a conundrum!

    At least, with the breakup of the Armstrong system into baby ACOGs, there have been some inroads into diversity of opinion, but unfortunately in the worst ones, the programmed personality still exists. Thank God the Biblical patriarchs, disciples, and other characters were permitted to retain their own personalities and opinions!

    BB

    ReplyDelete
  2. Or follow the Biblical injunction of: Prove all things.

    Ummm.

    How can a minister or cult leader argue with that?

    Oh, never mind.

    ReplyDelete
  3. There are many, many scriptures throughout the bible that make it obvious that “faith” in God is something that you absolutely have to have in order to please Him. There are also many scriptures that say we should not put our trust in mere people. But there’s a problem.

    What is faith anyway? Faith is trusting in what people have told you about God. Whether it was daddy and mommy or whether it’s prophets and apostles, I don’t have a choice about whether or not to trust God, unless I first choose to put my trust in the people telling me about Him. Of course, none of them can give you a good reason why they believed it, or why you should believe it either. (And maybe, as in the movie “Contact” it would be impossible for them to do so. Regardless, it doesn’t help me out much.) Nevertheless, because there are so many religions, therefore, most of the time, if not all of the time, they’re just propagating a contagious idea.

    If you lived in Nazareth 2,000 years ago and a girl got pregnant, and she told you that “God did it,” what would you say? A likely story! Oh, but if only you had even a tiny bit, a mustard seed sized amount, of faith. Yeah, and then what? Then I would believe every liar in history? And what good would that do me? And with no one giving me any good reasons why I should believe any of them, how do I tell the liars from those that speak the truth, especially when it’s thousands of years later? I can’t. If you can, then please share your methodology with me.

    This theological contradiction between faith in God vs. faith in man is written right into the bible itself, throughout both Old and New Testaments. It's not just something men made up later, it's integral to the book itself. And while it isn’t the only contradiction of this nature, it is one of the more fundamental ones.

    Why would God want everyone to switch off their brain and believe unsubstantiated claims so badly? I have a hard time accepting that this is something the real God would want. If I were God, creator of the universe, I wouldn’t demand that the people I made do this, especially not in an environment such as we have today. If I were God, to make a carrot out of sorting out the truth from the lies floating around this planet, and if you fail, then you get the stick, would be to me some sort of mental torture. A no-win situation.

    Even though the COG’s take on this subject is a lot more merciful than most of Christianity, even so, the whole “called” vs. “chosen” vs. “elected” thing means that for most people who ever lived, so the theology goes, who "God just decided not to call," they had no choice but to “waste” one entire lifetime. And for what purpose? Nobody can answer that question.

    I don’t deny the possibility that there could be a real creator God, I’m just not convinced that the Judeo-Christian God is that God.

    If the real God were to show up and clear away all the confusion that mankind has created, then I would be more than happy to do whatever He asked. But the only way I’m going to know who that might be is if He gives me a clue, which up until now I really don’t think He has.

    If God is fair, then I guess I’ll get credit for willingness and effort. If He’s not, then it doesn’t matter what I do, there won’t be any carrot anyway. Ditto if He doesn’t care or isn’t there. The fact is, I shouldn’t be doing what is moral and ethical for some far off carrot, anyway, regardless of how real or fictional it might be. I should be doing it for its own sake, for its intrinsic benefits, not brownie points.

    ReplyDelete
  4. "If I were God, to make a carrot out of sorting out the truth from the lies floating around this planet, and if you fail, then you get the stick, would be to me some sort of mental torture. A no-win situation."

    It is a no-win situation. Those who believe they're the winners are like people who believe they'll win the lottery and start spending the money before they buy the ticket. It's narcissistic madness.

    It's appalling how many "mad" people there are and that we were once among them.

    ReplyDelete
  5. In my opinion, everything comes down to choice and faith, that is, you choose who or what to believe.

    It's the same choice Adam and Eve were faced with in the Garden of Eden (if you choose to believe the Genesis account) and it's the same choice each of us faces every day.

    From the little things like what we buy or eat to the big things like who or what we worship.

    ReplyDelete