Best comment ever on leaving Armstrongism. Found on Facebook "Worldwide Church of God I Can't Wait For Sundown! And Other WCG Musings"
"I was born on the pile of barn manure and found the pitchfork and wheel barrow to get out in 1995"
For me it started with the infamous Christmas sermon by Joe Tkach Sr. in the Auditorium. Understood it completely. Knew exactly where he was coming from. Though the process of implementing it was flawed and poorly thought out. Attended off and on and then took a clean break in 1999 and have no intention of ever setting foot in one again!
When was your wake up call and ow long did it take to leave? Or, are you still part of a group?
It started for me with the Christmas Eve sermon as well, except I remember it as being in the Big Sandy gym. I was on the right side, almost halfway back.
ReplyDeleteI didn't understand it perfectly, although in retrospect I think I had a pretty good idea within a few weeks. Being in Big Sandy, I saw the bullying of the local ministers to accept the changes or else. Upon seeing this, the one thing I did understand perfectly was that, whether these new teachings were true or not, these were not the leaders that I wanted to follow in the search for truth.
The bullying led me to realize that my days in WCG were numbered but I stuck around until (in spite of the claims by the new pastor that both sides could co-exist peacefully in WCG), he scheduled a YOU work project on Saturday afternoon. I spent a couple of years in UCG before leaving Armstrongism entirely.
The Christmas Eve Sermon was my Jurassic Park moment. If you remember the scene where the kids were in the car at the top of the tree and fell like a pinball through the branches to the bottom where they fell out on the ground. The car then fell out of the tree and fell over on them mercifully where a hole in the car was. The comment from the kids was...
ReplyDelete"Well, we're back in the car..."
As I sat hearing the sermon live and in person, I remeber thinking....as I used to be Presbyterian....
"Well, we're back in the car..."
M.T.Journey
The Ambassador College bookstore used to carry a book called "The Feasts of Israel" by Kevin Connor, I guess as a support for one of the theology classes. I was at the bookstore one day and bought it, thinking it would be a useful study resource. This was years before the doctrinal changes were introduced.
ReplyDeleteUpon reading it, pieces of the puzzle began to fall together. His explanations were stunningly clear re: why the feasts were a wonderful guide and overview but, post-Christ, were no longer in force. My entire approach changed. Down the road, when JWT gave his rather bumbling sermon announcing the changes, I had no problem with it, even though I could immediately see that the stunningly insensitive way it was being handled was going to lead to catastrophe.
Shortly after, for the first time, I heard and read about HWA's incest with his daughter. It was brought up in passing by a longtime friend in a conversation, a man whose credibility, for me, was impeccable -- and yet, he brought it up in the context of defending the church's longstanding doctrines and opposing the changes! I didn't hear much of what he said after that. Incest? Seriously? I later had it confirmed to me by a relative, and old friend (both of whom had attended AC, and one of whom was friends with HWA's grandson), and then asked a longtime senior minister, who also confirmed it.
That really was it for me. I backed away from doctrinal pronouncements and eliminated "HWA said" or "HWA was" thinking from my mind, entirely. From there, the whole house of cards came tumbling down.
Today, I am simply stunned that otherwise intelligent, sincere people continue to promote a line of reasoning and belief that are based on the indefensible premise that HWA was doing anything in God's name, while he was steeped in such scandalous behavior.
His scholarship was faulty and his actions disqualified him from the pronouncements he presumed to make. Coming to understand the finished work of Jesus Christ lifted the fog and eliminated the confusion created by the teachings of HWA.
And to think it all began with a book I found in HWA's college bookstore years earlier. Amazing.
M.T.Journey,
ReplyDeleteI didn't see the whole Jurassic Park movie, and I don't remember seeing the scene you described, but it seems worth seeing again if for only that one scene!
I stopped attending at about 1975- because I had been raised in it(from maybe age 8) and I went off on my own then.
It was hard to get rid of the mindfuck, and it took therapy, life, friends and time to get "out", psychologically speaking.
I didn't even know my mind had been damaged from it, til many years had gone by and I was able to look back and recognize the healing that had been accomplished during the years since I'd stopped attending.
Funny thing, it was later, only when a girlfriend got caught up in a cult that I started reading about cults and how they operate in order to make sense of her predicament that I first realized that the WCG was a destructive and harmful cult.
Reading Lifton, Singer, and about the Zimbardo and Milgram experiments helped me understand my past experiences and put them in perspective.
Thankfully, all my family(which is my parents and my sisters) are out now. We even joke about it at times, but I tread lightly- I can joke more with my sisters but less with my parents.
Online is different. Maybe I'm wrong but I don't see the need to pull punches when discussing HWA's cult and all the mini's that it's spawned.
But looking back, there was a moment when I almost "dove in" with all I had into "the church".
I had 'stolen' some quarters from my tithe jar, and came close to confessing to my father and trying to become an altruistic minister like he was.
But there was something in the back of my mind that stopped me.
I'm glad I didn't go there, but it was so incredibly close.
BTW, I know some that have stuck with the church and are now with Grace Communion Intl.(or whatever it's called now). They've stated clearly that the basic reason they are there is to be with their old friends.
Norm
One of the most insidious hooks is that being with old friends thing. It was a pull for me for a long time, but I've come to see that I am better off just cutting most ties.
ReplyDeleteIt's kind of like separation instead of divorce. You're not really married, yet in some ways, are.
It's been a long evolution in my own life to anti-theist, anti-theocray atheist.
I'm just finishing Sean Faircloth's new book, Attack of the Theocrats! (Sean is executive director of The Secular Coalition for America.) It's a real eye opener to see where this country has descended to since the late 1700s when a very small percentage of our population were fanatically religious contrasted with what exists today.
I will get to meet Mr. Faircloth and Richard Dawkins this coming Sunday afternoon at a gathering in a private home in Sedona. I will be posting about that meeting on my blog next week. In the meantime, I highly recommend his book. It's a real eye opener.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0G73HXVrSyE
ReplyDeleteHere ya go anon..."At least we're back in the car!"
M.T.Foliage
For me, it was like a light switch that kept getting brighter the more you turned it. Many red flags went up even before the break-up, but I hung in there.I had red flags go up even with Herbie;s and Teddy's shenanigans. I always felt like something just wasn't right for many years. One red flag was when the "pastor"(Steve Nutzman) was obviously playing both sides. He knew his audience. At bible study, he said one thing, then at sabbath services, he said just the opposite. After that, he started getting flak from both sides. The next red flag happened when both sides exploded at a "holy day" service. Again, the "minister"(Dave Meyers)played the hypocrite and never chose sides, and the top dog(Jim Franks)was conveniently out of town so he didn't have to be approached by either side.The next red flag was overhearing another top dog(Burk McNair)telling another "minister"(Treybig), at UCG's first feast,that the first thing that UCG was going to do was make sure the "ministers" were going to receive paychecks. I realized it was going to be business as usual for all the same asshole "ministers" who used us and abused us for years. Then there was the UCG celebrating 50 years when they had only been in business for a few months. At this point. I started becoming dissallusioned with UCG as I did with WCG.Then, I started studying for myself and reading outside soouces instead of the proof-texting of church literature. UCG didn't want us reading any literature but their's(sounds familiar). Another red flag. I started revealing the lies to myself about "ordained ministers", "deacons", tithing, sabbath keeping, "holy day" keeping, the flawed Jewish calendar, and the false gospel.It was time to leave and not look back as the door hit me in the ass. I'll NEVER set foot in a "church" again!
ReplyDelete