Dennis on: "Why Pick On Dave Pack?"

Why Pick At Dave?

I've had to ask myself "what's with you and Dave Pack anyway?"  Why does he, more than any COG theological prankster get under my skin?  Why not just let him be?    Humor me while I take a few minutes to answer this publicly. I have oncology massage shortly and don't have much time.  If Dave can say ridiculous things publicly, I can too.  :)  Well, at least I can as long as I don't sign up as a returning and repentant minister eviscerating myself at Dave's feet.   If I did that, I'd have to get permission to ever speak publicly in this life again.

If Dave had a different personality, temperament , emotional make up, theological background and training, less ego and self centered views, somewhat shorter, less compulsivity, more of conscience, less hubris, a bit more compassion and a tad less HWA worship and nostalgia....I'd like the guy.   However....

Most of you don't know Dave's brother Bill.  Dave gives him a line in his autobiography.  Bill is one of the nicest, most authentic and genuine guys I ever met at either college or in the ministry.  He was pastoring Corning just before I did and everyone loved him. I often had a few months in a new church of people pouring out their hearts about the last ministers antic and unkind ways.  Most if not all of those guys are still either evangelists or ministers in the COGs.  Figures.  Anyway... You would think those two brothers were from different planets.  When you are around Bill, you just feel better or at least that was my experience.  Bill always had the big smile and enjoyable personality where Dave was always Mr. Look Down on You and Serious Demeanor.  Their reputation in ministry were night and day. Bill...I love ya man!  :)

At any rate, why pick on Dave?  Why challenge him to "debate" theologically, which of course I am not stupid, he would never do.  Why point out the ridiculous nature of his public screeds or his theological fantasies? 

 I don't take any time to talk write about Gerald Flurry.  I don't care for the man and his ministry is even more flagrantly phoney and flawed and only the really brain dead will fall for it.  Evidently there are enough brain dead to keep it going but we'll see.  His ministers are Hitleresque clowns and it seems everyone even in the group hates to see them coming.  Nepotism is in place as with HWA until it didn't work and we may see that in the Living Church of God as well but that won't work out so well I'm thinking.  So what's my problem with Dave?

Dave passes himself off as very intelligent.  He is not.  He is clever but that is the cheap form of intelligence. It does not hold up to scrutiny. Dave lives in a very small world...his own.  Dave dismisses a man like Einstein because "he had wild hair."  Really?  Dave  pokes fun of Socrates and Aristotle as if he knew.  He thinks the world is 6000 years old or at least humans are and that Adam and Eve really are physically where it all began.  He believes serpents can talk and walked until they pushed God's last button.  He knows nothing of serpent evolution nor human for that matter.  Dave teaches Bronze Age knowledge and that is not intelligent.

Dave reads the Bible like a newspaper or blog site.  Like Thiel and others, Dave still believes that weather, wind, rain and fire are the tools "God" uses to get our attention.  They really are the tools these men use to get your attention on them and send them money out of fear of being left behind.  Dave has virtually NO real training in theology.  He is a mere Bible reader who then cuts and pastes it all together into a story that pleases him and sounds good to him.  Dave knows NOTHING of the history of the Bible and how it really came about.  That would destroy his story.  Dave knows nothing of Gospel origins, contradictions and politic.  He operates at a less than Sunday School level because at least in Sunday Schools you hear the word "Jesus" and stories of his imagined life and sayings.  Dave likes Matthew 24 but 5-7 not so much. 

Dave knows nothing, and it shows about Cosmology, Paleontology, Archeology or the real issues they raise in Old Testament Studies. In his autobio he even says he had to get his Ambassador degree in the mail because he went into the ministry his senior year and missed graduation and that last year.  Personally I am ashamed of my Bible reading AC education but I was young.  I actually thought it was a seminary when I signed up. 

Dave thinks Genesis 1 is how it all happened scientifically when in fact, Genesis 1 is a political statement that goes something like this:

"You worship wind, rain and fire, animal, vegetable and minerals.  Our God MADE your gods..."

If Dave understood anything about the origins of the real world, he'd not say with a clear conscience many of the things he does.  Lots of ministers wouldn't.  Dave perpetuates ignorance.  I'd like to see a list of books that Dave has read over the past ten years outside of his very small box of knowing.  How about "Evolution-What the Fossils Tell Us and Why It Matters."  Nah....demons!      Bronze Age types are stuck in Bronze Age knowledge and their followers would never tolerate an update of knowledge.  It threatens the fairy tale that Dave weaves.  Ignorance is dangerous in the long run to good mental, spiritual and even physical health.  A good read of Israel Finkelstein's The Bible Unearthed wouldn't hurt either.

Dave would never utter the words, "Woman, you have NO VOICE!"  if he understood Genesis 2-4 were written to debunk goddess worship in the nations around Israel , blame women for everything and leave them having painful childbirth and saying "yes sir," to husbands so patriarchy could rule Israel.  Israel was going to have male priests, temples and bloody meat sacrifices and that was final.  That is also the lesson of Cain and Abel.  Well actually maybe if he knew this he'd say it even louder because God crushed women early in the game.  As was said to my dad ,  "You know Fred,  it's not easy being married to Dave Pack..."

Dave's theology is dangerous to others real lives.   Where in the world of Christian ministry would you hear such threatening blather as in Dave's Clarion Call sermon?  Look it up. Read it. Send me your retirements, your estates, your home sales, take out second mortgage, sell stuff and send me the money post haste!! Don't wait until you die to send me what is in your will!   Really?  How do I live after that stunt?

 

At least understand that the actual meaning of "here a little, there a little, line upon line, precept upon precept" is NOT the way to study the Bible.  In context, God is MOCKING the drunken priests with baby talk for their lousy theology.  That phrase is not meant to define how you find Bible truth.  It is more saying  "na ha , na...oh wotsa little priest blathering about now...."   Go do your homework Dave.

The fact one can only do that once may leave him desperate for money in the future. Maybe that time is now which is why he is putting all his eggs in the August 2013 basket.  Bills have to be paid over time, not once.  What do you think the public reaction would be if his sermons and news updates were read on TV or put in the newspapers?  What would the Wadsworth Chamber of Commerce think of such tactics by a minister so called?  How about running that "I am Joshua the High Priest past some local psychiatrists or counselor types and what would he get?   Have a conclave of educated theologians from Akron or Cleveland and explain Haggai to them and see how that goes?  Dave is dangerous because he is so very wrong in his theology. 

Dave is dangerous because he shields himself from accountability both financial and theological.  You simply are not welcome to correct, enlighten or educate the man.  He certainly won't do it himself.  Ok, lets throw mental health counseling in there as well.  Take a personality test?  No way...   Have a psychologist read his writings..um..no. 

Dave is deeply hurting people again. . He has blocked that out.  It won't get better.  Dave does not teach people how to actually live in the real world.  He teaches them how to give in his fake world.  Dave teaches people to be so tuned into the unknowable and speculative future that they are of no present good to anyone.  Pray, Pay, Obey and Stay..right?  That's it!  Dave contradicts Jesus, if I may be so bold to use that untrusted RCG word. 

Dave is setting his church up for a big fall.  He's 64 with no heir apparent.  Who would want to inherit the mess of RCG or the bills?  It would be a mad dash to file cabinets that hold the results of everyone's 35 ways litmus test for returning to RCG to blackmail others into submission.  Once we get past August 30, 2013, which is just weeks away, lots of things are going to be more clear to lots of folk than they evidently are now and it won't be clear as Dave counts clearness.  At least we won't have to wait three years as we did with Ron Weinland to see where this is going ....again.

In short, I suppose Dave Pack punches every button in my that fuels my personal regrets about the decisions I made way too young about topics way to big for my britches.  It's hard to get passed that with RCG in everyone's face wanting to drag everyone back to the idealistic past which never actually was.  I learned a lot from my experience.  It has been very painful for a guy like me.  I absolutely believed it and meant well until I didn't.  I had my blind spots, my denial and my sitting on the outside to others but standing on the inside to myself.  I want those to match at least for the rest of my life.  I have had to reeducate myself on all the things I realize I LOVED as a child.  I realize, while I didn't have the facts, I loved dinosaurs, fossils, galaxies, Neanderthals and Oldavai Gorge since I was a kid.  The 60's were chaotic and I turned to religion to explain it when I should have turned to paleontology, cosmology and archaeology instead.  My bad.  My dad told me recently he always wanted to be a New York State Trooper.  So I guess lots of folk make the wrong choice when young and don't know what else they could have done.  I realize when I was kid with my telescope out on the lake in the dark of night, the universe was calling to me to study it.  When I found fossils of trilobites in the shale along the stream, evolution was calling me to find out what went on.  

Dave Pack reminds me of my own bad decisions in life.  Or maybe they were just decisions.  One can't be here if they had not been there. 

When I went to Israel  to dig at Megiddo, having won the essay contest that year in Biblical Archaeology Magazine,  and sat for hours with Israel Finkelstein before he wrote The Bible Unearthed and he explained to me what he understood about the reality of the Old Testament, I knew I was doomed in ministry.  John Shelby Spong put the icing on that cake for me.  When I wrote John to thank him for his book Rescuing The Bible From Fundamentalists,  he wrote back to thank me too and then said, "you won't survive your church."

Dave reminds me I wish I had never heard of it...

I may have no secure future financially, whatever that means in this day and age.  I may not have chosen to keep the old old story going like others,(I was asked to),  but every penny I make is conscience healthy and earned. I know who I am in my soul and being authentic is important to me more than ever.   WCG may have got my youth, but it did not get my soul and neither will or should a deluded non theologically trained, scientifically ignorant but clever guy like Dave Pack get me on the other end of life.  How about you?

If you are a minister thinking of taking up with Dave...call me

EMAIL ME!

"post haste"

Contact Dennis at DennisCDiehl@aol.com