Just What Do You Mean
"God Haunted"?
Brutus and the Ghost of Caesar
haunt (hônt, h
nt)
nt)
v. haunt·ed, haunt·ing, haunts
v.tr.
1. To inhabit, visit, or appear to in the form of a
ghost or other supernatural being.
2. To visit often; frequent: haunted the movie theaters.
3. To come to the mind of continually; obsess: a riddle that haunted me all morning.
4. To be continually present in; pervade: the melancholy that haunts the composer's
music.
v.intr.
To recur or visit often, especially as a ghost.
n.
One of the worst explanations of scripture ever given in WCG as to how one should study the bible is found in Isaiah 28 9-11
…9 "To whom would He teach knowledge, And to whom would He interpret the message? Those just weaned from milk? Those just taken from the breast? 10 "For He says, 'Order on order, order on order, Line on line, line on line, A little here, a little there.'" 11. Indeed, He will speak to this people Through stammering lips and a foreign tongue,…"
This scripture is God, MOCKING the drunken priests of Ephraim and their way of teaching. It is God, through Isaiah, telling them they talk like babies. Later God says if that's the way you want it, that's the way God will respond and we'll see how that works out for you.
New International Version
"For it is: Do this, do that, a rule for this, a rule for that; a little here, a little there."
New Living Translation
"He tells us everything over and over--one line at a time, one line at a time, a little here, and a little there!"
These are not compliments and certainly NOT how one should study scripture to get "Gods intended meaning" or to promote "Letting the Bible interpret the Bible."
1. A place much frequented.
2. also hant or ha'nt (h
nt) or haint (h
nt) Chiefly Southern
U.S. A ghost or other supernatural being.
nt) or haint (hnt) Chiefly Southern
U.S. A ghost or other supernatural being.
God haunted is what James Malm, Samuel Kitchen
and E.W.King are. David C. Pack and Gerald Flurry are God Haunted. All of
those who listen to them are God Haunted.
Being God haunted, using the above definitions,
to often visit the scriptures...any scripture found anywhere on any topic to try
and discern what it must mean for you today and to pick a way in which it can
control, alter or influence your thinking. Mistaken and mispoken ministers do this to the congregation knowlingly or, more likely, unknowingly.
Being God Haunted is to continually obsess on
everything from "God's plan" to "Jesus Christ NOW is _____" fill in the blank.
It makes you wear or not wear certain clothes or kinds of clothes. It dictates
the foods you eat or don't eat . It may dictate how you cook that food or even
if you do. Being God Haunted determines the days you keep or don't keep as
sacred or meaningful. Being God Haunted makes one keep those days in exact and
certain ways and times. It calculates and measures.
Being God Haunted determines just how you view
marriage and "roles." If it is God/Christ/My Church Leader/Me and then my wife
to be followed by the kids and their pets, the woman is going to find out real
fast what God Haunted religion is going to do to her individuality. God Haunted
parents ruin kids and teach them that conformity in spite of individuality and
the authenticity of each person is all that is required. God Haunted parents
forget they got to make life choices themselves unless they too are the product
of God Haunted parents who only demanded conformity to the family ways, now pass
it on. God Haunted parents send their kids to God Haunted Summer Camps or programs where the kids then learn the fine art of either wearing the mask of conformity or the fine art of getting around the rules and having some fun.
Gerald Flurry is God Haunted. His obsession
with HWA and the Book of Malachi where in he sees himself as "That Prophet" is
classic God Hauntedness. It's also classic delusional thinking. He's not "that prophet" and he's not even that intelligent. Gerald is
Haunted by the Ghost of HWA who I am not confident was God Haunted in the same
ways. HWA had his ghosts but I don't perceive they were obsessions with how
exactly to be and do things to be on God's good side. Being God Haunted is the
fear of doing something Biblically inappropriate or forbidden upon pain of death
or being cut off from the Deity. Purification rites are being God Haunted.
Washings and sacrifices are being God Haunted. Giving money you really do not
have to give is being God Haunted. Allowing your pastor to badger you into
giving up retirements, homes, possessions, stuff, time and effort , with the
appropriate scriptures to back it up, against your better stomach twitching
judgment, is being God Haunted.
Dr. Robert Thiel is God Haunted. He worries
about how God views football, make up and the role of women. I suppose he has
mused on NASCAR too. I don't know. But if the question came up, he'd have to
search the scriptures for a principle with which to make a judgment on the
matter. That's God Haunted.
Being God haunted agonizes over questions about
what constitutes leavening or at what age my child should fast on Atonement. It
never crosses their mind to ask the child or even teen if they wish to
participate of their own free will. They are afraid they might say not this
year and then the Deity will be really miffed. Being God Haunted asks whether
God approves of oral sex or not. As one minister begged when the presenter at a
Refresher Program thought this needed to be addressed "in the Church", "Stop,
stop...don't answer that! You'll lose the entire French Church!" End of
discussion.
Being God Haunted begs for an answer to whether
you can eat out on a certain day of the week or turn on your lights or stove.
Being God Haunted keeps you near breathless to hear the next "announcement" as
to what God is doing this week which obviously He forgot to include in last week's
announcement. Being God Haunted looks back at what actually happened as opposed
to what one said must happen and rewrites the script to keep it ever about to
happen.
And of course, David C Pack, head of the
Restored Church of God, is God Haunted. Seeing himself as spoken of by the
prophet Haggai and Zechariah is classic God Haunted. It is classic mental
illness as well I am sure by someone's knowledgeable definition. I can't judge
Dave's religious sincerity. But he is God Haunted and obsessive about meaning
and what God, Christ and the Devil are doing these days concerning his Restored Church of God and himself. . They all are and they
search and search the scriptures to find meaning and to define everything they
can think up to think on. He is obsessive about all things HWA. Being God
Haunted never means "I was wrong," "I misspoke" or "I got a little carried away
with scripture and I apologize." It always means, "The Prophecy still stands!
We (not I) were wrong in the "Timing." And the God Haunted pursuit of the
content of God's mind continues unabated and unexamined.
One of the worst explanations of scripture ever given in WCG as to how one should study the bible is found in Isaiah 28 9-11
…9 "To whom would He teach knowledge, And to whom would He interpret the message? Those just weaned from milk? Those just taken from the breast? 10 "For He says, 'Order on order, order on order, Line on line, line on line, A little here, a little there.'" 11. Indeed, He will speak to this people Through stammering lips and a foreign tongue,…"
This scripture is God, MOCKING the drunken priests of Ephraim and their way of teaching. It is God, through Isaiah, telling them they talk like babies. Later God says if that's the way you want it, that's the way God will respond and we'll see how that works out for you.
New International Version
"For it is: Do this, do that, a rule for this, a rule for that; a little here, a little there."
New Living Translation
"He tells us everything over and over--one line at a time, one line at a time, a little here, and a little there!"
These are not compliments and certainly NOT how one should study scripture to get "Gods intended meaning" or to promote "Letting the Bible interpret the Bible."
When I was pastoring in Kentucky, people would
tell me that various areas or places "had the Haints." That meant it was
haunted. It had ghosts and was full of strange and weird things and
happenings.
Is there a cure for "the Haints"? Only time and
with experience I suppose. Some clear thinking people, and I'm not seeing a lot of
that in some of the COG membership as they sit week after week being entertained
by the fairy tales of a Dave Pack or the lesseer players like Thiel, Malm, Kitchen and King,, will reach the point of clarity and finally give up the
ghosts.
Many won't and really probably can't.
On this topic in the behaviors, requirements and
machinations of the key players in the Church of God unending God Haunted drama,
it will take time and a deep level of finally coming to see what "by their
fruits you shall know them" actually means to the observer of these things. This is the only real Ghost Buster I know and
you'll know it when it shows up.
It usually presents itself when you hear the
voice in your head, almost mid sentence or mid sermon say...
"This is stupid...I ain't afraid of no ghosts"
Science has some treatments but no cures for what is obviously a series of mental disorders.
ReplyDeleteIt may not be an haunting as it is a British Israelism addiction.
Or it's just plain idolatry in Biblical terms.
One of the problems with Armstrongism is that we were taught that fanaticism was balance. Officially, ridiculous theories and bad scholarship were sanctioned and taught, but only the ridiculous theories and bad scholarship developed by Herbert W. Armstrong.
ReplyDeleteThere is certainly nothing wrong with pondering and possibly being guided by Jesus' teachings on how to show Godly love to a brother or sister, or who is your neighbor. But there is a big problem in imagining that you are the latter day version of one of the Bible's minor characters, or that someone actually is an apostle today and is to be obeyed as if he were Jesus Christ. There is a big problem with becoming obsessive-compulsive about every single law in Leviticus. There is also a huge problem with imagining that your particular ethnic group is the modern equivalent of one of the prominent ethnic groups in the Bible, and that what the Bible says about that group in prophecy applies to you personally.
We all have our paradigms, and hopefully a code by which we conduct our lives. In most cases, these are principles involving honesty, faithfulness, and hard work. No one would call having such principles being haunted. The problem comes into play when someone begins acting like the iconic TV character Mr. Monk.
I suppose that one could become haunted about being haunted, too. It is surely still in all of our recent memories the extremes to which people went when the phrase "codependent relationship" suddenly crashed into our lexicon. Suddenly, no normal, healthy relationships existed.
Nothing wrong with God in a person's life. Balance is where it's at.
BB
OOOOOH! ME TOO! I want to be referred to prophetically in some relatively obscure book of in the Old Testament, such as Haggai. What do I have to do to make that happen?
ReplyDeleteI've know what step one is, which is copy Herbert in all things and claim to be his one and only true successor on some lame website.
What comes next? PLZ HELP!
Good subject and good analysis. It took decades for me to get the haunting out of my head. It still tries to reassert itself from time to time.
ReplyDeleteBB, I am referring to the strange and weird unbalanced views these guys wring out of scripture. One of the main problems seems to be the inability to see the upgrade the NT is designed to give to the OT even if Rabbis and Hebrew scholars would contest the approach and the misuse of their own scriptures.
ReplyDeleteTelling Jewish people they don't understand their own scriptures is risky business and their are some pretty fine rebuttals out there to the way the NT is used to define the "real" meaning of the OT.
Even in the fundy Baptists around here, they don't dig so deep through scripture for all that the Malm's, Packs, Flurrys, Kitchens, Thiels and Kings can come up with as mandatory practice and thought.
It's silly actually
In my view, the COGs eternal struggle is between being Jewish Christian as we would see of Peter, James and John types in their writings, real or imagined, and the Gentile Christianity of Paul which we are stuck with today.
ReplyDeleteThe COGs wrestle with how much of the OT still applies for Christians. If you go by James and John, most all of it as Christianity was merely a subset of Judaism. If you go by Paul, none of it as Christianity supercedes Judaism in some way. However Paul got a bit more humble about "the law" when the Corinthian congregation seemed to spin out of control under his grace approach to law.
Paul was forced to admit about law being "done away" , "well, I didn't mean that!"
It's a mixed bag and always will be. It truly is mixing the fabric of thoughts and ideas into one coherent garment and it is a tough match.
Den,
ReplyDeleteI figured that was your approach from past discussions. However, some of our atheist brethren have applied that phrase to believers in general. Basically, I was attempting to point towards middle ground, or to explain the middle ground which I have found, for the benefit of the larger audience of lurkers and anonymi.
BB
"There is certainly nothing wrong with pondering and possibly being guided by Jesus' teachings on how to show Godly love to a brother or sister, or who is your neighbor."
ReplyDeleteMost people call this effort simply, "Not being a dick."
Cult indoctrinated people often ascribe spine-tingling attributes to what is actually in the realm of the mundane.
I understand BB. I mean this in the context of the huge tendency in the COGs to search the OT for ideas where they can major in the minors and apply things to day that are irrelevant and stupid as if their NT salvation depended on it.
ReplyDeleteThe stress of some forms of Christianity is the fear of not getting absolutely everything correct and to "become perfect like you Father in heaven is perfect" Whether it means perfect or mature doesn't matter. The pressure to be these impossible things is enormous when one opts for the "what must we do" to be saved versus whatever "the simplicity that is in Christ" is.
By the time one sees themselves spoken of by the prophets I suppose it goes from haunted to outright possession lol