A reader here made the following observation about church members who sit back and let the ministry abuse them. These people have the need to be told what to do and have no idea how to step out and make a decision on their own. They remain fearful of the ministry over them. They have seen what happens to rebels who take a stand. Its never been pretty sight to behold.
People still look to fools like Malm, Thiel, Pack, Flurry and Meredith to give them the answers. The world is a safer place when a person is told what to believe than it is to dwell in the questions.
Pack,Flurry, etc have blown their minds with power and self involvement.
I think anyone in that organisation knows it but is afraid.
The C of G is filled with people who are not self starters. By and large the membership is teeming with people who need to be told what to do and when to do it.
It is a cult and attracts cult minded people and rebels who are rebelling against their family and friends and society.
Procrastination is the church motto. People quit and take jobs because ministry tell them to.
They marry and divorce as the ministry tell them to.
Those who won't go along with the micro control (the rebels) have 'bad attitudes' because they think for themselves.
I often wondered if HWA thought that people were gaining experience for the kingdom by being automatons.
These groups think they can buy salvation with deeds. The good works don't come from the heart but from the desire for salvation and saving their own skin.
This is the difference in a Christian whose heart has the law written in it and the members of the WWCG who read it off a stone tablet.
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“Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living with other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice.” Steve Jobs
This post is heartbreaking for me, because it summarizes why people allow others to take their freedom. In my case, finding freedom was a process:
1. "OMG, I've been duped, this is a big con."
2. "Wow, the bible is not inerrant, and is filled with contradictions, violence and lies."
3. "Religion is a major cause of our problems, not the solution."
4. "I love this fantastic opportunity for freedom of thought."
5. "I would like for everyone to have this same freedom."
6. "Looks like many are afraid of freedom and making their own choices. How sad."
In the old AC days or yore, it was once observed by a professor/minister in class that: Did you ever notice that the assistants to the top ministers seem to be just like their bosses? Same facial expressions, sense of humor, body language, taste in clothing, and mannerisms?"
Actually, what that represents is a person afraid of having a personality of his own, someone who is acting in another's valence. So, basically that person is taking life in, determining what his more powerful superior would do in specific situations, and acting that out for his own and the third party's benefit. You have, essentially, an actor who will subvert his own personality (if he has one) in the same manner, for his next boss as well! In local church areas, you could observe this same process at Spokesmens' Club. On a larger scale, it became the Universal Ambassador Personality, which I've commented on quite at length over the past.
Not good. It is difficult to visualize a God who would see strength and character in that.
BB
Because the New Testament is full of offices the mere member is to listen to, do as told n taught to and pray, pay, obey and stay. They have no conscious awareness they can think for themselves on theological matters. The Book forbids it. You know...human reasoning n all that...
Authoritarianism in any form is terrible, and the COG's brand of it is an especially hard cycle to escape from when you're family is involved and it's been forced on you from a young age. After so many decades under the boot it may be just too late for some, but I keep rooting for the kids to discover the spark that ignites the wildfire to burn through the bullshit.
Individual thinking and decision making is deadly to authoritarian organisations. It eventually stifles everyone and leads to the inevitable decline we're witnessing the COGs. You essentially become a non-entity unthinkingly goose stepping to whoever has claimed authority over you and has tricked you into accepting it as the way things have to be done. I always had a bit of my father's independence in me and credit that fact to the great blessing of never being ordained to the ministry which is a trap very few ever escape from. Dennis, you're very fortunate to have been able to wake up.
I'm glad I saw through it and didn't go desperately grovelling for any job back there in 1974 like many did. It would have broken my spirit and condemned me to a life of demeaning subservience. Yes, it had many rough aspects, but it was worth it to stand tall and realize I could make it on my own and be a free man.
Regarding my Dad, when he joined the church, the ministers kept badgering him to sell his ranch and mover closer to church. He did his own thinking, stayed on the ranch until he had to retire and then sold the land piece by piece to help support them in their old age. When he died at 95, he left a CD worth $10,000 to me and another to my sister. If he had listened to those idiot ministers, he'd have died in poverty.
My KARMA , ran over your DOGMA!
It's a twist on the lyrics of the old song, Young New Mexican Puppeteer...
Early in his political career, Hitler learned that the Germans aren't going to act like the Russians, who took up revolution and ran with it. He realized German culture required a strongman telling them how to think and what to do.
So the draw of one COGleader was, unless you listen to him, the only one who is right, you won't know when to flee, ... you get the picture.
After HWA's passing and the assumption of the inept Joe Sr., I had to ask myself in a more lucid moment, what the hell was I doing here? This after 25 years! I then took up the study of "what is atheism?". Ten books and I have been out of COGism since !992. I learned the invisible god and non-existent one look very much alike.
Jim
Jim HWA may have "deceived" you with his personally flaws but I wasn't. I saw the abuses and idolization, but asked is the theology wrong. Not Petra or other wild speculation. Much of his "new truth" was just old truth that the early church understood. When you follow a human leader you will always be disappointed.
However a much bigger deception is atheism. You have to turn off your reasoning ability a begin to believe in major fairy tales of the universe coming from nothing and be forced to ignore all the design of life you see and "believe" there was no designer. That's in my opinion it's a much bigger deception.
"However a much bigger deception is atheism. You have to turn off your reasoning ability a begin to believe in major fairy tales of the universe coming from nothing and be forced to ignore all the design of life you see and "believe" there was no designer. That's in my opinion it's a much bigger deception."
OK. Now, tell me who designed your creator. It's much easier to believe in a singularity than the magic of an all-knowing (knowledge comes form experience and experimentation), all-powerful, all-everything creator. If everything has to have a sentient creator, then so does your god, that god's creator, and on and on into infinity. I don't know how it all came about, but we're making progress in determining that and it's been a meager length of time we've been at it compared to the almost 14 billion years this universe has apparently existed. I feel very insignificant when I realise that I've been around for a mere 82 years come next Monday, and that's based on the orbit of a planet that didn't even exist until a few billion years ago.
Allen C. Dexter
Would "other wild speculation" include BI?
Speak for yourself. Ministry domination and intrusion may still be overwhelming in PCOG and RCG but not amongst many elsewhere within the other COG's. The Ministry are aged and the congregations too scattered. Oh I'm sure they still desire with feverent desire to wield the axe destroying brethren lives. But time or God Himself has put time, travel and money against them. They wield hardly any authority in brethrens lives.
I have to say, it is a fascinating thing to watch when people are under control. I have yet to be able to accurately explain it, because I was once under that type of control myself. When I came out from under it, it was like pulling a veil off of my eyes. I started seeing/hearing contradictions from every angle at the pulpit, yet why did I not hear it before? The best way I could explain it for myself, was likening it to when one starts feeling the zeal for religion, and then becoming baptized. For many years after that, you learn, and are thankful for someone to teach you, and I guess your mind kind of becomes closed off to the possibility of being misled. Along the way, something may happen, i.e. altercation with the ministry, a family member leaves the church, whatever it is, that may shake you up. It is at this point, that you start looking back at what you've learned, and your ears really open up when hearing, and eyes when reading, and you then realize that you only had the nuts and bolts of what you learned initially, and that the ministry had been manipulating the real context of scriptures. So, it's like being called and baptized in reverse, but none the less, your eyes are opening again.
Thankfully however, I did not throw away the teaching that I came to believe and could prove out of the Bible. I still hold on to it, and practice it. After all, there was a reason I became interested in it in the first place, it must hold value.
With that, it is a sad state in a majority of the COG's today.
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