United Church of God has always tried to portray its self as more enlightened than other Church of God's. After all, they were the "new and improved" version of the Worldwide Church of God when they established themselves a couple decades ago. They were going to do things bigger and better than their mother church did. Love and grace were supposedly going to trump rules and regulations.
As we have all seen over the last 20 years, that has never happened. One upheaval after another has hit God's special church. Thousands of members left to join up with a splinter group that also took a large percentage of UCG's ministers with them. UCG once again placed more emphasis on the rules and regulations than they did on love and grace.
To show that some things never change in the UCG, a UCG source sent me the following today:
The UCG is the most moderate of the splinters right? Well, you shouldMen, you too can listen to Joe Dobson's sermon here: God wants us to have living faith
listen to Joe Dobson's Aug. 12 sermon on "God wants us to have living
faith." About the middle, he goes out of his way to say that husbands
have authority over their wives, given by God. I'd sure hate to be
his wife!
15 comments:
the command to submit to one another supersedes the one of wives submit to husbands which was probably written to a particular congregation only.
Neither male nor female also ends anyone trumping authority over another.
Don't be like the gentiles who lord it over each other also disproves his idea that men have authority over women.
Men do take authority but this is based on might making right not on the New Testament.
The church of god is interested in power, not Christ.
A marriage is a partnership
People marry above and below their own levels in life, and both parties bring different talents, resources and abilities to the relationship. Also, there are different character traits and habit patterns, strengths and weaknesses. This one size fits all edict from Armstrongism, if practiced rigidly, does not allow for planning for an optimized allocation of strengths and resources so that the partnership can be successful. It reduces the whole thing to a primitive state of dominance-submission.
Imagine what would happen in an ACOG if a wealthy, intelligent woman insisted on a pre-nup!
BB
I listened to most of the "middle" of his sermon and heard what you are referring to. Most of his talk is about "living" faith, which is shown by works of service. Kind of hard to put that down. If all humans had the "spirit" of service toward each other, we would be creating the environment of God's Kingdom.
Then the authority issue comes up. And of course because this site focuses on the past and present abuse of authority, the issue of the man's authority in marriage is consider more abuse. I lived in an abusive home. My Dad was Catholic. Religion had nothing to do with domestic violence.
The speaker mentions that it's important that the man's "authority" must used wisely and with kindness.
I go out my way not to dictate to my wife, because her first husband treated her like a piece of furniture he owned and my Mom was abused. He was of Japanese decent. Having authority over a wife is often through intimidation, fear. I believe most men would admit that guiding a family, while working with your wife is a delicate and unsure skill. Often women will find a way to gain their own "control" and most men can count the many ways they use to get it.
I am familiar with such a situation. It was in WCG decades ago and the pastor insisted on a pre-nup. I expect this wasn't unique.
I think Paul's teaching is that everyone is answerable to someone ("submit to one another") and then he lists several instances. One of them is the wife submitting to the husband.
“United Church of God has always tried to portray its self as more enlightened than other Church of God's. After all, they were the 'new and improved' version of the Worldwide Church of God when they established themselves a couple decades ago. they were going to do things bigger and better than their mother church did. Love and grace were supposedly going to trump rules and regulations.”
In his old age, Herbert W. Armstrong had made it appear to be so easy to grow the Worldwide Church of God that many other people thought that they could do it too, and even better than HWA. In fact, things were going so well around the peak of the WCG in the 1980s that some people thought that HWA must be senile and incompetent. They thought that if they could just be in control of the church, they could do really wonderful things. They thought that they could show HWA and everyone else how to do it right.
When HWA died in January 1986, Joseph W. Tkach, Sr. took over. He was influenced by his son Joseph Tkach, Jr. and the kid's buddies to change all the teachings of the WCG. The more that the Tkaches criticized HWA and his ways, and talked about how they themselves were so much wiser, and spiritual, and loving, and thrifty than HWA, the more the WCG declined. At first the Tkaches denied that they were changing anything, but in January 1995 they openly wrote up in the WCG's Worldwide News newspaper that they were changing virtually everything. The only teaching that the Tkaches ever changed their mind about changing, and brought back, was tithing. Joey, Jr. suddenly, and conveniently, discovered that Abraham had tithed before the institution of the Old Covenant, and began calling on every man, woman, and child to resume tithing immediately. But it was too late. When Joe, Sr. died about forty weeks after the apostasy, Joey, Jr. took over and renamed the remaining wreckage the Graceless Community of Iniquity.
The sudden and dramatic income drop that resulted from the Tkaches' Great Apostasy of January 1995 caused many WCG ministers to fear for their jobs. The Tkaches attributed the sudden and massive income drop to various factors such as the economy, etc., and, oh, possibly even the doctrinal changes, maybe. Several months after this great disaster, some WCG ministers formed the United Church of Re-Employed Men, an International Association of Hirelings. Around the first year of the UCG, they bragged about how their church was already at the same size that it had taken HWA many years to grow the WCG to. They projected that at this rate of growth, the UCG would quickly get even bigger. So, of course, that was about as big as the UCG ever got. They seemed to forget that what relatively few members they did have had come from the WCG, where HWA had attracted them and collected them together.
The UCG idea of “showing love” by letting in unrepentant, unconverted, unbelieving perverts and allowing them to behave badly has not worked out well. It just led to much confusion and division. Without the law to tell what was right and wrong, perverts were able to attend church and harass other people there. Having learned from the Tkaches to do things backwards and wrong, the UCG's Council of Evil was in the habit of kicking out the innocent victims, and keeping the guilty perverts. The UCG ministers thought that they were God's gift to mankind and that they knew better than HWA how to grow the church, but, like the Tkaches, they have done nothing but shrink it. Now, they wonder why God does not send any more people to them to be abused and slandered. They wonder why all they ever seem to get is just the occasional weirdo sent by Satan to drain them.
Gordon 1:31 PM
You nailed it. Abuse of authority has happened throughout mankind's history.
We are all called to be servants and not to lord over others.
The greatest example of submission was Christ doing His Father's will.
Now that men have no legal authority over their wives and children but are still responsible for providing for them only a fool would get married. Marriage reduces a man to a victim-sucker who will be slaving away the rest of his life for his wife and her new lover after she walks away with the house, kids, money and he forks out the child support. It's a form of "taxation without representation" (financial burden without having any say) and in the past real men fought revolutions to overthrow those kinds of systems. If men ever realize how they are being played expect another revolution.
I still occasionlly go to Dobson's congregation. For all his talk about loving authority. there's another side to him. There was one family that he didn't especially like, and his last act was to "disfellowship" the matriarch of the family, a woman in her 80's who has expressed nothing but blind support of him. So much for loving authority.
Men today are total losers. They have been psychologically castrated. No balls. And they think this makes them modern and advanced. Fools.
Feminists are lying when they say they want equality. What they really want is the good jobs while men do the crappy jobs, the sweaty jobs, the hard labor, forced military service, and any job where there is danger, no air conditioning or central heat.
They also want YOUR money and laws that treat men like predatory scum presumed to be guilty. 9 out of 10 assault allegations are LIES.
The I.Q. is dropping because smart men are dropping out of the marriage game.
9.02 AM
So true. There's the classic 2013 essay on this:
'The Pussification of the Western Male' by Kim du Toit.
There's also the interesting YouTube video:
'R. LEE ERMEY Interview Explaining The pussification of our kids!!!'
R Lee Ermey is the sergeant in the movie Full Metal Jacket.
YIKES! As a younger man relative to this discussion who has never been married, I find the animus and embitterment striking. I don't know your history, but I hope you're able to be in loving committed relationships and partnerships in the future. There are so many wonderful caring women out there. I hope you're able to find one and love her as a full partner and walk together.
Being a man is not being a dictator, or some litmus test for testosterone. I've been out of the COG for two years now after being raised in it, and am dating the most incredible girl. We went to a wedding for a friend of mine and she was struck by how many times the minister said "submit" to the woman in the ceremony. She wasn't wrong. The whole man being in charge thing is overblown and kind of ridiculous. One person will have to lead, but I'd rather share leadership or follow in some instances because I don't have all the answers, and I'd rather work together than beat my chest and talk about AUTHORITY!
I'm glad women have the right to vote, the right to hold office, and are not treated as cattle in this country. I appreciate their perspective and their rights. If any women are reading this, please don't let the knuckle dragging neanderthals you find on the internet get you down. Stay strong and let your voices be heard!
Anon @11:04 wrote
>>YIKES! As a younger man relative to this discussion who has never been married, I find the animus and embitterment striking. I don't know your history, but I hope you're able to be in loving committed relationships and partnerships in the future. There are so many wonderful caring women out there. I hope you're able to find one and love her as a full partner and walk together.
<<
You have not seen the things I have not posted from this guy. This one was mild compared to the others. This person has some serious issues with women.
Anonymous 6:51 PM said, "What they really want is the good jobs while men do the crappy jobs, the sweaty jobs, the hard labor, forced military service, and any job where there is danger, no air conditioning or central heat."
My comment: That's about the funniest thing I've read in quite awhile. Tell you what anon. keep looking, there are a lot of women who would love for you to do the dishes, the vacuuming, sweeping, laundry, meals, and all the other indoor shtuff. Oh, and run all the errands (for the most part you are in a temperature controlled environment). There are many women out there who love to work hard and would rather be outdoors working than in an artificial environment. Keep looking. Love is a real important factor in marriage. That means BOTH. It doesn't work as a one sided arrangement.
Something I think that gets in the way for some, is how in Corinthians one attribute of love states that "love does not seek HER own" Well, either God is a woman..or some man mistranslated as a matter of control/convenience the word IT('s).
I've worked side by side with my husband for over 30 years doing the grotty jobs both in self employed businesses and around farm and home. It's usually he who wants in the a/c or heat. Fine with me, but I wish he would fix a meal once in bloomin' while!? I tried a "better paying", in an office job once. That only lasted for about 3 months. Not enough manual labor or fresh air!
Sorry you are still hurting from bad experience/s.
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