"The moment you follow someone, you cease to follow Truth,"
Jiddu Krishnamurti
“We are not supposed to all be the same, feel the same, think the same, and believe the same.
The key to continued expansion of our Universe lies in diversity,
not in conformity and coercion.
Conventionality is the death of creation.”
“The larger the group, the more toxic, the more of your beauty as an individual you have to surrender for the sake of group thought. And when you suspend your individual beauty you also give up a lot of your humanity. You will do things in the name of a group that you would never do on your own. Injuring, hurting, killing, drinking are all part of it, because you've lost your identity, because you now owe your allegiance to this thing that's bigger than you are and that controls you.”
"But the kingdom is within you, and it is outside of you. When you know yourselves, then you will be known, and you will know that you are the sons of the living Father. But if you do not know yourselves, then you are in poverty, and you are poverty. "
Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas
(No wonder it didn't make the cut)
“It was a well-known fact that humans became more addled than usual when running in herds.”
― Jim Butcher, The Aeronaut's Windlass
“There is no need for us all to be alike and think the same way, neither do we need a common enemy to force us to come together and reach out to each other. If we allow ourselves and everyone else the freedom to fully individuate as spiritual beings in human form, there will be no need for us to be forced by worldly circumstances to take hands and stand together. Our souls will automatically want to flock together, like moths to the flame of our shared Divinity, yet each with wings covered in the glimmering colors and unique patterns of our individual human expression.”
― Anthon St. Maarten
“Group Thinking” or lack of courage to ask the tough and strategic questions
is the chief weakness on Boards today.”
― Pearl Zhu,
is the chief weakness on Boards today.”
― Pearl Zhu,
Love, love, love all those quotes. How they cut to the core truth. Well my experience anyway. The larger the group the more toxic, surrendering yourself, less humanity. Modern day church zombies. I recall the time a deaconess boldly told women in the church exactly how they were to get their hair cut. A short sharp cut so they would all look neat and exactly the same.
ReplyDeleteI don't put much stock in religion or atheism, I only trust myself!
ReplyDeleteMy guess would be that the members who passed the pre-baptism hazing rituals prior to 1990 (and, Jeez, that was almost 30 years ago!) follow HWA (sleight of hand equates this with following Jesus Christ), and consider their splinter leader to be a poor substitute whom they must endure until Christ (and HWA) returns, when they believe they’ll receive their crowns as a group, along with those suddenly awaking from soul sleep.
ReplyDeleteHowever, are any of the individuals pictured in the entry above such dominant, charismatic, and inspiring natural leaders that people would automatically be drawn to, and want to follow? Or do they follow them because someone has convinced them that they have authority over them? A mantle, if you would.
Regardless of what anyone might say at this point, Armstrongism as a movement has been “phoning it in” most likely from the first time HWA began the repeats of his two trees sermon.
I was thinking just the other day. I’ve now been participating in the therapies and factual materials presented on these “dissident” blogs, forums, and websites for the same number of years as HWA/WCG were an influence in my life. 1 for 1. It is unlikely that anything relevant and new which has not already been discussed in deep detail by all of us could surface at this point. I would have to believe that familiarity in the splinters would inevitably produce both ambivalence and staleness. We witness so many things. Gerald Weston in repeating all of the old WCG mantras as if they were new is feeding staleness. David Pack and Ronald Weinland, with their ridiculous false prophecies are attempting something new, but when these too fail, it produces further ambivalence and staleness. Gerald Flurry, by being the idolatrous copy cat that he is, foments staleness. UCG and the COGaWA, by being so bland and silent, produce a deathlike staleness. Mark Armstrong’s micro-splinter, in becoming an echo of the the hard right, embraces the staleness of failed and dangerous policies of eras past. Bob Thiel and Wade Cox somehow never even get off the ground.
The problem is that so long as it is possible for one new person to be attracted to, rendered toxic by, and used and deceived by any agent of Armstrongism, somebody has got to be around to warn them. Outlasting “them” is just the right thing to do.
BB
"No, no, I'M THE GUY who "knows" what the bible was supposed to REALLY have always meant..."
ReplyDeleteThere's 40,000+ christian sects, which means at least 40,000 people who, more or less, claim this. Herbert was an imitator of the religious P.T. Barnum's who came before him. Now Herbert has a bunch of imitators.
And they "know" this how?
*crickets*
ReplyDeleteThe MIND behind the CULT
WCG (Herbert W. Armstrong)
Leader: The driven mind of the successful advertising man who was so far ahead of his time that his prophetic predictions still have not yet come to pass even decades later.
Members: The sneaky double mind of the hypocrite. The mind that knew how it was expected to act while HWA was alive, but that thought it could get away with anything after he was dead and gone.
CGI and ICG (Garner Ted Armstrong)
Leader: The mind of a playboy at play with co-eds, stewardesses, secretaries, masseuses, etc.
Members: The non-thinking mind of someone who was obviously Born to Lose.
GCI (Tkach, Jr.)
Leader: The mind of the ham-eating, Sunday-keeping apostate who hates the ancient, biblical laws of God but who loves the unbiblical, pagan-based customs and traditions of men.
Members: Ditto. The mind that was just waiting for an opportunity to rebel, and go bad, and have a ham sandwich., and observe Halloween, and do many other naughty things now that it is out from under the laws of God.
Continued below...
ReplyDelete...continued from above.
UCGaIA (Kubic)
Leaders: Originally, the mind of the hireling thinking about where his next paycheck will come from. And now, the mind of the newly credentialed, adulterous, killer “minister” thinking about what a clever life hacker he is.
“Members”: The mind of the unrepentant, unconverted, unbelieving, uncivilized, unsociable stalker who attends but may not even be signed up as a member of the UCG. The mind that would really rather be somewhere else, but its favorite false group is almost non-existent, so it hangs out at the UCG instead.
COGaIC (Hulme)
Leader: The fluffy, uppity, mindless mind that amounted to nothing because, other than wanting to be the head honcho that gets to spend all the money, it really had no Vision.
Members: The vain mind that got led out of the UCG and over to nowhere, and ultimately totally failed for complete lack of Vision.
COGaWA (Franks)
Leaders: The tired old mind of the movie lover thinking about how to do a work without actually having to work.
Members: The mind of the little teleholic that went with whatever group its minister went with when the UCG split.
LCG (Meredith)
Leader: The competitive mind that simply could not compete at all with what HWA had already done and accomplished in the past, even after starting off with some of HWA's followers and some of HWA's teachings and trying for about 25 years to “shake the nations.”
Members: The old timer's mind that was continually grieved by RCM's pathetic attempts to put his own stamp on the church with his so-called “doctrinal upgrades.”
Continued below...
ReplyDelete...continued from above.
PCG (Flurry)
Leader: The mind of Satan working hard at editing and changing HWA's writings and teachings so it can do all its own lying, stealing, destroying, and killing in HWA's name. Specializes in wrecking all normal family relationships and promoting sexual immorality.
Members: The mind of the old sex maniac, sex pervert, and predator running wild and out of control in a predator's paradise.
Ex-members: The mind of the perplexed prey that got caught in the gaze of the old perverts and wonders why nobody in the PCG obeys, or even seems to have heard about, God's laws about morality.
RCG (Pack)
Leader: The insatiably greedy and covetous mind of a doctrinally unstable demoniac in complete meltdown. Specializes in “common” theft.
Members: The mind that was supposedly doctrinally sound but will flip and change in an instant and go along with whatever it is told to believe next. The mind that thinks it literally has nothing left to lose of material possessions, and so will now continue to go along with the fraud and end up losing any sincerity and integrity too that it might have once had.
Ex-members: The sincere, formerly trusting, gullible mind that naively believed that Dave was going to restore everything that HWA had taught in 1986 but now has to deal with the fact that it has been utterly deceived, robbed, betrayed, and left destitute--not to mention looking like a sucker.
COG-PKG (Weinland)
Leader: The frustrated mind of a prophetic fantasy fiction writer with a dwindling following.
Members: The mind that likes prophetic fantasy fiction, even if it is not true. The mind that does not want to distinguish between fiction and reality. The mind that wants to be a pen-pal of a con-artist in the slammer.
CCG (Thiel)
Leader: The mind of a mentally challenged, amateur scammer that got outsmarted by the more experienced Nigerian mind. Specializes in looking to demons and pagans in lands like Africa, and fake news on American television, for hints about prophetic trivia.
Members: Almost none. Nobody with even half a mind would fall for this. Mostly just some demons and pagans from Africa.
So, how many pages will it take to complete this biography? Another book to be placed in the fiction bin. I think that GTA admitted that much of HWA's autobiography was fiction. Surprise!
ReplyDelete