We have all seen over the years the lies of Dave Pack and Gerald FLurry go down in flaming glory. We also witness it today in the lies of Bob Thiel as he attempts to constantly justify the existence of his personality cult. But not only is lying an issue with the leadership of the various COG's, it involves the members too. On a Facebook page, people have been talking about how their families lied to school administrators, church hall rental people and others.
LCG is rich with irony. While Doug Winnail is in Africa, Rod McNair is taking over his weekly comments, and he used this platform this week to share some statistics:
61% of Elders agreed lying is morally wrong
54% of Baby Boomers agreed that lying is morally wrong
50% of Generation Xers agreed that lying is morally wrong
42% of Millennials agreed that lying is morally wrong
But only 34% of Generation Z (born between 1999 and 2015) could agree that lying is morally wrong
Rod presents this as a problem, but those close to him know that he believes in the "Rahab principle" that if you lie for the Church you are not morally culpable. If you are married and Rod convinces your spouse to lie about you, that is lying for the Church and is justified. If you, however, dare to tell the truth about Rod's lies, you are going against the Church and must be eliminated. If you lie to donors about how your tithes are being used, that's morally OK, but if a critic points out the truth that many of LCG's media statistics represent purchased views and do not represent real viewer interest, your truth is considered morally wrong.
Gerald Weston has inherited a big problem. The Emperor is wearing no clothes, and those outside of LCG can see this clearly. It's only the frightened or ambitious LCG members who keep trying to pretend that their home office is something other than a nest of vipers. This is why LCG is not growing. If you are using the Holy Spirit to discern Godly character, you won't want to expose yourself or your loved ones to LCG's moral decrepitude.
I remember being told to say all kinds of things to school teachers that were not exactly true when it came the church belief idiosyncrasies.
Many times parents in Pasadena would use the campus chiropractor or registered nurses names as "official" doctors for the family. Not only were these men/women not real doctors, they were questionable chiropractors considering the quacky things they practiced and encouraged their patients to do. All of the engaged in peddling quack homoeopathic medicines, just as Bob Thiel does.Most of my experience of this was in childhood, filling out school forms. We had to list our doctor in the event of an emergency, and of course we had none – so sometimes my parents would write in the name of Dr. Clint C. Zimmerman (an evangelist who had earned a living as a chiropractor before entering the ministry), even though they knew they were being asked for a medical doctor, and we had never ever ever consulted Zimmerman professionally (if contacted by school officials, he would have had no idea who we were, though he might have remembered my grandparents).Even though Clint Zimmerman was no physician, I kind of see my parents' reasoning – he had, indeed, at one time worked in a related field; still, that's one heck of a stretch.But my first year or two of grade school they actually filled in the name of Dr. Hermann Hoeh as our family doctor – yes, a professor of twisted history who earned his degree from an unaccredited Bible college based on a dissertation unspoiled by facts or logic! No doubt if I'd had an accident on campus he could have mailed a prayer cloth to the school nurse ...
Then, if something did go wrong with a child due to the church stance on doctors and medicine, the church conveniently weaseled its way out of any responsibility whatsoever. They blamed the parents for not doing what should have thought to be right. Then when the child died from appendicitis are some other illness, the ministers would uphold the child or family as pillars of faith for not using medical treatment.
Lying to the "gentile" unconverted public was like casting "pearls before swine" in the eyes of the church. Never share church doctrines or its darker secrets with the "gentiles." We were warned that if we did that then persecution could come upon the church.
Lying also extended to hall rentals for church services or other evenings.
I remember going to "night to be Much Observed" dinners in restaurants that did not serve alcohol or in meeting halls. We were to keep the booze hidden and poured into paper cups so that the "gentiles" would think it was grape soda.Sometimes the church would rent a local school field and/or multi-purpose room for a church social, which involved signing a statement acknowledging alcohol was prohibited (often my dad was the responsible party who reserved the facility and signed those papers – ministers didn't like to go on record and sign official documents). Even at my young age, I can recall two of our ministers in the sixties, ...while instructing the deacons and servers to keep the wine they served with the potluck on the down-low .... never occurred to school officials a church group would intentionally violate the law.
Herbert Armstrong was well qualified to lie to the members since advertising is mostly one big lie after another. Just look at the scores of letters he sent out begging the membership for money all the while he would be on spending sprees at Harrod's and Sotheby's.
And who can forget the "let's flee to Petra" lie we all endure in the late 60's and early 70's. Could there have been a more monstrous lie forced on the membership? Oh wait, there were other lies just as bad, or worse: HWA was an apostle. Church members would become God as God is now. That we need to "qualify" for salvation. Hitler was still alive and ready to slaughter Americans...on and on it went.
The church always defensively claimed it never lied to anyone, but "sins of omission" seemed to be OK. The less you told the gentiles of the world the better. Half-truths were the doctrine of the day, and sadly still are in the COG's.
