THE THINGS THAT WE TELL OURSELVES TO STAY
By
Lonnie Hendrix/Miller Jones
When I think about my own experience in the realm of Armstrongism, I am reminded of all of the things that I had to believe to maintain the illusion that I was in the right place. I think too about all of the folks who are still part of one of the many descendants of the old Worldwide Church of God. How do they justify their continued affiliation with a movement that has been so thoroughly discredited? How do they get around all of the evidence that Armstrongism has been/is an abject failure? I think about the many posts and comments that have appeared over the years at Ambassador Watch, Banned by HWA, The Painful Truth, Living Armstrongism, Dixon Cartwright’s The Journal (and a host of other sites and sources), and I wonder how anyone could still occupy a seat in any church affiliated with Armstrongism!
How is that possible? In thinking about this, it occurred to me that continued association with Herbert Armstrong’s religion requires one to engage in make-believe. Indeed, when I look back at my own experience, I realize that I engaged in a great deal of make-believe for the last several years of my association with Armstrongism. I wonder if any of the points that follow will resonate with folks who have shared this experience with me? Maybe you can think of others?
In the face of so much evidence that Herbert Armstrong’s theology is a complete failure, we PRETEND that:
All of that history/evidence referenced above doesn’t exist AND/OR
Friendships (and the resulting fellowship) are more important than the cognitive dissonance which I experience when I attend services or discuss church teachings with others AND/OR
This collection of doctrines which we refer to as “THE TRUTH” didn’t originate with Herbert and are consequently not tainted by his many failures AND/OR
These doctrines have spiritual and intellectual appeal regardless of their origins (the late Ian Boyne liked this one) AND/OR
Herbert Armstrong’s obvious mistakes and sins don’t mean that God couldn’t/didn’t use him AND/OR
Herbert didn’t make any mistakes – that he was God’s vessel for revealing truth to mankind (Gerald Flurry is fond of this one) AND/OR
Other interpretations of Scripture are not plausible/possible/practical – that all of the scientists, historians and theologians who contradict Herbie’s teachings are wrong and/or deceived AND/OR
The motivations of all of those who are critical of Herbert and his doctrines are evil and/or inspired by Satan AND/OR
The only real problems with Armstrongism arose from Herbie’s notion about church governance AND/OR
All of the hurts and damage which were inflicted on current and past church members either didn’t really happen or doesn’t matter if it did
What do you think?
Lonnie, have you asked your dad the same questions seeing that he's a top minister in the CGI?
ReplyDeleteYou frame this as if ANY armstrongist has EVER visited one of the websites mentioned and as if some viable exchange of ideas has resulted from that. Most of those websites and the armstrongite cults operate completely isolated from each other.
ReplyDeleteHow many freakin Americans have opinions on "Russians" while they never left their State, never read a piece of Russian literature or heard Russian music.
They are discussions amongst themselves. Everyone living their own narrative without exchange.
That's how people "get around evidence to the contrary".
Lots of them and most of us.
Can we all hug now and shake hands?
Nck
Confirmation bias - we humans are not fully rational creatures and we interpret the facts around our core beliefs.
ReplyDeleteThis is why, for me anyways, I was able to read thru the Bible multiple times in different versions for over 20 years before I realizing we were not following apostolic Christianity, and then another year to realize the Bible not only had major inconsistencies, but also recorded fables - like the flood and Exodus - as if they were really true.
Some may be disappointed that I said "some there, most here."
ReplyDeleteI feel that people who have crossed the line into "believing" do not have to "explain" anything.
Once one has crossed that line I am fine with elves, gnomes, talking bushes, genocidal deities, deities that are willing to teach Stalin the way to peace, rabbit bones, etc etc
Believers don't have to "explain" to me.
Scientists and scholars need to explain to me and I might voice an opinion on their findings according to the rules that apply to them.
Nck
I never adopted Armstrong's ideas in the first place. My father made us listen to "The World Tomorrow" from the time when I was 5 or 6 years old. I would try to make sense of it so I would be able to answer when my father said at the end of the program, "He sure says a lot in a little bit of time, doesn't he?" I realized he said a lot, but I never understood what it was. Oh, I understood well enough that the Germans were going to come and kill us all. They would toss my littlest sister up and catch her on their bayonets and hang the rest of us on meathooks. But why was never clear to me, nor anything else except that it was part of God's plan. He was a good god, but for some reason had to destroy a lot of innocent children to make it work.
ReplyDeleteSo I developed the habit of daydreaming during the broadcast and doing a lot of smiling and nodding when my father expressed his enthusiasm for Armstrong and expounded his own prophetic interpretations of scripture and world events. My mother took up Armstrong's ideas without the bombast, so that after their divorce she took us to COG services when years later they became available in our area. Eventually she got baptized. I kept up my habit of daydreaming during sermons and smiling and nodding a lot during theological conversations with other churchgoers. I accompanied my mother to church because "Friendships [actually kinship is] more important than the cognitive dissonance which I experience when I attend services or discuss church teachings with others."
I agreed to go to Ambassador College partly because my father had always said he would pay my way to go there. I thought surely an institution of higher learning would have a few people around who enjoyed playful banter and satire of the kind I drank in from Mad Magazine and other places. Turned out badly. There were a few, all right, but the overall mood was dead earnestness. Anything lighthearted was cause for suspicion. I could no stand that atmosphere.
At 18 I still had never gone through the healthy teenage rebellion stage. I did not rebel openly even when I decided Ambassador college was not the place for me. I just quietly sent off an application to a state school so I could transfer there for my sophomore year. There were complications with accreditation that kept me from going to the school I applied to, but eventually I got into a different college and found a whole lot of people who appreciated playful banter and who did not put a halt to exhilarating philosophical discussions by frowning and warning, "You can't ask that question!"
So although I was not unscathed by armstrongism, the wound was only a grazing hit. I moan for all of you who suffered deep wounds, and I hope your healing continues until you are comfortable in your own skin.
How about 'I need friends that agree with me"
ReplyDeleteor
I need a social life so I can't leave
or
I'm afraid of death so just in case I better stay
or
I am a coward and am afraid to challenge myself. I may not like what I discover.
I think about the many posts and comments that have appeared over the years at Ambassador Watch, Banned by HWA, The Painful Truth, Living Armstrongism, Dixon Cartwright’s The Journal (and a host of other sites and sources), and I wonder how anyone could still occupy a seat in any church affiliated with Armstrongism!
ReplyDeleteThere are many people who have never read these articles. I have only read these articles after I left WCG about 19 years ago. When Keith Britain came down to our group and told us we are going to sunday and I made some comments about we were told we would not have to change days. He told me I don't have to come, so I listen to him, I walked out that day and never went back.
Some which I knew believed the lie of Herbie that this was the only true church and if you left you would go to the lake of fire, so they remained for a while till they went to sunday.
The ones I know who are going to COWGA, and UCG and etc. think theirs is the only true church, afraid to leave or as one ex-elder and his wife are still studying the bible (as they say) by using only the corresponding course of Herbie and old PT's etc.
I can only think "Groundhog Day"
If I try to say anything they quickly cut me off. So be it, I say no more.
I think about the many posts and comments that have appeared over the years at Ambassador Watch, Banned by HWA, The Painful Truth, Living Armstrongism, Dixon Cartwright’s The Journal (and a host of other sites and sources), and I wonder how anyone could still occupy a seat in any church affiliated with Armstrongism!
ReplyDeleteThere are many people who have never read these articles. I have only read these articles after I left WCG about 19 years ago. When Keith Britain came down to our group and told us we are going to sunday and I made some comments about we were told we would not have to change days. He told me I don't have to come, so I listen to him, I walked out that day and never went back.
Some which I knew believed the lie of Herbie that this was the only true church and if you left you would go to the lake of fire, so they remained for a while till they went to sunday.
The ones I know who are going to COWGA, and UCG and etc. think theirs is the only true church, afraid to leave or as one ex-elder and his wife are still studying the bible (as they say) by using only the corresponding course of Herbie and old PT's etc.
I can only think "Groundhog Day"
If I try to say anything they quickly cut me off. So be it, I say no more.
A person has to be true to themselves, you cannot live a lie. It fool's no one in the long run, not even yourself.
ReplyDeleteWhatever a person believes in or not believes in then your life HAS to reflect that. Otherwise you will end up a person with no integrity, sulking in the shadows, neither being believed, or trusted.
So we all have to tell ourselves the truth. The truth that we believe as individuals.
Anonymous 9:22 AM,
ReplyDeleteWhy do you only use your name to post sometimes? Do you not want me to know when you're being snarky? After what we just went through with snarky remarks directed at another commentator, I would have thought that we'd all have learned not to play these kinds of games!
nck said: "You frame this as if ANY Armstrongist has EVER visited one of the websites mentioned and as if some viable exchange of ideas has resulted from that." You've been visiting these sites long enough to know better than that! Armstrongites visit these sites fairly often (even though most of them don't reveal their identity or use a screen name).
Painful Truth,
Excellent additions!
My question was "Is there any way these people could actually be right?"
ReplyDeleteThat was gradually answered for me in the time period between 1972-75. And, in the intervening years, I've seen nothing which would remotely change the judgment call that I made at the close of that time period. Any God worth following would not have allowed His earthly government and/or messengers to be as flawed, mistaken, duplicitous, cruel and corrupt as the Armstrong movement. HWA and his lackeys would have been a very poor reflection upon God. There was nothing salvageable, no baby in the bathwater. The only course was to start from scratch, searching for new and more correct answers, which is what I ended up doing immediately following about ten years of partying which were necessary to clean the slate, decompress, and recharge the batteries. Then, once again, I began to ask the deep philosophical questions which seem to be innate in the human mind. Deep down, we all really want to know just what the heck is going on. Lying to yourself is not part of the path to enlightenment.
BB
It is difficult to understand what is defined as a story that I believed when becoming associated with the WCOG. My whole life was influenced by a faith in Jesus Christ and the belief that God was working out a plan that give human beings the opportunity for an eternal existence. My great-grand-parent, grand-parents. and parents were members of an Anabaptist group that went into the 1700’s
ReplyDeleteWhen I married the wife I still have and had children we decided we needed to teach them about God and Jesus Christ. This was early in the 1950’s. It took a couple years of looking at churches to find a church that would teach God’s word without some of radical requirements of the churches we had been reared in. The Radio Church of God was the one that had some customs that would be acceptable without being as radical as the church she had been reared in and my family church.
We were both baptized in 1958 and must say our life has been filled with positive experiences and not the problematic experiences many claim to have experienced. The only thing that I can attribute that to is our faith and confidence that God was guiding us through that part of our earthly journey. The last few years with WCOG were spent trying to avoid getting involved in all of the controversy and continue our personal lives as they have always been. I do not try to tell anyone how they should live and what they should be doing, but I will say that my years of living have taught me that I am responsible for successes and failures. I cannot blame God, Satan, evil spirits, evil people, good people, bad people, the government, the weather, even my wife
There's a price to paid for using the old bible correspondence course or re reading old literature. One is bound within someone else's limited map of reality.
ReplyDelete'Be perfect..,' ie, become mature, means moving forward and expanding ones borders of wisdom and understanding.
Byker wrote:
ReplyDeleteAny God worth following would not have allowed His earthly government and/or messengers to be as flawed, mistaken, duplicitous, cruel and corrupt as the Armstrong movement.
Couldn't we say the same about a movement leader who knew about and tolerated the corruption of Judas Iscariot? A supposedly spiritual movement in which the top men competed against each other for top-ranking position, with the leader doing nothing more than giving these dangerously ambitious men a "talking to" instead of booting them out of their positions? A movement that gaslighted its selfless and giving "Martha" figures in favor of attention-seeking "Mary" figures? Any genuine god in the flesh would have organized and administered his movement far more effectively than Jesus ever did.
Retired Prof said...
ReplyDeleteI never adopted Armstrong's ideas in the first place. My father made us listen to "The World Tomorrow" from the time when I was 5 or 6 years old. I would try to make sense of it so I would be able to answer when my father said at the end of the program, "He sure says a lot in a little bit of time, doesn't he?" I realized he said a lot, but I never understood what it was. Oh, I understood well enough that the Germans were going to come and kill us all. They would toss my littlest sister up and catch her on their bayonets and hang the rest of us on meathooks. But why was never clear to me, nor anything else except that it was part of God's plan. He was a good god, but for some reason had to destroy a lot of innocent children to make it work.
So I developed the habit of daydreaming during the broadcast and doing a lot of smiling and nodding when my father expressed his enthusiasm for Armstrong and expounded his own prophetic interpretations of scripture and world events. My mother took up Armstrong's ideas without the bombast, so that after their divorce she took us to COG services when years later they became available in our area. Eventually she got baptized. I kept up my habit of daydreaming during sermons and smiling and nodding a lot during theological conversations with other churchgoers. I accompanied my mother to church because "Friendships [actually kinship is] more important than the cognitive dissonance which I experience when I attend services or discuss church teachings with others."
I agreed to go to Ambassador College partly because my father had always said he would pay my way to go there. I thought surely an institution of higher learning would have a few people around who enjoyed playful banter and satire of the kind I drank in from Mad Magazine and other places. Turned out badly. There were a few, all right, but the overall mood was dead earnestness. Anything lighthearted was cause for suspicion. I could no stand that atmosphere.
At 18 I still had never gone through the healthy teenage rebellion stage. I did not rebel openly even when I decided Ambassador college was not the place for me. I just quietly sent off an application to a state school so I could transfer there for my sophomore year. There were complications with accreditation that kept me from going to the school I applied to, but eventually I got into a different college and found a whole lot of people who appreciated playful banter and who did not put a halt to exhilarating philosophical discussions by frowning and warning, "You can't ask that question!"
So although I was not unscathed by armstrongism, the wound was only a grazing hit. I moan for all of you who suffered deep wounds, and I hope your healing continues until you are comfortable in your own skin.
February 15, 2020 at 10:34 AM
This is the best post I've ever read here on Banned. Thank you for your honesty. I had a similar experience at AC.
LXX
Im a combo of one and two...
ReplyDeleteThis collection of doctrines which we refer to as “THE TRUTH” didn’t originate with Herbert and are consequently not tainted by his many failures AND/OR
These doctrines have spiritual and intellectual appeal regardless of their origins (the late Ian Boyne liked this one)
I think there's something here between Kieren Underwood's post, this post by Lonnie, as well as Retired Professor's comment...
ReplyDeleteI think it's easy for people to assume that there's something to the bible. It's just endemic to the culture. People just grow up thinking there's creatures hiding in Loch Ness and the Himalayas, that aliens are visiting earth, that Nostradamus was able to foretell the future, and that the bible does too.
Herbert Armstrong tapped into that, and he told us a prophetic story. He told us a story in which if you don't do A, B, C ... X, Y, and Z to appease a wrathful deity with a hair trigger, then your story would end with this deity returning within 3-to-5, 5-10, or 15-20 more years to murder you. And if not that, then he'll murder you later with a lake of fire. He told us a story about a future that you should be very much afraid of—unless of course you count on him to guide you through it.
I think the people who stay continue to tell themselves this prophetic story, in which the future is scary and traumatic, and only the doctrines of Armstrongism will get them through it in one piece.
Neither my mother nor my father were particularly religious, but even so, they had this latent cultural story about how the bible is a mystical book that contains information about the future. Each of them independently stumbled upon a man who claimed he alone could decode that book's mystical information, and independently he snared them both with that story. Because it was a story they were already telling themselves. Herbert Armstrong just juiced their story up, added details, specifics, and urgency to it, as well as inserting himself into it. And that new and improved story was a story they continued to tell themselves all their lives. Nothing else mattered. Not the scandals, not the improbability of it all, not the failure of his date-setting. Sure, he was a little off on the timing, but other than that, he was right! It was only ever about their relationship to a story about biblical prophecy and how to navigate the frightening future they believed it said lay directly ahead of them. As long as they believed that scary story was their future, no other story had a chance. No other story could work for them.
They told me their story. However, that story never worked for me because even if it were my future, I could never determine that its prescriptions were meant for me. If that scary story about what the future holds was my future, as long as couldn't get the deity's attention, I was never convinced there was safe passage through that future available to me, no matter what I did.
Then I began to understand that everything I had been told about the bible was lies anyway, and that the bible itself couldn't be what I'd been told it was. Sure, it was a great story, but it wasn't anything more than that. It certainly wasn't my story.
Miller.
ReplyDeleteI believe not a single armstrongite ever googled "Armstrong". Most sites constitute people who left years ago.
Your questions are good though. What do the Amish, Irish Catholics, Book of Mormon adherents, Movie star Scientologists tell themselves despite the overwhelming evidence of rubbish they believe in and possibly adhere to but at least belong to.......?
When interviewing ANY of a billion Chinese I hear nothing but praise for the government. And in the US I hear ordinary folk detest ANY government official....... what narrative are they brainwashed into?
I seems people are only willing to process data up to a certain point, then the automatic brain takes over and goes on autopilot.
I learned those lessons at a very young age at for instance our Feast Sites where our wonderful directors showed, "Fiddler on the Roof....... TRADITION, and" Animal Farm" as family activities in the seventies.
Perhaps it was only me who filtered Orwell out as one of the best visionaries ever or Fiddler as important in understanding conflict like the one in Bosnia - Herzegovina............ and all the others only filtered the mild entertainment. I wonder even how on earth our entire congregation and guests would watch the example of a gay outsider person like Lawrence of Arabia......... as others might have filtered just the data about the hashemite friends of hwa........ As a matter of fact I am beginning to wonder if Dennis Diehl was our Feast coordinator in the seventies....... preparing all those lesson that are of use during my career.
My point...............
It 's all about the filter installed, what data presented is processed.
People CANNOT examine data..... if they do not evaluate their filter.
I believe each and every of my postingson banned over a number of years has questioned data, only to see people reaffirm their filter immediately.
I also believe(d) that the CIA found wcg a fascinating labaratory for mass communication psy opps or group behavior during their efforts to secure western democracy. However I question that line of thinking myself after I saw they conducted those experiments themselves in the sixties.
Therefore I am to conclude that HWA was a natural and as sincere a human can be in believing what he did or who he was.
Was he right. Of course. Everyone is right, just pick a filter.
Nck
not everyone at Church is in The Church....which gives rise to blogs such as this.
ReplyDeleteExactly Anon 4:54.
ReplyDeleteAnons 4:54 and 2:22, you are well on the way to understanding. Soon you'll realize that very few ACOG ministers are "in The Church" and these blogs will make a lot more sense.
ReplyDeleteAnons 4:54 and 2:22 may well be onto something...
ReplyDeleteIn fact, my suspicion is that if there is an exclusive "The Church," then followers of Armstrongism might not even be eligible to be a part of it. If so, then yes, not everyone at church is in "The Church," maybe even no one at church was ever in "The Church"! That was the direction my observations pointed toward at least.
Now, far be it from me to divide the sheep from the goats and start judging others regarding their salvation, as Anons 4:54 and 2:22 appear to be doing. My working hypothesis was instead to judge "The Church," salvation, and our delusional and arrogant ideas about our elite and exclusive status.
A personal comment about people who are or have been members of WCOG congregation. I believe that the majority of those people are or were balanced religious people dedicated to live by the word of God as written in the Christian Bible. Whether this was the Old Testament or the New Testament is not a critical factor. To assume they were not worshiping God through Jesus Christ is poor judgement. Those who were in ministry roles were poor examples if they were not living lives that people could respect and share. When I was attending WCOG the congregations there were a few times when there were damaging relational problems surfaced that were corrected without effecting a loss of membership. My point is that God’s word has a message of hope that is simple when we are dedicated and willing to apply it to our daily living.
ReplyDeleteGreat questions Miller.
ReplyDeleteNCK. You get crazier by every comment you make here. Your "observations" about Herbie are so off the wall that it is laughable. Why do you have to derail every single post with wild fantasies and conspiracy theories? You think you know so much about Herbie and yet you know nothing.
ReplyDelete3:02
ReplyDeleteI never respond to "general accusations". Please next time pick one line you do not disagree with and I might just respond to the specifics.
What's your problem man?
Having to acknowledge that HWA did NOT deliberately deceive you and was sincere, but that the both of you framed themselves into what constituted the truth for as long as it lasted?
Nck