Privilege and Entitlement in the Churches of God

 

Concretized Christianity has a blog entry up on Privilege and the Churches of God and it has a lot of good points.

If you ever hear II Timothy 3:1-5 read during a sermon on the Sabbath, you will hear it followed by the assertion that it refers to “the world,” to “others,” and not to “us.”

But is that true?

Observing the words and conduct of people who claim to be members of the ekklesia (the body of Christ is not a physical organization, but instead a spiritual organization) on social media and in other venues, I personally can attest that it’s not true.

Every word of God, as Paul points out in I Corinthians 10, applies to each of us personally. If we abide in the word of God, striving to live by every wordin it, then we abide in God and Jesus Christ and they abide in us. Every time we open the word of God, we are one-on-one with God and Jesus Christ in an intimate relationship and conversation.


So every word there is personal to each one of us. The word of God is a mirror into which we look. If God condemns something or warns about something, our response should be to ask ourselves, “Is that how I am? Does that reflect something in my character? Is that something I am thinking, saying, or doing? Does this exist anywhere in my life?”

If we look at the majority of the word of God as being for someone other than ourselves, then we miss the boat of our calling, our converting process, our transformation through the power of God’s spirit completely.

The church and a lot of its leaders have always loved to use scripture as a weapon to denigrate others. It has seldom been used as a tool to be considered with introspection to see if it was actually there for our own benefit to see how we measured up. Of course, most of the time the church and many of its leaders thought they were without blame and that they set the best example of living godly lives as possible. We are eighty-some years down the pipeline now and I think almost all of us know that has never been the case and STILL is not today in 2020. In fact, it seems to be worse today than ever in the history of the COG movement!

The blog entry continues on with this:

It’s quite sad to me to see people revealing their inner selves and to see how far we are from living by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. Many of us are revealing ourselves to be the very things that Paul warned Timothy of in II Timothy 3:1-5.

That is disheartening to observe. But what it reflects is ignorance in some cases. But, underneath the ignorance, is one of the main roots of why this behavior exists and that is the sense of privilege.

Anyone who has been around the churches of God for any length of time knows about privilege. First, we see it in action in every one of the church of God organizations. There is a pecking order – a hierarchy – and privilege is layered throughout that until you get to the people who just fill the chairs every week and fawn over and idolize those with privilege, while in the organizational sense, they have no privilege and aren’t even, legally, members of that church of God organization (only the organizational privileged are).

However, those people know they have privilege compared to others (the world) because they are told that over and over. They’re special. They’re the elite. One day, they will be resurrected first and they will rule with Jesus Christ as kings and priests for 1000 years.

We were set up in the church over the decades to view ourselves as the epitome of righteousness in God's sight. There were no better Christians on earth than COG members. We were endlessly told we were a privileged lot that would soon be kings and priests and would be rulers of planets throughout the galaxy. Not only that, but we were to be GOD's.

Today in some of the larger COG groups we wee that "pecking order" mentioned above as the enforcement of "proper government".  The problem with that "pecking order" is that the privilege stays at the top and leaders live lives of excess at the expense of members. That lofty deluded grandeur makes them untouchable in church members' sight and so they are afraid to rock the boat and hold leaders accountable and thus suffer greatly from spiritual and psychological abuse.

The writer above is correct in how those sitting in the seat each week have no privilege in the church. In fact, they are not even members of the churches they think they belong to. The by-laws and legal documents of almost all the COG's state explicitly that the only members of the church are the ordained ministers. Herbert Armstrong did this when he established the Radio Church of God and COG leaders have done so ever since.

Power is an idol in society and an idol in the churches of God. The lust for power is often the sole motivation for what these man-made organizations do and say.

Privilege and power often go hand in hand. Whether the power is real or imagined, organizations and people who believe they have power manifest the corruption of the idea of privilege.

We can see the above in Gerald Flurry, Bob Thiel, and Dave Pack. Their imagined power is a product of deluded minds and not something God has passed on to them. Thiel, in self-righteous anger after LCG and Rod Meredith constantly refused to follow his commands, had to start his own group in order to have the power that he has always been denied, regardless of the COG entity he was a member in. To be seen as a great person in the COG is the prime motivator of most of the current batch of COG leaders. That privilege puts them above the members and all the hurts and problems members have. They are totally oblivious tot eh world around them.

People who have not suffered and who also cannot see, relate to, nor empathize with the suffering of others is a symptom of privilege. James discusses this in the second chapter of his letter. Privilege creates a bubble of illusions that is solely focused on self: what I want, what I need, who I am, and what I think or believe.

The bubble of privilege is opaque, so that anything that is outside that bubble is invisible. Jesus discussed this bubble of privilege in Matthew 25 in His parable of the goats and the sheep.

The sheep had no bubble of privilege. They were looking for needs among the people around them and meeting those needs, no matter where they found them. They weren’t doing it because someone was “important,” or because other people would see them and applaud them, or because it made them feel good or superior. 

The sheep were doing it because it was the right thing to do. They were following God’s word (read Deuteronomy sometime if you want to see what loving God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength – about the first third of the book – and loving your neighbor as yourself – approximately the last two-thirds of the book – looks like in action and ask yourself if this looks like you) and they were following the example of Jesus Christ.

The goats had the bubble of privilege. Inherent in their response was, “well, Jesus, if You personally had come to us and asked us, of course, we would have done these things for You.” In other words, if the Son of God had made the first move, knocked on the door of their bubble of privilege, and said, “I need…,” they would have done it. Otherwise, they didn’t see, know, or care to seek out the needs they could meet right outside their bubble.

I remember the stories in Pasadena as the church was imploding and departments had to start laying off employees. The one that stuck in my mind all these years was one about Bernie Schippert and a woman he laid off. She said he sat there behind his huge rosewood desk with his Rolex on his arm and told her that the church owed her nothing as they laid her off, despite working for the church for over 20 years (this was while the church was sending him to law school and footing the bill).

The church has a sad record over the decades of never being able to see the needs of people in the congregations, or even with employees. When people did go in and ask for assistance it was denied a large percent of the time.  Can you imagine a Restored Church of God member asking Dave for assistance when he is constantly milking them for money!

The best part of the article is the last part and the COG response to COVID.

People across this country are murmuring about COVID-19. Some people, even among those in the ekklesia have bought into the spiritual insanity we see everywhere around us, and believe COVID-19 is a hoax. 

Some people are clamoring to get back to “normal,” complaining that they’ve been confined to their homes, working their fulltime jobs with benefits, and paying the bills and enjoying extras, for too long and they want to get back together with other people, including those in the ekklesia, because, “people die every day, and if people die because we get back together, so be it, because us being together is more important than a few thousand people, who are going to die sometime anyway, dying.” (This is not made up. It is a synthesis of much of the sentiment you’ll see on social media.)

I want to address some of these points of privilege. While people are complaining about being confined in their homes, they are ignorant of the fact that there are many people both in the United States and around the world would simply be happy to have a home to be confined in, as opposed to, if they’re fortunate, living in a vehicle, and, if they’re not, living on the street.

People with privilege will counter with, “Well, it’s their fault they’re homeless. They’re either lazy, addicts, or ‘trash,‘ and they’re where they are because that’s what they deserve.” Some among the ekklesia would be among the people saying these things.

While people are complaining about having to work fulltime jobs with benefits, paying their bills and enjoying extras, they are ignorant of the fact that the American economy over the last 12 years has left many well-educated, highly-skilled people scrambling to find gig work (American work is now highly tilted toward a gig economy, which is freelance with no job security and no benefits and no set amount of income to depend on) just to cobble enough money together to try not to end up homeless.

People of privilege haven’t had to look for work for a very long time. They have absolutely no idea how much the employment landscape has changed. They have been fortunate enough to remain in jobs that, so far, have been insulated from the economic upheavals that have roiled the United States since 2008.

So the response of people with privilege to these gig workers is, “Well, it’s their fault if they don’t have a fulltime job with benefits. They’re either lazy or not trying hard enough, and if they really wanted a job, they’d have a job.” Some among the ekklesia would be among the people saying these things.

The disregard for human life among people of privilege is most appalling. There are some among the ekklesia who would rather people die so they can all start congregating again rather than to have to continue virtual services at home.

There’s some kind of magical thinking about the physical presence of other people and socializing. As if that’s the key, and you’ll hear people say this, to fellowship and unity.

And it is, from a purely physical point of view. But it’s not spiritually. Jesus told the Samaritan woman in John 4 that a physical place of worship was irrelevant because those that God has called and chosen worship Him in spirit and truth.

But that’s not the focus for many of the church of God organizations or many among the ekklesia. Why? If we’re a spiritual organism and we “say” we love each other, why are we in touch with people in the ekklesia on a regular basis, whether that’s an email, a text message, a digital meeting, or some other means to check in and make sure everyone – not just our little group of friends – is doing okay, doesn’t need anything, and has whatever assistance they made need?

Frankly, most of us just don’t care. As long as everything’s okay in our little world, we simply don’t think about or care about anyone else. In fact, the only reason we want to get back together physically is to see “our friends.” The same people we don’t see in isolation, we won’t see when we’re in the same room with them. 

With this insanity of wanting to be physically together right now comes more insanity, among which includes being asked to disobey God.

Pastors of church of God congregations are already scouting for people to volunteer to do a lot more work on the Sabbath than is already being done. People who have no idea how to truly sanitize (they don’t even have access to the commercial chemicals and machines) a space are being asked to work to clean the meeting facilities before services and after services. Other volunteers are being asked to screen people for temperatures before they let them inside.

When they get inside, everyone must wear a mask and stay six feet apart from everyone else. There are no hugs and no handshakes. In fact, there is no conversation. Instead, you’ve got the people of privilege screaming across the room at each other while the invisible, who know that no one will notice whether they are there or not, are home, resting as God commanded (and this virus has enforced a true Sabbath rest, which has been delightful) and worshiping God with like-minded members of the ekklesia in spirit and truth.

Where did we get so off track? This is definitely not God’s way, nor is it agape. It, instead, is the system’s way, the way of the curse, the product of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. 

Will we ever see and repent?

That is between God and me and God and you.

What are you personally going to do?

One would think that after 80 years of hearing what we SHOULD be doing that the church today in 2020 would be doing that. It still cannot. Or, won't.