Those fun boys in Cincinnati are wanting their members to talk about their faith with others and not be ashamed of its ties to Armstrongism. They want their members to be able to practice Christian apologetics.
Christian beliefs, lifestyles and values contradict many prominent voices of the modern world. That being so, it’s easy to become defensive or insecure when we hear comments we don’t agree with or that simply mock God or our beliefs.
However, having respectful conversations about our faith with others is an important way we can live out our faith, and it is a discipline we should all try to master. So, if you are new to the apologetics world—or have never even heard of the word—let me introduce you to what it is and how it can look in everyday life!
Apologetics
The word apologetics doesn’t mean to make an apology for your faith when someone doesn’t agree with what you have to say or what you believe. Apologetics means to give a well-reasoned and graceful defense—an answer to something controversial in your conversations with someone else—in a way that makes sense to them and is relevant to their experiences. As Solomon said in the book of Proverbs, “To make an apt answer is a joy to a man, and a word in season, how good it is!” (Proverbs 15:23, English Standard Version).
Their first step is to have members discern how "Christian" or how deep are the beliefs of the person they are talking to.
In order to practice Christian apologetics in conversations with friends, acquaintances or strangers, it’s important that we first understand the depth of another person’s beliefs before we make any kind of defense of our own. We can all do this by asking a question as simple as, “What do you mean when you say . . . ?” Of course, it might be a good time to ask a quick, silent prayer in your head for guidance as well!
In Armstrongite speak, it makes no difference really on how deep of a belief that a non-UCG person has because no matter how deep it is it is all wrong and rooted in paganism. Only enlightened UC G members carry the truth and no matter who well they guard their words, they still think themselves superior to the nonUCG person.
How many UCG members or even COG members ever seek to understand the beliefs of the Christians living around them? Those beliefs are barriers that limit them from seeing the true church that is UCG. They are part of the false church and need to move in to the light of UCG.
This question, or any question that seeks to understand someone else before we expect them to understand us, is the key to finding out what kind of barriers someone truly has towards God and Christianity. It’s the backbone of effective and meaningful conversations because for some, there are intellectual barriers to God, while others have personal barriers based on their experiences with Christianity, and that’s just not something we can assume on the surface.
The article ends with this:
The example before us
When we look at examples of apologetics in the Bible, we see writers who each understood their audiences’ cultural roots and addressed the barriers in their ideologies. For example, when writing his gospel account, Matthew used genealogy to defend the bloodline of Jesus Christ to the Jews. By contrast, Mark did not include a genealogical introduction to his gospel account in his appeal to a gentile audience.
Likewise, Luke’s writings gave an historical and orderly account of Jesus, which he backed with other eyewitness accounts, just as the Greeks did. But John wrote his gospel account and letters from a theological perspective to address Jesus’ testimonies and ideas that were circulating through his Palestinian-Jewish audience at that time.
Paul preached to citizens of Athens at the Areopagus of their “Unknown God” as the foundation of his witness testimony of Jesus Christ (Acts 17). And Jesus showed Thomas the marks on His hands from the crucifixion when Thomas could not believe based on the reports of others alone (John 20:24-29).
No matter what perspective the audience came from, we see that the ones who preached the gospel before us reached their audience where they were and made a defense for Jesus from there.
Though much of the Western worldview shares its roots in Christianity, our schools, workplaces and institutions are now predominantly secular—or non-believing by nature. So, in our spiritual conversations with others, remember to ask questions and search out the answers to people’s barriers—what it is that holds them back from believing what the Bible says is true. Turn those controversial conversations into meaningful ones.
By doing so, we can demonstrate respect towards their doubts and show love by reaching the hearts and minds of each individual, and effectively use apologetics to make a defense for our faith.
Armstrongism has never used its beliefs as a defense of its faith. It has always used its beliefs as a weapon to destroy and mock those who are outside the bounds of the church or who are atheists.
It would be very hard to explain one’s beliefs if they included British Israelism, the God Head existing as Two, HWA as the end time Elijah, the Law, tithing, the meltdown of the cogs into hundreds of completing groups all at loggerheads with each other, the destruction and separation of families etc etc etc…
ReplyDeleteBut to explain the simplicity of our salvation in Jesus Christ would be extraordinary difficult for many within Armstrongism.
I'm a faithful member of UCG and you sir are a liar!
ReplyDeleteToo much confusion for me.
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ReplyDeleteThis sounds like all the godless leaders in the UCG cannot attract any new people, so they now hope that maybe the godless people who hang out at the UCG meetings can attract some new people.
ReplyDelete“The word apologetics doesn’t mean to make an apology for your faith when someone doesn’t agree with what you have to say or what you believe.”
A lot of those evil people in the UCG SHOULD APOLOGIZE for their evil behavior.
My apologetic to UCG: mandating tithing today, and seven feasts, is not scriptural.
ReplyDeleteIf the UCG wants their own people to "evangelize", then they should let them keep their own tithe for "living expenses", just like the ministers do.
ReplyDeleteThe COG mantra has always been" to pay up" to support the spreading of the Gospel to the world. Now you are expected to do that work personally and pay up too? Talk about making the slaves make brick without straw!
This is a difficult sell, and let's face it, there just aren't a heck of a lot of Mrs. Runcorns around.
ReplyDeleteSomeone once said that living well is the best revenge. In order to make one's religious beliefs or practices appear to be viable, one would need to be living such an exemplary life that others would find it compelling to imitate it. Read that again as you contemplate how to turn all of the weirdnesses of Armstrongism into some sort of positiveness. If you were a member of Dave Pack or Gerald Flurry's cults, you would need to out and out lie to make your life appear to be even mediocre, let alone good and blessed. I suppose there are some exceptional Bernie Madoff type sales people who could pull this off, but frankly, Q has more appeal than any of the ACOG "leaders".
Judaism is very salable merch. It has been known to attract Goyim. But, when you add Armstrongian authoritarianism, three tithes, pain compliance for the wives and children, and constantly failed and retimed prophecies to the mix, how are you going to evangelize that???
UCG was once seen as downplaying the influences of Herbert W. Armstrong,, and perhaps growing past the early cultic behavioral patterns of Armstrongism, thus achieving to the next level,. Perhaps the current leaders have taken the wrong lessons from the whole Donald Trump experience. It is almost chic right now to extol and identify with a rotten and extremely toxic and divisive leader, a phenomenon which has perhaps influenced UCG's new identification with HWA.
I just don't see any crossover value in this. There are no positives to Armstrongism. How can one honestly indulge in apologetics for the Armstrong faith? When you have to lead with lies, all that follows will also be lies. I don't give most people a hell of a lot of credit for common sense right now, but even in this sorry state, they are going to see through UCG's attempts at personal evangelism.
The closest that I ever came to hearing a well-reasoned and graceful defense of Armstrongism was from CGI's Ian Boyne on this forum (and, in my humble opinion, he came up short). In short, as this post points out, the Armstrongist mindset starts with the premise that their theology is true, and everyone else is deceived. And, frankly, when a person is willing to do the deep dive - to do the kind of open-minded and independent research required in this instance, they will conclude that many (I'm not suggesting in toto) of the tenets of Armstrongism are heretical/wrong.
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ReplyDeleteI once actually mentioned the UCG to someone out in the world and even showed the person a copy of the UCG's booklet about the Sabbath.
The worldly one sort of caught me off guard by asking me right away what the people in the UCG were like.
I did not want to lie, so I simply said that about half of the people who hang out at the UCG are bad, but that the other half seemed to be okay.
A number of years later, the big UCG-COGWA split happened.
ReplyDeleteWhat you hear from someone who attends with the UCG could vary greatly depending on their own personal pet theories that they like to spout off. It will not be the old WCG teachings, but rather will tend to be ideas that contradict what HWA taught.
Ancient Israel rejected God by asking for a king. It seems that the ACOGs have done the same by looking up to "king" HWA, Flurry, Dave Pick-Pocket, err, I meant Pack and others.
ReplyDeleteIf the rest of the country understood British Israelism as the racist theology it is, the UCG, LCG, and all the other xCGs would be run out of town. The challenge with BI is that one must really put in the effort to slog through it in order to realize how despicable it really is.
ReplyDeleteMiller writes:
ReplyDelete“... when a person is willing to do the deep dive - to do the kind of open-minded and independent research required in this instance, they will conclude that many (I'm not suggesting in toto) of the tenets of Armstrongism are ... wrong.”
I agree with what you say. But I am not anti HWA or my experience in the WCG, in fact I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. I could have read about Armstrongism but it wouldn’t have been the same as living and breathing it.
While I no longer attend any COG - for quite some time now - I still keep the Sabbath and holy days; though I could do better.
Also I do not believe in the Trinity.
C. Aplantinga’s contribution to the International Standard Bible Encyclopaedia was on the “Trinity”. Reading the article it appears he struggled in arguing the case:
“In sum, the NT does testify to the Spirit’s distinct personhood and divinity, but MUTEDLY AND AMBIGUOUSLY. The Spirit is the NT is personally less distinct than the Father and Son,, and His divinity less clearly stated; He appears as nearly transparent agent for God and Christ. One properly concludes that the NT is overall clearly binitarian in its data, and PROBABLY trinitarian” (C. Aplantinga, Jr., ISBE, Vol.4, pp.916-17).
If the testimony is muted and ambiguous how can it clearly testify to the Spirit’s personhood and divinity? C. Aplantinga Jr. can only conclude that trinitarism is probable.
Gal 4:6 And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father.
Mk 14:36aAnd he said, Abba, Father,
“God becomes “our Father” through the gift of the Holy Spirit, whom Paul explicitly identifies in Gal 4:6 as “the Spirit of the Son,” whom God sent “into out hearts” and who is thus responsible for crying out to God the Father in the language of the Son (“Abba”)” (Gordon D. Fee, Pauline Christology, pp.37-39).
A parallel on the human plane is Jacob adopting Joseph’s sons as his own.
That's quite a bomb to drop Tonto. Are you claiming UCG Ministers don't pay tithes but justify them as 'living expenses'? And if true how do you know?
ReplyDeleteUCG like all the other ACOG's needs a radical inward rethink of everything. I'm not proposing apostasy. Those that don't really believe anymore should shift themselves into Grace Communion. They won't but they should.
ReplyDeleteHaving UCG membership getting into apologetics with everything else staying the same is a disaster waiting to happen. The needs to be a whole radical inside out honest investigation from within UCG.
The UCG membership surveys are a move in the right direction but far more needs to be done. The ACOG's have reduced themselves to unprofessional congregations of Pastor, small town leadership, dominated social groups. If the face fits your in, if not don't come back.
5 year Stalinistic plans that achieve not much but hot air.
I'd say quite a few don't even want growth. Dealing with people outside of the Ambassador College aristocracy fills them with dread. They only do good to their cronynies and love to despise non cronies.
The Lord can do nothing with the ACOG in their overall present state.
This article appears to be a HUGE step in the evolution of UCG - encouraging COGlodytes to embrace apologetics and discuss spiritual matters with the unclean may likely be the first crack that quakes the UCG.
ReplyDeleteFirst, the COGlodyte leaders appear to have expanded their thinking beyond their inbreed/in-read cult body of knowledge - Herbie's jowls would wag with disapproval.
Herbie established a closed cult - he demanded that he and the ministry would do all the preaching.
Herbie's model insisted the role of the people was only to pay, pray, and obey.
Keeping members from discussing "truths" with those who were not being called was part of the elitist training employed to keep the members under the WCG rock.
Members were commanded not to read "outside" literature and scared with the teaching that Satan would use those fake Christians to deceive them - one's salvation depended on strict adherence to the confines of the COG, hence the term COGlodyte.
The UCG leadership is venturing out from under their rock to explore how other Christians use their faith to interact - that's giving too much credence and exposure to those "Christians-falsely-so-called".
One obvious result will be that some UCG ministers and many members will never return to life under the COG rock, once they're exposed to the Light beyond the dark confines of UCG.
If those ham-eating Christians had the inspiration for this neat evangelistic tool called apologetics, what other inspirations do they possess?
The door is open for the COGlodyte to begin to explore and grow - many will evolve beyond obedience to the COG.
The members who do engage in interacting with others are bound to learn strange new terms, like justification, redemption, grace, and savior.
When their new friends challenge them with the meaning of these terms from the Bible - many members will no longer be able to return to being a COGlodyte.
Many will resent their COG leaders for not teaching them these fundamentals of Christianity and will bolt from the UCG - while others will be inspired to bring this new Light into the UCG.
Some hardened, blinded COGlodytes will reject this "worldly Christian" approach and will leave the UCG for another COG rock that doesn't hurt their eyes with Light or divert their allegiance from the "truth" first delivered by HWA.
UCG's embracing apologetics may very well be a step in an evolutionary course similar to the one that exploded WCG.
Hallelujah; thank you Jesus!
I find it perplexing that the leaders of this Splinter group would encourage apologetics. They seem to want to strategically move their fellowship into crisis. Let me cite just one issue. Splinterdom, including this group, does not have a coherent, documented Doctrine of God. If they rely on what the WCG taught, then they have only a scattering of statements about God in many different past publications. Without such a carefully stated doctrine, subject to controlled revision as needed, God is what the current leadership in any particular Splinter Group says he is at any given moment. And we know from experience that Armstrongism does not believe in the same God as the Christian movement or even the anecdotal God of non-believers.
ReplyDeleteApologetics is principally about the existence of God, not praxis and liturgy. Praxis and liturgy are downstream from the Doctrine of God. If you look at the table of contents of "Mere Christianity" by C.S. Lewis, a standard in apologetics, you can readily apprehend what apologetics encompasses. And this is precisely where Splinterdom has its weakest point. It is true that Splinterdom could engage apologetically with people who know nothing about Christianity. But engaging with people in the Christian movement will just invoke polemics and division. If this Splinter group wants to preserve their beliefs intact, they should follow the traditional Armstrongist circle-the-wagons defense.
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All the ACOG splinter groups need to take a page from GCI. We are the ones who have remained faithful to New Testament Christianity, but they are the ones who cling to the Armstrong dribble.
ReplyDeleteStand with GCI? What does that even mean. Stand but attend elsewhere ?
DeleteAnonymous 10:44
ReplyDeleteYou seem to be caught somewhere between Armstrongism and Christianity. Regarding the Trinity, I believe the Trinity is mysterious. But that should not be alarming. For a finite being to never fully understand an infinite being is only reasonable.
If you deny the Trinity then you must develop alternate explanations for the scriptures that support the Trinity. For instance, scripture characterizes the Holy Spirit as sentient, unlike the impersonal energy of Armstrongism: "And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit." Here the Holy Spirit, separate from the other persons of the Trinity, is characterized has having mind (Greek, phronēma). Yet HWA states in the MOA (page 45) that the Holy Spirit is only a projection of God. If that were the case, one wonders why God would characterize his activities and inclinations as a separate phenomenon from himself at all.
I am confident that there have been many good Christians who lived their lives well in Christ and went to the grave without ever understanding much about the Trinity. But they did not have the resources available to them for study that we have today. We are obliged to wrestle with this doctrine. But I will also grant that you can only understand God to the extent that he reveals himself to you.
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Anonymous Anonymous said...
ReplyDeleteThat's quite a bomb to drop Tonto. Are you claiming UCG Ministers don't pay tithes but justify them as 'living expenses'? And if true how do you know?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
MY RESPONSE:
NO.
I am not claiming that ministers in the UCG are not tithing. I am saying that their lives are supported by the ORG , because supposedly they are "preaching the gospel". I am suggesting that if the laity are the ones "preaching the gospel" that they should have their lives supported and paid for as well, or that they should be "tithe exempted" (in effect paying themselves) for preaching the gospel.
No Tonto that's NOT what you wrote at all. Your actual words state 'of ucg want their members to evangelize then they should let them keep their own tithes for 'living expenses' like the ministers do.
DeleteNo mention of having their lives supported by the ORG. Stop being a trouble stirer. Fake tonto.
I'm wondering if UCG has changed some of the policies which made us so cultic in classic WCG. We appeared to be secessionists from society. We met in rented halls, and had no permanent church buildings or properties, with the exception of the AC campuses (campi?), feast sites, and summer camp locations. Neither we as a group, nor our local pastors, were listed in the phone book. We were not approachable. Even initial visits from the ministry to prospective members were awkward inquisitions at best, in which prospectives were told to quit smoking, start tithing, and separate from previously married spouses.
ReplyDeleteIf any charities approached us for a little financial assistance for good and uplifting causes, we explained with withering sneers that all of our charity went to our church, and they evaluated the charities and gave to the worthy ones (if that isn't an indication of letting someone else do your thinking for you, I don't know what is!). If you really want to attract people to your group, you must appear to have vested interest in fellow man, community, and a willingness to make the world a better place! Those are internationally recognized marks of sincerity.
Parents met with school officials to get their kids excused for an odd lot of holy days, some of which were observed by Orthodox Jews, while others were unknown. Parents would take the church's position against small pox vaccination right up to the point of their children being expelled. Though these are all perfectly defensible from a religious freedom point of view, it would have been nice if the church had encouraged an openness and a willingness to participate in wholesome community activities, countering and balancing the effect of our seemingly weird activities, adding at least some added value for each of us to the people who knew us.
I've fortunately never been a part of any of the splinter groups (privately, I call them sphincter groups). However, the concepts of callings, and "My Kingdom is not of this world", or the classic "Let the dead bury the dead" can all be taken to extreme, thus taking on the aura of a negative. If you are told not to help needy people because God is punishing them, or that all homeless people just want your spare change for drugs or alcohol, or that it is presumptuous to pray for friends or coworkers to be "called", or that if you see an accident in which people are injured, check to see if it's "brethren" involved, and if not, beat feet the hell out of there, you are not behaving in a Christ-like fashion at all, and no amount of rhetoric can change that fact.
All I am saying is that if friends or strangers pick up on a lack of caring on your part for fellow humans, a lack of interest in making the surrounding community or the world a better place, and an attitude of separateness (read arrogance or elitism), I don't care how persuasive your words are, your personal evangelism is going to fall flat, as well as it should.
I agree that "apologetics" does not usually mean apologizing for your faith! The ACOGs are the notable exception to that rule! Members and the ministry should be constantly falling all over themselves apologizing for the de riguer damage, and the anti-Christian behavior which Armstrongism teaches, redefines and euphemizes. But, people who have been deceived don't realize that they have been deceived until they are not.
I don’t consider, as one would, that I am “caught” between Armstrongism and Christianity. I am trying to strike a balance between the wrong teachings of both.
ReplyDelete“Though it is not a biblical doctrine in the sense that any formulation of it can be found in the Bible, it can be seen to underlie the revelation of God, implicit in the OT and explicit in the NT” (R.A. Finlayson, “Trinity”, New Bible Dictionary, p.1221).
I don’t believe the doctrine of the Trinity is “explicit" in the NT, but it is read into. I think that there is a better explanation of the Scriptures.
From my previous post C. Plantinga, Jr., concluded:
“In sum, the NT does testify to the Spirit’s distinct personhood and divinity, but mutedly and ambiguously. The Spirit is the NT is personally less distinct than the Father and Son,, and His divinity less clearly stated... One properly concludes that the NT is overall clearly binitarian in its data, and probably trinitarian” (“Trinity,” ISBE, Vol.4, pp.916-17).
He also wrote:
“So one WARILY CONCLUDES that on balance the NT data presents and support a personal concept of the Spirit” (C. Plantinga, Jr., ISBE, Vol.4, p.916).
“muted,” “ambiguously,” “less distinct,” “less clearly” - not too confident - “probably,” “warily.”
I support his “other hand” observation:
“On the other hand, perhaps biblical writers sometimes use personal references to the Spirit in a personifying way for what they actually regarded as the power or presence of God - as they do elsewhere for Gods’s name, hand glory, face, finger, wisdom and word” (C. Plantinga, Jr., “Trinity” ISBE, Vol.4, p.916).
Below is from the NIV:
Ac 16:6 Paul and his companions traveled throughout the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been kept by THE HOLY SPIRIT from preaching the word in the province of Asia. (NIV).
Ac 16:7 When they came to the border of Mysia, they tried to enter Bithynia, but THE SPIRIT OF JESUS would not allow them to. (NIV).
"but the Spirit suffered them not (AV): The oldest authorities read "the Spirit of Jesus suffered them not." In like manner (Rom 8:9) the "Spirit of God" is called also the "Spirit of Christ." Cp. also Gal 4:6; Php 1:19; 1Pe 1:11" (Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges).
A synonymous parallelism is where the "second line repeats or reinforces the sense of the first" (Gordon D. Fee & Douglas Stuart, How To Read The Bible For All Its Worth, p.189).
If the synonymous parallelism of the NIV, in this case verses, is allowed to stand then the Holy Spirit = the Spirit of Christ.
Rom 8:9(b) ... if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.
Rom 8:10 And if Christ be in you...
Rom 8:9 (a) if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you
Rom 8:10 And if Christ be in you
Gal 4:6 And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father.
“There is a close relationship between the Spirit of Christ and the Holy Spirit... In Romans 8:9-10 the Spirit, the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Christ, and Christ all seem to be used interchangeably” (NIVSB, Kenneth Barker, Gen Editor, p.1766).
The above captures my present understanding; but for me, though others would disagree, it is reinforced by typology - there is more to the account of Adam and Eve - they are types of God and the preincarnate Jesus Christ.
“The singular man ('adam) is created as a plurality, "male and female"... in a similar way the one God ... created man through an expression of his plurality (..."let us make man in our image"). Following this clue the divine plurality expressed in v.26 is seen as an anticipation of the human plurality of the man and woman, thus casting the human relationship between man and woman in the role reflecting God’s own relationship with himself” (John H. Sailhamer, Genesis, EBC., Vol.2, p.38).
“with Himself” would be better “between God and the Word.”
God is not a ménage à trois type relationship - the One God is two persons not three.