COGWA: We don’t do watered-down?

 

COGWA: We don’t do watered-down?

By

Lonnie Hendrix

The Church of God: A Worldwide Association website proudly proclaims “Christianity is easy … when you remove its standards, blur its focus, and strip away its purpose. And a lot of churches are happy to do that for you. We aren’t one of them.” They go on to say: “Our job—the mission Christ gave to us—is to share God’s message of life, hope, and truth with the world. We don’t believe that message needs to be updated or polished or reinvented for the modern age.” Superficially, that sounds good - God doesn’t change, so we don’t either! However, when you get into the weeds of what they actually believe and teach, that focus does tend to blur, and some cognitive dissonance becomes apparent.

They say that the Bible doesn’t need to be updated, but then they turn around and preach that Israel’s identity in the modern age needs to be
updated! Unfortunately, like other groups which emerged from the trainwreck of Herbert Armstrong’s Worldwide Church of God, COGWA continues to teach a version of Anglo-Israelism. As part of their Life, Hope & Truth website, they have posted an introductory article by Mike Bennett titled Where is America in Prophecy? The articles listed there (“Blessings of Abraham,” “United States and Britain in Prophecy,” “Why is God Angry?” “U.S. Economic Collapse,” “What Will Happen to America?”) are supposed to answer the question: “What names does the Bible use and what does God foretell for the United States of America?” In Dave Treybig’s Who Are the United States and Britain in Prophecy?, we read that “the British Commonwealth has clearly been the group of nations best matching the prophecies related to Ephraim.” Likewise, according to Mr. Treybig, “As for Manasseh, the United States best fits the biblical description of being a “great” nation (Genesis 48:19) due to its economy and military strength…” But COGWA doesn’t “believe that message needs to be updated or polished or reinvented for the modern age.”

In the May/June issue of their Discern Magazine, Jeremy Lallier wrote an article titled The Danger of Cut-and-Paste Christianity. Jeremy asks, “What do you do with the parts of the Bible that challenge your worldview?” In other words, Mr. Lallier recognizes that parts of the Bible don’t seem to mesh with our modern notions about sexual orientation, tolerance, compassion, violence, and our own life experiences. He wrote: “The Bible is also a book that doesn’t always mesh with our own views about how things should work. There will be stories in the Bible where the words God says and the actions God takes are not the words you think He should say or the actions you think He should take.” He continued: “Whenever we come across parts of the Bible we don’t understand, don’t like, or don’t want to grapple with, we can start mentally cutting and pasting God’s Word until we arrive at a final product that makes sense to us. We replace what the book actually says with the version we’ve created in our minds.”

Unfortunately, while Mr. Lallier and COGWA appear to recognize the dangers inherent in “Cut-and-Paste Christianity,” they seem to be oblivious about how this applies to them! Like many of their counterparts in the ACOG movement, they simply cannot see that they have performed their own cut-and-paste operation on the Torah and other scriptures. They don’t see any dilemma in cutting out clean and unclean meats, tithing, and festival observance and pasting them onto the New Covenant while ignoring other provisions of the Law. They don’t see any dilemma in embracing the Torah’s prohibition of homosexual behavior and ignoring its provisions relative to wearing blended fabrics, receiving tattoos, regulating polygamy and slavery, mildew mitigation, and agricultural practices. Sure, like their counterparts, they justify their cherry-picking with elaborate arguments about different kinds of laws, etc., but the end result is the same!

COGWA also seems to be completely oblivious to the fact that our understanding of many things has greatly expanded over the last two to three thousand years. For them, the writings of the Bible seem to be frozen in time and space. In other words, there is no room for growing in grace and knowledge. For COGWA, it is apparent that the “letter of the law” takes precedence over the “spirit of the law.” Again, like many of their counterparts in the ACOG movement, they seem unable to differentiate between things that reflect the cultural milieu of ancient times and things that represent eternal spiritual principles that are applicable to all times and places.

Moreover, this insistence that the message doesn’t need to be updated goes to the very heart of the ACOG’s (and the larger Christian community’s) problem with attracting interest from younger folks and other more liberally inclined segments of our society. In an online article that originally appeared on News Nation titled Younger generations are 'reckoning' with religion: Theologian, we read: “‘We are reckoning with the ways that so much of our traditional teachings don’t align with the kind of people that we’re trying to be, and that is, in and of itself, the biggest issue,’ said theologian Candice Benbow.” Continuing, we read: “‘When we’re looking at younger generations and populations of people, they are really asking questions about what does it mean to do life with people? What does it mean to honor people’s individuality? What does it mean to honor people’s lived experiences, and not be so beholden to dogmas, that, when you think about it … have taught us really not to see people as people,’ Benbow said.” For those who may be interested, the website which published the research, Public Religion Research Institute, can be found here: https://www.prri.org/topic/religion-culture/

Unfortunately, in the name of defending the inerrancy of Scripture, COGWA has fallen into the same trap that has ensnared most of the other ACOGs (and many other mainstream denominations and groups). To be clear, the Bible and Christianity ARE still relevant! However, the failure of groups like COGWA to update and/or reevaluate their messaging in light of the many scientific and cultural advances of the last five hundred years has severely curtailed the appeal of their messaging and caused a large part of their potential audience to ignore and/or dismiss them out of hand. In a similar fashion, they stubbornly refuse to even entertain the findings of modern Biblical scholarship or the thinking and interpretations of folks who have done deep dives into the original languages and writings which we call the Bible. But don’t hold your breath waiting for a change! As their website indicates, they will probably be preaching the exact same message when the last member turns out the lights for the last time! What do you think?