Sheila is amazing! She managed to rise above her circumstances and even go to college - graduating with associate's degree in Nursing with high honors! She has been through a lot, but managed to get free! I'm so touched by her strength and character. She a husband and 4 beautiful sons that love and respect her! Great interview!
One of the sick things the church did was tell members that when they left the church their lives would be utter failure. They will lose their homes, families, jobs, etc, because the prissy god of the church was ticked off that they left. these success stories make utter fools out of the ministers who claim this.
16 comments:
"Miserable when one left" I don't remember that at all ever bring id. (perhaps because it's been so long ago)...... I do remember that one could potentially loose eternal life etc and in this life God's special protection, but a promised miserable life in this life, I never heard it.
Moreover, I heard the opposite, that in the church it was a "narrow road" or that the "weak and meager" were chosen in the church..... But that it did not need to stay that way...
Anyhow.... Congrats to the Lady..
Nck
It sounds like she moved on with her life, which is more than I can say for the rest of you.
Armstrongist womp womp… This is group therapy for those who have left or considering leaving.
Why COG bootlickers go on here is beyond me. Don’t you have some magazines to distribute or something?
I'll have to agree with Nck on this one. The only comment I heard from the pulpit is that members lose their "spark" and become noticeably duller when they leave the church. There's some truth to this. Reading the bible or/and self help books raises one's mental energy level and conditions the mind to be more positive. One church friend of mine stopped doing both and constantly appeared semi depressed as a consequence.
nck,
It was a very common refrain at least in my experience. The fact that so many do well upon leaving the WCG control group/cult is a blessing as they are also doing so while losing family and friends many times.
5:34 said: "It was a very common refrain at least in my experience. The fact that so many do well upon leaving the WCG control group/cult is a blessing as they are also doing so while losing family and friends many times."
It was a common refrain as I grew up in the church and I heard it repeatedly in Pasadena while at the college. NCK always has to have a contrarian viewpoint on everything as if his experience is the only real experience.
5:47
"as if his experience is the only real experience"
No...I have repeatedly said that my Congregation was on Tatooine......with of course the occassional visit from The Emperor or Emissaries from the Empire......
But more importantly I NEVER EVER based my opinions about WCG on "Local Ministers opoinions" rather than OHLY official statements, official literature and my own experience about the world and people in general.
It seems many of the terrible interpretations I see here come from "hearsay, from local midwestern ministers, with only an AC education re interpreted by even funnier people in the congregation to be rehashed on internet boards 50 years later.
Hey, but as I said, Its been a long time....
Nck
The guy said that 1975 robbed him of a college education and that because of the loss, he used to cry when jogging past a college in later years. There's thousands that paid a heavy price for Herb's 1975 lie, and many are too embarrassed to make it publicly known since they risk being looked down apon for being deceived by a religious con artist. There's many skeletons in the closet of The church of Herb.
Yet Herb boasted to friends and family about being number three in the kingdom.
I knew people even in the so called golden years of the 80s and into the 90s who were eschewing college because "it wouldn't matter" or "I don't want to get worldly". I thought it was foolishness myself - okay, if you think Jesus is going to return particularly soon, you still need something to do in the interim, right? Why not use it to better yourself? But it was what it was, I guess.
RSK
The entire 1970's....at least from 1974 on Kids who performed well in school were higlighted very prominently in the WorldWide news and its predecessors.
So your point is exactly making my point on the idiots heaping trouble on themselves through their personal troubles or interpretations..
nck
Nck, you're blaming the victims with your 10.56 comment. 1975 wasn't just an interpretation but a HWA teaching that appeared in church publications, including in a Good News article. Why do that difficult college course, look for a mate or get medical attention if 1975 will bring everything to an end? Or if the end is just 3-5 years away? You keep looking at the outer face of the church and refuse to look behind the curtain. HWA's Church was and still is "whited sepulchres, which outwardly appear beautiful, but inwardly are full of dead men's bones."
It seems that many think life is like a cartoon untill they themselves have experienced hardship. And perhaps even then keep insisting on their cartoon view of the world.
4:06...I do blame post 1974 people you saw that right......Just look up the "Worldwide newses post 1974 where all the achievers are hailed and praised.....
Indeed I did not experience the pre 1970 period.
Yet reading the literature from that period I doubt very much I would have believed 1975 was the end......pure speculation....and more over since 1964 the plans for the college had been marketed that to me would clearly indicate my life motto....."Live as if it is your last day, yet plan for a thousand years....".but I have learned to empathize more with the Radio period people....
nck
I wouldnt know, nck, I was born after 1975 and have no memory of that period.
I do recall my father sneering about certain ministurds and wannabe ministurds who reportedly counselled some parents that college for the kids was unnecessary and they should instead give those funds to "the Work". But that was a man who fought his way into a university that didnt want him due to his skin color, so he thought that was a silly notion.
RSK.... I can imagine that.... because the scramble for money was there. And certain studies were frowned upon. Yet kids with great performance were put highlighted in the biweekly church bulletin.
In the fifties surplus applicants for AC were directed to assigned black or white colleges..
... which was of course a distinct Saxon cultural phenomenon..
Yet these (Christian) colleges are named in the bulletins
Nck
On a similar note, for poor kids, one way to escape the cycle and break the paradigm is to join the military - which of course WCG did not approve of. I knew several young black men who had to leave the church because they enlisted and their parents got maligned from the pulpit in a sermon by a certain over-entitled pastor.
That said, after that occurred, several men (black and white) who had done the same thing in their youth for the same reasons, cornered the ministurd as soon as the service was over and told him where he could stick that kind of talk. It was a sight. He almost got the shit kicked out of him that day.
RSK
Thank you very much for the 6:39. That is a very interesting comment.
I have an opinion on that. Yet a very interesting dilemma indeed. I understand.
nck
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