Van Robison on: "Making Sense of Human Life"

Making Sense of Human Life

The Worldwide Church of God experience for many of us was a profound time in our lives.  We were innocent human beings who believed that we were seeking "truth" and had found it.  After a period of time, we could see that there were reasons to doubt that we had really stumbled upon spiritual truth.  In a sense we feel that we were raped (spiritually).  Even very intelligent human beings can be hoodwinked.  Some years ago, my own son that I love dearly was caught up in the Jehovah Witnesses and he and I went around and around with some very heated debates and I offended his senses.  My son is a very intelligent man who is in management of a multi-million dollar company and his position pays him a salary that would be the envy of most human beings.  What it proves is that even very intelligent human beings can be caught off guard and be swept up in religious foolishness.

Fortunately, I succeeded in persuading my son that his affiliation with this cult religious group was not something he wanted to be involved with.  That was years ago and he was set free from bondage to this stupid religion. Without question he will never again be caught up in religious nonsense.

There is something deep in our human souls about being taken advantage of by religious hustlers, even if they were sincere about their deceptions.  Ultimately human beings have been trying to make sense of human life for thousands of years.  No matter our personal position in what we think is truth, it is for sure that we will all exit life on earth.  You would think that common sense would dictate that life should be lived for positive and constructive purpose, while we have these few short years to live.  Should we live to be seventy, eighty, ninety or even one-hundred and beyond, in terms of eternity it is just a blinking of the eye.  What then is the purpose of life?  I suppose the answer will vary with the individual.

None of us have a clue as to what really happens beyond the grave, although many have experienced "out-of-body" experiences that are to my thinking not to be dismissed.  There is another dimension.  We are not God and we will all perish.  Those of us who have children and grandchildren know beyond doubt that it is sad to even contemplate death and that the void when anyone dies, is a void that can never ever be replaced.  There is simply nothing on earth or in the universe that can replace my sons, my daughters, my grandchildren or my wife or loved ones.  It is impossible.  Is there a lesson in human existence that we all yearn to understand?

Why is God silent?  Why does He not communicate with us on a level that we can see Him, converse with Him and know beyond doubt what this life is all about?  Men have been asking questions like this since the beginning of time no doubt.  Who can understand human suffering?  Does any human being exist who does not know suffering?  Who doesn't want utopia, paradise and happiness forever?  We live in a world of seeming madness.  The endless wars of death and destruction of countless millions of human beings never ceases and why?  Are those who rule really even human beings?  The United States has military bases all over the world and what for?  World dominion? So a hand full of human beings gain control of the entire planet and all its resources and control all the people---then what?  All the rulers will end their lives in the graveyard the same as all others.

Are we missing something in life?  Religions and governments of men are obviously both control freaks.  They both assume the position of being God to all human beings on earth.  "Its the law" is the biggest excuse man ever invented for control.  I don't doubt that God Almighty exists, but I also am flabbergasted that there are more questions about life than there are answers.  Rest assured the Worldwide Church of God and its many deformed and mentally paralyzed daughters, have no more clue, than do all the other religious groups on earth.  Humans will battle mentally forever over issues of religion.  We all know that ALL the leaders of ALL the splinter groups of the Worldwide Church of God, will ALL vanish from life on earth and it is just a matter of time.  Everything changes in time.  Good bye Rod Meridith, Gerald Flurry and so forth.  They will ALL meet up with Herbert and Garner Ted.

What then is the real purpose of human life?


Van Robison

The "Creepers" In The Church of God

Silenced has a great blog entry about creepy men in the Churches of God.  Those were the single guys over 35 that stood around with their tongues hanging out watching all the single women.

Pasadena was full of these creeps.  Because Pasadena was the HQ for the Church it attracted a lot of really weird and sick people.  Most were men.  There were a few women in the mix, but mostly it was men.  The auditorium attracted most of these guys because the students were assigned to attend there, so it was a young and nubile smorgasbord.

They would stand in the lobby of the auditorium and stare at coeds and well dressed women.  Some would then follow these women into the auditorium and sit behind them so they could stare at them all through services. Others, would have typed lists of expectations on how women were to act if they ever accepted a date from one of these guys.  It was all about being submissive and knowing who was in charge.

Church dances were a favorite venue for these creepers to come out of the wood work. They would gather up the courage to ask the single women to dance with them and then the touching would start in.  You could see it in the women's eyes as they returned to their seats with their friends.

Sadly the ministry never did much about these guys.  However they would tell women to go out with them, sometimes even commanding women to date certain of these creeps.

Silenced goes further into the topic relating how women were molested by these men.

Creepers and terminally single males

There weren’t many men to choose from anyway, and the remaining single, unattached males tended to be older and mentally unstable, as they had been trapped by COG dating prohibitions to keep their sights within the church. They sunk into loneliness, depression and instability as their opportunities and years passed them by.

The “terminally single males” as we jokingly called them tended to be 35 or older and socially awkward with the tendency to stalk. They would single-out women they liked at dances and social gatherings, despite their obvious disinterest, glare at them, make them uncomfortable and even sometimes make crude or harassing remarks.

These “creepers” were pervasive across COG groups, and the ministry did nothing about them. After all, they were men and tithe-paying members. Drop-kicking them out of the congregation would hurt the COG’s bottom line.

There were hundreds of tales of older men stalking and hitting-on women half their age or younger. These women are powerless and often frightened to bring this before COG pastors, who would simply be negligent to do anything about it anyway.

Many of these men ended up being sexual predators.  Silenced relates how a man in United Church of God called Mr. H preyed on women in the church and STILL does to this day because UCG will not do anything about him.

One illustrative example of a sexual predator online and in real life was a COG member we’ll call Mr. H.

He was a young man, late teens/early twenties, who was an infamous stalker of UCG women, teens and young adults. He would send them salacious, sexually charged messages, harass them before and after church, made lewd and suggestive phonecalls, and do things that would usually get people arrested.

However, his victims were afraid to speak out against him, because he was a “member in good standing,” his profile’s gallery was full of pictures of him and prominent church pastors shaking hands and smiling, and he outwardly was one of the pious and self-righteous church sheep ever produced, and that hid a very dark side that was gaining fear and infamy throughout the young people in UCG.

Mr. H is still a member in good standing, as the ministry has done nothing about him.

A horror story related to Mr. H was recently left on one of our posts by a current member of COGWA:

I will say that I completely agree 100% with Silence/et al, who point out the creepers/stalkers. I know exactly who you are referring to with Mr. H – I have had my own experiences with him, and after he sent salacious messages to a MINOR, I had him reported.

Mr. H was not reprimanded by the COG for this.

Most of these men jumped ship during the changes and went with the various splinter groups. LCG, UCG and PCG took in a lot of them. These guys have to be in their 60's now which makes it even creepier!

 Read the entire entry here: I wept for my sisters

Andrew on "What Is Sin?"

What Is Sin?

Anyone who has spent anything more than a few minutes involved in Armstrongism knows what sin is. All twenty-seven definitions. I jest. Slightly. It’s the transgression of the law, the missing of the mark, and all those wrong thoughts that are “broadcast” telepathically directly into your brain all 43,200 seconds of the day by the Prince of the Power of the Air, a.k.a. Satan.

In secular terms, a “sin” would just be a mistake, an error in judgment, or a grasping and fumbling in unfamiliar and confusing circumstances. But as soon as you wrap it up in religious terms and propose that every embarrassing thing you’ve ever done has been chiseled into eternal stone to be used against you in the most intimidating circumstance imaginable to determine your eternal fate, well then every thought, intention, and act, necessarily becomes fraught with eternal significance.

We’re not really going to argue things like murder, rape, grand theft, etc. There isn’t anyone who doesn’t agree that these are serious offenses that one cannot generally do “accidentally.” Probably no one in history has ever uttered the phrase, “Oops, I didn’t mean to become a serial axe murderer.”

“Oh,” we might all say, “that was an understandable mistake. Becoming a serial axe murderer could have happened to anyone.” No, I think we can all agree that does not constitute a valid defense in anyone’s book. Instead, we’re talking about the criminalization of much smaller mistakes.

A key problem with turning every trivial error into an act of cosmic significance is the fact that we are born not really knowing very much, and learning involves making mistakes, and that means doing some “sinning.” Realistically, it just can’t be helped. Yes, it is true, we do have a “choice” in a manner of speaking, whether to sin or not in any given situation, but given tens or hundreds of billions of people, the bible itself says that not one person ever passed the test of living a “crime”-free life.

If the bible is to be believed, on the one hand, God intentionally designed us so weak that every single one of us is going to do some “sinning” every time we try to do anything at all. On the other hand, every mistake and every learning experience has cosmic significance, obviously as an expression of the idea that God doesn’t want us to ever do any “sinning.” Does anyone else see a conflict here? Why would God put us in a no-win scenario like this? Under the burden of so much religious-based accusation and judgment, is it any wonder that so many people suffer from low self-esteem?

Of course, this is a biblical thing, not just an Armstrong thing, so Armstrongism isn’t alone in this. Catholicism, Judaism, and Islam all have their fundamentalism that inflicts the same conundrum upon their followers.

So then, because every single human being ever created is such a heinous criminal (hmm, I wonder why), God’s kingdom would have exactly zero new additions from this earthly experiment except for the enormous and benevolent grace of God, who sent his only begotten Son to die to pay for all our heinous crimes. And we must be eternally grateful and beholden for such a wonderful deed done on my behalf because we are all such heinous criminals.

At the risk of sounding like an absolute heretic, excuse me, but who set this whole system up in the first place, starting with how I was created, and then criminalizing every mistake I was sure to make, thus guaranteeing such an enormous debt of “sin” would be hanging over my, and everyone’s head, that needed paying for in the first place?

The traffic codes are written in the same way. If they were written for safety, then they were written for robot  drivers, not human drivers.  The way the traffic laws are, you can’t help but break some of them every time you drive. They seem calculated to take advantage of human frailty. Any time the city needs some extra income, they can simply go out and fleece the people by issuing a slew of moving violations. Every time you get behind the wheel, you are probably incurring hundreds or thousands of dollars worth of debt (I know I am), which may or may not be demanded of you.

I understand the point of much of the “law” laid out in the bible as a code to genuinely help everyone avoid making some large mistakes, and that’s fine. But what if the whole system of “sin” and “sacrifice” was laid out with the same intentions as the modern traffic laws? What if it’s just the fabrication of a fictitious debt combined with the biggest guilt trip in history for the sole purpose of bringing an entire society under the control of religious authorities?

What if we were to let go of all the neurotic energy bound up in the word “sin”? Not to say that many “sins” aren’t genuinely bad ideas, but just to say, let’s abandon the cosmic significance part of it.

What if we were to say that a mistake is just a mistake? Yes, there will be consequences. You won’t score the brownie point, you might lose the girl, you'll have to pay the fine, or maybe you’ll look like the loser and idiot that we all feel like from time to time. And then a funny thing happens. Everyone forgets. And it’s just not that big of a deal anymore. There’s no cosmic significance. Nobody is going to bring it up a thousand years from now and rake you over the coals for it. And a mistake suddenly becomes something that is affordable. It’s just not that serious. And you can afford to laugh at yourself.

-Andrew