Having Parents Who Still Defend The Past

Are Church of God Members TRULY Your Family?

There is an excellent post on The Painful Truth site about what really constitutes a family in the Church of God. Are you fellow church members your "new" family?

Will they truly support you in times of need?

Will they give you unconditional love and support?

Will they accommodate your beliefs and understandings?

Will they stand beside you at all costs?

What is your experience?

Joining the Worldwide Church of God meant major sacrifices. Being a church of God member made it harder to fit in with the outside world. Some things we had to give up entirely. Armstrong tried to provide substitutes for everything we lost when we joined the Worldwide Church of God, but they were poor substitutes indeed.

Armstrong deliberately structured his belief system to alienate his followers from their families 

and make them more dependent on the church. When I joined the Worldwide Church of God, all of a sudden I couldn’t participate in most family get-togethers because they were “pagan holidays,” I couldn’t eat the food on the occasions I could attend because it was “unclean,” and I offended family members, especially my mother, when I did not give gifts on Christmas and birthdays.

My family still gave me their unconditional love despite my beliefs. When I visited my mother, she would always make sure that there were no “unclean” ingredients in my food, and while I felt unable to compromise my beliefs by attending infant baptisms and holy communions, she would attend church social events occasionally. I couldn’t bend to accommodate her, but she did all she could to accommodate me.

Compare that to the so-called substitute “family” the church provided. The “love” the church gave had many strings attached. If you didn’t obey the ministers and submit to their authority, if you didn’t agree with “Mr. Armstrong” in every respect, you could find yourself kicked out, and all of your “family” members were forbidden to have any dealings with you. If you did not regularly attend all of the church’s activities, you were loved less. The more blindly you submitted, the less you complained, the more “love” you received. If you had any questions or doubts, all of a sudden the love was withheld, and if you weren’t careful the “love” disappeared altogether. Former church members were and still are shunned by those still in the Worldwide Church of God and its splinter groups. The church did not only encourage the shunning of disfellowshipped members, it required it. There were serious penalties for associating with disfellowshipped members.

Read the entire story here:  The Family
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One Hell of a Way to Insure Compliance and Obedience? (Warning: Graphic Images)

Nigerian Christians Burn a Suspected Witch

Let's get this part over with.  "There is a way that SEEMS right to a man...Dennis, but the ways there of end in DEATH....yours".  "The wisdom of man is FOOLISHNESS with God...Dennis...and so are your observations."  "God laughs at the wise...Dennis, and is laughing at YOU."   There...

Now....

As a child growing up in a rather mainstream Christian Church, the topic of Hell Fire was disturbing to say the least.  I had burned myself several times so equated the concept of an ever burning hell for those, at the time whom I assumed did not profess the Westminster Confession of Faith, as something quite horrific. 

The experience of burns in real life magnified over the entire self and for all eternity ever burning but never able to die or burn up did accomplish the intended goal of watching out that I did not do bad things that were unforgivable or leave the church. How one never burned up, however, remained for me as scientific impossibility.

The old feeling of I might be going to the ever burning Presbyterian Hell returned when I got a letter from the Board after having gone to AC reminding me I had yet to confess my faith even though they knew I had been home visiting.  I was to contact them as soon as possible.  I didn't of course.  I had found new truth. I burned but  not forever so I would not be confessing that faith.

The Presbyterian Version rarely mentioned

In this hell  I think I imagined people bobbing or doing everything to keep themselves afloat in molten lava, as if it mattered .  When National Geographic allowed me to look into the spewing heart of a churning volcanic magma chamber I recall having to put out of my mind just how would feel to fall into such a lake of fire. Recently a young Oregonian accidently fell into a hot water cauldron in Yellowstone and all they ever found of him was his wallet. The rest had dissolved away in a day. I imagined what those last "Oh shit" moments must have felt like emotionally and physically for that young man. The best solution is just not to think about in too much detail and stay on the pathway.

The price humans exact on Unbelievers

Then came the teaching of "Is There a Real Hell Fire" from the Worldwide Church of God.  Now this was better I reasoned.  We don't burn forever.  That's a plus.  We burn up!  But still we burn and it takes time to burn up.  Even as a minister for the Burn Up Church of God, I wondered if God would not better exemplify "God is Love" if  He just stopped their hearts like we do in executions of hardened criminals today.  But then I was I was told that God is a just God and can do as he wishes.  It would be a quick lesson and realization by the wicked of just how wrong they were.  For what purpose I still cannot come up with. I guess that was supposed to comfort and distract me from wondering or doubting that this truly is an example of "God is love."  It's certainly not the I Cor. 13 kind of love.

Both growing up and as a minster, I wondered why an all powerful God could not simply show up and have a one on one chat with the doubting sinner.  I promise, if a real God sat me down and conversed with me as in "Come let us reason together,"  I'd listen well.  It's the middlemen that muck up the message and fuel the doubts and skepticism.  God needs to rethink that middlemen thing as it doesn't seem to convince the masses very well on something as important as not being burned alive for not confessing the truth of it all.

I have probably had a dozen people, from the Churches of God, warn me over the years here that "You'll think differently when you are facing the Lake of Fire"  This does not concern me as I have long since gotten over the idea that there is a Lake of Fire to be thrown into regretting I had eaten pork, tithed more faithfully, put the leaven out better and admitted that I was rejecting the one true Church, split, splinter and sliver along with competing Apostles and Prophets each cosigning the other to the Lake of Fire for watering down the teachings of Herbert W Armstrong who was only guessing at best.

And I simply don't know how to repent of good science done well that contradicts the Biblical explanations for all that is actually true.

The concept of Hell and The Lake of  Fire is a human construct. The concept evolves even in scripture and the bottom line is that it has been used for 2000 years to keep the faithful organized, faithful, supportive and gyrating in their seats. It is a FEAR based threat for consequences of non-church compliance. And while perfect love may cast out FEAR.  Evidently it does not cast out this one Fear put into the hearts of men by the clergy or the God they claim to speak for.   It is the reason the philosopher Denis Diderot said:

"Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest."

So to avoid being told to get back to my On and On Anonymous meetings, let's let one picture be worth a thousand words and ask:

In what way is this the Love of God and the only way God , even the Church of God,  God, can deal with the skeptical and unbelieving?  My apologies for using such a horrific example in picture form to illustrate the obscene theological solution, portrayed to the faithful and unbelieving of that which I know the thinking Christian also wonders about but will not speak about in church of course.

But the fearful, (Can God not ask what they are afraid of?) and unbelieving, (Can not God find out why they don't believe?) and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, (Can God not find out why they are this way?) and all liars, (Can not God ask why they fear to tell the truth?)shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.
Revelation 21:8

The reality is that human beings of all creeds and religions have only been around the last 38 seconds if you portray the last 570 million years in one hour, and our individual lifespan of 70 years is just 0.00035% of the human experience. 
Yet are punished  for billions and billions and zillions of quintillions of years into eternity for not getting it right. 

Think about that!

The Jewish Christian Churches of God might do better at least to adopt the Jewish view of the topic but that's another story...