Musings: Why Did I Want to Be a Pastor and Why in the Worldwide Church of God?

_______________said...

"Poor Dennis!

If he had a freind  (sic) here, he surely urge him to seek professiomal (sic) help for the delusiobs  (sic), extreme narcissism, and illusions of grandeur. However, Dennis' state does cause one to wonder if one couuld  (sic) become a COG minister without such proclivities." 

It has not proven a joy, at times, to be the symbol of all some have come to hate.  And believe it or not, I get that. I'm not real happy with my own youthful choices in vocation either.  I worked around ministers in adjoining church areas that were everything I'd hate about a guy if he was my pastor too. Lots of stories but let's move on. 

For years now, I've read the opinions and rancorous projections of many who are pretty sure they know why I became a pastor and how I went about being one. So even after 20 years since, I thought I'd ask myself why I chose to pastor in WCG  and the answer is the same as when I was 18.

(Note:  Nothing new here I know and I know I have told bits and pieces of my journey into WCG before so I also get the "repetition" part. Tune out if you must. I just wanted it all in one place once and a chance for at least a bit of pushback in response to those who actually have no clue as to my motives, hopes and perspective in wanting to be a pastor in WCG. Had I not chosen, and I did chose it, to go with WCG, I know I would have been a pastor somewhere that suited my then beliefs and hopes. I had been accepted at Methodist Seminary as well but chose WCG. 

This is the article I posted a few days ago but removed as I was in the "it doesn't matter" mode. But it does matter to me and I have always appreciated Gary's years ago invitation, as a former WCG Pastor who moved on rather than jumped to yet another version of WCG to share the experience and fully known by name in the interest of transparency and openness.)

So here I share my "extreme  narcissism and illusions of grandeur" with you for the first time, once again.

A Typical Sunday after church visit to see my brother (right) at the Newark State School Hospital in NY.  I guess I'd be about 10 in this pic.

Looking back, one of the main reasons I came into WCG was because of my brother "Freddy"  Born 6 months premature and weighing in at 1.5 lbs, he survived but barely. The pure oxygen they gave in those days destroyed his retinas, his small ear bones and left him blind, deaf and unable to speak . 

After he lit the curtains on fire at home, took the car out of gear a few times in the drive and stuffed a grape down my throat that mom barely saw him do to me and got it out in time, my parents knew he had to be where he could get more care and where our family could have some kind of normal life. So he spent his first 18 years at the State Hospital, compliments of Eastman Kodak and dad's insurance.

Newark State School-NY

Originally the "New  York Custodial Asylum for Feeble Minded Women"

(True!)

Every Sunday after church we'd drive the 30 miles to picnic with him or take him out for ice cream. Anything to get him out and about. Going inside the State Hospital was somewhere between scary and creepy, but by the time I was 10 I had seen, heard and smelled every human birth defect known to man. It may have been overload but it formed the view in me that somehow I was supposed to help fix him and all his friends.  Going to see him after church, the picnic and such was probably the reason I never thought much of taking my own kids to the YMCA on Friday nights growing up or the zoo on after Sabbath church if I did not have to speak at two locations. I know some think that proof of my lack of WCG conversion etc, but I didn't grow up in WCG so did not have the same mindset to begin with.

I spent years feeling guilty, as a kid, that I had parents, a home, my own room and bed while my brother had to live locked in and sleeping with all the smells, (he could not see or hear them) of the hospital and the other handicapped children. I used to keep a good eye on my parents walking the halls to find him because I was always afraid they'd lose me and leave me there for a day or so until they came back to get me. Just how kids think.

I wondered what the inner world of my brother was not being able to hear, speak or see.  I still do as he is still alive.  We communicated through touch and had our own sign language that only we all understood. He went to Helen Keller Institute because the State paid for it but we knew he'd not understand a think about what they were trying to teach him.

In the Rochester Christian grammar school I attended, I prayed every day, out loud, for his healing. The teacher even wrote how nice that was I did that on my second grade report card.  I had a caretaker and fixer  view of life from a very early age.  It was what lead me into WCG.

I was 14 when I visited my WCG newbies sister and brother in law in Boise, Idaho. They were soon to go to Pasadena as "married students." They too went into the full time ministry with myself to follow a few years later.

Fred Coulter, a bit of an austere and scary guy as I recall at 14 gave the first sermon I heard. But he talked about the Universe for some reason and of course that got my attention. No Presbyterian minister ever did that!  But then he quoted a verse that I had never heard in my entire religious life in church up to that point.

Isaiah 35:4-6 ^{4 S}ay to those with fearful hearts, "Be strong, do not fear; your God will come, he will come with vengeance; with divine retribution he will come to save you." ⁵Then will the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped. ⁶Then will the lame leap like a deer, and the mute tongue shout for joy. Water will gush forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert. I was hooked. I never heard that scripture in a Presbyterian sermon.  I wanted that for my brother and all his "friends".at the State Hospital.  I knew I had to be a part of a church that understood that and taught it. I probably decided then and there I was supposed to teach it too and in someway free my own brother from the prison of his own, literal blindness, deafness and inability to speak. 

Of course, I was young and naïve. 

I skipped through booklets like the US and BC in Prophecy. The New Testament cared little about who was who. Even I knew that as kid. But "Does God Heal Today?" and "The Wonderful World Tomorrow. What Will It Be Like?", I wanted to read to my brother but alas...well you know. 

When I was ordained a local elder in Mt Pocono, the first human I anointed for healing as James 5:14 now gave me the right to expect and the laying on of hands to do personally as a "minister", was my brother.  I went up to his room. Touched him to let him know I was there and anointed him.  Maybe this was part of why I was "called".  Um...well Freddy and I had a good laugh as he sat quietly wondering what the hell I was doing.  He still can't see, hear or speak 47 years later. LOL, or not LOL depending.

 When I respond with "well you don't know me very well" I mean it a very deep level based in a lifetime of experiences. I can't help that I have moved on in loss of faith in faith and lack of belief in what, to me, are now just myths and stories designed to give a small cultic people a huge pedigree while they languished in captivity. 

I can't help that I don't see why any God has to behave as the Bible God and be so out of touch when promises not to be..

 I can't help my love for science and seeing what I see in the realities of the evolution of all life on this planet including myself. We can argue our prejudices and faith restrictions til proverbial cows come home, but in my world of study and seeing the evidence and at times holding it in my hands, evolution is simply a fact (known in science jargon as a "theory" even though in religion a theory is thought to be a mere opinion).

One final experience and then I'll start to let you go...

When I had come to the end of my rope with WCG and the twin demons of depression and anxiety had taken root, I spent a week in a Charter Hospital in counseling and getting my brains back in my head. I had a short list of people close to me that were allowed to visit and only one day a week. They didn't want anyone from my past or present interfering with my program.  However, one day, in comes ___________, a minster and high up in WCG  (and still in another splinter)  for a visit.  I didn't want to see this person. I thought he had come to fire me but he only threatened that when I got home. Wish he had. But he asked me "What have you learned in here?"  I began with a story about my brother and how it affected me but he interrupted me and said "Yeah, yeah...I know all about your brother. What else did you learn?"  I think I made something up as I seethed and for the first time in my life heard the words "fuck you" pass unimpeded though my mind.  It felt good.  I wish I had said it out loud.

I haven't thrown babies out with bathwater in my view. I am not only reacting to "Armstrongism."  I'm not interested in destroying faith or taking crowns.  My entire life has been soaking in religion and the entire journey and experience has lead me to this place now.

It's my journey and just like yours, I am entitled to the lessons and experiences it provided me with. Being an "a-theist" is simply another kind of result you get when one becomes dis-illusioned with religion but why would one want illusions in religion to begin with?

It started when I was about 10 visiting my brother at the State Hospital every week after Church.  The story is ongoing as I enter year 70

And I'll have to end  with one of my favorite Eckhart Tolle quotes:

“Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness. How do you know this is the experience you need? Because this is the experience you are having at the moment.”

― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

Thanks for listening...

...and that's all I have to say about that

Gerald Waterhouse on the World's Religions

Here's Gerald Waterhouse on the World Religions in 1981. He'd flip a cow pie if he saw that Armstrongism became the same thing.

“Seems like some people got so much of this world's religion, they think this world and all of its dividing religions is right, and if you don't agree, you just go out and start your own. So Martin Luther disagrees with Catholics, and he went out then others disagree with them, others disagree with them, and finally you got about 600 different protestants. And they all think this is right. You know... if you dont agree go out and start your own religion,and that's God's religion, If God were to accept that, he'd be a weak, weak … fish! Some people think God is so weak that you can come down here and coin your own religion and shove it down God's throat and he's gonna swallow it! God is the one that decides how we worship Him and no one decides that except God Almighty and he is revealing that through His apostle toward the World Tomorrow. Mr. Armstrong - no one else knows how to worship God of Himself … but God does and he's leading through Christ to build a team as the pioneers to teach the whole world, here's the way you worship God. And God will have no other way, I'll guarantee you. And then if anyone says I wont worship that way, God says, I won't force you, I'll just burn you up. God's gonna win the argument, no one's gonna argue with God and win. He says if you dont wanna worship me the way I want you too, fine! You don't have to, but won't be around. See no one's gonna argue God into their own religion. See if God were to agree with all these different... How many pieces would God have to divide Himself into? Give a part in the Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, four square, three square, half a square, Anglican, dutch reform, German reform, Chez unformed, unreformed, latter day saints, early day saints, middle age saints, dead saints, live saints, no saints. How could God divide himself if they have different days? And they worship every day, and this day, and that day? The simple solution is He makes everyone conform to Him and He has one family all speaking the same thing! This world is so absolutely confused! Then some who have been in the Church they go back out and get just as confused. One minister who was a Church of Christ minister for quite a number of years jumped the track went out and he went back as a Church of Christ minister and his wife's teaching Sunday School, doesn't that sound sweet? May sound sweet but sweet will burn in the Lake of Fire, I'll guarantee you."  February 7, 1981, San Angelo, Texas       found by SHT

How many Church of God's will the church continue to divide into?  Which piece is right? We are already at around 500+ splinter groups through the last 7+  decades. Every single one of them doing what they think is right. The Church of God is so absolutely confused.

So much for that "team" being led to be teachers in the world tomorrow. Instead, we have a bunch of self-appointed narcissistic liars who have turned into little Hitlers that are wreaking havoc in the church, by leading people astray with their blasphemous lies.

The Preposterous Fiction of Literalism

What will happen to Armstrongism when we colonize the Moon and Mars?   

It's a valid question. One that these days we cannot just readily dismiss. We already have humans orbiting Earth at the International Space Station, and plans are to send men to Mars by 2020. If we can set up a colony on Mars, no matter how small, that obviously throws a lot of long-held Armstrongism beliefs into deep confusion. 

For the sake of argument - let's imagine that in the next twenty years at the minimum, and who knows how long after that, we have established some sort of colony on the Moon or on Mars. We'll go with Mars with this one. Hang with me here folks, There's a point to this. It's going to seem a little calendarish and trivial at first, but bear with the trivialities...

Here are some facts:

The Martian day lasts 1 day and 37 minutes. 

The Martian year lasts 687 days.

Spring is seven months long, summer is 6 months long, fall is 5.3 months long, and winter is just over 4 months long. 

Here is the Dorian Calendar, proposed by the Planetary Society for timekeeping on Mars:

http://www.planetary.org/explore/space-topics/mars/mars-calendar.html

Let's use this year as an example. 

Martian Spring started this year on March 23, 2019 Earth Time.

Martian Summer starts this year on October 8, 2019 Earth Time. 

Martian Fall starts this year on April 8, 2020 Earth Time. 

Martian Winter starts this year on September 2, 2020. 

Which brings in mind ethical questions:

Everything that Armstrongism stands for has to do with Earth, NOT Mars.

We all know that Armstrongism takes everything extremely literally, from the Isaiah Prophecies to the "World Tomorrow". Since they have proposed a theology deeply embedded in literalism, I will do the same with my questions. Try not to laugh too hard. 

• When Christ returns to Earth, will Christ do a fly-by and a wave going past Mars?
• Will Mars be spared from "The Great Tribulation", including any colonies? 
• Are Martian Humans subject to the Law just as much as Earthly humans?
• If the Kingdom of God is on Earth, and Earth is Heaven, do Martian Humans really go to Heaven when they die? 
• If Earth's atmosphere is a "heaven", what is Mars' atmosphere? a Marsvean? 
• If the Millennium takes place on Earth, are Martian Colonies left out? 
• Will you be able to see The Holy City from Mars?
• What about the Sabbath and Holy Days on Mars? What meaning will these have there?
• Will sunset to sunset still apply? 
• Will the Moon become a new Feast Site? Or will all Martians go to Earth for the Feast? 
• Why are there no Mars-prophecies recorded in the Bible? 
• Why are there no Moon-prophecies recorded in the Bible?

Are these questions ludicrous? In Armstrongism, everything is ludicrous, so I jumped on the Ludicrous Train for a moment so I can bring out loud and clear what happens when you take biblical allegory and scripture LITERALLY. It brings up a bunch of questions that, clearly ridiculous, are deeply embedded in Armstrong theology. Which leads me to a final question.

Is Armstrongism so steeped in literalism that it has become an unapologetic mockery all of its own? 

If the entirety of the above questions make you smirk and squirm at it's ridiculousness, then perhaps you will get a taste at how the entirety of Armstrongism's literal theology - as incorrect as it has been proven to be - is to those who have actually studied religion and look at what Herbert did to it. Remember, Herbert was the one who said Christ would literally travel millions of miles in a day to return to Earth. So in his theology, these questions really aren't so preposterous. Right? 

Whether on Earth, Mars, in deep space, the two great commandments stand - LOVE. You can love your neighbor here or there. That transcends time, space, literalism, debate over law, seasons, times, and years. It transcends holy days, Sabbaths, and festivals. It can be practiced anywhere and everywhere humans do and will exist. The funny thing is? 

Armstrongism can't even get it together here on Earth, and as such, they miss the boat, hanging their entire doctrinal palette on literalism which has become its own genre of science fiction, ignoring the reality of love for the inferiority of the shadows. And that's the point I am trying to bring out in this somewhat ridiculous post. 

submitted by SHT