Is Doubt and Faith Compatible?

Is there room for a person of faith to have doubt in their life about God and their spiritual journey, particularly in the Church of God?  Because the church dealt in absolutes and had to have the answer to everything, there was not much room for doubt to find fertile ground to play around in.  Questioning and inquisitiveness were frowned upon.  To do so was to question the leadership of the church, Herbert Armstrong, the ministry, the Bible and ultimately God. To try and solve that "problem" the church had hundreds of books, booklets, articles, and videos explaining everything imaginable.  Because the church was God's specially appointed tool of "truth" it could NOT be questioned. To do so was sin.

As children we were encouraged to be inquisitive and questioning, but as adults we are told to stop doing that.  As a person of faith in the church one must never doubt or be inquisitive, at least in the words of "wisdom" of the leadership.  The problem this creates is that with certainty there is no room for faith to flourish.

At the church I attend I work with new members seeking to join.  We meet for 6 weeks  two hours a week listing to stories of staff telling their journey's of faith and doubt.  Then we break into small groups were we share our personal stories.  Many have come from abusive churches and are seeking a place of refugee.  The interesting thing with so many, including myself, is that in spite of all the spiritual abuse and sometimes physical abuse, there is something that keeps drawing them and myself back to the church.

Here are some screen shots of the meeting we had last week that centered on faith and doubt.  Things like this would NEVER have been encouraged in the Worldwide Church of God, nor will it be in any COG today.

Can you imagine what would've happened to the WCG if we had allowed skepticism?  Most of our baloney dogma would never have been allowed to take root!  Certitude reigned supreme in the church and still does.

This journeying doubt has been a fascinating one to me. I do not need the answers. I seek to understand things, but never to the point I think I have the answer. I tell the people in my groups each class that never should they accept the words of the preacher as the final say on anything.  It should be a jumping off point.  A point to start asking questions and as soon as we think a question is close to being answered we should  have another one.  We will never give them an answer as to how things "should be."  We let them play in the field of questions.

In the COG fear was used as a tool to stop all inquisitiveness.  Fear of disobeying God by doubting, fear of losing ones salvation, fear of never making it to Petra and the ultimate fear tool was blaspheming the holy spirit.  Church of God members have been conditioned to never examine their faith.

“Take faith, for example. For many people in our world, the opposite of faith is doubt. The goal, then, within this understanding, is to eliminate doubt. But faith and doubt aren't opposites. Doubt is often a sign that your faith has a pulse, that it's alive and well and exploring and searching. Faith and doubt aren't opposites, they are, it turns out, excellent dance partners.”
― Rob Bell, What We Talk about When We Talk about God

Rod Meredith: Living Church of God "...a true bulwark against this absolute “rubbish,” which is being palmed off as Truth!"

Rod Meredith has a new "Personal" letter our for the LCG faithful.  In his typical style, it is all about sex, perversions, and all kinds of "nasty" things that seem to still occupy his mind as his life winds down. It is hard to imagine a life of 60 some years as an "adult" that is so preoccupied with gay sex as his has been.

He starts his letter out stating that he hopes he intentionally "offends" LCG members reading the letter. According to his reasoning, the media and Satan have destroyed the youth of the church and the world by turning them into sex crazed fornicating perverts who can't keep their minds off of sex.  If they are not whipped into shape soon then they will leave the LCG and their lives will be total failures, their parents will be embarrassed and most likely will despise them.

Dear Brethren and Friends, Powerful forces of evil are facing our youth more than in any time in modern history! I want to address this problem as strongly and openly as I can. I hope that I will offend none of you by being somewhat plain in describing various situations. The world—and its media—certainly describes these things in detail. So we should not be “embarrassed” about discussing this reality that is being propagated in our society and which our young people understand far too well—whether some of us older people grasp this or not. Thousands of you older brethren are parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts who have a sincere interest in helping the youth in God’s Church. So all of us have a responsibility to help our young people understand what is happening to them before it is too late! For many of them will be “lost” to the Church and to the way of God unless we take action!

Meredith wants all LCG members to read The Marketing of Evil by David Kupelian.  Apparently this is the new "go to" book for the LCG.  The book was heavily promoted on WorldNetDaily, an ultra conservative web site that so many COG's look to for their "news."  The church has had a tradition of choosing "worldly" books that fit their end times deterioration of society world view and this one really fits the bill.

Frankly, brethren, I hope many of you will purchase and study this book I have recommended: The Marketing of Evil. It can be a guide to you in the sense that it will help you understand the real background of this whole perverted movement, which Satan has spawned to propagandize and deceive our young people in many important areas of life. For many of them have not had the experience to grasp the suffering that is often caused by these perverted behaviors. 

It is always the outside world that is attacking the church.  Never once does it chose to look inwardly at the deep seated sins that occupy the leadership of the church.  LCG proudly includes in its history how a known pedophile from WCG Pasadena was instrumental in starting the Global Church of God who later helped bankrupt it and then helped start the Living Church of God.  Imperial Schools students from Pasadena have one horror story after another about trips to Camp River Glen with this guy.  Nor does LCG worry too much about some in its ministry that have had rampant sexual problems while they were in WCG where they were well know for their various peccadillo's.

The church has never looked inwardly at its own sins, but has always looked outwardly to find the closest scapegoat.  Yet it claims to be the following:

Only God’s Church can be a true bulwark against this absolute “rubbish,” which is being palmed off as Truth!

...or so Meredith claims.

Sadly, this has never been the case, regardless of which COG incarnation is being discussed.  the church has never been a bulwark of anything.  Just look at the scores of delusional self-appointed narcissistic COG leaders running various COG's today.  None of them are "bulwark's of truth or of God's word. The church has promoted so much rubbish over the decades and has ruined so many lives that it can never be a true "bulwark" against anything!  It cannot be trusted to dispense "truth."

Meredith goes on to rail against transgenders, gays, and other evils that have ruined the minds of LCG youth.  He then moves directly into these very youth being tortured and killed by the upcoming "beast power" because many of them will not make it to Petra.  Young people of LCG and the world are being set up to suffer through he tribulation, IF they even live through it.  Why is it that life is always so pleasant in Meredith's mind...?

Our young people need to be actively guided to genuinely understand this! For our present society—in which they will have to suffer far more than many of us who are older, if they live right on through the Great Tribulation—is headed straight back to Sodom and Gomorrah and the horrifying things pictured directly in the book of Revelation. God describes the society soon to come, when men will so misunderstand and “despise” the true God that they will even fight Christ at His Second Coming!

The Living Church of God has been fighting God ever since its inception.  It refuses to accept anything that Jesus tried to get across to people.  It rejects the new covenant, a standard that most Christians understand but not those in COG leadership positions.

Meredith ends with this:

If all of us who are adult Christians genuinely “reach out” to our young people—with love and understanding, yet with firm conviction, as well—perhaps they can be helped to understand, and we can thus save their lives from the awful suffering that is going to come from those who are cut off from God.

So I ask all of you, in Jesus’ name, to “get involved” in helping and caring for the well-being of our young people. Take time to teach your children, your grandchildren, your nieces, nephews and other young people you know and love, to understand before it is too late! Using the Bible, using this outstanding book I have mentioned—The Marketing of Evil—and using my article on “Satan’s Alternative Universe” and other “tools” which this Work gives you over and over, you can help if you will stir yourselves to take action. May God help all of us to strengthen our youth at home, through the Church, through our youth programs and in every way we can before it is too late!

Get ready for LCG to start throwing its youth to the curbside as parents and church members accuse them of all kinds of satanic things.  Will we soon see LCG practicing the same filthy teaching that Philadelphia Church of God does towards its youth?

The most healthy thing the youth of the LCG could do for their spiritual and emotional life is to LEAVE the LCG as soon as they possibly can.