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.

The Meat of the Gospel: Salvation by Carnivory

Guest article:

The Meat of the Gospel: Salvation by Carnivory

by: Retired Prof

On the face of it, the doctrine that a god/man had to die to spare us from horrible punishment for our sins is absurd. Let us accept the idea that a creator designed and constructed an unimaginably vast universe. Say he stocked one tiny speck of it with a breeding pair of sentient, rational beings and vowed to kill them if they displeased him. So far so good. But does it make sense that he would then have designed them vulnerable to temptation and set before them an irresistible temptation? He had to know they were bound to give in, yet when they did he declined to acknowledge his own mistake (or sadistic ploy?) but placed all the blame on them.

In an attempt to mitigate the absurdity, those who devised the doctrine compounded it. They say the creator will save his creatures from his own wrath by siring a son who will never displease him and then having that son sacrificed in their stead. Sure, they will still die, but that is okay, since killing his sinless son will melt his heart enough to make him relent and let them enjoy a pain-free existence after death--as long as they meet certain terms and conditions. Otherwise he will condemn them to horrible suffering. 

How can anyone claim, much less actually believe, that taking the life of an innocent person could restore the lives of guilty ones? Why would the kind of loving creator Christians believe in devise such a convoluted, irrational “plan of salvation”? An omniscient being should manage to keep things from getting out of hand in the first place. If he were as kind and loving as they say, he would not have made creatures so faulty that they had to be kicked out of Eden. He would not have poured upon their descendants a massive flood that drowned not only the sinners who provoked his wrath, but their innocent babies, their livestock—in fact all the sinless bystander-creatures that shared their world, except barely enough for seed stock to repopulate the place. He would not sadistically plan to resurrect the sinners and destroy their lives all over again by throwing them into a pool seething with fire. Furthermore, he should never need to resort to a makeshift fix once he decided that some of his human creatures could be salvaged. Surely he could think of some way to let sin-contaminated descendants of Adam and Eve off the hook without having to torture and kill one additional person—this one entirely free of sin, and his own son besides.

However bizarre this doctrine seems from a rational point of view, it does make psychological sense if we examine how two powerful human influences have intertwined: our conflicted reactions to eating animals and our tendency to believe in the supernatural.

All cultures recognize that we share with other animals the same nutritional reality. For us to live, something else must die. Most of us are untroubled if the thing that dies is an insensate turnip or a mushroom, but animals are a different matter. I once fattened a lamb for slaughter. Every day when I brought feed and water to the pen where he lived alone, he would put his front hooves up on the bottom board, peer over the fence, and greet me with a hearty “baa.” I was the only friend that lamb had. The cold November day when I knocked him in the head and cut his throat, I felt like a total traitor. Even a wild animal or bird I do not have a personal relationship with—when I shoot one my exultation at having solved a suite of difficult problems and thereby gained a quantity of edible flesh is tempered by the image of a vital creature suddenly converted to an inert mass of meat.

Members of our species manage turmoil with rituals, and the rituals many cultures observe in connection with slaughter suggest my kind of turmoil is pervasive. Some American Indians pray for forgiveness to the spirits of the animals they have killed. Hmong immigrants who share some of the hunting areas where I go cover the eyes of deer they are carrying to their vehicle, out of respect for the animal’s spirit. Observant Jews and Muslims eat meat only from animals that were ritually slaughtered. Even secular societies may require rituals. After I shoot a deer or turkey or goose, I must report to the Department of Natural Resources (a kind of secular priesthood) that I performed the slaughter by a prescribed method in the prescribed hunting zone. Meat from domestic animals must be inspected and certified under the secular authority of the U. S. Department of Agriculture.

Humans perform such acts whenever something both awful and awesome takes place. Slaughter is awful because we pity the animal and because its death reminds us we too will die. It is awesome because it delivers satisfying, life-sustaining food. We feel a need to expiate our guilt, celebrate our triumph, and dissipate our mortal gloom. Ever since our species came into being, most of us have felt a need to turn at such times to gods of one sort or another, who we think must be scrutinizing what we do. We design our rituals with those gods in mind. 

Members of cultures that believe all animals have a spirit may condone slaughter by claiming the victims were complicit. Friends who attended a Sun Dance in South Dakota reported that several young men set out on the reservation to acquire a buffalo for the feast associated with the ceremony. They found a lone bull and shot him. As animals often do when shot through the heart/lungs, this one dashed away. The men said it ran toward the road and conveniently died where they could pull up to it and load the meat in the back of their truck. They were convinced that the bull’s spirit had donated his body to the ceremony.

In cultures that worship a creator who is separate from creation, people may excuse killing other creatures by saying their god demands the slaughter. Cain, for example, couldn’t get by with trying to foist off vegetables as a sacrifice. Only meat would do—meat from the finest unblemished specimens. Someone once expressed the opinion that priests wrote Genesis that way because they bore the solemn duty to eat the sacrifice on behalf of YHWH, and they would rather be obliged to eat lamb chops or T-bone steaks than arugula or Brussels sprouts. Still, it seems unlikely that priests could persuade herdsmen to donate their most prized animals unless the herdsmen felt burdened with turmoil and found they could relieve it by placating their god with a sacrifice.

Most cultures have believed in gods who were similarly pleased by top-of-the-line sacrifices. The more prized the sacrifice, the greater joy it gave to the gods, and the more leniently they would treat the person who made it. Some cultures carried this trend beyond animal to human sacrifice. It made sense. What is even more valuable than the finest bullock? A captured slave. What is more valuable than a slave? Someone who represents the future of one’s own tribe. Incas seized on females entering prime breeding age. Aztecs upped the ante by sacrificing gods. Though these gods came in the physical form of human beings, they were identified symbolically as divine avatars. Christians also ritually sacrifice such a god/man, inflicting symbolic, not actual death. The slaughter of Jesus, the linchpin of salvation, is re-enacted yearly in passion plays. Believers then symbolically eat the sacrificial flesh and drink the sacrificial blood in the Catholic/Anglican Eucharist, the Protestant Lord’s Supper, or the Armstrongist Passover. The symbolism is a powerful way to affirm the believer’s closeness to Jesus. No relationship can be more intimate than the assimilation of one being into another.

So this part about sacrificing Jesus so that others may live makes perfect emotional sense. The Lamb of God is performing the same role as a literal lamb, except symbolically, on a spiritual level. Just as they know material meat will help keep them alive during this life, Christians believe spiritual flesh and blood will keep them alive forever.

However significant and moving the ceremony may be for others, I can’t see my way clear to turn loose of my preference for the literal over the symbolic, reason over emotion, flesh over spirit. It is impossible for me to believe sincerely that anything, not even a consecrated wafer and a sip of magic wine that represent the nutritive substance of a guy who died two thousand years ago, could keep me alive forever. And I refuse topretend to believe it could. The absurdity of other tenets associated with the Christian plan of salvation gives me confidence that my skepticism is justified.

Maybe you are different. You may be a person who glories in convoluted logic. You may feel it opens up mystical possibilities, which you find deeply satisfying in a way you can’t quite explain. If so you should carry on, for the sake of the emotional depth. You are under no obligation to follow the mundane example of secular folk like me.

Can Faith Be Proven?

Awhile back Apostle Pack gave it his best shot at proving God's existence with his bombastic and self assured outdated, badly restated, greatly glitterated , memorized but not studied, copied and plagarized from creationist lit long ago negated but nicely mistated.   His presentation was obliterated by Aron Ra leaving anyone with an interest in knowing if Dave knows what he is taking about, which he doesn't.

I have never seen a creationist argument out of a need to prove religious truths scientifically and with the scientific method, as they twist and manipulate it or don't even understand it, succeed.  The conclusion is already believed and the "facts" are used to prove what they already know and can't not know to be true because it is religion, which cannot be proven to begin with but dare not be denied.

 Religion is a function of faith not facts and as time goes on and on, the facts tend to obliterate that which used to be understood by faith.  Science well done has not once reverted back to faith.  Faith issues have often had to yield to scientific inquiry done well with good conclusions about the truth of a matter settling the matter with more details yet and always to follow over time. Is faith really just believing what deep inside you know or suspect probably isn't actually so?

"Ignor-ance is not only what you don't know, it's what you won't know"

Growing up Presbyterian,  no one said and not once did I ever hear a sermon on "prove me now herewith and see if..." or "Prove all things and hold fast to that which is good." They really had no big issues that needed that kind of attention. Is that really possible with issues of faith?  If I had, I would have wondered just how do you do that anyway.  Oh I know that archaeologists have tried to prove this or that event in the Bible but haven't done all that well and often these days, the opposite has been shown to be more the case. Cosmologist has show us just how insignificant egocentric humans are and those who do the hard work and study of human origins have laid the Adam and Eve myth to rest long long ago for those not threatened by the facts. 

Everything religious is taken on faith is it not?   "He that comes to God MUST BELIEVE THAT HE IS...."   Faith, as expressed in scripture leaves facts out of the mix.  Is that not the formula we find in Hebrews 11?

"Now faith is the substance of what we hope for . The evidence of things not seen."

Is that not the same as saying ...

"Now faith is the substance of what we hope is true. The evidence of things for which we have no evidence"?

In WCG I was assured I could "prove" God's laws of tithing by doing it and seeing if the windows of heaven did not open up.  Ummm......and ummmm.

There is not one conversation in the OT that I can prove in any real sense ever was actually spoken n by the person or even god that is said to have spoken it. There is not one person in the OT I can actually proved ever really existed.  I suspect the Priests of that God got together and said,  "Let's say this" or "Let's command that."   Well trained  archaeologists with everything to lose say no to Moses, Abraham, Solomon and possibly even David and that "we exaggerate and the Old Testament, as you call it, is a small cultic people giving themselves a large pedigree while in captivity."

(Israel  Finkelstein  Author of The Bible Unearthed, to me personally  sitting at a picnic table at Tel Megiddo where he is the lead archaeologist)

Who knew what God said at creation?  Who wrote down or knew the exact conversation Abraham had with Isaac alone before almost sacrificing him?  Who knew the words of Jesus, alone in the Garden with sleeping disciples or what Pilate's wife told him in private?  Who wrote down or knew the exact words of the long winded speeches of Stephen or of Jesus at the last Passover of which the other Gospels knew nothing?  Are these not what some author imagined they would say so he said they said it for effect?  It was a common writing style of the day. 

I can't prove that God actually said what I have been told all my life "He" said. And while it's right there in the Bible, surely we can't think that settles it really?  Maybe most do.  I can't. 

Does not "Prove me now herewith" and "Prove all things" really mean if you try really hard enough, you can reach the same conclusions and beliefs we already have come to for you in religion?  Is not this cart before the horse and formula for "Well, it sure didn't work for us" and being the reason so many lose their faith, like that's a bad thing.

Did not Paul say "Let us all speak the same thing," not the same right thing but "that there be no division in the body."  Is that the way to prove what is real?  

 It is God's privilege to conceal things and the king's privilege to discover them.

Proverbs 25:2

Aside from it being not just the privilege of the King but of everyone, what if the conclusions drawn thousands of years later are not what were expected of the King thousands of years ago?

Can you prove faith or any religious thought or belief?

 That's not the nature of Faith or Religion is it?

Just asking....

(And I'm not "trying to destroy your faith" and try really hard not dismiss Aron's  Epilogue to Dave's arrogant attempt to prove what he so badly didn't by noticing he has long hair.  There is not a COG minister or writer who could stand up to his grasp of "the facts")

I personally  believe, based on fact and hope perhaps, that humans are hard wired to be spiritual in their thinking. We have a sense of wonder and find ways to respect all we see around us and can't explain or couldn't at one time.  I still find awe and wonder in weather but unlike Bob Thiel, do not find it caused by the gods or their way of "trying to get our attention."  I find it to be high and low pressure facts. 

 To me, religion is what others, like a Dave Pack, Rod Meridith, Gerald Flurry  and all the other one man truth dispensers hope I'll believe of them. It is what others pour into your head. What to believe, where to be, how much to give, what thoughts to think. 

 Spirituality is an inside job and organizations hate those who have spiritual perspectives.  The spiritual are like cats who can neither be organized or herded into their seats.  Dogs, who pray, pay, obey and stay populate organizations. They fetch, sit, roll over and beg for more.  

Never thinking or ever really being able to come to proper conclusion about the absurdities their trainers like Dave Pack dish out because religious ideas can't really be proven and must be taken on some kind of faith until they no longer can be and the damage is done...