Friday, February 23, 2018

LCG Still Hates This Blog...Somebody Call Whine-One-One!



This is all just so delightfully fun!  Who would have ever imagined that a little blog would have LCG in such a state of disarray! The fact that Rod Meredith had to publicly ban LCG members from reading this blog shows just what a thorn in the side it has become. It is all quite comical.

I want to make it clear to any Living Church of God member that you may post or send things to me anonymously, as many have. If you want to share your story, abuse you have experienced or seen going on in Charlotte or your local church area, please feel free to post it here.

None of us here have any beef with the membership, but do with the men who claim to be Christ's representatives here on earth who run rampant wreaking people's lives. Grace and love have been in short supply in the church for decades.  Abusive ministers from Worldwide Church of God jumped ship with their same desire to control as they went into Global and then in Living. How can any church ever expect to accomplish an end time work when they treat their own members with such disdain?  Why would any member of the public ever be interested?  Why would Jesus even be interested?



@ Anon 12:15 PM wrote:
Wyatt Ciesielka is the main troll here. He reports back to Rod McNair. Rod, Gerald and the others at hq would like to shut this blog down but so far are helpless.
A reader here with ties to LCG responded:

LCG cannot shut this blog down. All it can do is fire employees who are caught posting here. The problem is that there are already enough ex-employees who are beyond their reach, who have seen old abuses and still hear about new ones from their friends in Charlotte, that the leaks will continue even if couple of employee leakers get fired.

Wyatt and Rod can run their spies and create a climate of fear at LCG HQ, but they cannot stop former employees from getting the word out when HQ inmates reach out to their friends. Mr. Evil and Mr. Stupid cannot touch ex-employees BB, CB, DB, JB, KB, MB, SB, TB, LC, KF, VF, LK, JM, RM, BO, CO, LP, RP, BR, HR, JR, KR, GS, LS, PS, RS, SS. That's 27 sets of initials, and some of those initials are shared by two ex-employees. Add wives and LU students, and the number of potential leaks from the LCG grapevine is way beyond what Rod and Wyatt can control, even if they succeed in instilling fear into current employees.




Friday Musings...



You can't unring a bell. You can't unsee what you do see or see what you don't see.  And our pious convictions with marginal information doesn't help either.  


Recently I wandered through the topics being offered for a large ministerial conference of my former peers. While typically the first topic of concern was, as expected, "The Offering as Worship, the other topics were not all that informative on the topic of the actual Bible. When a ministry is made up of mere Bible readers, you're not going to any seminar on "A Scripture can never mean what it never meant."
There was one workshop where one might ask questions on theology to the one man provided to answer them for you, but I suspect the questions were rather light and foofy unless the group wanted to probe the depths of the nature of the Trinity or just what plan B may have been for God with Adam and Eve, mostly Eve, mucking up the works. Other than that, I am fairly sure a good hard question about the Bible where the answer might threaten the accepted answer was limits.
One certainly would not wish to become labeled as "he who asks too many hard questions." That would endanger your career. I can't tell you how many times I have asked pastors of all faiths questions that only pastors seem to think up for each other and was told  "I know...I know...but if I bring that up I could lose my job."
I would be reminded of the Wizard of ID being questioned by a commoner and being told, "well with ideas like that, you're really going to go up in this Kingdom." The next scene you see the commoner standing at the bottom step of the gallows with he hangman saying, "Up you go there buddy."
Long story, but I have managed to outgrow my church and I was the pastor. Not the one of my youth, which was Presbyterian, but the one I moved on to in my youth thinking it was more real and then gave almost three decades of my life to it. In time, nuther long story, they reinvented the wheel and insisted I return to my rather Presbyterian roots taking me full circle. I realized my love affair with organized religion and true churches was over. With messy transitions and difficult emotional experiences, I moved on. 
The tribe does not have much use for stray dogs. They either domesticate them for their convenience or they eat them.
In my personal journey through a very sincere belief that I was correct in my Biblical perspectives as a pastor, I have gone from believing in the "God breathed" inerrancy of the Book, to an eyes wide open understanding that the Bible is neither all that Holy, "the greatest Book ever written and full of errors, bad science, implausible accounts and many contradictions. I find my self marveling at the hours spent by sincere pastors straining to understand how the sins of Adam and Eve impact our lives today and place us all under the cloud of Original Sin and the need for blood atonement to make it all good again. The simple answer for me is now that the evolution of humans is good science and that the idea that any literal first humans called Adam and Eve is ludicrous. I"m almost ashamed of myself for taking so long to figure this out with the love of science I have always had but strained for decades to place it all in the context of Bible literalism, which can't really be done well.
Since, to me and as a result of my own study, there was no literal Adam and Eve (and no, the creation of humans is not a mere 6000 years ago either), there was no literal sin for which everyone forever more after has to be cleansed from by the blood of a dying God/Man. The fact that there has been a score or more dying God/men in history, all of whom were born on December 25th, were tempted to fail, rose to the occasion, were betrayed, pierced and lay in the grave for three days and three nights only to be born again is pretty darn common. While some may love to "Tell the old old story of unseen things above...", they are not aware of just how old the story is.  Solstices and Equinoxes quite the framework for much of the story. 
The higher and more critical thinkers and doers of  theology, history and archaeology, understand with no reservations the first 11 chapters of Genesis are borrowed mythologies given a Hebrew spin. It's how it's done.  Israeli archaeologist, Israel Finkelstein of The Bible Unearthed fame will plainly tell you the Pentateuch was written by Priests in the Babylonian Captivity of the 5 century BCE to give themselves a great pedigree. He'll also convincing tell you there was no Moses, Abraham or Solomon and he suspects no David.  In his field at least, there is no evidence for this and he often ends by saying, "We exaggerate."  Imagine the Church of God without these characters or the Exodus as real history?  I can't. 
But where does one fit when the tribe has no use for you and stepping outside the box is going to have it's consequences? I'm amazed, yet should not be, of the phenomenal loss of "friends" one experiences when bells ring and lights go on. It's the price one pays for being unable to stay stuck in something you learn along the way is not as one has been told. Few go with you. some talk about you and all ignore you forever more. The labeling and name calling is phenomenal.
My first title after moving on was "High Priest of Marduk"  (James Patrick Holding of Tekton. Nasty little when he corresponds)  It was down hill from there.  "Spawn of Satan", "Apostate Former Minister" and "Twice dead" among others.  The Bible has enough labels for the lost to keep thinking twice about leaving and  firmly gyrating in your seats with glee over the sermon no matter. 
The best I can come up with is that you become more of your authentic self...something organized religion is loathe to have you do in the first place. Churches and Priesthoods generally want followers, compliers and sheep. Ministers may seem to pride themselves in allowing for questions, but they are easy questions to answer because when all is said and done, one can claim that "God says it, I believe it. That does it for me" and put the ball back in the court of the reprobate questioner.
If all else fails, the one who questions can be told "there is a way that seems right to a man, but the way thereof ends in death," or "God sees not as a man sees," or "The wisdom of God is foolishness with man," and thus all his questions can be dismissed. Of course, these putdowns don't answer the original questions, but they send the message that one is not even smart enough to ask the right ones. The cure for being "one who questions" may be everything from prayer and fasting to get the attitude straightened out to "how 'bout we sit out of church a few weeks and think about our relationship to Jesus." Either way, "he who questions loses." The Church and God always win in such cases.
So after after you outgrow your church, organized religion or the literalism of one's childhood Sunday School lessons, what is the purpose of one's life? Since Churches tell us that salvation through the blood of a dying God/man is the purpose of life, but now one has no confidence in that, what's the point? While I now can stay home from church and save a whopping ten percent, I'd still like to find meaning in life beyond being a food tube that eventually dies.
My Babies
Pure Iron from the first stars,14 billion years ago, that "had the courtesy to explode and spew their guts into the universe" (Neil DeGrasse Tyson" )to the left.  Stoney meteorites from asteroid and small planet collisions from the outer mantle. 
Perhaps that's why just sitting with one of my 4.5 Billion Year Old meteorites, left over debris from the formation of the solar system, is almost a spiritual experience. I also don't have to believe it faith or marginal information.  These  make the " 6000 year plan of God" a mere .00000013 % or reality. 
One of the many meme's of organized religion is that human beings are evil, nasty and worms in God's sight. Their hearts are deceitful above all things and desperately wicked to the point of total mistrust. We are sin personified in nasty flesh and worthy of nothing but death, at best. Let's get right to the truth of the matter.
You and I are just fine. Labels are not your problem. They are the problem of the he who labels. We are who we are and it's your goal in life to get to know yourself and who YOU are. We are all unique parts of the same one thing. It's not our goal or to our advantage to believe that we are to become someone else or follow the life, perspectives or worldview of someone else. That ruse has restrained and constrained human-becomings for way too long on the planet. The "you're not good enough," meme is a set up for allowing others to control you with fear, guilt and shame to their advantage every time.
Gerald Flurry, Dave Pack, Bob Thiel, UCG, LCG and all LMNOP Churches of God are not the be all and end all of truth giving.  Opinions, views, speculations and pious conviction perhaps, but to date, mostly proven inaccurate if not incredibly wrong about themselves epitomized by the poster child of badly mistaken theology and scientific inquiry,  David C Pack. 
The goal in life is to get to know your own unique self. It's a troublesome process as there are more than enough others who feel you need to get to know THEM and be like THEM who are less defective and wormlike than yourself. Don't fall for it. Nursing homes are full of people who would give anything to have another shot at being themselves. But that goes back in another way to not being able to unring a bell.


Wednesday, February 21, 2018

Philadelphia Church of God "men" still struggling to be Real Men as their women head off to the gym "...to develop manly abs and biceps"

The official theme song for those Macho Men in PCG and LCG

Reading the latest article by Ron Fraser on the Philadelphia Church of God website is almost like he ripped it out of Rod Meredith's hands.  Why is it that various Church of God's today struggle with their men being "real" men?  Reading Fraser article makes it seem like the Church of God only had "real" men prior to the mid 1960's.

We are witness today to a great confusion which has set in with respect to the meaning of marriage and family and the definitions of traditional gender roles in society at large.
The result is that few truly know what it means to be a real man or to be a real woman as God designed and intended us to be. The fallout has drastically affected the ability of men in society to lead. To lead effectively in any institution, be it marriage, family, a corporate situation, a military role or any responsible function in society at large.
Indeed, the reality is that we are today living out the legacy of this mass confusion of God-given roles in fulfillment of the prophecy contained in Isaiah 3:2-3.
Note that God prophesies that it will be the traditional male roles that will disappear in our day.
In these end times, there is only one man who had the real possibility to restore true masculinity to the world.  No, it is not Gerald Flurry or even wimpy Bob Thiel, it was none other than the apostle and prophet, Herbert W Armstrong!   How quickly we all forget!
But we, in the Church, are called into God’s Family to recapture true values—to be educated in all things restored to the Church through a latter day, 20th century Elijah (Matthew 17:10-11), revived through a latter day prophet and apostle in this 21st century.
Fraser said the feminization of humankind began in the Garden of Eden when Eve began being a liberal.  He uses Gertrude Himmelfarb as his source for this information.  Himmelfarb is part of the neoconservative movement here in the United States.  She is also deeply involved in researching and writing about Victorian sexual mores.  These are the morals that Armstrongism is fondly attached to since Herbert Armstrong's Missing Dimension in Sex is based on Victorian sex books.
It really started in Anglo-Saxon society with what Gertrude Himmelfarb calls in her masterful treatise “The De-moralization of Society” the “new” men and “women” of the 1880s and 1890s.
As in the Garden of Eden with the first attempt at “liberalizing” woman, the move to change God-given gender roles started with a certain kind of woman which Himmelfarb describes as wanting “more by way of liberation than bicycling, smoking, or reading risquĂ© books—who sought nothing less than sexual liberation.”
Since those early women’s lib proponents of the latter 19th and early 20th century, the feminist lobby has steadily pushed and prodded its way into the traditional male realms of yesteryear, invading and in some cases even coming to dominate them.
Fraser and many in the COG's never grasped the concept that men and women are equal.  PCG longs for the days women were subservient to the lord and masters of yesteryear.

Fraser is particularly galled by women in "this age of women."
This is the age of women—whom God made, deliberately, the physically weaker sex—competing with men, and to their shame, at times beating them even in traditional male physical activities.
Yes, it must really frost the butt's of PCG ministers when there are women in their congregations who have a better grasp of scriptural meanings that the feminized men in the pulpits or that are directing stages shows about Old Testament prophets.

Fraser then reveals the reason women go to the gym.
Common sense should tell us that the normal physical structure of the male body as God designed it casts him naturally in the role of physical protector of the woman, who is naturally created without the muscle mass that is distributed over a male frame. So what does the perversity of feminism do to counter this natural phenomenon?
It encourages women to go off to the gym in an effort to develop manly abs and biceps.
Seriously, can there even be a dumber comment than this?

Oh, and those gym going "muscle women" have "muscled" themselves into corporations where they become CEO's!  Oh, the humanity!
In the corporate world, women have “muscled” their way into the boardroom and in many cases have taken over the traditional male role of ceo.
Fraser then goes on to quote Herbert again.
Mr. Armstrong told us why. He said repeatedly that when the male fails to lead, the woman will seek to take over. As already intimated, it’s as old as the account of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.
It’s high time that men recaptured their true, God-designed role—and taught their sons their true role!
Women!  Get back in the kitchen and make Rod Fraser a sandwich!


Fraser then goes on to describe the men in PCG:
To have a dad that is a waddling blob of inertia will probably engender a son in the same image. To have a dad who is fit, athletic and muscle-toned will, no doubt, produce a son in the same image—IF Dad spends the time to help his son develop such a manly frame!
Fraser is also irritated at the speed that knowledge can be obtained today thanks to computers, laptops, smartphones and other devices.  Of course, this is all exacerbated by evil colleges and universities.
Stephen Bertman in his book, Cultural Amnesia, observes of this trend, “the exhilaration of technological speed and its efficacy lead people to value speed more than ever before, diminishing in their eyes the worth of activities that take time, including the time-consuming activity of learning.”
The knowledge of what once demonstrated just what it was that set the real men apart from the boys is thus greatly diminished, for as Bertman muses, “Because computers are mostly adept at serving up the new, they will serve up the present at the expense of the past. … Computers can give us information …. What they cannot give us is a reason to value that past. … What they cannot give us is judgment or goodness.”
Manly men in PCG can only gain knowledge by attending HWA College or reading about Old Testament hero's.
One of the most manly examples in God’s Word is that of King David. Constantly, in psalm after psalm, this mighty, manly warrior-king of Israel asked God to give him judgment and goodness. Those aspects of character are really what marks out the real man and separates him from the mass of humanity as a true leader.
In his book The Missing Dimension in Sex, Mr. Armstrong states, “Humans are endowed with minds. Humans were placed on Earth for the express purpose of developing godlike character—learning to make right decisions, with prayerful guidance from God and His Word, and to exercise the self-direction to rightly act on those decisions.”
Fraser then says that the ultimate purpose for PCG men is to become "god", because apparently, Herbert said so.
In his book The Missing Dimension in Sex, Mr. Armstrong states that God’s “purpose is the reproduction of His own kind—holy, righteous and perfect character in the divine Family of the ever-living God! Humans, physically begotten and born through sex, may be spiritually begotten and divinely born of God—entering the eternally living God Family!”
There can't be any pussy men in the Kingdom!

Apparently, the liberal era of the COG in the 1970's was caused by women:
It is a fact that even in God’s Church, we too often see women dominating their men in marriage and family situations. Down through the ages the ways of society have had an insidious way of working their way into God’s Church. Witness the decade of liberalism which impacted the Church in the 1970s, something from which it never did fully recover—witness, in turn, the speed of the great falling away following Mr. Armstrong’s death (2 Thessalonians 2:3).
And where would we be without having to "inculcate" some idea?
This planet needs as many godly men as God’s Church can produce.
The Church needs them.
It is incumbent on every parent of every lad in the Church to work hard to inculcate the true essence of godly manhood in their male offspring, thus enhancing the prospect of his manifesting that missing dimension in his life when God leads him by His goodness to repentance and real conversion to His way of life on the road to fulfilling his incredible human potential! 
True men in the Philadelphia Church of God?

While not everything in the article is bad, it is typical Armstrongite self-righteous fluff.  Read it here: Become a Man, My Son!