The Sourpuss Church of God

 

I was reading yesterday about the recent death of John Rittenbaugh, founder of the Church of the Great God splinter group. Browsing through their website I noticed the following article,  Is God Playful? by Mike Fuhrer. To many in Armstrongism, particularly those with a literalist belief in the Bible and God, finding humor in Scripture is anathema to God's majesty and power. How dare anyone find something funny in the Bible! Just look at Song of Soloman, it's a gigglefest of sexual innuendo from start to finish, but I digress.

After spending over 30 years in Pasadena, far too many there were such dour sourpusses. Nothing ever made them happy and they seemed to make every effort to make all those around them miserable too! Thankfully there were lots of happy people to counteract those grumpy people who later left to start many of the splinter groups we have torturing people today.

Fuhrer writes:

At a previous church of God fellowship, while standing around after services, eating cookies, and drinking coffee, I told a joke. One man listening to my joke later cautioned me that we should not tell jokes "because they are not the truth." I have pondered his statement for quite some time now. 

 

Does everything we say or do have to be "truthful"? By that, I mean, is fiction in any form—even in the service of good—forbidden to us? Certainly, we should not break the ninth commandment (Exodus 20:16; Deuteronomy 5:20), which covers intentionally speaking falsehoods to deceive as well as committing perjury. Nor should we step over the line into harmful practical jokes (Proverbs 26:18-19). But are there times when something fictional, made-up, lighthearted, or playful could be okay for a Christian to say or do?

It was always a trip to watch ministers in Pasadena get infuriated by students joking around and being playful. How dare they! They were at God's West Point and needed to act like it!

Fuhrer continues:

We cannot go too far astray if we allow Jesus Christ to be our Example in this area of life as in all others. Does Jesus have a sense of humor? The clues all point to the answer that He does! The Bible tells us He is the Creator (John 1:3; Colossians 1:16; Hebrews 1:2), and as such, He created humans and their laughter too. Eight billion people, each with a unique sense of humor, tend to support the idea that their Creator has a sense of humor too. 

 

The name of one of the patriarchs, Isaac, means "laughter." And his mother, Sarah, who was in her nineties when God told her she would have a child, laughed (Genesis 18:12). Perhaps God exercised His sense of humor, a grin on His face, when He named her son "Laughter."

Don't forget the talking jackass! No, I'm not talking about Dave Pack, but Balaam's ass.

Our Savior was not above having a little fun with the disciples, either. In John 21, the disciples, having been skunked after fishing all night long, saw Jesus standing on the shore. He casually asked them the question every fisherman has been asked: "Catch anything?" Are we to believe that He did not know? Of course, He knew! He is the One who set up the situation!

Another thing that infuriated the dour ministers and members was people who told stories that were totally fictional. They claimed this was lying. Yet, the Bible is filled with hundreds of parables that were made up of stories. Totally fictional and yet told a truth.

How dreadful our lives would be without at least a little playfulness and laughter! If we cannot tell jokes because they are not strictly "the truth," we should neither read novels nor watch movies because they are fiction—not the truth. By the way, we should take scissors to our gospel accounts because they are chock full of Christ's parables, made-up stories by which He taught His disciples vital spiritual lessons they—and we—needed to know. 

 

We should also be wary of history books because, as it is said, history is written by the victors. They alter the facts to depict the winners—themselves—in a heroic light and portray the defeated as villains. Beware of the daily news, too, because it may well be fake news leading us down a dangerous path. For good measure, we might want to quit reading opinion pieces because they are just that—opinions from the corrupt minds of people saturated with the knowledge of good and evil. 

 

In the end, on the question of whether we should tell jokes, William Shakespeare might have said, it is much ado about nothing! Like the parables, fictional stories—even jokes—can have positive qualities that a wise person can use to convey a piece of wisdom, offer a refreshing perspective, or simply lighten the mood to help others relax. A well-written book of fiction or a movie can impart valuable life lessons or trigger helpful emotions that lead us to think deeply about an issue or situation.

He ends with this:

Yes, God can be playful, and He no doubt enjoys a good laugh from time to time (see Psalm 2:4). Studies have shown that laughing reduces stress, a finding the Bible supports (Proverbs 17:22). But our higher priority is to please God by being a good and faithful servant and one day entering the joy of our Lord (Matthew 25:21, 23)!

UCG and the Tithe of the Tithe Con Game

 

For decades the church looked for ways to get more money from the membership and the tithe of the tithe was one of those con games. The mother church, the Worldwide Church of God was bringing in sometimes a million dollars a day in tithes and offerings from members who struggled to make ends meet. That money went to pay for lavish homes, gold, silver, fine art, concert series, and building three campuses. One would think that the church should carry on with that process and pay for Feast site locations through those tithes or with offerings taken up on the two holy days of the Feast. Not content with raking in that money, they wanted more and the tithe of the second tithe was instituted as the 4th tithe church members had to pay.

UCG found a subtle way of taking the word tithe out of the equation in order to make people think they were giving an offering instead. Today in 2023 some are looking to bring back the tithe of the tithe. and the Council now is looking into it again.

The next time COG leaders try and guilt you into paying a tithe on your second tithe take that money and instead take your family out to dinner inviting some widows/elderly, singles, and those you know that are struggling financially or better yet, give THEM the money. The church does not need it and God certainly does not!

Chairman Martin then turned the floor over to Brain Shaw to lead a discussion on the possibility of a policy statement concerning the subject of the Tithe of the Tithe.

Mr. Shaw began by explaining why he wanted to have this discussion. He mentioned that he has been approached by members who have asked if the Church still requires the members to give a tithe of the second tithe in order to pay for facilities at the Feast of Tabernacles. He commented that we used to have a statement on it in the Feast brochure, however, it seems that the policy has been inconsistent. Is it optional? Is it not optional?

Mr. Shaw said that it’s clear that it’s not a biblical command, but a policy that was put into place years ago in order to help pay for festival cost. Mr. Shaw added that, as a pastor, he would like to see us have a policy or clarify our stance on this matter. He then opened the floor for discussion.

During the discussion it was mentioned that the term “Tithe of the Tithe” is not used anymore and has been replaced with the term, “Festival Fund.” Chris Rowland reminded the Council that a resolution concerning the Tithe of the Tithe was passed by the Council on February 12, 1997.

Chairman Martin made a motion for consent without resolution to remand this to the Education Committee for the purpose of examination of the 1997 Resolution and report back to the Council in the August meetings with their suggestion. Eleven Council members supported the motion, one abstained.

UCG Has Discussion On The Most Astounding Gospel Witness Ever For A Church of God!

 

One would think in 2023 with all the homelessness, broken families, food disparity, and other societal issues that face the neighbors of the United Church of God and its members, that a UCG would step up to the plate and make a public proclamation that as a church they would help bring relief and kindness to people so in need of it. Sure they have Kubik's pet charity to make them look good, but as a church getting involved in their local communities should be a priority. What better way to witness for the gospel than that!

The Council of Elders met recently and they had a long discussion. Not about helping others and showing God's grace and mercy, but about whether or not they need an official church logo. WTH?

President Shabi began by giving a quick background of the logo history and issues. Sense (sic) the new logo was rescinded at the February 2023 meetings, the administration has worked together to assess the problem. He added that after much consideration he has concluded that UCGIA does not need a physical symbol to represent the Church. Moving forward the administration and staff have discussed ways in which artistic design can be utilized to bring unity to our different forms of media. He feels that those ways will actually be more effective than a logo. President Shabi then stated that this is where we are, and then opened the floor for further discussion, questions and suggestions.

Then, the next day they brought it up AGAIN!

Chairman Martin called the Council to order and then turned the floor over to Clint Porter to address the follow-up discussion concerning a Church logo.

Mr. Porter began by explaining how the Media and Communications Services department can bring unity across the UCGIA platform without the use of a logo. He then demonstrated how this can be accomplished through the use of text type, color schemes and wording. He presented the “NC State University” website as an example of how this can be achieved. After a quick demonstration, Mr. Porter opened the floor for comments, suggestions and concerns. After a further discussion addressing a few questions and concerns, Mr. Porter then turned the floor back over to Mr. Martin.

 

The ADD Prophet Is Back Trying To Con People Into Joining His Cult

It's another fun day in California as the Great Bwana to Africa and 100 Caucasians is back bouncing around again with his ADD narcissistic personality with arms flailing and hands flapping as he preaches to the choir on how superfantabulous his little cult is. Never in the history of the church have we had a man who claims to be an ordained preacher care so little about Jesus!

Nowhere in this multitude of topics below in this so-called sermon is there any mention of Jesus? It's all about Bob, all the time, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. No other Church of God is as miraculous and touching more people that the Great Bwana and his little band of merrymakers.

Philadelphian Gospel Proclamation Priority 

What work should the most faithful Christians be supporting in the 21st century? 

 

What was the “open door” that Jesus opened for the Philadelphians for? 

 

Did Herbert W. Armstrong say that door was for the Philadelphians to fulfill Matthew 24:14 to proclaim the gospel of the kingdom to the world as a witness? 

 

What did Luke and the Apostle Paul write about the open door? 

 

Is having literature in hundreds of languages helpful to assist in the fulfillment of Matthew 24:14, Matthew 28:19-20, Romans 11:25, and Revelation 7:9? 

 

Just what was the work according to Herbert W. Armstrong? 

 

When did he, Dr. Herman Hoeh, and others in the Church of God say the proclamation work was to end? 

 

Was that related to the Great Tribulation and a nuclear World War III? 

 

Were the Laodiceans prophesied to rise up, be the dominant Christians at the end, but with lukewarm efforts and priorities, while wanting to focus on taking care of themselves? 

 

Did the Radio Church of God also warn about that? Is the proclamation of the Philadelphian church supposed to last until about the time it is to flee to the “place of safety” in the wilderness? 

 

Are there analogies between the first and second temple and the work done under Herbert W. Armstrong and now the Continuing Church of God? 

 

What about Loma Armstrong’s two-part dream? 

 

What about proclaiming the gospel through multi-media, radio, internet, literature, and personal visits? 

 

Will Philadelphian Christians be subject to persecution when some are used by God to “instruct many” per Daniel 11:33? 

 

Did Herbert Armstrong believe a “second work” would rise to effectively finish the short work of Romans 11:28? 

 

What are some part of the “final phase of the work”? 

 

Does the Continuing Church of God have the type of fruits that Jesus pointed to? 

 

Is supporting the proclamation work showing Philadelphian brotherly love? 

 

Was “Philadelphia” to continue per Hebrews 13:1? 

 

Is necessity laid upon the true Philadelphians to proclaim the gospel of the kingdom to the world as a witness? 

 

Is this a priority of the Continuing Church of God? 

 

Dr. Thiel addresses these matters and more by citing scriptures, historical records, and more!

Can you imagine his poor followers in Africa sitting in a hot building with a metal roof that is amplifying the heat downwards as God's greatest evangelist puts on this sermon and the brethren have to sit there and listen to our bouncing Bob talk about things they could care less about? After walking miles in the heat and being wary of troublemakers along the way, you arrive at church and are subjected to this asinine preaching. They come to hear about Christ and instead hear about Holy Bob.

Quantum Physics and the Incorporeality of God: Armstrongist Anthropomorphism in a Quantum Reality

 

Creating Entangled Photons from a Helium Atom

 

Quantum Physics and the Incorporeality of God

Armstrongist Anthropomorphism in a Quantum Reality

By Scriptor

Theology must be informed by science.  Otherwise, theology will be bound to an archaic world of unrealism.  The Genesis creation account, for instance, is based on ancient Near Eastern cosmology.  A cosmology in which the sky is an arcing vault made of some kind of solid material and it is blue because there is water stored behind it and it is close enough so that birds can fly up to it and stars are little tiny lights in this firmament and one might even build a tower to reach it and God lives just on the other side of the vault.  My guess is that nobody reading this article believes this today even though it is written in the Bible.  If you never had a science course in public school at least you watched Star Trek.  The Bible content was written up during a certain period of time, by a certain people with a certain level of scientific development.  That does not limit its efficacy as a literary presentation of moral principle.  Science may change.  Moral principle does not.  This is the backdrop for this essay. 

Quantum Entanglement and the Idea of Space

Our world is a world of big stuff – rocks, trees, water.  But this world of big stuff emerges from another world of very, very tiny stuff – most of it particulate or resembling particles.  Light is composed of photons, for instance.  And this world, called the quantum world, behaves very differently than our world of large things.  This may seem irrelevant but it has very high relevancy to theology.  

Here is something that will be used in this essay that has an impact on theology but comes out of the quantum world.  It is called quantum entanglement.  Two photons can be entangled or, let us say, “connected.” These photons then may act as a pair.  An effect on one, like maybe changing its direction of spin, will immediately, in the same segment of time, cause the spin of the other to change.  They have identical, linked behavior.  The really amazing thing, something that Einstein called ‘spooky behavior at a distance’, is that it does not make any difference how far away the two photons are from each other.  One could be in your backyard and its twin could be 10 light years away and if you changed the spin of the one in your backyard, the spin on the one ten lights years away would also change identically.  Scientists don’t really know what happens here but they know it happens.  It is as if in the quantum realm the idea of space does not exist.  And in this reality of the incredibly small, Physicist believe that distance does not exist (Not all of them, of course.  You can never get agreement from all of them on most anything.)  

If you have a level of reality that is fundamental to our level of reality and distance does not exist in that fundamental reality, it has implications for whether or not God has a bodily existence in his essence.  This concern will be further developed below. 

God is Incorporeal – The Scriptures

Before we proceed with quantum mechanics, an exegesis from the New Testament concerning God’s ontological nature will give us a necessary point of departure.    Jesus is the culmination of the Law and the Prophets.   In Matthew 5:17, Jesus said “Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.”   So, Jesus can be consulted on all those places in the Law and the Prophets where it speaks about God because he is the culmination of the message.  He knows what the text means because he personally is the fulfilment of the words of that message including all the words that describe God as having eyes, hands and other body parts.  Jesus was semantics in being and action. 

And Jesus said, “God is a Spirit (John 4:24).”  God, in his essence, is Spirit.  But to us Spirit is something like attitude or mood.  How could a Being be nothing but that kind of Spirit?  So, Jesus explained it further in another place by using an analogy to something we know from our created world.  Jesus stated in John 3:8: 

“That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit…The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.”

From this we know that Spirit has the following properties:

1.     It has existence.

2.     It is not visible to humans. 

3.     It does not have form, as the wind does not have form.

4.     It is of a totally different category from flesh.

This has to be a puzzle for Old Testament literalists.  They must believe that God has a body and that Moses saw God.  Yet, the New Testament tells us that God is pneuma.  But humans also have pneuma.  Humans are viewed in the New Testament as being composed of pneuma, psuche and sarx – spirit, animating principle, and flesh.  In the verse above, when Jesus said “God is Spirit” the word recorded as Spirit is pneuma.  When, 1 Corinthians 2:11, Paul speaks of the “spirit in man” the word he uses is pneuma.  We then are beings with a pneuma where mind resides.  But doctors, people who can be trusted to be careful, scientific observers, have never seen a visible, formed spirit emerge from the human body at death as the Old Testament literalists would believe.  We have come to understand that Moses really just saw a theophany of God, a vision prepared by God for human discernment – like a metaphor in action.   Jesus, who should know, said, “No one has seen God at any time…”

The Invention of the Idea that Spirit as Substance with Form

In spite of the words of Jesus, in John 3:8 and 4:24, some who have fallen under the influence of Semi-Arianism believe that there is a way to support the idea that God has a body.  This is by defining spirit to be a substance that will hold form like matter in our realm.  There are some difficulties with this idea.  The first is, if God exists as a formable substance, who formed him? Is he not the only God?  If he formed himself, does that not say that in his original essence, he had no form?  

Some assert that any artifact that is in heaven, such as the heavenly Temple, is made of spirit.  While there may be formable substances that angels and other spirit beings use to fabricate artifacts, this is not necessarily true.  In the Book of Revelation, our only real window into the heavenly realm, John of Patmos saw objects made of gold and various precious and semi-precious stones (Rev 21:18-21).  John’s inspired understanding of these building materials indicates that they were composed of matter as we know it. 

Moreover, in the writings of those who support the idea of spirit as a formable substance, spirit is a single type of substance.  This is a requirement because if you want to bridge the idea of spirit as formable substance from the artifacts of the heavenly Temple to God’s supposed body, it must all have the same properties.  But that is an unproven and unprovable assertion.   Nowhere in scripture does it refer to heavenly artifacts as pneuma, but God is pneuma.  Some heavenly artifacts may be made out of some ever-enduring formable substance, something we might call “spirit” because we have don’t know what it is, but there is no exegesis that will show that God, who is pneuma, is made out of this same substance.  The term “spirit” is bandied about indiscriminately.    

God is Incorporeal – The Quantum Mechanics

Physicists speak of entangled particles, like the photons we discussed earlier, as having “non-locality.”  The quantum particles are not really bound by location and distance.  If God had a body he would be bound by location and distance. A bounded object in 3-space would model this idea.  If God were at point A in 3-space, he would not be a point B.  If God wanted to go to point B, he would have to cover some distance to get there.  And when he arrives he will be at point B and no longer at point A. Yet, photons function as if space and distance do not exist.  This means that God is constrained by distance but photons are not. 

This creates a dilemma.  Would God make particles with greater freedom than he himself has?  Or more to the point, could he even make particles with more freedom that he himself has?  Do you think he could make something that could do something that he himself could not do and yet be omnipotent?  The rational conclusion is that God is not constrained by distance and the physics of large material objects moving in space, a characteristic of bodily existence, does not apply to him.   So, the entire creation is present with him at once – something called omnipresence in orthodox Christianity.   

Summation – God is Transcendental

While what I have written I believe is a better explanation than believing that anthropomorphisms are literal, I understand that God cannot be known; my views for me are just a placeholder until the real understanding comes. 

A few months back, a contributor to this blog said God is comprehensible.  I had just made statements about God being transcendental.  His feeling was that if you could not understand God, what’s the point.  I think he thought that God was a kind of Superman and maybe we are all Clark Kent and one day we would take off our human suit and put on Superman clothes – Superman who was really quite human except for a few super powers.   This is the natural outcome of the idea that God has a body – and is like us.  That God is not really transcendent – just a more powerful version of us.  It makes the bumptious idea that one day we will be “God as God is God” seem like something within reach.   But God says in Isaiah 65:18, “But be ye glad and rejoice for ever in that which I create…”  If we will be equal to God, wouldn’t we be doing our own creating and rejoicing at our creations instead?  It is clear that God expects this to be the eternal condition of our relationship with him – he creates and we rejoice.  Yet, being a Creator is the principal part of what God is.  If you are going to be God as God is God and you do not create, you are missing the principal part of being God.  I am glad that God created quantum reality and scientists can barely understand it even though they can experiment with it.  It informs my personal theology that God happily transcends all that we children of God know.

Forever. 

God is Great!