Post-WCG Life and Theology ARCHIVES

Pasedena Guy10 of WCG Alumni briefly explains:

Many of our ministers and leading brethren have sensed a spiritual "malaise" coming over quite a number of our brethren. Since nothing shocking seems to be happening on the surface—though much is happening just underneath the surface in world affairs!—some are letting down spiritually! Fervent prayer and real Bible study are lacking. And no doubt partly because of this, some brethren are losing their spiritual focus and are beginning to feel that God is "far off," that nothing much is happening in world affairs and that it is not really important that we are all truly committed to being part of the Work which Christ is using us to do.They don't realize that we are being used in a unique manner to truly "warn" our peoples of the Great Tribulation and also to genuinely "feed" God's people with the "whole counsel of God" (Acts 20:27). Many "little groups"—here and there—have part of the Truth and are doing a "little" part of the Work. But where is Christ primarily working and where are His eyes focused today on the Church. He is using to prepare for the coming Kingdom of God? Most of you understand. But some of our people are confused and weak, and some are also discouraged that several of our brethren are becoming seriously ill with various forms of cancer, heart disease, etc.So our Headquarters team unanimously agreed that we should call a Church-wide fast for the Sabbath of August the 4th!

PasedenaGuy 10 brilliantly responds:

Ya know, J, last summer I was listening to the Michael Medved program. On this particular occasion, he was observing how every couple of decades, any one of several influential professors on some of the larger ivy league campuses will attempt to rehabilitate the concept of communism. And, the first thing this person will state is that communism really is not a bad way of life if we could only get the right people running it. They'll
blame tyrannical dictators for the failure of the philosophy itself.

Now, Medved wondered, how many times do we have to try communism and have it fail before we realize that the very philosophy corrupts leaders and makes them into the oppressive types of tyrants that are universally associated with communism?

That for me was a huge lightbulb moment! I knew immediately that this had a direct parallel to the typical Armstrongite doctrines, and the ACOGs! How many times do we have to experiment with the so-called 18 restored truths before we realize that that very system will always produce oppressive leaders, and very toxic cultic behavior????? It's a cause and effect relationship, and though Armstrongites consider themselves to be Christians, the ACOG system always produces very unChristian behavior! I suppose you could privately practice Armstrongism in your home, and not do anyone any harm, but the minute you turn it into an organized group, voila! Hello cultism!

Far be it from me to try to dictate peoples' choices in their religious practices, but I personally feel that anyone who goes from ACOG to ACOG, attempting to find the "good" one is just kidding themselves.

Glenn:

I think you suffer somewhat from coming into the COG world at a late date. If I recall from another post, you had some contact with WCG in the '80's, then faded away, then got serious in the mid '90's right about the time things started falling apart.
The problem with the ACOG's is that they've pretty much always done what you describe, only in the past it was easier to hide and there was no other place to run. Gerald Waterhouse would proclaim in sermons that Harmstrong had the right to take the members tithes and set fire to it in the middle of the Sydney Harbor bridge. GTA said that he was too important to the work, ergo, God overlooks his marital infidelities. Tkach Sr. writes himself a check out of third tithe in order to not pass up a rare investment opportunity. Jet fuel for the airplane gets paid out of the widow and distressed fund (third tithe).
Every year at the FOT the ministry received a subsidy to attend (since they didn't have to tithe, being "Levites"), driving their corporate cars, staying in the finest hotels - and all this after haranguing the members about not spending their second tithe properly. Mis-spending would include things that lasted beyond the term of the FOT, such as clothing, tires, etc. No matter that between taxes and tithes most WCG members were living off of less than half their gross income.
It should be no surprise that the self proclaimed heirs of Harmstrong should wish to continue in their ways of privilege, but unfortunately for them everyone received a dose of NC theology and the concepts it brings, whether they ended up believing it or not. Besides, if one group gets to be too annoying, you can leave and attend somewhere else. The lake of fire is not longer the only option.
The other systemic problem the ACOG's have is an over infatuation with the law and with ruling. The law was emphasized, and grace was not. Fresh college grads were sent out to tell their local members how to live: out with white sugar, out with bleached flour, don't buy red cars. Of course, they don't say those things anymore, but no one has given up the authority to do just that if they please.
But law and ruling also resulted in a bent understanding of our relationship with God. In a time when Jesus said that the Comforter would lead us into all truth, the ACOG's place their ministry between us and Christ. In a time of grace, they preached law and wages of sin. Are you truly picsed off at God? Perhaps he never really said that he was to be your butler.
That's one thing I had to wrestle with. I was a good cult boy, followed the law as best I could, certainly better than the heathen around me because I tithed, I kept the sabbath and Holy Days, and prayed diligently for the work and Harmstrong. Why did not God bless me like that man in Psalms 1? In other words, howcome my butler didn't do what he was supposed to do?
The trouble was my thinking was still colored by an overbearance of law, not grace. Paul tells us we are saved by grace - are we then so inconsistent to think that God rewards us according to law?
Just before his crucifixtion, Jesus called his disciples his friends, and we are his friends if we follow his command to love one another. Consider the blessings in your own life - does your wife love you because you so perfectly keep the law? Certainly your care and love for your children has no basis in law keeping, but is a grace you extend to them. Certainly you have rules of how everyone is to behave in your home, but do you love each other less when they are broken from time to time? I think not.
I didn't mean to preach, so I'll stop with that and just recommend to you any of Philip Yancey's books. I think I have about half a dozen of them or so now, and Where is God when it hurts may be one that you'd find helpful now. If I remember correctly, he contrasts two people with severe injuries: one party stayed bedridden and prayed diligently every day for healing, being very confident that one day tha healing would come. Another party learned to live with injury, getting about in a wheelchair and leading a productive life. I can't make judgements here about who had the greater faith - but one party sought only one answer, while the other looked for other answers to how life is to be lived.
When I left WCG, I felt that my church had already left me. One or two people may have called from the local group, but most left off contact when I stopped attending. I don't fault them, as they were only doing what had been taught for years, and apparently still lives on today. When I tried talking about these things with friends that stayed in WCG I got a response that it was "an emotional subject", as if everyone had been given some talking points. JLF was a place where we could all freely talk, even if it did get raucous in the early days.
If you can bear a suggestion, I recommended taking another look at what God is really like. After all, friends are not your butler.

KMS

Personal perspective on the state of the COG's I originally started writing this message as a private e-mail, but as I got into it I decided it would be appropriate to instead post it publicly. Basically it's a broad "state of the COG's" overview from my perspective. Up front I want to make it clear that I'm not "picking on" the COG's. I'm well aware that many of the problems I relate here are not unique to the COG's and can in fact be found in religions and political systems around the world and that such things have been happening for thousands of years - as Solomon noted, there's nothing new under the sun. I single out the COG's here only because that is my background, not because I believe they have a monopoly on such problems.As I indicated in previous messages on JLF, my current spiritual state is pretty much nil. I still believe more or less the same things I have for years but I'm very much disillusioned with religion in general and the COG's in particular - not so much for their core teachings, but for their way of doing things. The WCG and its spin off's - or ACOG's (Armstrong COG's) as some prefer to call them - always seem to find a way to do the wrong thing no matter how many opportunities they have to get it right. As many have told me over the years, an apple doesn't fall far from the tree. The practices and policies of Herbert Armstrong continue to influence everything these Churches do.On the left you have the current WCG. It may have thrown out much of Armstrong's doctrine, but it definitely retains his abusive "government" and cultic style of "leadership". On the right you have the HWA purists like Gerald Flurry's PCG and David Pack's RCG who have finely honed that abusive government into little gulags. These are instruments of finely crafted deception, expertly tuned to attract anyone who has ever been caught up in the personality cult surrounding Herbert Armstrong.In between these extremes you have groups like UCG and LCG who are schizophrenically trying to both embrace and distance themselves from HWA. And sprinkled throughout are all the "splinters" and "slivers" (as David Pack calls them - as if he and his group stood apart from and above all the rest). These range in size from a small handful meeting in a living room to a few hundred meeting in tiny groups around the world.To one degree or another all of them compete for a rapidly shrinking pool of aging tithe payers - generally current or former WCG members. A few of them have outreach programs to try to gain new converts, but such efforts are only marginally effective. Truly "new" members (people who never heard of Herbert Armstrong) are few and far between.As competitors many of them routinely "betray and hate one another" - like so many predators fighting over a carcass. And to the degree they practice HWA's "government" they also betray and routinely demonstrate hate towards their own members like a predator eating its own children. Thus there is a steady stream of dazed, confused and disillusioned members either moving from one "fellowship" to another or dropping out of the COG's altogether.It's not all bad. There are some groups which appear to be more or less benign and have not become addicted to power and lording it over others. And all of these groups (even the most extreme) have members, deacons, elders, ministers, etc who love God and are genuinely trying to serve and give and do what is right.But in many cases these people are fighting a losing battle against an irresistible tide. There is tremendous pressure on them to compromise and betray their own principles. They are told to "be a team player" and "get with the program" and to stop being "self willed". It's all too easy for even the most honest and upright servants to cave into such pressures, soil their garments, and begin to beat their fellow servants and drink with the drunkards.Most ironically, such people are often "disfellowshipped" or "marked" for doing *PRECISELY* what their Church teaches and claims to practice. As if by magic, "truth" apparently loses its validity when applied to a "minister" or to a favored lap dog or upper bracket tithe payer. Iniquity abounds, and the love of many is fiercely and mercilessly driven to become cold.Am I being overly harsh? I don't think so. I say all these things based not only on my own experiences but on the experiences of *MANY* others as well. Through e-mails, phone calls, internet forums etc, the stories are all a little different, and yet nauseatingly familiar. Early on I tended to ignore such accounts, writing them off as "a root of bitterness"... until I experienced first hand things I had been warned would probably occur. The Bible says in the mouth of 2 or 3 witnesses a matter is established. In the mouths of a great many such witnesses it is beyond any shadow of any doubt.I know and count as friends many individuals in these groups - people who have proven themselves over time to be truly "of God". But as a whole, I cannot believe most of these Churches are truly "of God" as their names all claim them to be. Taken as a whole, if these groups truly have the love of God shed abroad in their hearts then I'm not sure I want to know such a God. Jesus said his disciples would be known by the love they have towards one another. What can then be said about a bunch of competing, backstabbing, spiteful little groups trying to destroy one another and all the while claiming an exclusive franchise on God? What an ungodly and unholy mess! No wonder people are so confused.