Part 3
We were married in my husband’s third tithe year. Oh yes, ten percent is not near enough. The third tithe was squandered on minks for ministers wives, fine wine, chefs from France, anything that could be conjured up to satisfy their raging lusts. Yes, we read about their deeds in ministerial letters smuggled out of their headquarters by an unknown person. For my husband and I starting out a life together, a new marriage, finding housing, job, car, giving 30 percent of one’s meager income to the pyramid scheme LEAVES NOTHING. We didn’t even get spiritual encouragement for our monetary sacrifice.
A young lady I knew told me that as 1972 approached, she actually accosted a stranger and asked the male to engage in (well you know) due to wanting the experience prior to the end of the world, he quickly complied. Too late, the girl was not happy with her quickly lost virginity excursion. From what I could tell from their embarrassing sex classes they were essentially clueless about the subject anyway. They read from an antiquated manual written by the Apostle. The Apostle was NO authority on anything actually, much less sex. No wonder so many marriages broke up with people trying to follow his ridiculous manual.
The selection of human beings in the marriage pool at Ambassador College or local churches for that matter, was small with no outside connections allowed. Selective reproduction, for what? I gazed into the “marriage valley” “the valley of dry bones” on the campus at Big Sandy. Texas. I stood on a hill and looked down into that valley, that sight filled me with grief, like a nervous dread you have when a loved one is ill. I saw a parade of young males and females strolling through an ill constructed arbor taking vows. I decided I would not be one of them, not that I would have a choice, AFTER ALL I WAS ON THE REJECT LIST. If love came to me it would have to be real love, not a circumstantial faked fraud.
After returning to my home area I had a reoccurring nightmare about individuals finding me and forcing me back to Ambassador College. The details of that nightmare are distressing. At long last and a long time in coming, after about three years, I recycled the nightmare for the last time. To those who might remember me, I did smile a lot (to keep from crying.) Real or imagined, I thought I was being punished. I did not like everyone at AC and everyone did not like me, ministers included. For the most part I was the invisible girl for all my life, home, school, now college. Those who abuse their fellow human beings should not go unpunished. Humans have the privilege to bind on earth what will be bound in heaven. If you are unable to determine right from wrong and enforce stiff penalties for crime here on earth, I have to wonder why are you here.
My real guardian, has been a spiritual one a Guardian Angel, who has been with me all along. My Angel kept me SAFE through an unholy walk amongst some of the most vile humans on the planet earth. Don’t bother to tell a family member or who you think might be your friends about your plight young ones, they will turn their backs on you, in my case they did. A stranger is probably of more help. At Ambassador College I was told I was different by those in charge, I did not dress like or look like other girls. This has a familiar ring to it. I could scarcely believe it, wow, what great luck for me to be on God’s special chosen campus, where the motto was: Recapturing True Values.
Amidst, all the criticism, what was I to do, splash my face with a shot of acid, burn the two pathetic outfits I owned, what about the royal blue satin dress, I treasured? What is to become of it? I gave all of my worldly treasures to other students. I mean, honestly what need did I have of them. The pipe dream was ending. Someone said “the world’s a stage and each must play a part.” I just did not know my lines. I simply did not know what was expected of me. What is this play about, what is my role, I have misplaced my lines, please someone help me.
Lost, frustrated, growing angry, yet at the same time, there was something in wind or in my DNA that was telling me to get out while I still could. Something wicked this way comes. If I decided to go that direction, hitch a ride from a stranger away from this confinement, my father would totally reject me, along with everyone I was even remotely acquainted with. Not all a bad thing. Oh yes, all connections to other humanity was limited to the World Wide Church of God. I figured I could manage somewhere, maybe Fort Worth. I knew how to work, I had already worked three years in a very responsible position. I would take a chance, hitch a ride with a stranger to Fort Worth, Texas. The pressure was on, what to do? There was no home where I had come from, not now.
My mother walked out thanks to this church, my father sold out, quit his management job at Ford Motor Company and went to work at the mother campus of this cult in Pasadena, CA. If I hitch out of here, he is not going to let me stay at his apartment that is for sure. My mother ended up being murdered at age 52, her life after the divorce from my father was even more of a living hell than the one created as my father entered into this cult of darkness, imitating religion. Disruption and grief was all that followed in the wake of the howling, roaring aftermath of this church.
Several women from the classes ahead of me insulted me. I mean honestly, you have to remember the motto of “the chosen Ambassadors” was… Recapture True Values. Insults included, my hair,(God help us, no beauticians around) my one skirt, my shoes, or several just made up stuff, take it to the limit, go for it, run and tell the dean something that would get me called in, even it was a lie, do it and they did. It could be something as small minded as … you sat your books down in the wrong place, you must be guilty of the “bad attitude” syndrome. That could land you in a concrete room, 115 degrees in the hot Texas sun sorting rotten potatoes for hours. GET IT? SORT THE GOOD POTATOES FROM THE BAD POTATOES? One potato, two potato, three potato, four. How would I know that? Experience, been there, done that. I bet I was THE ONLY ONE TO GO THERE.
In l965 or 1966 I was in the bath house in booth city, the row of finely constructed tin huts. Two of God’s special women entered, they did not know I was in there. These young girls who were so much favored by faculty began to beret me. It was shocking to hear. I tried to move my lips to say to them, please stop, I am here, I can hear you, I trusted you, why are you doing this to me. The conversation became so hurtful and hate filled , that I croaked out those words… please stop, I am in here. Silence from the two. No more voices. They left, they ran. With my head bowed I exited from the building hurt yes, but very angry and now so distrustful I looked around me to see from whence the next attack would come.
Attacks kept coming alright, just not on that day. I began to wonder if the place was wired for sound. One girl was reported to the faculty for praying too loud in a prayer booth. What self-righteous young woman would turn her in for that? Cults breed tattle tales and gossipers. I would have to protect myself, I had always had to protect myself, that was the only resolution to it, was to get out of here before I ended up being shipped off in a box. No home to ship my body to though, no family would claim my corpse. Bad, bad, girl, she’s getting what she deserves.
The block house, ah yes. So much for the ROYAL BLUE SATIN DRESS that I packed so lovingly for my delayed prom event. I should have found army fatigues for my rendezvous with fate. The block house was maggot and spider infested, also rife with scorpions that crawled in there out of the sun. I killed one scorpion with my shoe. Hey it was him or me. Survival of the fittest. I was more fit for that battle. I guess I was supposed to screech in terror and repent of my tempting (who or what.) A convenient scorpion sting would have finally put an end to me. They would have found my poisoned body slumped over the pile of rotten potatoes. Good riddance to bad rubbish.
The only help you would get would be a prayer cloth, that’s it. Well, they did have a non-practicing doctor of sorts on the campus. A senior man blind-sided me one day in a volley ball game, he hit me so hard, I fell on the concrete with one foot under me as all my weight came down on my twisted foot, the foot instantly turned solid black, it was now sideways and I could not turn it. The foot swelled twice its size. This senior walked off, he would not even help me struggle to my feet. Two other upper classmen stood right there and none of them would help me up and back to my room. They all simply walked off without a word. It took over an hour to hobble, crawl, pull myself to my room. No one helped me, no not one. Plenty saw my plight as I struggled in pain along the sidewalks my blackened foot twisted sideways, but no one offered to help me. Zip, zilch, zero. They were too busy putting in their time with fleshly matters.
This story infuriates me and leaves me extremely angry.
There are many lessons to be learned from this, but the takeaway for me is the cruelty of those corrupted by Ambassador College and Herbert Armstrong. Ambassador College and the Worldwide Church of God were all about power and those who ‘succeeded’ within the dysfunctional environment lost their empathy, and, in the process, became very able in their torture of others.
It’s thoroughly disgusting.
After this long a time, many of those committing this virtual rape are probably dead — and good riddance to them: The world is a better place without them.
I’m guessing, but the preponderance of those still alive probably went off to David Pack. It’s the place where they would feel most comfortable, although they have quite a pick to continue to ply their tortures: All they need is a position of perceived power and authority — they will be off and running to make more people miserable. It’s unfeeling hubris.
By this time, if we couldn’t have justice, I’d settle for revenge.
[Another Armstrong inside joke: Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, I will repay — so the church won’t give justice, just wait for God to give it to you.]
I used to feel that in WCG/AC, it was thought that people didn’t matter, only the rules mattered. However, it wasn’t even that! What really mattered was authority, and the ways in which it was exercised were always overbearing, and without empathy. Members should have realized that when top ministers gave sermons at the Feast in which parents were told to harden their hearts and pay no attention to the anguished cries of their children as they received spankings, that this would also come into play as the ministry corrected the adults in their congregations. Then when you take it to the ultimate conclusion, since these people had us convinced that they were God’s agents, acting on His behalf, what did this type of authority seemingly tell all of us about God?
Most of the people who read our memoirs and autobiographical stories would never believe them. They seem far too extreme, far removed from the civilized era in which we believe we live. Yes, if someone from a crime and drug-ridden neighborhood wrote their stories, perhaps the experiences would seem equally hopeless and cruel. But those stories would be written from a place that humanitarians, politicians, social scientists, and educators are actively attempting to change and restructure. Chris Rock’s stories about growing up in Bedford-Stuyvesant are nowhere near as insane or depraved as our own stories. Richard Pryor probably had a better childhood growing up in his grandmother’s whore house than we did in our WCG homes, at SEP, and at Ambassador College! Our stories have mostly come from what is made to appear as mainstream, fomented by people claiming to be acting for God.
BB
Excellent post Bob.
‘What really mattered was authority, and the ways in which it was exercised were always overbearing, and without empathy.’
This is taught in authoritarian societies. The wcg and the splits were and are of the same ilk of third world nation mentality. On another note America is turning to this same mentality. This is what dying nations always do. It buys a few more years but I digress. A story for another day.
When people have an opportunity to escape a gulag like armstrongism, it may take more than a unlocked gate to tempt them. It usually takes a severe personal tragedy before they hop the fence and run.
The story does piss me off also. That damned college was a ‘Skull and Bones’ elite club for these loser scumbags! Worthless pieces of shit. No wonder I hated the Young Ambassadors, they were the elite snobs.