Category: Douglas Becker

It’s been nearly 50 years now — five decades; half a century — that the Armstrongist churches of God have declared war on my family. I just hadn’t realized it until now. I’m a technologist. Stupid fool people stuff is not my thing.

It always starts out the same. I’m curious, perhaps to an unprecedented degree. Curiosity drives me as a truth seeker. As a truth seeker, I embrace new things which have promise rather immediately. After all, if it is true, it is probably a good thing to pursue, right? The truth will set you free and all that. More than that, truth is interesting. The problem is with that tiny little word, if.

It isn’t long that people associated with this new “truth” (new to me and maybe not so true) begin to notice that someone is rooting around in their root cellar where they don’t want anyone looking. Those things lurking were never supposed to be found. The lies and deceptions upon which the “truth” were built threaten to destroy their prosperous little enterprise. This works for churches, governments, business and academia equally.

Instead of welcoming correction, these people position themselves well to protect the lies upon which their social order is constructed. They aren’t just defensive, they are downright aggressively vicious and will rally themselves to galvanize against any invaders. It’s like that Disney nature video where the wasp falls into the ant nest. Soon there is nothing left of the wasp but wings and feathers.

And so it is with the Armstrongist churches of God. They seem so sociable at first, hoping for your support in the form of money and giving over your personal power for the aggrandizement of their narcissistic leadership. The lies always threaten to sink their leadership, take away what they come to think is their money and cause their rather tenuous built-on-a-house-of-cards structure of outright delusional destructive fantasies to crumble.

It isn’t enough for me to gain the proof of how anachronistic the social order is. I must do the high concept thing of projecting the logical conclusion of the outcome, if everyone does exactly what they are supposed to do in the nonsensical framework of absolute dysfunction. Let me give you a concrete example from the real world.

I work for a county which has built a rather magnificent Emergency Operations Center (EOC) for $10 Million. It is an impressive work. It looks like those centers you see on TV with all the monitors high on the wall in every direction, dozens of tables with PC workstations and telephones. Just what you need for some emergency, like an earthquake or Mount Rainier blowing its stack. Not to be outdone, they also have a $600,000 mobile EOC in a massive trailer which can be moved at any time with the attached semi. Now mind you, I’m not certain how effective the mobile EOC would be in an emergency with all the communications gear and such, because it is setting right next to the EOC building in the parking lot. If you can’t get to the EOC building, how could you get the mobile EOC? These are the sorts of questions that county officials just hate to hear. In fact, they don’t hear them: They don’t listen to criticism at all, constructive or not. They made the decisions, and the decisions are wise ones. Who are you to question THEM!?! How like the churches of God. Anyway, the location of the EOC is secret. Did I say secret? With a simple search of about 10 minutes, you can get not only the location of the EOC, but detailed floor plans and building specifications. You see, the county had to go out to bid. Part of the bid process was to find vendors to build the thing. To find the vendors for the RFP, they had to post the plans on the Internet, and, as you know, things posted on the Internet never really go away. So there you have it: In times of terrorists, the terrorists will probably have the location and layout of the EOC. Brilliant, I say!

The EOC has a computer room. You would expect that. Important stuff would be on computers to help with any emergency. Planning was a bit lacking. There has been unending battles to try to keep the air conditioning operationally adequate. During hot days in summer, they had to open the doors and use portable fans to cool the room. Later, they got portable air conditioners and vented them through the open doors. Then there was the circuitry. You have to know that the toaster and microwave oven are on the same circuit as the servers in the computer room. And, yes, people have taken down the servers with their toast and heating their lunch in the microwave. My suggestion is that they don’t use both the toaster and the microwave at the same time, or their servers will be toast. There’s nothing like great planning! Nothing like it. It doesn’t seem to exist. They can conceptually plan for an emergency, but the Devil, as they say, is in the details. And remember, a county is a complex place. And this is just one SMALL example.

Anyway, you can imagine that the Armstrongist churches of God are not at all pleased when people come along and point out that the Emperor not only doesn’t have any clothes, but he has a nasty rash that needs to be treated. We have a more contemporary version of the fable of the Emperor’s new clothes (which don’t exist). The kid points out what everyone sees, but don’t admit. “The Emperor has no clothes,” the kid says. The crowd gives the parents a nasty glare. The parents shush the kid up. “But he doesn’t!” The parents, with the “encouragement” of the Emperor’s staff find a psychiatrist to treat the poor kid for his delusions. He’s put on Ritalin. It doesn’t help him of course. The last we heard of him, the kid grew up in a mental institution, is in a straight jacket, given psychotropic drugs and is safely hidden away from ever being able to tell the truth. You might agree that this could have happened in the old Soviet Union, but folks, the United States Corporations have adopted the worst of the old Soviet Union Corporate model and implemented it badly — replete with ineffective five year plans. Government has adopted the worst of the Corporate model and implemented it badly, with twists of its own, since government doesn’t have to make a profit and will survive no matter how far in the red it goes. I’ve never heard of a government agency declaring bankruptcy, but it seems like we’re about due for a massive declaration any time now. All because people don’t want to face the truth. Better to live on lies than do the real work of dealing with the difficult challenges by using reasonable process and discipline. The quick fix of lies in a dysfunctional environment is far preferable to the long uphill hard work which is really needed to resolve the problems.

And so it is with the Armstrongist Churches of God which declare that if they find the truth, they will adopt it and correct everything that is wrong. It is a lie. They lie; they cover up the lie; they cover up the cover ups; they make everything undiscussable and then go on to do something really stupid. If you need an example, look at the UCG. They spent years getting established in the Cincinnati area. They bought property and built their buildings. They paid it off. Then why, in heaven’s name, did they decide to move to Texas a mile or so from a Superfund Toxic Waste site? And they weren’t about to, in typical Armstrongist fashion, back down until the whole thing became excruciatingly and unavoidably public. It is only excessive force that will at all influence these suspicious people from doing all the wrong things for all the wrong reasons. The innocent are destroyed as a casual collateral damage because in their preposterous egoism, no one else counts but them, because they are in charge, and, by cracky, you better believe that Almighty God put them in charge and if you oppose them in any way, you will be dealt with by the rather Retentive Creator of all the universe who is offended by the slightest hint of rebellion, no matter how well intentioned it is to keep people from utter destruction — or more like, rather inconvenient consequences. When you have money and power, you can cover up your mistakes rather handily, it seems.

The story of my brother, Bruce, isn’t the only skirmish in the war that the Armstrongist churches of God has declared against me and my family. There are too many incidences to recount in one place. The CoG cultmeister from Australia springs to mind, but he’s not the only one by a long shot. It’s not even just about my family. The Armstrongist churches of God have declared war on many other families. Today, we will examine one of them.

Back in the early 1960s, a psychopathic con man came from the Philippines and ended up associated with the Radio Church of God. He was married to a very sincere devout white woman who had grown up as a Catholic, but has become very much a part of the Armstrongist church of God landscape and who is totally dedicated to Armstrongist teachings. Her husband claimed that he was a doctor in the Philippines and had managed to convince a real medical doctor in the church, state board certified to be a practitioner, that he was he, too, was a qualified doctor. The man from the Philippines, as you would have expected, ended up wrecking the real medical doctor’s career. There was nothing left of Dr. J’s practice when R finished with him. But R had established his own reputation and credibility in the church. Even though people were proscribed from have medical doctors treat them, R’s opinions in the church were highly regarded, particularly in the ministry. He was regularly asked for his advice, which turned out to be nothing more than opinions, and bad ones at that. He took one look at our daughter’s birth mark and declared that it was cancer and that she would die from it. Our pediatrician told it was a mere birthmark and would disappear. It did. Our daughter is still alive after 30 years. Pediatrician 1; psychopath 0.

The con man and his wife J had children. The divorce was inevitable. Now the wife had no place to live with her children, so a self made millionaire in the church provided her and her children a place in his guest quarters. Now the millionaire was quite prosperous. He has his own home theatre. His son’s bedroom is larger than most people’s living rooms. They are well-to-do. Now they were good friends with the minister. Their son married the minister’s daughter and their daughter married the ministers son. The grandchildren are double cousins. The wedding for the millionaire’s son to the minister’s daughter cost $25,000. It was an impressive event to attend. Of course, the millionaire lets everyone know that he is a millionaire because of God’s blessings from his obedience to God. The minister has been very happy to have a very rich relative by marriage. This particular minister has always been telling people from the pulpit how worried he is about his retirement and that he doesn’t have enough money to retire. It is the case, though, that the minister will probably be OK, since he is now the President of United.

It was an accident in the apartment the millionaire provided for the woman who had been married to the psychopath. Something went wrong with a space heater. The fire destroyed the small apartment in the millionaire’s property where she took refuge. This had implications. The millionaire blamed her for destroying his property. He made the minister fully aware of his displeasure. The poor woman went on the minister’s bad list — and he ended up supporting a psychopath rather than helping a genuine church member in need.

There came a day in the divorce proceedings that the question of who would get the children came up in court. The church had an attorney assigned to the woman and paid for the legal fees — up until the day before court, that is. When the day approached, the woman called Pasadena to find out what happened to the lawyer and the church paying the legal fees for the custody of her children. Victor Kubic let her know that she lost the church’s support. She had no legal representation because the church stepped away. As a result, she lost her children and her erstwhile psychopath husband won a major battle.

Once on a minister’s bad list, always on the minister’s bad list. These people have a long memory for vengeance and they play the long game. This same poor woman went about doing good in her church. She helped a man who had a mental disorder. Because she was nice to him, he fixated on her and began stalking her. He continued stalking her after she was remarried for seven years. The couple being stalked begged and pleaded with the ministry which had passed from the Radio Church of God to the Worldwide Church of God to the United Church of God an International Association. The minister staunchly supported the stalker. You can guess why. The couple went to the Council of Elders. No dice. The minister in question is well connected. In fact, during his sermon on Pentecost, he made the comment that he had a talent for putting people in touch with the right contacts. He knows that because I told him that when I gave him my book, Assertive Incompetence — an Introduction to Management Malpractice. At least you can’t say he hasn’t learned anything from me. But I was hoping he would see himself in the book and make changes, like that would ever happen.

You know the rest. God intervenes. Or at least sensible judges in civil court do. The restraining order and all. I’m not certain who really won in this particular part of the war. To make the point: The war with that particular family is not over by a long shot.

The thing is, we might not know who the ministers are, but we certainly have a view of what they are. The Apostle Paul commented that we are not ignorant of Satan’s devices. I think he was wrong about that one thing. We don’t know Satan’s devices, although, I must say, they look a lot like the practices of the Modern Church Corporate. We do know a lot of things, such as what happened to the son of the minister, leaving his wife and going to San Francisco and all with his roommate. I wonder if the guys ever married.

The base problem is what it has always been: After the dust settles, it is clear that those with their lies, delusions and deceptions are not at all what they represented themselves to be; and the truth finally comes out. The only problem that’s left is to find a way to put a spin on it for plausible deniability. And that’s damned inconvenient.

We have had accounts of how crimes are covered up in the Armstrongist community for years now. It isn’t sin, it’s crime. It isn’t like someone works on the Sabbath once a year or skips paying a tithe or something. We are talking about crimes for which the perpetrators should have gone to prison. GTA date raping Ambassador Coeds. The various men committing incest with their daughters. When our daughter was 12, she told us that her best friend in church was being raped by her father. The church did nothing about it but cover it up. It sort of turned out and justice was done: He was working on the toilet holding tank on a ship and it broke open and the contents washed over his face and head. He died shortly after that. In church, a certain elder was known for molesting boys. The leading women (ones who had no position) in the church went all the way to Pasadena and had no response, so they “watched” the man, particularly on holy days. Ironically, I did not know it at the time, but the man was the Sabbath school teacher for my own son. Universally, the Armstrongist churches have followed the corporate policies of covering up crime, not fixing it.

United is interestingly different. As a church corporate, the other state incorporated Armstrongist churches could learn a great deal from them. They are progressive, and while they adopt the worst of the corporate model and implement it badly [and I’m the one that gave them the corporate stuff from Weyerhaeuser, which they adopted], they are brilliantly, devilishly clever about it. They learn from reading forums like this to use ever new methodologies to cover up crimes committed by their ministers and members. What they do is NOT solve the problem. What they DO is to bribe the victim! Remember the stalker? They seduced the couple being stalked by giving them a bribe. It sort of solves the problem without solving the problem, but it makes it much more palatable for the victims to continue to bask in the warmth of the church corporate cesspool without retarding the laps the ministry and administration are doing in it.

It would be nice if we never hear another incident of a 70 old elder fondling a sixteen year old girl in front of people of the congregation, for example. They are perfectly comfortable to remain secure in their church corporate. I would remind everyone that a corporation is an “It” — a thing. It has no empathy. It is amoral. It exists for no particularly good reason except to exist. It does everything it can as a non person to continue its existence. The end justifies the means. If it takes murder, rape, incest, theft, lies, deceptions, so be it. If you are doing a good work, doing evil to keep it going is a must. The only rule is, DON’T GET CAUGHT at it.

Scripture speaks of the leopard, how it can it cannot change its spots. The Armstrongists don’t seem to be able to change, but it isn’t mere spots. It’s more like stripes — and not the stripes by which we are healed, either. It’s like stripes on a skunk.

If we consider that the Armstrongist community is the ultimate in church corporate, it follows that they are not for us. Anyone who is not for us is against us. Anyone who is against us is our enemy.

While the leaders of the Armstrongist community may be our enemies, to each other, they are more than enemies: They are competitors. Any Armstrongist champions out there looking for some sort of confederation of the various clan sects of the different flavors of Armstrongism can just forget it. If they have made the lower than dirt peasants of their fiefdoms their enemies from the start, it is certain that they will never give up their own power and freedom to their competitors. Any fantasies to the contrary should be treated by a competent mental health professional.

It is important to know that if you don’t have money and you aren’t well connected and don’t have any power, and if you are a truth seeker, the Armstrongist churches of God will declare war on you and your children for generations to come, for as long as the Armstrongist community lasts.

One wonders what they expect to win.

In the late 1960s, I often went up to the city on the weekends to stay with my brother at his boarding house. He had grown up during a paranoid era of the cold war and was always seeking an avenging hero which could show that the majority was wrong and, more importantly, empower him with the promise that some day he could be in charge to right the evils of the world. He wasn’t exactly a religious hobbyist, but he was definitely seeking — not a higher power — but someone or something with superior power. As some of you know, he finally found and settled in on Armstrongism and eventually it killed him: In pain, alone, in fear, abandoned, betrayed.

After his death, people from the WCG came by his apartment as my mother was wrapping up his affairs. You might think that they came to express their condolences and relate how Bruce improved their lives. If you thought that, you would be wrong. They came by and wanted his stuff: His precious stones he polished himself, his telescope, his cameras he built himself, his electronic gear. It was like they had some sort of entitlement. Later, two church boys, who had joined the military, had the gall to come by our folk’s home to stay over on the way to the Feast. My folks put them up and fed them because they claimed to know Bruce. My mother showed me the letter from Haffely, the minister, who admitted that Bruce had called him for help when he was having the heart attack, but the minister just advised him to go to the hospital emergency room. My brother’s trusting delusion that the church would take care of him when he was in trouble killed him.

It didn’t end with his death. My mother received a letter from Pasadena after Bruce’s death from the massive cardiac infarction. The good folks at Pasadena were certain that my brother had left them absolutely everything in his will: Tens of thousands of dollars, and they wanted it. They demanded that my folks produce his will they were certain my mother was hiding, because everything of his was theirs now. Of course, they had no rights at all to his small fortune built up from his industriousness, conservatism and use of his technological skills, but they were certain our family was hiding something that would prove that their selfish arrogant avarice was well founded. They took advantage of his generosity in life and were determined to take everything that was left after his death. My mother showed me the letter. It was really pretty nasty and vile. I have concluded that though my brother may have been delusional, but the scoundrels at Pasadena always knew precisely what they were. It occurs that the Churches of God have declared war on my family nearly 50 years ago and I’m just now waking up to the fact that they are still at war with us. Interesting.

There had been incidents long before this. Bruce was kind and generous. As a bachelor, he prepared dinner every Sabbath for different people in the church. He did his best to “serve” at church functions. He gave a lot of extra money to the church as he had occasion. For awhile, my brother was prosperous. He lost his job. He had a large apartment with several bedrooms. A man in the church moved in with his wife and children and mooched off of my brother for several months without providing one thing in return, ever. The man didn’t have a job and Bruce ended up supporting the whole family — a family which was not related to him. He was of the delusion that the church WAS his family.  He couldn’t get rid of them. When things got really bad and he was running out of money, he asked a deacon in the WCG for help. The deacon laughed at him to his face. Remember that this was after my brother had spent a year at Ambassador College. He got into the college by giving and loaning a considerable amount of money to the church. It turns out that Herbert Armstrong was impressed by men of power and / or money. If you had enough money, you could buy yourself into nearly anything in the WCG. I can guarantee that my brother would never have gotten into Ambassador College without his giving them tens of thousands of dollars, back in the early 1960s.

While I was a still a teen and before my brother entered into the RCG / WCG environment, those weekends with my brother were most illuminating. One Sunday, I was going to catch the Grayhound home and my brother’s landlady — a true believer and relgious hobbiest — asked me if I’d be interested in a talk some religious leader was giving in a room at the Davenport Hotel. I said, OK. What can I say, I was 17.

Here was this hefty but short 40 something professor-looking dude with a beard and glasses. As he gave his talk to about 20 or so people, it got stranger and stranger. He told us the world was hollow and people lived inside the mantle of the earth. They had flying saucers which flew out of the North Pole. His “proof” was colorful: “I can prove it,” he said. He protested that people [read that scientists] taught that the earth had a molten core. I remember his colorful demonstration: “Build a fire and put a wooden box over it,” he said; “What happens? The fire burns through the box! This proves the earth does not have a molten core — it is hollow! People live inside!”.

I had a background in science. At the age of 13, I built my own 24 volt regulated DC power supply. With relays I found in the city dump from the AT&T Radar relay TV station, I designed and soldered together a binary counter, replete with a panel of flashing lights. I read the book, Earth, Wind and Fire, to learn about how the earth was formed 4 billion years ago. I performed my own electronic and endless chemical experiments. I used home made hydrogen to fill lighter than air balloons [the part about tying thread to them, spooling the balloon up to the ceiling, lighting the thread and making the balloon go POOF! I will leave out!]. Anyway, here I was — my first real delusional cult leader confronting me.

After his presentation, he singled me out and stood between me and the door: “What did you think of my talk,” he said? I was a naive country farm boy with a penchant for science experimentation. I had found the arc light at school and put it together with the projection microscope for the first time in seven years when my other brothers last did it. My dad taught me welding at the Lincoln County Shop where he was foreman. I fixed the pendulum clock for grandmother. And here I was. And here he was. I thought of the volcanoes which blew up and which, incidentally, proved that the earth had a molten core. But this was an authority figure. What to do? What to do?

“It was interesting,” I said, and left, caught the bus and went home.

How, you might ask, is this relevant to Armstrongism? Well, you should take a look at Ralph Orr’s article over at:

http://web.archive.org/web/20071217130140/http://www.wcg.org/lit/prophecy/anglo/howanglo.htm 

It is a wonderland of British Israelism, related false prophecies and Pyramidology. Herbert Armstrong was a nut case every bit as bad as the hollow earth core dude, but with more people impressed with his credibility. He sounded credible. His overweening positive manic approach evident in his enthusiasm for everything he did, including THE VERY WORK OF GOD, was persuasive. Today, it doesn’t look that credible, the empire has crashed and burned in disgrace and Herbert Armstrong is a mere footnote in a long list of delusional cultists.

Back in the 1950s, a then young man, was interested in the Sabbath. He went searching. He had done his homework and studied the Bible. He went in to a meeting of the Radio Church of God. At the end, someone asked him, “What did you think of Herbert Armstrong?”. His reply, “You should ask me what I think of Jesus Christ!”. Now this guy was tall and heavy and fit. It took two deacons to literally pick him up and drop him off outside the door. He later went on to become a minister of the Seventh Day Church of God. I know his 85 year old widow, Marion, who told me the story.

Anyone with any shred of objectivity should tell any nut case, “Prove it”. I would be inclined to continue, “And just who died and left you God?”.

That anyone would fall for the preposterous psychotic delusions is testimony of where the generations led us all to. In the movie, Generation Zero, there are four basic steps posited which brought the current world economic crisis:

1. The crisis: World War II
2. The High: The easy prosperity of the 1950s
3. The Awakening: The 1960s Hippie Movement
4. The Unravelling: Spoiled entitled people leading to Financial Meltdown

In all of this, objectivity, data, facts, even science are all ignored. People don’t want logic. They don’t want science. They want what feels right and what feels good. Mothers who lived in want pampered their children and gave them everything they wanted and needed, instantly. Disposable diapers are an example of something both immediate and personal. Spoiled children grew up to become selfish entitled adults, leveraged by the explosion of technologies spearheaded by the space race. People awakened to self-awareness to protest perceived injustices. They insisted upon and got the opportunity to express their opinions: To have their say and go their way. During the Clinton Administration, the Clintons capitalized upon this with their Health Care Plan Summit. There was no solution at that time. But the stakeholders came together in Washington D.C. to discuss the issues. Once they were satisfied that they were all given an opportunity to be heard, they all went home, confident that the issue was taken care of without any commitment, involvement or effort from them.

This past couple of years, the chickens came home to roost — or vultures and velocerapters, more like. Psychopaths became bold, arrogant and downright pushy and got their agendas passed, plying the suspicious point of view to pressure the public. After all, it was what the people wanted. And the sociopaths of the business world pressed the advantage to empty the coffers, affecting generations to come. Meltdown has struck and is with us, but most of the Boomers and New Millenniest breed seem to think that meltdown is a good thing, sort of like cheese topping.

Dr. Phil has said, “Emotions got you into this and emotions will get you out of it”. That’s a lie. It can’t possibly be true. No, emotions got us into the problem and determination, discipline, logic and a lot of resources with a great deal of effort is the only way to get out of it — if it is even possible. Unfortunately, the modern generations are just plain lazy. They want the instant fix without the character to build to viable solutions [think The BP Oil Spill]. Like some rebellious teens who declare their independence by rebelling against authority, when they are in trouble, they cry out, “Mom, Dad, save me”.

In the July-August 2010 The Sabbath Sentinel is this interesting entry:

“I’m Spiritual, but not religious!”

In a recent CNN article writer John Blake examines the trend among young people who believe that they don’t need organized religion to have a life of faith.

However, James Martin, a Catholic priest, believes that this trend is essentially egotism. “Religion is hard,” he says. “Sometimes it’s just too much work. People don’t feel like it. I have better things to do with my time. It’s plain old laziness.”

But offer people something fun and easy like websites, blogs and tweets, and they’re all over it. Use those cell phones to send [mostly] and receive text messages. Try to put them to real work, and they’re outta here.

Likewise, if it feels right and sounds right, most people today just stop there and don’t look behind the scenes. They accept what is and get drawn into the most preposterous belief systems. The con man is adept in structuring everything to sound right to selfish egos, for example: You will be Kings and Priests in the Kingdom of God, if you DO THE WORK! Throw in some proof texting and there you go. The earth is hollow and people live inside. We can prove it.

In the same The Sabbath Sentinel is an article by Brian Knowles called Out of the Box — Defeating the “Religious Spirit”. Here is part of what he said:

Throughout history, there have always been obsessively religious fanatics who have wreaked havoc on the civilized parts of society. Instead of advancing mankind, or emancipating it, they have plunged it into dark ages of superstition, torture, unjust imprisonment, the illegal confiscation of property and untimely death….

 Brian goes on to give four keys to avoiding the religious spirit:

1. Is it idolatrous?
2. Does it tend to freedom or bondage?
3. What are the fruits?
4. Beware of isolation

Prove all things. What a concept. Which takes work. Unfortunately, people don’t want the truth, they just want to feel good — with as little effort as possible. People don’t really want science. Don’t confuse them with the facts. And, by the way, if you think that what his religious spirit is restricted to religion, be apprised that he is also talking about such things as secular ones, such as [but not restricted to], ardent environmentalists [AKA eco-terrorists], save-the-whales [yes, I am a bit overweight, but they don’t help me!], animal rights, Islamic terrorists [say, isn’t that religion?], neo-Nazis, left-wing socialists, health food fanatics, fanatical communists and other nut case groups.

 Once the scoundrels get entrenched it is almost impossible to get rid of them or their silly ideas. Think British Israelism. They pave the way to becoming ensconced by wrecking the credibility of legitimate authorities, among them scientists. When you hear someones philosophies and they try to convince you that scientists are wrong, beware. Of course scientists can be wrong. For example, those weather stations which “prove” global warming are in asphalt parking lots and next to the exhaust of air conditioners. The criteria is the same: Lax and lazy scientists are not to be trusted, particularly if your life depends upon it.

Nevertheless, it is possible to debunk most of the urban legends. Which falls faster? A bee-bee or a cannon ball. The scientific method proved they fall at equal rates at 32 feet per second per second by pushing them off the Leaning Tower of Pisa at the same time and their landing at the same time. Which is lighter, oil or water? OK then, why does the oil float on the water, then? These embedded belief systems taken for centuries with no examination is partly the responsibility of the generation of religionists and scientists of their time. I had a discussion with the chief scientist over lunch in the Weyerhaeuser cafeteria. He related to me the history of science from the perspective of the acceptance of new scientific discovery. Every generation rejected the truth until the next generation accepted it. Newton’s Law finally gave way to Einstein’s theories, but not without a lot of disagreement. The establishments wants the status quo and hates change.

Unfortunately, change oft comes with the abandonment of truth. Perhaps it is that Herbert Armstrong took some of the best of the Church of God Seventh Day [or not], but along the way he seriously corrupted and mangled it to become indistinguishable from psychotic delusions. Unfortunately, for the same reasons as given above, far too many people were convinced of his follies.

I should point out that children, as innocent victims of this nonsense, followed the same path as everyone takes when they are bound involuntarily by lies: They rebelled. Unfortunately, sometimes, rebellion does a lot of unintended collateral damage.

My heartburn is not with the ones who spread the delusions so much as those who absorb them and lap them up. What sort of people are they? What do they want? Are they so warped that they grasp at every hope that comes by? Are they so desperate that they grasp at straws? Why do they never seek beyond the veneer to find the real truth? This is all very disturbing that so many people get hooked up with fantasies, delusions, myths actively without delving into facts. Perhaps it is true that some people have a convincing “patter”, but now with all the knowledge out there about EVERYTHING, it is surprising that people will actually spend money and risk themselves and their families on flim-flam.

We should be grateful that Herbert Armstrong came along. He was among the first and largest of the cultists [in more ways than one] to deceive people with his admixture of raw facts and delusional fantasies. At least, when we were finished with him, we have been well positioned to apply the suspicious point of view to the rest of the narcissists, psychopaths and sociopaths which come our way — even though it seems small comfort for the ruined lives for which he is responsible: We’ve learned Caveat Emptor the hard way, but we’ve learned it first and more thoroughly than others. It’s a lot harder to deceive us now, particularly with delusions.

Nevertheless, so many people never learn a thing: They may turn against all that Herbert Armstrong taught, but they turn back to delusions. Former cultists have a way of going back into the system of delusions when they put their trust into government figures who tell tall tales or other unbelievable stories. They look for their heroes, their saviours.

I am reminded of one of the worst cultmeisters of the Churches of God. The man was evil and oppressive. He played games. He was even exposed publicly through government records. When people had a chance and finally left him, what did they do? They took all of his nutty ideas and doctrines and created their own church group. It was all the same except for the leader they had ousted. Same doctrines. Same rules of governance. All the same people [who, by the way, don’t seem to have ever read the Book of Hebrews, or figured out that the writing of Islam are equivalent to New Testament Epistles]. It’s difficult to understand the mindset of people who insist on retaining nutty toxic delusions at all costs. One would think that they would want freedom from such things.

But now today, if you stand between me and the door, and ask me what I think, you can be pretty well assured that I will answer, “It was interesting”.

Next time in the Disappointment series: Infestation!

Those fun guys at the University of Toronto have done it again! They’ve discovered the secret to Executive Ability! After gathering all the data, the jury is in. Executive Ability is developed early in a child’s life. After the age of six or seven, it’s too late to develop it. One has to have the practices of Executive Ability down pat early on, in order to win the favor of, and, direct others. The methodology must be seamlessly integrated into the child’s life to be successful as an adult. Otherwise, expect to be second rate: You’ll never rise to the Executive Levels of say, the President of the United States or be a successful Cult Leader, which is the same in the thinking of some circles. Corporate America falls all over itself to secure these people who have achieved Executive Ability as Children. Corporate HR is interested in seeking you out if you have it.

What those lads at the University of Toronto found is that children who learn to lie successfully and skillfully develop Executive Ability. No one else need to even bother to apply. You just don’t have what it takes to con your way into a comfy position.

It’s bad enough that people with influence are delusional, but it’s really terrible when they look you right in the eye and lie to you without so much any kind of indication of lying.

Lying is not limited to the Armstrongist Churches of God. Neither are takeovers. Excesses and abuses are universal and you can find bad examples nearly anywhere.

The Church of God Seventh Day had a fairly strong presence in the Tacoma area at one time. There were were as many members in CoG7 as there were in the WCG back when. They had developed their own property and built a church building. In due time, though, as things would have it, eminent domain took over and they sold the property and moved. There is an hospital where the old church building used to be. The transaction netted them $300,000.

They rented a nice facility across the bridge and met there. Things were going pretty well, but some of the younger members wanted more, especially for their children — a step up, if you please, from the more traditional services. They hired a Church of God Seventh Day youth minister from Lodi, California — a man who had grown up in the church and who wrote his master’s thesis on Dugger and Dodd. His wife also is related to one of them. His dad is a minister. He has five brothers in the church.

They brought him in and things began to change. He and his wife were attractive and charismatic. They were both musically talented and sang. They formed a praise worship band for church. He was so smooth, butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. He could charm the socks off a fox.

At this point, I’m reminded of the story of the Arab and the camel. The Arab set up his tent in the desert at evening and went inside to sleep. The camel complained, “I’m cold, could I stick my nose in to get it warm?”. “No,” the Arab said! “But it’s just my nose,” the camel whined. “No,” the Arab said, “you’ll stick in your nose and the next thing you’ll come right in, lift off the tent, walk off and I’ll be left in the cold!”. “No, I won’t,” the camel promised, “please!? Please!!?? PLEASE!!!??? I promise”. The Arab began to lose his resolution. The camel continued to whine and promise. Finally, the Arab said, “OK, but just your nose!”. So the camel stuck in his nose, his body followed, he lifted up the tent and made off with in into the desert, leaving the Arab high, dry and cold.

The man — we’ll call him Chris — got tight with all the younger families. He made himself the chairman of the church board. Chris made himself the head of the Christian Rock Band Group with something like twelve members, including a synth keyboard player whose name would be familiar to all of you in this area. There was a lot of praise worship involving music at over 85 decibels, the threshold of pain. I know because I brought a Radio Shack sound meter with me. Everybody was sort of happy. But there was all that $300,000 in the bank, calling to him, calling to him.

Chris took over the church board and did away with bylaws of the Church of God Seventh day. It didn’t take long that he was changing the name of the church to something like what happened in the Armstrongist realm — something that sounded a lot more evangelical. There was more and more music for services. He was making friends with the Sunday churches and proclaiming that the church was going to become a community based Christian church. He got the board to buy a piece of property in Gig Harbor for much of the money in what became his little “slushy” fund. He proceeded to get the church to pay for his continuing education with Azuza Pacific University. He gave himself a 20% raise out of what money was left of the $300,000. He started paring down the sermons to 20 minutes of cloying religious vagueness. The rest of the time he, his wife and his band played the gospel music, while the rest of the congregation sang along. He also moved to split from the Church of God Seventh Day.

At the same time, he moved to disfellowship a member of the church board and oust him from the church. He made it sound like a disagreement about administration, while the truth was that the board member was protesting the break from CoG7. He reported the board member to CoG7 to get him disfellowshipped and at the same time proceeded to cut off his newish church from CoG7 — starting by not paying the portion of money that was to flow there [and good luck for those contributors: There were never any receipts cut for contributors to report to the IRS]. The ousted board member went to the Regional District to protest and his ministerial credentials were saved — but only just barely — and only because the news of the now Chris church had reached the Regional District administrator.

Pandemonium pursued. Older members were told they weren’t welcome and that Chris wanted church members his age and under. A full 75% of contributions came from the board members, and most of those left, so regular income dropped like a rock. Oh, there were still all those appealing programs with all the appealing people — and all those special events like Super Sabbath Weekend and a gigantic Christian Music Rock Concert at the Columbia River Gorge [not connected with the church in Gig Harbor, which at last count dropped to something less than 15 members].

Church support in this newly created church in Gig Harbor fast disappeared. The ousted board member set up services across the bridge with some regular members still loyal to the Church of God Seventh Day. There wasn’t enough money left to even get permits to build a new church facility in Gig Harbor. Chris couldn’t scrape up enough money to pay the property taxes, and, besides, it’s now partly a wetland because building a nearby freeway ended up making it one. Some of the members — some of the older ones in service to the old regime — are now in United and serving there. Chris and his buddy have apparently fallen on hard times and it’s really gotten around to the other Sabbath keeping Churches of God, but there’s still one thing he has: Chris is in charge! And his dad is none too pleased with him, by all accounts.

The remaining church board member in Gig Harbor offered to sell the property at a substantial discount to the Seventh Day Church of God. After discussing it amongst themselves and contracting with a lawyer, the Seventh Day Church of God declined the offer and promptly tied up the property by putting a lien on it. They still own it and they’ll probably get it back in the end. In the meantime, they’re going to change a few rules about the ownership of Church of God Seventh Day properties so this doesn’t happen again.

I’ve talked to someone who knew Chris at Vale Academy. He told me that “It was hard to pin down what it was while I watched Chris play, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it”. No doubt it had everything to do with Executive Ability — that’s something that always sets a person apart from his lesser fellows. His other peers who grew up with him have defended him by saying, “We know who he is!”, ironically and weirdly paralleling the purported words the demons said to Jesus, “We know you”.

This story isn’t ended for sure. None of us may live that long. Nevertheless, in the end, I’m personally persuaded that the Universe does balance things out. It may take awhile, but lying just isn’t the way to get your way in the long term.

Yes, those lads at the University of Toronto really have something: Lying is the successful path to Executive Ability. It should also be noted from those stalwart fellows from the University of Tuebingen, Germany, that deliberately told lies impact the Cebral Cortex by rerouting and destroying brain cells. They have found a way of synthetically virtually suppressing the neurons involved to make better liars of people. Perhaps it will be a cornerstone to finding ways of making adults Executive material, having missed their window of opportunity and all.

My experience: People who are subjected to lies become apathetic, if they can do nothing about it, say, in a work environment. Listen for the words, “Nothing ever changes around here”. That is a lie, of course. Things are changing, just not for the better. But give the oppressed the hint of freedom, THEY WILL REBEL! Count on it. It’s a process — one we can see reproduced with regularity in social circles from governments to religion. It’s unfortunate that there are no studies about what happens to the brain cells of the people that are lied to, although we sort of know already. We’ve seen it in the religious venue we participated in as the CoG Collective: Lie to me and I WILL regret it! The liars are causing billions of brain cells to die, turning into those Unidentified Bright Objects found in brain scans where not much exists but fluids. Consult your neurologist, for all the help that will be — brain cells gone for good, executed by scoundrels with executive ability.

It’s clear that Chris has Executive Ability. How’s that working out for you Chris?

Yet another example of someone accepting no authority but their own with poor behavioral control.

What a disappointment!

It’s high time that folks realized that narcissists, psychopaths and sociopaths aren’t folk heros, they don’t offer any freedom, they just offer their own brand of slavery that ends badly for the slaves.

And did I mention that Lodi is idol spelled backwards?

Next time: Delusions