The "Plain Truth" About The True Church

Blast from the past…

From time to time in my adventures, as I read the letters and articles of people on this website and elsewhere, I come across references to the “true church”. When my eyes were first wrenched open by the unassailable facts of corruption at all levels of the Worldwide Church of God, almost the first question that entered my mind was: “If this isn’t the true church of God, then where is it?”

For forty years I had been immersed in the doctrines and prophecies of Herbert DoubleYou Armstrong. Though I did not consider myself a Bible “expert”, I did know without a doubt that no other church on the planet had what we had. What we had was a theology that was so logical that it was perfect. No other church was aware of, nor would they accept, these fundamental “truths”. In a nutshell, these truths were:

  • The annual holy days. These seven festivals pictured the Plan of God, from the crucifixion to the arrival of God the Father on earth (nothing about the 4000 years preceding the crucifixion, however).
  • The identity of the Ten Lost Tribes of the House of Israel. (I have to admit that I found it a little difficult to accept that the tribe of Dan included both Denmark and Ireland, but hell, I wasn’t very smart in those days. It also amazed me that objects named after Dan included the rivers Don and Dnieper, but no one ever mentioned the Danube!)
  • The weekly Sabbath. It was God’s “sign” placed on his people. Sunday, by contrast, was the “mark” of the beast. (No biblical scriptures backed this up, but it didn’t matter. DoubleYou said so.)
  • Prophecy. This was clearly the ultimate proof (to me) of God’s true church. Our version of prophecy included pretty much every prophecy in the Bible (at least a whole big bunch of them) and was mapped out from the time of Alexander the Great (and before) all the way to John Paul II. This included Daniel’s vision, Matthew 24, all of Revelation, most of the minor prophets, heavy hitters like Jeremiah, Isaiah, and Ezekiel, not to mention Jesus and John. Everything was (or seemed to be) covered. It made sense. It was logical. Details might vary here and there, but the “big picture” was intact. No other church had that. No other church came close

The Seventh Day Adventists seemed to believe that the United States was the beast power. I read one of their publications in which they indicted the entire U.S. Government, but ignored the entire rest of the world. Russia, China, Europe, and the Catholic church were never even mentioned. Other “prophets”, such as those on the 700 Club, the PTL Club, and the Trinity television network were so pathetic as to be laughable. They didn’t have a clue.

Our theology was perfect. The Bible was perfect. We read the Bible, believed it, and let it “interpret itself”. There was no way we could be wrong about any of this, because it came right out of the Bible.

Then I discovered the Plain Truth about the Worldwide Church of God. I learned of homosexuality at Headquarters, of incest and rape within the Armstrong family, of adultery and fornication and (probably) statutory rape by Ted Armstrong, of Herbert Armstrong’s alcoholism and “flog log”. I learned of Herman Hoeh’s connections to the Nazi party (his parents were members), of his picture collection of little boys, of the Manpower Meetings held by Rod Meredith, of a putrid cesspool of corruption of all kinds at every level of the Worldwide Church of God. (I already knew in my heart that the Tkaches were corrupt, but it was quite a shock to discover the rest.) And I learned emphatically that tithing not only was no longer required, but was being administered incorrectly (indeed, feloniously).

“In the mouths of two or three witnesses shall it be established. . .” There were piles of evidence, hordes of witnesses and first-person accounts. None of this could be disputed. It was not a suspicion, there was no “reasonable doubt”. In fact, there was no shadow of a doubt. It was true. All of it. For four decades my life had been ruled by people so corrupt that their equal could only be found within the ranks of the KGB or the SS. These “men of God”, these “ministers”, these “spiritual leaders”–were the biggest crooks of the century. And they had done it all in a way that none of them would ever fear legal consequences.

The entire organization was rotten to the core. I was rocked. I was stunned.

And I was puzzled. The question popped over my head like a balloon in a comic book, with a huge question mark in the center. “If this isn’t the true church of God, then where is it?”

?

It was a good question. Really, it was the only question. A question I had to answer. Because I could no longer remain in the Worldwide Church of God with a clear conscience. I didn’t even want to. But if I were to avoid leading my family into the very fires of hell, I had to know–“If this isn’t the true church, then what is? Where is it?”

There was no point in investigating other churches. I had already done that. One thing Herbert DoubleYou was very good at was knocking down the teachings of other religions. Yet I did talk to various “Sunday Christians” that I knew, read some articles, read a few books. Nothing answered the question. The people I talked to knew a lot less about the Bible than I did, all the literature talked a lot about Jesus and little else. What about the prophecies? What about the plan of God? What about the Millennium? What about a lot of things?

I could have consulted experts, but where to find them? And how to determine if they knew what they were talking about? All the books I had read were written by people with letters after their names, and they each had their own personal axe to grind. Finding a disinterested or neutral “expert” seemed unlikely.

I was left with only one avenue of approach. And that was one the Worldwide Church of God had ridiculed for decades: I was left to my “own understanding”. More precisely, I had no option but to think it through as logically as I possibly could.

You may laugh. Who the hell does he think he is? What degrees does he have? I’m nobody, of course–the Worldwide Church of God made sure I understood that. I have no degrees. But I can tell right from wrong (in a moral sense), I know the difference between up and down, black and white, right and left. As a computer programmer I can track down a bug that no one else can find, which means I have to think in logical terms to do my job.

And I had never had a more open mind in my life than I did at that moment in time.

It took time. I don’t remember exactly how much time, but I left the Worldwide Church of God May 29, 1992, and it was probably late 1994 before I knew the answer. I can’t recount here all the avenues of thought that I went traveled. I don’t even remember them all. Certainly every day in my car (I drive 35 miles to work each way) I thought of little else. Many hours each week went into the sorting down of facts, fiction, and fables. I went back over sermons, articles, discussions, lectures, announcements, and various other data in my mind. And I found myself returning again and again to two fundamental quotes:

  1. Prove all things. . . (from the Bible)
  2. We came in at the middle of the movie (from Herbert DoubleYou)

The first one, Prove all things, is a scripture unknown to most of the Christian world. If they ever read that, or believed it, most of them would never be able to believe half of what they do. If the Bible was ever right about anything, it has to be right about that one.

The second one, a favorite of Herbert Armstrong, turned out to be much more revealing than he ever intended. He used it in the context of world history, pointing out that we are born and live our lives at a certain era in the history of the world and our perceptions are colored only by what we can see, with little or no knowledge of what went before. A very good point. (The same is true, of course, of the Worldwide Church of God itself. Those of us who came in the Sixties or later had no knowledge of what HWA himself had done or taught in previous decades.)

These two quotes made my job a little easier. The first was incentive to make sure I finished the task. The second offered a clue as to how to do it.

To make a long story short, it boiled down to this: Everyone assumed that there had to be One True Church. Period. There was no recognition of the historical saga of church and churches, of orders and groups and unions and cliques and brotherhoods. The apostles who wrote the New Testament were generally accepted as the founders of the new religion called Christianity, but since their time the evolution of that religion had been constant, to the point that today what was called Christianity bore very little resemblance to that original philosophy (with its creeds and tenets and rituals). That was Herbert DoubleYou’s major appeal (or one of them, anyway), that what passed for Christianity today did not square with that original faith. And he was right. It does not.

Neither did the one he instituted.

Where does it say, in the Bible or elsewhere, that there has to be one “true church”? The Bible speaks of the “body of Christ”, but what exactly does that mean? Many who left the Worldwide Church of God in the early 90s adopted the idea (and I was one of them, initially) that “the body of Christ” consists of “true believers” wherever you may find them–in the Worldwide Church of God, the COG 7th Day, among the Catholics, the Lutherans, the Baptists, the myriad fundamentalists–even Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons. In other words, if they individually have that “personal relationship” with Christ, then they are “true Christians”.

Was this, then, the “true church”? Was there no single organization, but rather a scattered congregation of individuals mixed in among the hordes of traditional Christians like nuggets of gold among so much slag? It seemed likely for a while, but then how would one obey the admonishment to “forsake not the gathering together” of believers? How would you know who to congregate with? How could such a disorganized mob be effective? How would such powerless individuals carry out the great commission to carry the gospel to the world? How could God reveal his intentions to such people through his prophets, if they didn’t even know each other, if there was no network, no means of communication?

Gradually it dawned on me that the “great commission” had already been achieved. There was no need for an “end-time apostle”. If the New Testament were true, there had already been twelve apostles (one for each tribe of Israel, I suppose). They had already done the job. We have the Bible, which supposedly contains all their writings that are important for us to read. The Bible has been published for centuries, is available throughout the world in purt-near every language. There is no need for an “end-time work” such as Herbert DoubleYou established, or like those we see and hear on the airwaves today. The word has been spread. The world knows about Christianity. So communication between individual believers, for the reasons I considered, is unnecessary.

That still left questions hanging, of course. What about the place of safety? What about escaping the tribulation? What about prophecy? What about . . .

What about. . .

Hm. What about what?

Slowly I realized that everything I thought I knew about anything was suspect. Talk about your paradigms–I was asking all the wrong questions, based on my Worldwide Church of God training. I assumed there had to be a true church, because I assumed that prophecy was important, because Herbert DoubleYou had said it was. I assumed that Christians had to be able to identify one another–I assumed a lot of things, but I didn’t really know very much at all.

I had to ask new questions. For example, What is required for salvation? Membership in the One True Church? Subscription to the correct set of beliefs? Did you have to keep the sabbath on Saturday? Did you have to keep the Passover and the Jewish holy days? Would you be condemned for keeping Christmas or worshiping on Sunday? Did you need to understand the subtle variations of meaning between the Greek and Hebrew text? Was it necessary to be able to translate the precise meaning between the original text and the modern English equivalent? Did you need to understand the precise archaic context of every parable spoken by Christ?

Just what the hell did it take to avoid crashing and burning?

Even in the Worldwide Church of God no two people ever completely agreed on every single nuance of scripture. Not even among the ministry. Hell, especially among the ministry! They were more divided than anyone. And if no two Worldwiders could get together on these issues, then none of them were going to be saved, and the rest of the world didn’t have a prayer (assuming that Worldwide Church of God theology was correct–which it wasn’t).

I asked the question: What about some poor sod in Africa or China who meets up with some smiling missionary who tells him about Jesus, and he buys it? The Bible said that anyone who “confess that Jesus is the Christ” is a Christian. So this poor sod confesses that Jesus is the son of God. He is therefore a Christian. This poor sod can’t read, write, or use the internet. He has no Strongs Concordance handy. How in the hell is he going to distinguish between the three words for heaven or the three words for hell? How is he going to figure out the punctuation in the King James Bible when Jesus said, “Verily I say unto you, today you shall be with me in paradise”, as opposed to “Verily I say unto you today, you shall be with me in paradise”? Hell, even educated Americans can’t find that one!

So is God going to burn up this poor sod just because he can’t read?

If he is, then he’s no god of mine! And if he doesn’t, then all this legalistic crap is nothing but the dung of an ox (i.e., bullshit).

So where did that leave me? Where does it leave you? When you consider that a “church” in today’s environment is nothing but a legally organized corporation (i.e., a business), it really takes away any question of which church is the “true” church. After all, who is asking which store is the One True Store? Or which team is the One True Team? Or which factory is the One True Factory?

We were led astray, totally, to the point that we could no longer think. We were told that God had to have a “true” church. No proof was offered. No questions were tolerated. It was stuffed down our throats, and we never really thought much more about it, except to say that, “Once you’ve been in God’s true church, where else can you go?”

I finally arrived at my bottom line. Simply stated, it is this: There is no True Church. You are either with God or you aren’t. Christianity is an individual endeavor, pure and simple. As for churches–well, we’ve already been there and done that. Any organization that attempts to catalog its beliefs and structure its membership has already lost the battle. It has become man-made religion. You can attend any church you want, from fringe-lunatic cult to Catholic or anything in between, and take whatever you want from any of them, but don’t look for the “one true church”. As an organization, it does not exist.

Thank God for that!

Article by John B.

Visions of the Other World

Black Elk was born in December 1863 along the Little Powder River (thought to be in the present-day state of Wyoming).  According to the Lakota way of measuring time, (referred to as Winter counts) Black Elk was born “the Winter When the Four Crows Were Killed on Tongue River”.
When Black Elk was nine years old, he was suddenly taken ill and left prone and unresponsive for several days. During this time he had a great vision in which he was visited by the Thunder Beings (Wakinyan), and taken to the Grandfathers — spiritual representatives of the six sacred directions: west, east, north, south, above, and below. These spirits were represented as kind and loving, full of years and wisdom, like revered human grandfathers. When he was seventeen, Black Elk told a medicine man, Black Road, about the vision in detail. Black Road and the other medicine men of the village were “astonished by the greatness of the vision”

We have men among us, like the whites, who pretend to know the right path, but will not consent to show it without pay! I have no faith in their paths, but believe that every man must make his own path!
-Black Hawk – Sauk

 


Black Elk Speaks.
-by John G Neihardt

EXCERPT:

So I dressed myself in a sacred manner, and before the dance began next morning I went among the people who were standing around the withered tree. Good Thunder, who was a relative of my father and later married my mother, put his arms around me and took me to the sacred tree that had not bloomed, and there he offered up a prayer for me. He said: “Father, Great Spirit, behold this boy! Your ways he shall see!” Then he began to cry.

I thought of my father and my brother and sister who had left us, and I could not keep the tears from running out of my eyes. I raised my face up to keep them back, but they came out just the same. I cried with my whole heart, and while I cried I thought of my people in despair. I thought of my vision, and how it was promised me that my people should have a place in this earth where they could be happy every day. I thought of them on the wrong road now, but maybe they could be brought back into the hoop again and to the good road.

Under the tree that never bloomed I stood and cried because it had withered away. With tears on my face I asked the Great Spirit to give it life and leaves and singing birds, as in my vision.

Then there came a strong shivering all over my body, and I knew that the power was in me.

Good Thunder now took one of my arms, Kicking Bear the other, and we began to dance. The song we sang was like this:

“Who do you think he is that comes?
It is one who seeks his mother!”

It was what the dead would sing when entering the other world and looking for their relatives who had gone there before them.

As I danced, with Good Thunder and Kicking Bear holding my arms between them, I had the queer feeling that I knew and I seemed to be lifted clear off the ground. I did not have a vision all that first day. That night I thought about the other world and that the Wanekia himself was with my people there and maybe the holy tree of my vision was really blooming yonder right then, and that it was there my vision had already come true. From the center of the earth I had been shown all good and beautiful things in a great circle of peace, and maybe this land of my vision was where all my people were going, and there they would live and prosper where no Wasichus were or could ever be.

Before we started dancing next day, Kicking Bear offered a prayer, saying: “Father, Great Spirit, behold these people! They shall go forth to-day to see their relatives, and yonder they shall be happy, day after day, and their happiness will not end.”

Then we began dancing, and most of the people wailed and cried as they danced, holding hands in a circle; but some of them laughed with happiness. Now and then some one would fall down like dead, and others would go staggering around and panting before they would fall. While they were lying there like dead they were having visions, and we kept on dancing and singing, and many were crying for the old way of living and that the old religion might be with them again.

After awhile I began to feel very queer. First, my legs seemed to be full of ants. I was dancing with my eyes closed, as the others did. Suddenly it seemed that I was swinging off the ground and not touching it any longer. The queer feeling came up from my legs and was in my heart now. It seemed I would glide forward like a swing, and then glide back again in longer and longer swoops. There was no fear with this, just a growing happiness.

I must have fallen down, but I felt as though I had fallen off a swing when it was going forward, and I was floating head first through the air. My arms were stretched out, and all I saw at first was a single eagle feather right in front of me. Then the feather was a spotted eagle dancing on ahead of me with his wings fluttering, and he was making the shrill whistle that is his. My body did not move at all, but I looked ahead and floated fast toward where I looked.

There was a ridge right in front of me, and I thought I was going to run into it, but I went right over it. On the other side of the ridge I could see a beautiful land where many, many people were camping in a great circle. I could see that they were happy and had plenty. Everywhere there were drying racks full of meat. The air was clear and beautiful with a living light that was everywhere. All around the circle, feeding on the green, green grass, were fat and happy horses; and animals of all kinds were scattered all over the green hills, and singing hunters were returning with their meat.

I floated over the tepees and began to come down feet first at the center of the hoop where I could see a beautiful tree all green and full of flowers. When I touched the ground, two men were coming toward me, and they wore holy shirts made and painted in a certain way. They came to me and said: “It is not yet time to see your father, who is happy. You have work to do. We will give you something that you shall carry back to your people, and with it they shall come to see their loved ones.”

I knew it was the way their holy shirts were made that they wanted me to take back. They told me to return at once, and then I was out in the air again, floating fast as before. When I came right over the dancing place, the people were still dancing, but it seemed they were not making any sound. I had hoped to see the withered tree in bloom, but it was dead.

Then I fell back into my body, and as I did this I heard voices all around and above me, and I was sitting on the ground. Many were crowding around, asking me what vision I had seen. I told them just what I had seen, and what I brought back was the memory of the holy shirts the two men wore.

That evening some of us got together at Big Road’s tepee and decided to use the ghost shirts I had seen. So the next day I made ghost shirts all day long and painted them in the sacred manner of my vision. As I made these shirts, I thought how in my vision everything was like old times and the tree was flowering, but when I came back the tree was dead. And I thought that if this world would do as the vision teaches, the tree could bloom here too.

I made the first shirt for Afraid-of-Hawk and the second for the son of Big Road.

In the evening I made a sacred stick like that I had seen in my first vision and painted it red with the sacred paint of the Wanekia. On the top of it I tied one eagle feather, and this I carried in the dance after that, wearing the holy shirt as I had seen it.

Because of my vision and the power they knew I had, I was asked to lead the dance next morning. We all stood in a straight line, facing the west, and I prayed: “Father, Great Spirit, behold me! The nation that I have is in despair. The new earth you promised you have shown me. Let my nation also behold it.”

After the prayer we stood with our right hands raised to the west, and we all began to weep, and right there, as they wept, some of them fainted before the dance began.

As we were dancing I had the same queer feeling I had before, as though my feet were off the earth and swinging. Kicking Bear and Good Thunder were holding my arms. Afterwhile it seemed they let go of me, and once more I floated head first, face down, with arms extended, and the spotted eagle was dancing there ahead of me again, and I could hear his shrill whistle and his scream.

I saw the ridge again, and as I neared it there was a deep, rumbling sound, and out of it there leaped a flame. But I glided right over it. There were six villages ahead of me in the beautiful land that was all clear and green in living light. Over these in turn I glided, coming down on the south side of the sixth village. And as I touched the ground, twelve men were coming towards me, and they said: “Our Father, the two-legged chief, you shall see!”

Then they led me to the center of the circle where once more I saw the holy tree all full of leaves and blooming.

But that was not all I saw. Against the tree there was a man standing with arms held wide in front of him. I looked hard at him, and I could not tell what people he came from. He was not a Wasichu and he was not an Indian. His hair was long and hanging loose, and on the left side of his head he wore an eagle feather. His body was strong and good to see, and it was painted red. I tried to recognize him, but I could not make him out. He was a very fine-looking man. While I was staring hard at him, his body began to change and became very beautiful with all colors of light, and around him there was light. He spoke like singing: “My life is such that all earthly beings and growing things belong to me. Your father, the Great Spirit, has said this. You too must say this.”

Then he went out like a light in a wind.

The twelve men who were there spoke: “Behold them! Your nation’s life shall be such!”

I saw again how beautiful the day was – the sky all blue and full of yellow light above the greening earth. And I saw that all the people were beautiful and young. There were no old ones there, nor children either – just people of about one age, and beautiful.

Then there were twelve women who stood in front of me and spoke: “Behold them! Their way of life you shall take back to earth.” When they had spoken, I heard singing in the west, and I learned the song I heard.

Then one of the twelve men took two sticks, one painted white and one red, and, thrusting them in the ground, he said: “Take these! You shall depend upon them. Make haste!”

I started to walk, and it seemed as though a strong wind went under me and picked me up. I was in the air, with outstretched arms, and floating fast. There was a fearful dark river that I had to go over, and I was afraid. It rushed and roared and was full of angry foam. Then I looked down and saw many men and women who were trying to cross the dark and fearful river, but they could not. Weeping, they looked up to me and cried: “Help us!” But I could not stop gliding, for it was as though a great wind were under me.

Then I saw my earthly people again at the dancing place, and fell back into my body lying there. And I was sitting up, and people were crowding around me to ask what vision I had seen.

I told my vision through songs, and the older men explained them to the others. I sang a song, the words of which were those the Wanekia spoke under the flowering tree, and the air of it was that which I heard in the West after the twelve women had spoken. I sang it four times, and the fourth time all the people began to weep together because the Wasichus had taken the beautiful world away from us.

I thought and thought about this vision. The six villages seemed to represent the Six Grandfathers that I had seen long ago in the Flaming Rainbow Tepee, and I had gone to the sixth village, which was for the Sixth Grandfather, the Spirit of the Earth, because I was to stand for him in the world. I wondered if the Wanekia might be the red man of my great vision, who turned into a bison, and then into the four-rayed herb, the daybreak-star herb of understanding. I thought the twelve men and twelve women were for the moons of the year.

The "Unpardonable Sin"

Blast from the Past…


by John B 

 

I remember lots of people wondering if they had committed the unpardonable sin.  The very idea of a sin that couldn’t be forgiven was pretty scary, and the church was always pretty vague on just what that sin was.  I think the best explanation I heard was that it had something to do with cursing the Holy Spirit; they said that if you were worried about committing it, then you hadn’t committed it. 

The whole idea of sin, of course, is bogus.  “Sin” is a man-made concept.  What it boils down to is committing a crime in a religious context — it isn’t something you can go to jail for, but if we can dupe you into believing in religion, we can threaten you with death and control your life. 

 

Not About Sin 

In spite of the title, this article is not about sin.  It’s about something much worse.  A few months back I posted an article entitled “When Should You Forgive?”; this article is about forgiveness, and things you can do that should bar you from ever receiving forgiveness. 

None of us is perfect.  We all know that, and if we ever forgot it, the WCG leadership wasted no time reminding us.  We’ve all made mistakes, we continue to make mistakes, and we will always make mistakes.  To err is human.  Because we aren’t perfect, most of us find it within our hearts to forgive others when they offend us.  Doing so not only releases the other person from guilt, but relieves our own frustration as well.  But there are times when forgiving others is not, or should not, be an option. 

Most of the time, when people offend us, they don’t do it consciously.  I’ve offended people without realizing it, and I’m sure they didn’t always tell me about it.  No doubt there are still people holding grudges against me that I know nothing about.  Without knowing who or what or when, I can’t make it right.  Until I’m made aware of the problem, I can’t correct it, and until then, it isn’t my problem. 

Almost anything can be forgiven, if the guilty person acknowledges his offense and makes it right.  Spouses have forgiven their significant others for cheating, for example, and that would be a hard one to forgive.  Many ex-members of the cult have forgiven their pastors for their brutality (which I am not willing to do until the bastard stops doing it to others).  Each person must choose what he or she is willing to forgive, and I offer no judgment for or against their decision, even if I don’t agree with it — it’s their life and their peace of mind.  I can’t argue with whatever will offer a person relief. 

 

The Unpardonable Sin 

But there is one “sin”, one pattern of behavior, which cannot, in my estimation, be forgiven.  That pattern of behavior is child abuse. 

Everyone knows about child abuse.  Many of you reading this have experienced it.  The media talks about it all the time, and the courts are pretty severe with people who commit it.  From time to time we are stupefied by stories of people beating, burning, starving, even chaining children in closets.  We hear all the time about the sexual abuse of children.  These are criminal acts which merit a very, very long prison sentence. 

Such crimes are clearly inexcusable, and it doesn’t take a warp-scientist to understand that.  But I’m not talking about that kind of child abuse.  As bad as it is, there are laws and agencies that deal with those kinds of abuse.  The abuse I’m talking about is, in many ways, even worse, and there is no one out there to take action when it occurs.  No statutes exist to punish the offenders in these cases.  The offenders go free, and only the victim can free himself from the effects of his trauma.  But in order to do so, he or she must recognize what has happened and what life-long effects he is suffering. 

 

Religious Child Abuse 

For lack of a better term, I will call this kind of abuse “Religious Child Abuse”, although you don’t have to be religious to commit it.  But it seems to be most prevalent among people who practice religion, who have been brainwashed by some preacher somewhere (and not just in the COGs). 

(In the paragraphs that follow, I will be talking about a few specifics that might offend some of the holiest readers.  You have been warned; unfortunately, anyone who stops reading now is probably the very person who needs this information.) 

What is religious child abuse?  How do you define it and what kind of damage does it do?  Simply stated, religious child abuse is when you use the concept of God to crush a child’s spirit and ruin his or her life. 

There are many ways this can be done, far more than I am aware of.  But I can give you some examples, and from there you should be able to identify other instances of religious child abuse when you see it. 

One of the major concerns of most Christians is the behavior of their kids.  This was especially true in WCG, where “child-rearing” was a major topic.  Everyone wanted to be a “good” Christian parent, and wanted people to view their kids as well trained.  To accomplish this, many parents visited horrors upon their kids that were worthy of felony arrest.  

 

Moms and Masturbation 

There is a terrible irony when you look at the facts of life in WCG.   Parents subjected their children to codes of conduct drawn up by some of the most horrible people on the planet.  Men like Garner Ted Armstrong and Herman L. Hoeh set the standards that church children were expected to live up to.  This was especially true in sexual matters.  

“WE WON’T HAVE MAS-TUR-BAY-SHUN IN GOD’S CHURCH!” — Herman Hoeh, circa 1964 

“So I walked up to this kid and I said, ‘WHY DON’T YOU STOP PLAYING WITH YOURSELF!'” –Garner Ted Armstrong, circa 1966 

Herman Hoeh kept a photo collection of naked boys.  GTA admitted (perhaps “bragged” is more accurate) to having sex with about 35 college co-eds and over 200 ministers’ wives.  Herbert W. Armstrong raped his own daughter for ten long years; toward the end of his life he wrote his infamous “flog log”. 

Grand paragons of virtue, they! 

And you want to raise your kids by their values?  

Look, let’s be blunt.  Masturbation may be a little embarrassing for some to talk about, but there’s essentially nothing wrong with it.  I don’t know how it works for girls, but boys have this thing called a prostate.  That little thing generates several gallons of semen a day (sure felt like it, anyhow!), and just like a bladder that fills up with urine, that stuff has to get out.  It just does.  So when a kid is 14, 15, or 19 years old, and isn’t married, and isn’t allowed to have sex with girls…well, you figure it out.  Nocturnal emissions might help, but they don’t happen frequently enough, and the days and hours in between are extremely miserable. 

If you’re a mom with a teenaged son, get off his back!  You haven’t been through what he’s going through.  As long as he does it in private and washes his hands afterward, ignore it.  He isn’t going to go blind and hair won’t grow on his palms.  If you fill him with shame over something he has no control over, you’re going to ruin his life!  There may be consequences far worse than a few stained bed sheets. 

And that’s enough about that subject. 

 

Bad Parenting 

Bad parenting comes in many forms, and the parent who is obsessed that his kids obey every jot and tittle is the worst parent of all.  Such parents are likely to insist that their kids study the Bible X number of hours per day, refuse to let them partake in normal childhood activities, and closely monitor their friends to make sure Satan doesn’t somehow enter them unawares.  Such parents may insist their kids hang out with “church” kids whose parents seem to be important, even though those kids might be the worst possible companions.  This scenario has a thousand patterns, and I think you get the picture. 

It’s true that children need to be trained, need to be guided.  But don’t be anal about it.  What does a kid really need to know?  Teach him to respect other people, teach him a sense of fair play, and then step back.  The rest will take care of itself.  You may need to use a nudge now and then, but that doesn’t mean beatings with a belt or episodes of screaming that fill a kid with shame.  

The very worst thing you can do is fill a kid with shame! 

Kids are kids.  It takes time — years — for them to grow up.  Those years are important, even vital, because those are the years when kids learn how to interact with others.  They make mistakes, lots of them.  But that’s what those years are for.  Childhood is the time to make mistakes and learn from them.  That’s why kids still live with their parents — they aren’t ready to make their own way in the world, and until they are, they must be fed, sheltered, and nourished.  You don’t nourish a kid by browbeating him or her.  You don’t prepare a kid for adulthood by making him ashamed of his body and its needs.  That should be obvious to any rational person, but religion and its tenets blind the most well intentioned to these simple, obvious facts.  

Religion creates bad parents! 

 

Give Them A Break

I was always amazed in WCG how hard the kids had it (and I didn’t know the half of it).  They taught us that you needed the Holy Spirit in order to obey God.  You couldn’t get the Holy Spirit until you were baptized.  You couldn’t get baptized until you were “mature” (i.e., an adult).  Ergo, kids couldn’t be baptized, and thus did not have the Holy Spirit.  But by god!  They were expected to toe the line!  They were expected to be perfect!  Kids never got a break!  

By contrast, the worst members in WCG were usually the old people. Those with the “hoary” head (whore-y head?  I was never quite sure)!  Some of those old codgers (and there were good ones, too) pulled some of the most outrageous crap you could imagine, spreading gossip and divisiveness wherever they went.  Many were selfish, petty, petulant, and just plain cantankerous.  But did they ever face discipline?  Maybe some did, but I never saw it happen.  The old people, according to the Bible, were supposed to be “wise and full of years”, and their “wisdom” was to be a beacon for the rest of us to live by.  Very few of them were, yet they seemed to have a blank check when it came to bad behavior. 

But the kids never got a break. 

It was bad enough being a kid with a weird religion.  Kids face more severe peer pressure than anyone else on the planet.  Kids can be extremely cruel to other kids, and no one knows that more than a church kid.  What kids want more than anything else is to be accepted by their peers.  Most of those peers are the kids at school, and if you are the one odd-ball in the group, your life is going to be miserable. 

So your parents suddenly adopt this weird religion.  Not only do you go to church on Saturday, but you can’t observe most major holidays.  You have to go to school in January and suffer through other kids asking what you got for Christmas.  You can’t go trick-or-treating.  You can’t go to football or basketball games on Friday night.  You can’t eat hotdogs.  The list of what you can’t do is several times longer than the things you can do.  You stick out like a sore thumb, and everyone notices you.  A lot of people shun you. 

You can’t date anyone at school, you can’t go to parties, you may be forced to dress in clothing that is years out of style.  If you’re a girl, you’re forbidden to wear makeup, or some of the more stylish fashions.  

All of that is bad enough.  Up to this point, it’s just plain hard to be a church kid.  But then it gets worse. 

 

The Really Unpardonable Sin 

Not only do you belong to a weird religion, you are a member of a cult!  That cult has a high-profile leader who screams and foams and threatens his followers with extreme violence if they fail to obey his voice.  Enforcing that leader’s desires is a task force of men called ministers (though they do very little actual “ministering”).  These men scream and foam and threaten people at the local level, browbeating parents and kids alike.  The parents, beaten down already, try to enforce this abject lifestyle on their children, often screaming and foaming and threatening. 

This is religious child abuse.  This is the unpardonable sin. 

But it gets worse.  Common sense goes out the window.  Not only do the parents force their kids to live this lifestyle, they often make stupid decisions that, on the face of it, should be obviously wrong.  Girls are sometimes forced to date men many years their senior, men who seem creepy to them.  Sometimes these girls are date-raped, but does anyone believe them?  Hell no!  If anything happened, it’s the girl’s fault! 

What happened to common sense?  Can’t you tell that there is something weird about a 35 year-old man, still living with his mother, who wants to date a 16 year-old girl?  Doesn’t that seem a little odd to you?  Have you ever heard of child molesters?  Have you ever heard of stalkers?  Have you ever heard of perverts? 

Granted, the guy may still be single simply because he lives in a cult with very few eligible women, and is not allowed to marry outside the cult.  But a 16 year-old girl?  What happened to common sense? 

Now here comes a kid with a dream.  She wants to be an artist.  She has a lot of talent.  She does beautiful work, and doing it brings her a great deal of satisfaction.  Will she find any support from the people at “church”?  Not on your life!  More likely, she will be encouraged to learn cooking, cleaning, and all the domestic skills she will need to become a “Proverbs 31 woman”; i.e., her only role in life is to be someone’s wife and bear his children. 

Nothing wrong with that, of course.  The girl may even have that goal as part of her dream.  But she can be a wife, a mother, and still be so much more!  She can be an artist as well, pursue a career, and find fulfillment in life.  But not in the cult.  People in the cult (and probably her parents as well) will tell her to forget it — God didn’t “call” her to draw pictures.  God expects her to live a “godly life” (whatever that means)!  Who does she think she is, anyway?  She can’t be an artist.  She can’t be famous.  That’s vanity!  Why should she waste her time drawing pictures when she can be praying and studying instead?  After all, she needs to prepare herself to raise godly children, doesn’t she? 

Enough people tell her that, and her parents don’t back her up, and her dream is crushed.  Her spirit is crushed.  And she is miserable for the rest of her days. 

Here’s a boy who excels in sports.  He’s a gifted baseball player.  He has the talent to make the pros.  But he can’t pursue that dream.  If he plays high-school ball, he may have to play on the “Sabbath”.  So he either doesn’t play at all, or at best has an understanding coach who lets him play when he can. 

Let’s assume the latter.  The coach lets him play the Wednesday games and those Friday games that start before sunset, though he has to step out in the 3rd inning because the sun is going down.  The kid at least gets to play, and he excels.  Word of his skill reaches a major league scout.  The scout watches the kid play and, upon graduation, approaches him with an offer. 

What is that kid going to do?  He desperately wants to play major league ball, but no franchise is going to put him in the roster when he can’t play Friday night or Saturday.  They just won’t.  Not even Jewish players get that kind of break, and when one steps down for Yom Kippur, it makes network headlines. 

The boy makes his decision.  He has to obey God.  He walks away from a once-in-a-lifetime career that most people only dream about, but he might actually achieve.  His spirit is crushed.  He will never be the same again.  Perhaps, in 20 years, he will come to recognize that what he thought was “God’s true church” is nothing more than a blood-sucking cult, and he gets out.  But what then?  He’s 38 years old, the age he should be retiring from his major league career.  The window of opportunity closed years ago.  Now it’s too late. 

What do you say to that boy, now a middle-aged man, when he realizes he could have had that career, that he should have signed that contract?  What do you say to him now?  What do you tell him to console him?  How do you make him feel better? 

The answer?  You don’t.  There is nothing you can say! 

That, ladies and gentlemen, is religious child abuse. 

That…is the unpardonable sin! 

There are so many more scenarios, every one of them true to life.  There are tens of thousands of people out there with stories to tell even more horrible than anything I have related.  Perhaps you have a similar story.  I encourage you to share it with the readers of Painful Truth.  Send us an email.  It’s important that people realize, that people understand.  Why? 

Because the unpardonable sin is still being committed every day in the splinter cults and the WCG!

  — 07/31/2005

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