The Painful Truth-Herbert W. Armstrong's Worldwide Church of God

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

Years back, I had the responsibility to do some work to prepare the Weyerhaeuser Mill in Valliant, Oklahoma for the Year 2000. I wasn’t certain what to expect. What I found was most unexpected.

The then Weyerhaeuser Mill was the largest mill of its kind in the world. In scale, you might think of a gear the size of one inside a old style Swiss watch or even a gear in a car. In the mill, a gear was typically a minimum of 6 feet across (about two meters for you in the rest of the world). Everything there was huge!

Paper mills work using wood pulp “digested” and pressed into kraft paper using 430 degrees of heat. The “digesting” part causes sulphur, turpentine and chlorine to be airborne and quite pervasive. The smell of the place was not unlike a hospital surrounded by a forest in hell. It got into everything. The way to survive it was to go to the mill to do the work, return to the motel room and take a shower. Taking a shower in the morning before leaving for the plant was useless. Before the shower, I would put my clothes I wore that day into a black plastic garbage bag and put that bag inside another black plastic garbage bag.

One of my colleagues had travelled by jet back to corporate headquarters. He had papers from the office at the mill in his brief case. All he did was open the briefcase. Immediately, the smell was all over the jet cabin and many people on board became sick.

I thought I would be smart: When I arrived home, I got the washer started and dumped my clothes on the bed, thinking to put them in the machine presently. Immediately, everyone in the house wanted to know if the sewer had backed up. I should have dumped the clothes directly from the garbage bags into the washer, but it was far too late. It took two hours to air out the house — with the plastic garbage bags outside in the garbage.

The mill controller told me that a very clean living Mormon family man had worked at the mill for 20 years and retired. He moved away and shortly died of cancer. The controller told me that he was convinced that the chlorine, sulphur and turpentine had killed him. It was difficult to see it any other way.

The remarkable thing was that after almost exactly six months, people who worked continuously at the mill stopped smelling the chlorine, sulphur and turpentine. Anyone who suddenly told their coworkers that they couldn’t smell it anymore had their coworkers go, yup, he’s been here six months.

In 2009, I went to the first day of the days of unleavened bread with the UCG in Tacoma. It had been over three years, and I was only there for my wife’s sake. I no sooner walked through the door than the minister came by and told everyone in hearing range that I was stubborn. He later told my wife to force me to return to United. Her reaction was that she couldn’t make me do anything. Besides, who was the minister to make such outrageously presumptuous demands? I remembered very well the circumstances with my last contact with the minister: He lied to me, broke his promises, falsely accused me and lied to others about me [I can ruin my own reputation just fine on my own without help from a UCG minister, thanks loads]. Besides being vain to the point of considering taking group photographs of himself, he engineered some of the most illegal, immoral and unethical acts I have seen outside corporate America.

In order to make the whole stalking case go away, he offered the UCG couple a bribe. What do you want the most,he asked? “Oh, I’d really like to go to the Feast in Alaska,” was the reply. So instead of doing the I Corinthians 5 thing and putting the immoral stalker out of the church for a time until he, well, stopped stalking church members, the minister offered a bribe to keep the whole thing out of court. He issued a check out of third tithe, taking it from whatever hapless widows and orphans there might be, and gave it to the stalked. Before the ink dried, they deposited it and got tickets to Alaska… and filed suit in court. It was a win-win for them. United, not so much. You must admit it was a clever ploy, though. I think the minister more than met his match.

So when I walked into the UCG services in 2009, the arrogance of the minister hit me every bit as hard as the stench of the Weyerhaeuser mill. It stinks, it really does. I realized then that I had been in the stench since 1964 when I first attended with the Radio Church of God. I was 17 and naive. My sense of discrimination was simply not present. I could not sense the arrogance. I thought these people were gods — a simpleton from the hinterland of a farming community subjected to the sophisticated city folk. I was, in that environment, under those circumstances, extremely poor and cut off from my own folks, subject to the tender mercies of those godlets in sheep’s clothing, persuaded to commit the best and the rest of my life to Herbert Armstrong with no hope of being or achieving anything in this life. Hooray, I was on the bottom. The lowest of the low. I had no status whatsoever. I lived as best I could on less than minimum wage. Often, I fasted because I actually had nothing to eat. I paid my full tithe on my gross income before anything else and “Second Tithe” as well. At the best of times, I had $3.25 to last me a fortnight until the next paycheck. Needless to say, I lost a lot of weight and was quite gaunt. It wasn’t really that healthy, but I thought I was happy, giving my life to God and all.

It was only later — much later — that I realized that I was giving my life to a parasite who never even knew who I was: Just another face in the crowd of 6,000 people for the two hours he stood at the podium at the Feast of Tabernacles. I was dirt poor and he was wealthy beyond the hopes of avarice. Because I grew up in a Catholic Parochial school, I thought Herbert Armstrong had a vow of poverty and chastity, just like the Catholic Sisters. After all, he said he didn’t really own anything.

It was later that I began to see the arrogance of Herbert Armstrong. I got to perceive the arrogance of Roderick Meredith. I’ve gotten experience first hand with the arrogance of Joseph Tkach, Senior.

It stinks. It all stinks. It stinks to high heaven.

Well, you know. After being out of the stench of Armstrongism for a few years, you don’t appreciate what you are missing, until the day you walk back into it. Then it hits you. It is overpowering. But then, I didn’t and don’t have to put up with it. I don’t attend United any longer. I don’t attend any Armstrongist church. Oh, a visit now and then for reasons other than spiritual health, because they don’t offer much in the way of anything spiritual. They don’t recognize the fact that they are empty. If you attend services with the Armstrongists, it is highly likely you will hear about their support programs, or, Scripturally, be regaled with the minutia and unnecessary details of the weights and measures of utinsels in the Arc of the Covenant.

They are utterly devoid of spirituality, let alone humanity, because they are used to they way they are treated: With dignity, honor and deference. They don’t seem to realize that I’ve very much outgrown them and have no need for them any longer. They never had that much to offer in the first place and they have nothing to offer now.

I also have the benefit of the experience of the non Armstrongist Sabbath keeping churches of God. You’d be surprised how like the Armstrongist churches of God are at first glance. There’s not much difference in the doctrines, but there is a very great difference in the way people are treated. The minister is an unpaid volunteer who has a day job. I can actually talk to and relate to the minister. He’s just a regular bloke without the “halo glow” about him. There’s equality among the people. The standards are quite different. After awhile, you recover from the stench of the Armstrongists and wonder what you ever saw in them. They no longer seem bigger than life. The Armstrongists merely seem terribly pathetic.

The arrogance of the Armstrongists hit you when you come through the door. You can smell the stench when you read their magazine. You get the stench from their website. You can see the stench from the telecasts and podcasts. And heaven fore-fend, you can really get the stench at the Feast of Tabernacles when they declare the Word of the Lord and how the Statutes, Laws and Judgments of God are going to be applied in the Millennium and in the Second Resurrection: An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, as the judges determine. You can get the stench of nuttiness from their arrogance from their sermons — they are right and you are wrong and THEY ARE IN CHARGE! THEY HAVE THE POWER!

Not anymore.

In case you were wondering about that Weyerhaeuser Mill in Valliant, Oklahoma? Weyerhaeuser sold its entire Containerboard Packaging Business in 2008, replete with over two dozen plants and several mills, including the one in Valiant, to International Paper Company. International Paper was under-capitalized and nearly immediately closed one of the three lines at the mill and laid off 60 people — a hard hit in an already depressed part of the country. I presume that the stench continues, just at a diminished capacity, for a mill that opened in 1982 and decreased the adult illiteracy rate from 55% in that area to 45%. I’m thinking that illiteracy will go even higher than original. It’s sad that the buffet 14 miles from the mill, featuring deep fat fried catfish will have fewer customers. By the way, if you ever go there, or anywhere in Valiant, be sure to bring cash, because no one accepts credit cards, not even Visa. But the King’s Motel still accepts paying guests by the hour.

So I hope you learn something from this: There is a stench to the arrogance of the Armstrongists. But beware: Stay with them for six months and you won’t notice it any more. But it could kill you.

Next time: Lies

I have to admit that sometimes I can be pretty dense, although, in my defense, even highly qualified experts who should know better sometimes miss the point. It was only last year did something come clear to me because of an experience I had with a young man who was not exactly who he seemed to be. As a result, it would seem time to clarify the distinctions between the pure narcissist, psychopath and sociopath.

My introduction to the concept of narcissists came from William D. Meyer over at the main website for the Painful Truth:

http://hwarmstrong.com/narcissistic.htm

It was very helpful to me, personally. I wondered about some people I knew personally, and this helped me immeasurally in my personal and professional life. It suddenly made sense to me when I dealt with people who were the center of their own universe and could in no way relate to others in a personal way or even acknowledge other people’s worth except for what they did personally for the narcissist himself or herself. I also had unfortunate interactions with Dr. Sam Vaknid and bought his book. I can agree with one thing he said in his book, Malignant Self Love — Narcissism Revisited: “My disorder is here to stay, the prognosis is poor and alarming”. The Narcissist has no empathy for others. The Narcissist will never change. Everyone else who comes into the life of the Narcissist will probably end up to be collateral damage.

So I thought Narcissists were really bad. But there are worse things in this world. I was in the locker room at Balley’s Pac West after a workout when a retired doctor who also worked out there told me about Dr. Robert Hare and  his book: Without Conscience — The Disturbing World of Psychopaths Among Us. “It’s a fun read,” the retired doctor said. After my experiences with them, and especially a Church of God psychopath leader [well documented by a psychiatrist], I conclude that the read might be fun, but actual experience with them, not so much. I’ve never been so miserable in my life as when I’ve been forced to deal with psychopaths. Dr. Hare wrote another, more useful and useable book with a colleague: Snakes in Suits — When Psychopaths Go to Work. Snakes in Suits unveils the basic patterns of the Psychopath: Evaluation, manipulation, abandonment. They are the risk-taking game players. Ironically, a story in the book tells of how a psychopath ripped off a church. It appears to me — and this is just my thinking — that the highest concentration of psychopaths are in Jails / Prisons, Corporations, Government and Churches. Otherwise, they are 2% or so of the general populace. However, statistics are hardly comforting if you end up being on their radar. You are going to be toast. They have the talent to con just about everybody and rip them off royally.

Along the way, people have asked me whether Herbert Armstrong was a psychopath. I have told them universally that I did not know. For one thing, anyone with a high vocabulary is not easy to spot as a psychopath, and, although, as with everything with Herbert Armstrong exaggerated to be bigger than life, and although perhaps his vocabulary was not as high as he’d like to have believed, it still would certainly cloud the issue.

Two years ago I encountered a young man who seemed sincere and quite religiously pious. He said and seemed to do all the right things. He had quite a family history which many would find somewhat disturbing, but he seemed OK. My radar was on for Narcissists and Psychopaths, but I was missing the final piece. I could not for the life of me figure this guy out. I wondered what was going on. He seemed to familiar to me, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

After quite a bit of research, I discovered the rather unexpected answer: He was a sociopath. Before you begin jumping to any conclusions, let me say that Dr. Robert Hare says that the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM IV) is wrong. It confuses the distinction between sociopaths and psychopaths. A little more research revealed the difference: While psychopaths are narcissistic, have no conscience and play games with people, the sociopath is narcissistic, has a situational conscience and is an opportunist.

What is a situational conscience?

A situational conscience is a conscience which is activated within a sociopath for a particular venue. That is to say that a sociopath may very well have no problem at all murdering, lying and theft with the general public, but for his particular social association, he may hold it anathema to do so with a particular segment of his social group. For example, the sociopath I knew hates all other men and he would have no problem hurting them — even killing them, but he would NEVER even think of hurting or doing anything bad to the women of his own family.

A perfect example of sociopaths is represented by the Mafia: They may murder, steal, lie, run illegal gambling and prostitution rings, cheat and sell drugs. Nevertheless, Mafia members would never do that to other Mafia members. It would probably mean death. Their sociopathic behavior is compartmentalized to the world outside of their own social group. And, of course, the one who holds the whole thing together is the Godfather.

If you view Herbert Armstrong as the Spiritual Mafia Godfather, it explains a lot. In the Radio Church of God and later in the Worldwide Church of God, his behavior was not that far off the mark as a sociopath acting as a Godfather. He generally took care of his family. He protected his son, even as GTA committed reprehensible acts. He took care of his wife and daughters, albeit there seems to be some aberrations in that regard. He took care of his closest lieutenants, as long as they did what he wanted them to do. He viewed the rest of us as the sort of plebians which carried out the operations and supported the main Family. At this point, Tkatch’s “We are Family” just doesn’t seem that appealing. It would be natural for him to fall prey to a sociopath who made outrageous claims of being connected to the Mafia.

The Worldwide Church of God was filled with outrageous anomalies. Men who became ministers married coeds who had been date raped by GTA. Some of them made it all the way to be Evangelists — all the while knowing the truth. It was natural that Roderick Meredith would be seen by Herbert Armstrong as his loyal “enforcer” — hard, harsh, cruel, but loyal to the Godfather himself. People ended up engaging in and subject to all sorts of conduct that was illegal, immoral and unethical. Herbert Armstrong himself said it was OK to lie to the general populace in order to bring them to “the truth” whatever that was. Personal opinions of the Godfather became doctrine, just as does in the Mafia. He had all the control and power. No one could oppose him.

Herbert Armstrong could be very nice to those he though were “important” and could be of use to him. I think, though, as aggressive and manic as he was, Herbert Armstrong was an opportunist. He didn’t aggressively play games and play people, but he wasn’t above engaging in opportunities when they came his way. For example, he honored and held up his eight Japanese “Sons” and even threatened to leave us all in favor of them. Stanley Rader was an opportunity he could not pass up, particularly because Rader straightened out the business end of things. But to make him an Evangelist after baptizing him in a bathtub? Well, you know, it’s important that Godfather makes it clear what kind of treatment of honor and respect someone gets in doing his work and providing him service. After all, the end justifies the means, just as it does in the Mafia. As long as the Godfather and his work was promoted, all else could be forgiven.

So now my training is complete and I have the trinity of narcissim well defined and nailed down: Good enough for practical use in daily life. My advice to you is the same as I take myself: As much as lies within us, avoid Narcissists, Psychopaths AND Sociopaths. Our lives are better off for it. Unfortunatly, I work for them, so there isn’t that much escape, but at least I understand their deviant nuttiness.

I hope that my experiences will be of practical benefit for you.

Keep your radar on.