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

As I was doing my essays on the nature of freedom from religious organizations, I was informed that the idea of “judge not, that ye be not judged” would lead to anarchy in today’s society.

If, within the context of truth, we cannot judge or condemn others, how would we go about enforcing obedience for those who simply refuse to try and live by a moral standard?

Ad we know from Matthew 5, Jesus said he came not to destroy the law, but to fulfill “every jot and tittle” of the law.

However, if we try to keep that law, in accordance with Paul’s statement in Romans 8:7, the result would be infinite splintering of religious beliefs. Jesus apparently agreed with that, since he said in Matthew 10:34-38 that he came to bring about exactly those results!

In other words, the attempt to obey “God’s law” will force us to become more and more individualistic in spite of ourselves.. yet out of that individualism, Jesus also told us we are not to seek “an eye for an eye” or vengeance in our dealings with others.

What we see in that is a “separation of church and state”. To pursue the ideals taught by Jesus, to love those that hate you, to pray for those that use and persecute you, to bless those that curse you, these would make a person an open invitation to every crook who ignored those principles.

But by that same token, we cannot simply take vengeance into our own hands. The very act of doing so is to claim that we can speak with authority in God’s name over the life of others.

So, it becomes necessary to have a system that “executes wrath”, and Paul covers that subject in Romans 13. “For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God.”

But let’s also look at Matthew 4: 8-10, and Luke 4: 5-7. We recognize from that statement that Satan has power over all world governments. So if all powers are ordained of God, then we are forced to conclude that Satan’s power is ordained of God(assuming that they exist, of course).

The power of vengeance, of wrath, of even death, is given to Satan, recognized and ordained by God. In Hebrews 2: 14 we see this. “For as much as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil.”

One favorite statement of Libertarians is that of Thomas Paine: Government at its best is but a necessary evil….

While Paine himself “converted” to atheism at a later time, he actually made a statement consistent with the bible. Government, from the scriptures above, is a necessary evil.

So, while the “higher powers” are ordained of God, and we are to be subject to them, they are nothing more than a necessary evil, and the direct administrator of them is not God.

Romans 13:3 “For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil”.

If government itself is a necessary evil, it is empowered to punish only evil. Therefore, we see from Jesus’ teachings that his followers are not to condemn others, nor to practice vengeance.

But before he tells us to be subject to the higher powers, Paul reminds us of the same obligation in Romans 12:19-20: “Dearly beloved, revenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine, and I will repay, saith the Lord.”

Notice that first part, “revenge not yourselves”. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. in his treatise on the Common Law, tells us that law has developed out of a need for vengeance. It was necessary to have a higher power to enforce vengeance, but both Jesus and Paul tells us that vengeance is not our job.
Verse 20: “Therefore, if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: For in so doing, thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head”.

Within the teachings above, we see the presumption of innocence for all accused persons. Can the “higher power” accuse? Can Satan act as accuser to people? The whole point of Jesus’ life, as we saw in Hebrews 2, above, is to overcome Satan’s control over death.

This means that government must follow certain guidelines before there can be punishment, and since God ordains all government, then all government would be subject to the protections ordained by God:
1.presumption of innocence(Isaiah 54:17)
2.Right to face your accuser(Isaiah 50:8)
3.No entrapment(Isaiah 29:21, Jeremiah 5: 26-31)
4.Two unbiased witnesses for all accusations(Deuteronomy 17:6, 19:15)
5.Protection from perjury(Deut. 19:19)
6.Trial by jury(1 Corinthians 6)

Notice that these are recognized in the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution, along with the First Amendment, giving freedom of religion. A government of “God”, therefore, would of necessity be a government in which innocence is to be preserved.

In regard to that right against self incrimination, former Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas says:

“The principle that a man is not obliged to furnish the state with ammunition to use against him is basic to this conception.” The state must “within the limits of accepted procedure”, punish lawbreakers. “But it has no right to compel the sovereign individual to surrender or impair his right to self defense….A man may be punished, even put to death by the state; but…he should not be made to prostrate himself before its majesty. Mea culpa belongs to a man and his God. It is a plea that cannot be exacted from free men by human authority. To require it is to insist that the state is the superior of the individuals who compose it, instead of their instrument”.

As Constitutional historian Leonard Levy wrote “The framers understood that without fair and regularized procedures to protect the criminally accused, there could be no liberty. They knew that from time immemorial, the tyrant’s first step was to use the criminal law to crush his opposition”.

As Lord Acton said, power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Government, said Paine, at its very best is but a necessary evil.

The principle of rule by the people is bound within the concept of “due process of law”. We read it in both the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, first as protection from the federal government, and then as protection against the states.

No person shall be deprive of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.

Due process, said Chief Justice Edward Coke of England, came from Magna Carta. It was defined as “lawful judgement of peers and law of the land”. This, said U.S. Justice Joseph Story, meant the common law.

To be “subject to higher powers” is a necessity, but it is a necessity that comes secondary to the right of individuals to live freely. That is the

essence of Paul’s teachings about Jesus.

I can expand on this later.

Comments

This article ties directly to my essay below, and it was sparked by a response in the “comments” section.

The really big deal in Christianity is this thing called the “Holy Spirit”. The assumption is that you must be “born again”, and in order to be “born again”, you must also join a legitimate, approved religion, and then follow their teachings. Yeah, right.

It is a natural tendency of people, when seeking truth, to try and find a truth that is collective. We seek “birds of a feather”. Christianity has evolved this collective sense to make us believe that we cannot have any “legitimacy” before God unless we accept the officially authorized versions.

Actually, we can blow the “christian” definitions of “Holy Spirit” right out of the water simply by looking at the New testament itself.

The big verse that Christians point us to is in John chapter three. In verse 3, Jesus told Nicodemus, “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God”.

If we look at that term “born again’ we see a difference from other passages, where the Greek “annagennao” is used, which literally means again born. Here we see reference to the greek word “anothen“, which means “from above”.

So, unless one is born “from above” one cannot see the kingdom of God.

Apparently Nicodemus had real trouble with that idea, and yet Jesus never went to great lengths to explain what he meant. He insinuated that Nicodemus should be familiar with the idea already if he were a rabbi of Israel.

Whatever “born again” did mean, it apparently had nothing to do with “fleshy” birth, as Jesus pointed out in verse six.

But this creates a very big problem. If the fleshy mind is enmity against God and cannot be subject to God, as Romans 8:7 tells us, and if, as Godel’s theorem tells us, there simply is no way we can capture all truth into one neural net, one system of thought, how exactly do we go about determining what the “Holy Spirit” is?

Well, you can’t “see” unless you are born of the spirit. And that tells us absolutely nothing at all.
There simply is no manual, no algorithm, no process by which we can logically deduct by our natural mind, what the “Holy Spirit” actually is, and the only way we can understand it is to be “born from above”.

We would be forced to conclude, therefore, that if the christian religions are right, and if they actually do represent “Christ”, then there would never be a logical, rational method of knowing if they ARE right or wrong. Such a choice to follow them would have to be a process of blind faith.

Yet Jesus himself, in Matthew 24, warned us to “take heed that no man deceive you….”

There must be some logical process to know what is right and what is not, but even by Jesus’ admission, that process is simply not subject to our natural processes of thought. If we can rationally, logically decide on that process, there would be no need for many religions, yet Jesus warned his followers that “many will come in my name, and will deceive many”.

That very statement by Jesus, in itself, indicates that there simply is no logical process by which we can reduce truth to one package. If we could, we already would have, which leaves us with one, and only one, logical choice to make: Follow no one, which is exactly what Jesus said in Matthew 24:23.

Okay, let’s say there was no Jesus. Well, that would mean it is not necessary to follow any man who comes in the name of Christ. Therefore, Jesus or no Jesus, the passage in Matthew 24;23 tells us the truth, any way you look at it!

To say that the “Holy Spirit” is simply a form of “crowd control”, therefore, is to assume that the “christian” religions are correct, even thought they directly contradict not only simple logic, but the direct statement attributed to Jesus himself.

In fact, that is what Jesus indicated in John 3: 8: “The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound therof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the spirit.”

There is no organizational capacity, no decision procedure to define the “Holy Spirit” and that in itself puts all so-called christian religions out of business.

Yet that is exactly what Paul told us in Romans 8:7, 8:29-30, and 9:16-22, not to mention such scripture as Ephesians 2:8-10.

You can’t get “there” from “here”.

But again, let’s assume you can do so. If there is such a decision procedure that represents the Holy Spirit, then that procedure can be translated to algorithms, which can then be programmed, so that there will be no difference between a computer ‘son of God’ who is programmed with an identical process known as the Holy Spirit.

This reduces it to a “Turing Test” of truth. Alan Turing proposed such a test when he devised his “Universal Turing Machine’, which was his mental creation of the first computer. Turing proposed that if you placed a computer of sufficient programming behind a wall, and had another person sitting beside the computer, a questioner on the other side of the wall, feeding both computer and person handwritten questions, should not be able to tell the difference between “man” and “machine”.

But that is exactly what religions attempt to do when they insist that their religion, which is based on mechanical ideas about God, subject to the same laws of physics and limits of Godel’s theorem, can somehow collectively represent God, when one person simply has no way of knowing! The simple realization is this: if collective religions can accurately represent God, then so can a computer, since computers are based on the same principles of mechanical rules of thought as religions!

If there is a “Holy Spirit”, it cannot be subject to the limitations of rational, finite, logical processes of human thought, and that is exactly what both Jesus and Paul told us! It cannot be achieved by any “fleshy” process. No religion can possibly truthfully represent God, nor can any human individual do so!

So what is this “Holy Spirit” from a biblical perspective? Actually, Paul does describe it very well, but in doing so, he cancels the possible authority of ALL human organizations.

Jesus said there were two births, one of flesh, and one of spirit. The birth of spirit was ‘from above’. But we have no evidence of anything ‘from above’, so we have no process of choice as to how we can achieve whatever it is.

Paul
begins to define these two births in Romans 9:6, last part, “For they are not all Israel, which are of Israel.
“Neither, because they are the seed of Abraham, are they all children: but, ‘In Isaac shall thy seed be called’.
“That is, they which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God: but the children of the PROMISE are counted for the seed.
“For this is the word of promise, ‘At this time will I come, and Sarah shall have a son’. “

Israel, the physical descendants of Abraham, were “created” as a covenant nation at Sinai, yet the promise made to Abraham, said Paul, came four hundred thirty years before that covenant with Israel.

The conclusion is simple enough: anyone who was a “child of God” was to be born in just the same fashion, under just the same circumstances, as Isaac. They were born of that very promise, foreknown(as Isaac was) predestined(as Isaac was), called(as Isaac was) glorified(as Isaac was).

Paul further states in Galatians 4:28 that “Now we brethren, as Isaac was, are children of the promise”.

Just as Isaac was, in the very same conditions stated in Romans 8:29-30. Either you’re born of it, or you are not, and there is no way to tell otherwise.

It is both brilliant and simple. It is not dependent on human thought or human organization, or human decision procedures. The best that people can do is try to organize in the name of God, but they will always tend toward speciation and splintering. The “purpose” of all this is quite evidently NOT one of organizing people, but forcing them to confront the impotence of all such efforts. HWA did you all a favor, because he scammed you and allowed you to be free of all this crap.

But in fact, there never was any authority of men to establish God’s kingdom by their own effort. It simply cannot be done.
Galatians 3:29 : “And if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise”.

So what if there’s no God? Then you can’t ever truthfully organize in God’s name. What if there is a God and Paul was correct? You STILL can’t organize in God’s name!

In either case, there is only one correct conclusion: you are free to make your own moral decisions, and you are to be left alone by others unless you harm another, after which you must be accused truthfully by others. That is the basis of the law and of grace.

Comments

Two responses to my essay are a common variation of what is generally argued as refutation against the bible, and they are good arguments.

The first argument is to look at all the garbage offered as punishment to those who “curse their parents” or the severity of death for the smallest infraction. Who in the world, in this enlightened age, would want to follow those prescriptions?

Nobody of any intelligence, and I agree with that.

Second argument is that you can make the bible say anything, and that is precisely the strength of my own argument, as is the first argument, above.

What does the Old Testament law say in the words of Isaiah, called the “universalist” prophet?
How about the presumption of innocence? (Isaiah 54:17)
Right to face your accuser, with God’s vindication(Isaiah 50:8)
Right against self incrimination is also implied in both these scriptures.
Also, you will notice in Deuteronomy 19:15 that two witnesses are required for all acusations and those witnesses are not to be provided by the government. The two main biblical examples I can think of where the state provided witnesses was in the story of Ahab and Naboth (not too good), and Judas betraying Jesus (also not so good).

The Supreme Court, in fact, recognized that our right against self incrimination has its analogue in the bible (Miranda vs Arizona, footnote 27).

Of all the stupid, ridiculous laws in the OT, the main teaching in every case is that the accused is to be protected, not only in personal cases, but also against usury laws, and even slaves were to be freed if they escaped to another free man(Deuteronomy 23:15-16).

The laws were given with the constant reminder that “you were once strangers in a strange land”. The implication from this was that recognition of justice always took precedence over the “majority rule”.

In the New testament, you will see that Jesus, in is great “thesis on the law”(Matthew chapters 5-7), recommended that any two individuals could settle all matters out of court. So, while he said that not one jot or tittle of the law would be done away until all was fulfilled, he actually placed the settlement of arguments within a framework of “two or three”.

You will see that Jesus expanded on this principle in Matthew 18:15-18, where he pointed out that any two people could settle trespasses between themselves, using the “two witness” rule of Deuteronomy 17 and 19.

As Jesus pointed out, “whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose will be loosed in heaven”.

This doesn’t imply that some human can become a recognized power of God, but that any two people could simply decide among themselves to settle a matter, and it would have God’s recognition.

Further, said Jesus, if it couldn’t be settled between two or three, take it before the community or the church. He didn’t recognize government as official arbiter. In fact, Jesus said if your adversary didn’t want to accept the conclusion of the community, treat him as a “gentile or tax collector”.

That doesn’t indicate that Jesus would want matters settled by tax collecting powers of state.

Also, Jesus did not approve of the legal system within Jewish culture. While he admitted that scribes and Pharisees “sit in Moses’ seat”, he then went on to condemn their actions, calling them hypocrites.

Scribes and Pharisees represented the popular legal “lay” authorities of the day, yet Jesus said they “shut up the kingdom of heaven against men; for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in”.

If you compare that to Matthew 18:15-18, you will see that Jesus allowed any two people to settle matters outside of “Moses’ seat”.

This same message is copied in Luke 11:52: “Woe unto you lawyers! For ye have taken away the key of knowledge: ye entered not in yourselves,, and them that were entering in, ye hindered”.

This is merely the repetition of a teaching in Isaiah 29:11:

“And the vision of all is become unto you as the words of a closed book that is sealed…”

Verse 16: “Surely your turning of things upside down shall be esteemed as the potter’s clay: for shall the work say of him that made it, he made me not? Or shall the thing framed say of him that frameth it, he had no understanding?”

Jesus’ teachings merely returned the idea of government as it was intended to be, taught to children, and children’s children, remembering the idea of mercy, presumption of innocence, and not condemning. “Judge not that ye be not judged”.

Second argument: You can make the bible say anything. Exactly! And this is where Paul’s teaching is quite valuable. Can we have any legitimate, “approved” understanding of God? Not according to Romans 8:7:
“Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the laws of God and neither indeed can be”.

This leads us to a very logical result corresponding to the argument above:
Any attempt to organize people according to God’s law would inevitably lead to a confusion of disagreeing concepts as to what God’s law is. If you don’t believe that, simply look at the continually splintering groups of ex-WCG members who can’t find the proper “handle” on truth.

But that’s exactly what Jesus said would happen for such people in Matthew 10:34-38.

So, if the carnal, natural mind cannot be subject to God, and if all attempts to follow Jesus result in splintering and speciation, even to family members, we cannot assume, under any process, that if there is a God, “He” doesn’t desire us to unite, but rather to begin thinking as individuals.

Jesus said “Beware the leaven of the Pharisees”. And what does leaven do? It grows, expands, includes more and more until it exhausts all possible growth, and then it collapses.

This compares generally to a process called entropy. In any organized system, the attempt to expand that organization will result in chaos of related systems, simply because energy can neither be created nor destroyed. The resulting breakdown of order in relate systems, chaos, is the process generally recognized as entropy.

So, “you can make the bible say anything”. based on the teaching of Jesus and Paul, what does that tell us?

It tells us exactly what Jesus said in Matthew 18:15-18, that there are no legitimate authorities. The presumption of innocence is to override the power
of an “eye for an eye”, which Jesus specifically prohibited to his followers.

So, the natural mind cannot be subject to God, there must be the presumption of innocence, and we cannot directly exercise an “eye for an eye”, which means we have no power whatever to control or organize or rule over others.

But then, Jesus told us that he who would be greatest of all should be servant of all.

But let’s take Paul’s teaching in Romans 8:7 and see where he went with it. If there is no power of the mind to organize according to God’s law “legitimately”, can there be some decision procedure, some algorithm, some ‘freewill” act by which we can declare ourselves God’s elect?

Paul said it can;t be done, as we see from Romans 8:29-30. The logic is simple enough: if God foreknows, predestined. called, and glorified his own children, there simply is no decision procedure whatever by which we may recognize ourselves as “elect”. Can’t be done.

And in case you think Paul might have meant something else, he repeats the idea more directly in Romans 9:16-22. There simply is no decision procedure by which we may organize ourselves as God’s representatives.

This is fully consistent with Jesus’ teachings, who said we could settle matters among ourselves by ourselves, that we could exercise the rule of law that recognized presumption of innocence, right to face the accuser, trial by jury(1 Cor 6) and right against self incrimination, also provided in Isaiah 54:17.

These are all principles incorporated into the US Constitution in the form of the Bill of Rights.
Further, Jesus‘ teaching that we are free to settle matters within the church and outside of courts is recognized in the First Amendment.

So yes, you can “make the bible say anything”, but that is the very reason why both Jesus and Paul pointed out that we are free to develop our own social process, always remembering that we are no better or no more exalted than any other person in our standing before truth. All men and women are created equal.

If any religious leader says otherwise, he’s simply a liar.

Comments