Bill
Albany, NY, USA
whoffman@nycap.rr.com
I recently found your web site with the non-believer former members of WCG. I left WCG some time between 96 and 97. I guess I was in about 10 years. My wife grew up in "the church." Fortunately, we both left together. It was sort of a gradual process. Basically, the attempt to make a 180 in doctrine was a bit much for me. It was quite painful to watch the minister try to teach what he had been told, when it was clear he was not sure about it yet. I suppose at the end of the day, I sort of looked at both sides of the argument and said, they both make sense, and can be "proved" from the bible. Therefore, there must be something wrong with this "bible." It can be used to create many realities and religions.
Until recently, I sort of looked at the WCG as a best effort at trying to follow the bible, I just no longer believe in the bible. However, a friend from the WCG recently stopped by and got me thinking about the cultish nature of WCG. I started doing some web searches and now look back at the experience more as a cult than anything else. I now have serious doubts about the motives of those in charge of WCG.
I have read a few books along the way that have helped me come to my current thinking on things. I would be interested in reading suggestions from others as well. Here is a short list:
- Daniel Quinn, Ishmael
- Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
- Jon Krakauer, Under the Banner of Heaven
- Yann Martel, Life of Pi
"Under the Banner of Heaven" has one point where a former LDS member says after you have been in an extreme religion there is no place to go, you have to end up atheist or agnostic.
Bill
Explore posts in the same categories: Personal Story
March 18th, 2006 at 7:34 am
1968-1986, Philadelphia, Wilmington DE, Cumberland MD, Wilmington DE,
Longview TX, Corpus Christi TX, Lakeland FL, Longview TX. and 13 schools in 12 years (and I am a drop out).
Its been almost 20 year since I was thrown out of my house literally for “not being a virgin” I am going to skip the re-reading of the minutes of that meeting cause ya’ll have all been in your own. I was 17.
I am 37 now, and 10 years ago, I was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder.
I don’t have time to post about the intervening years. Maybe after the semester is over.
My first full blown bipolar episode was caused by a combination of things…
1. I had been misdiagnosed. 2. the anti-depressants contributed
3. I had just broken up with an emotionally abusive guy. 4. I turn to a non-denominational church looking for guidance. Felt very peaceful. 5. Emotionally abusive guy steps back into the picture - to get laid (he didn’t) and when I told him I was attending church and chose that lifestyle, he said, “I’m the only God you will ever have.” Interesting.
It is not too far from what our narcissistic parent tells us in WCG. My sister, who is long dead from a drug overdose, was the only person who was brave enough to stand up to my mom. She would demand an accounting of where my mother’s linscence to soul-kill came from. “I - am your parent. You - are the child. It is - my - GOD GIVEN AUTHORITY - to discipline you and - YOU - must - obey - me - in all things.
Speaking back was disobedience, which is/was as the sin of witchcraft, therefore, as was explained to me (by MOM) each time I disagreed with anything - including political views (You think what I tell you to think and on all other issues, you shut your mouth!) or god forbid, get angry - and boy did I get angry and still do, I was in danger of becoming demon possessed. This was said with all the drama of a person holding the flashlight under thier chin during a campfire ghost telling session.
That was the summary, “disagree, disobey, get angry=get demon possessed (which was a permanent condition apparantly) and burn in the Lake of Fire. I CANNOT TELL YOU HOW MANY TIMES, AS LITTLE LITTLE CHILDREN WE WERE TOLD WE WERE GOING TO BURN IN THE LAKE OF FIRE. They cannot be counted. Oh Yeah, my older brother used IV drugs, he has advanced HIV.
So, when I went crazy, I had psychosis. The experience of psychosis can best be described in terms of “garbage in - garbage out”. My mind started VOMITING unarticulated and disconnected spew. One second God was talking to me, the next it was someone that was too mean and harsh to be God. 4 days of this convinced me that God and Satan were the same person. Of course I called my mother. “Mom, there is something terribly, terribly wrong. I am hearing God - Is this normal?” “She said, well, the bible says that in the last days, your old men will dream dreams and your daughters will prophesy.”
Psychosis wasn’t such a bad thing. I got deprogrammed. And I had the opportunity to meet the real God of Mercy who did sustain me through that and Calvary Chapel, my pagan church, even though I got psychotic in the pastor’s living room, NOT EVER have they so much as looked at me sideways. I am just me to them. and they are glad to see me on my infrequent visits to church. No judgement on that either.
I was driven to the hospital by some friends. Right outside the door, the sun hit me full in the face (July)and my psychotic mind turned it - I believed it was Jesus. And maybe it was. He said, “Rest now Janice, rest. These people work for me.” And he showed me the medical staff with the snakes thing, and I understood that modern medicine was a tool that God uses to bind Satan. (Remember, we are recounting the ravings of a very psychotic mind.) Again, he said, “These people work for me. It is time for you to rest. {this after weeks and weeks of struggling with questions about the sabbath and the nature of God, day and night, without sleep, first knowing and then not, not knowing and then knowing, understanding and not understanding, and going around and around and around and around - essentially - If God loves me, WHY does he want me to go to a church where I am miserable and want to die?) Back to Jesus, I said, “But I can’t enter into your rest. It’s Thursday. The Sabbath won’t come until tommorow night.” He said, “Today is my Sabbath and today is your sabbath and today will be your sabbath forever.” I said, “Thursday? Thursday is the Sabbath? It’s not Saturday like we have believed all this time?” He said everyone kept the ancient calendars wrong and it threw off the identificaiton of the real 7th day.
Okay people, I know I was fucking nuts - but you have no idea how much freedom I found in that small possibility. And then he told me again that “today, this day, thursday, is your sabbath - IF YOU WANT IT.”
This next part should sum up all of what WCG is, and was and isn’t and was’t. Being a good freaked out church kid. Not having attended in years, I called my mother and asked for a minister to come to the looney bin and counsel with me. I have no family around me, I was lonely, and scared and frightened. What is the next best thing to family?
So on day 2 of my cruise at St. Vinnies Mental Hospital, whilst I was still in the “close observation” area, in walks - and I am going to name names -
Steven Elliot, pastor of the NY/Long Island congregation of UCG.
I know this man. His mother pushed my hair back from my forehead when I was 13 and said, “You don’t worry. You are going to be a classic beauty” She probably doesn’t know it but she may have saved my life.
Anyway, I KNOW this man. I had spoken to him less than 2 years before when I picked my little brother up at his house after a youth thing and took he and his friend to the city for the day before putting them on a plane back to Texas. This man had been a cop. I was a cop (not any more). Our families knew each other.
I saw him through the glass and I was so happy to see >home