The Worldwide Church of God has now completely divorced itself from its past.

Any church claiming it is part of “Grace Communion International” IS THE WORLDWIDE CHURCH OF GOD. This is a CLOSED HIGH-DEMAND RELIGIOUS GROUP THAT STILL REFUSES TO PROVIDE FINANCIAL ACCOUNTABILITY, AND DEMANDS MONEY FROM ITS MEMBERS.

ANY CHURCH AFFILIATED WITH GRACE COMMUNION INTERNATIONAL MUST BE AVOIDED AT ALL COSTS. THEY ARE TRYING TO DIVORCE THEMSELVES FROM THEIR CULTIC PAST. WE WILL NOT LET THEM DENY OUR EXISTENCE ONE MOMENT LONGER.

Ambassador Watch and Part 2, thanks for the mention, Gavin. Also, a response to Richard Banes.

Living Armstrongism

Holy Mighty Atheist

Shadows of WCG (I’m sorry you had to come out of retirement for THIS, J.) Part 2. Part 3.

Ambassador Reports

A brief mention here. Not sure who the blogger is, looks like an evangelical, but no overt ties to the church.

Claude Mariottini mentions the name change, by way of Ethics Daily. There are no comment options on the Ethics Daily blog, unfortunately.

A mention of this page, and a link, on a cult-watch page here, thank you to Perry Bulwer.

And the sheeple are coming out of the woodwork in force, to defend the church everywhere I have posted. Other than a sheeple insisting the church uses an external auditor the Iron Sharpens Iron blog (for which I demanded proof, we’ll see if I get any), they’re basically hand-waving and ignoring any questions about financial accountability. Telling, that, no??

Stan Gardner’s blog also records that the church has been here before. I only hope the children being born and raised in GCI are not so blindsighted about their “communion” as we were about “god’s true church”. More than likely, children of GCI will never know they or their parents or grandparents were a part of anything else other than GCI — just like we never knew that we, our parents or our grandparents, were a part of anything else other than WCG. At least one teen commenter in the whitewashing links below, indicate that this is the case, for those still trapped on the inside.

Exit & Support Network (Warning: Fundamentalist evangelical site.)

Proscenium of Mind

I also registered and added a trackback link to this page on the Cult News Network.

WE ARE THE CHILDREN OF THE CHURCH.

NEVER FORGET. NEVER FORIGIVE.

I will be updating the links as they are whitewashed, and adding more links to pages/comments/blog comments that indicate the cowed membership are going along with their pontiff, Joe Tkach’s edict. (See “the letter to donors” from the first AW link.)

One ministry blog has already been whitewashed. The Surprising God Blog has not (yet). [Update: Crazy Teddy fixed that around Easter. TSGB has now been whitewashed.] One Pennsylvania congregation has been whitewashed. WCG’s vulnerable and at-risk youth recruitment propaganda has not been whitewashed (yet). [Update: As of April 22, 2009, Generations Ministry has now been whitewashed. One TN congregation has been whitewashed. Anybody speak Spanish? Looks like this congregation has been whitewashed, but I can't tell for certain. (According to an anonymous AW commenter, it's a translation of the PGR announcing the change in Spanish.) This US congregation has not been whitewashed. Montego Bay congregation (parading under a deceptive name to begin with) has been whitewashed.

A current child of the church is going along with the name change like a good little sheeple. (Thus confirming my fears that 2nd gen GCI children will never know that they were WCG, just as we in WCG never knew that we were RCG -- just like we never knew about '75 in Prophecy and the receivership scandal, they will never know about the changes, and Pope Joe I and Pope Joe II.) An older church member (definitely not a super deacon, at least not according to how he's dressed, on a business site) is participating in what looks like a viral marketing campaign to spread the church far and wide, now that it has been (or so they think) completely divorced from its past.

Another apologist blog, but read the comments. Also see this post from the same user, cheerleading for the church (my comment linking back to here, and pointing out that Junior is still authoritative and there is zero financial accountability for the church was not approved I WONDER WHY), and see Gavin's response here.

Another ministry blog has been whitewashed. This congregational page has not been whitewashed. (And they're in Pasadena, of all places!!) [Update: Looks like Junior brought them onboard. Now whitewashed.] However, the pastor of the group’s Google profile has been whitewashed. One commenter on an ex-Adventist’s blog is holding fast to the truth (sorry), good for them. Warning, it looks like the ex-Adventist in question is heavily evangelical now, and appears to be in favour of the church.

This congregation in Winnipeg is returned by a search for “Worldwide Church of God”, but notably, neither WCG nor GCI is present on its web page, and Headquarters is linked to with the text “International HQ”; presumably, since they are Sunday-keepers, this Winnipeg congregation wants to fly under everyone’s radar. (Most of the church’s congregations in Canada are still Sabbatarian.) Also, as of April 18, 2009, the Canadian HQ site is down.

Update: As of April 19, 2009, the Canadian HQ site is back. And has NOT been whitewashed. As a matter of fact, the WCG name is even bigger and bolder on the front page than it was before. The site appears to have undergone redesign for the look, but I haven’t dug down any further to see if the content has changed significantly or not. [Update: See here and here for the ongoing drama, and it now looks (as of June 12, 2009), like Junior has managed to maintain status quo. No great honking banner (again), but also oddly enough, no mention of GCI, Headquarters is simply referred to as "International HQ". Hmmmmmmmm.]

Could the whispers of a possible denominational split over the name change have some basis in fact??

Some digging reveals superficial changes, and more content. I did find this note interesting on the Statement of Beliefs page (emphasis mine):

Christian financial stewardship is the management of resources in a manner that reflects the love and generosity of God. It includes the responsibility of offering a portion of one’s financial resources to the work of the church. Donations fund the God-given mission of the church to preach the gospel and feed the flock. Such giving reflects the heart of Jesus Christ, who loved us and gave himself for us.”

Now all they have to do is provide itemized public records of “such giving”, and what exactly they do with the money once it’s been “given”. Is that really so much to ask? Yeah, it probably is.

Another US congregation is whitewashed.

Listen to Junior and Weazell prevaricate on Iron Sharpens Iron. Funny, they gave the same self-congratulatory spiel on the Bible Answer Man show, during the changes. Don’t miss the comments, a stalwart member is claiming the church uses an external auditing firm. Update: And now we have the name. Stan Gardner, are you ready to unleash the church’s financial statements to the world?? And thanks to xHWA for the support. And now we have Part 2, without comments, a move the blog administrators probably made intentionally.

They’ve sent the sanitized version of the “letter to donors” to the Religion Press Release Service. Presumably this is the same press release picked up by the Christian News Report. The press release has also been picked up here. (Comments are not available on this page either.) Dividing 42,000 members by 900 congregations, at least we can take solace in the fact that the church is much, much smaller than it used to be. On the other hand, that probably means Junior is pressing the few remaining members in, to give everything they’ve got; either that, or he’s just quietly letting the GRUMPs continue on with their legalism, and living off their continuing tithes.

Another Christian blog has picked up the press release.

The UK church has not been whitewashed (yet), [Update: Still not whitewashed, although they claim to be "in association with GCI". What does that even mean?? Which came first, the Brits or the Canadians? Neither one of those "Israelitish nations" wants to give up their heritage as "God's Chosen People", after all.] but check out the “Day by Day” scripture reading: “God Loves a Cheerful Giver”. I’ll bet Junior loves “cheerful givers” even more, eh? (Cheerful givers?? Is that what the church is calling the tithe slave these days? Really?) The church in Africa (I bet you never thought you’d read those words, huh?) has not been whitewashed. The church in Australia has not been whitewashed.

The church apparently has what appears to be some version of Imperial in the Phillipines; this, too, has been whitewashed. Disturbingly, they also have a video titled Healing. One wonders if the church overseas has “held fast” to the medical doctrines, even through the changes……

For ex-member bloggers trying to up your Google ranks and spread the truth as far as possible, please tag your posts about the name change “grace communion international” and “worldwide church of god”. This will allow tag-caching services, like Technorati, to  return results that reveal the truth about the church, instead of the whitewashed truth the church wants the public to see.

Aargh. Ever have one of those “stranger in a strange land” days?

Apparently it is a tradition, amongst the group I currently find myself, to wear a piece of red clothing for Valentine’s Day, or on the day closest to Valentine’s day that we find ourselves assembled together. Which just happened to be yesterday.

Now, see, I’ve always been respectful of the (silly, but will still get you mocked in some circles) superstition that one must never wear red on Friday the 13th. Needless to say, I never told anyone that was why I wasn’t wearing red yesterday, but still. It was one of those “Ah crap, I still don’t fit in very well, do I?!” moments. Those suck, by the way.

Hi, I’m AggieAtheist, and I’m a child of the church: Try my damnedest to fit in, but in the end I’m damned if I do, and damned if I don’t.

Anon Sun Feb 08, 05:31:00 PM NZDT (whoever you are),

I apologize for my part in our recent exchange. I regret what I said. I regret that I said anything at all.

I apologize that you find my non-belief so offensive, although I hope that I have demonstrated elsewhere that I do not view Christian believers, in and of themselves, as offensive. I know that might not have been too clear in our recent exchange.

Engaging in Christian belief would no doubt make my life easier, and would facilitate my interactions with believers (who make up a large percentage of the population) much more smoothly; but I can no more subscribe to a faith-based belief system, then you can unsubscribe from the one which you hold so dear.

I do not view believers as less than human, or delusional, or somehow inequal to non-believers. I apologize if my recent remarks came across that way.

We are each one of us human, we are all present in the here and the now, living this life, whatever it is and for whatever reason that we are here.

Thank you for your insight, and please know that I will try and see things a little more clearly from the other perspective, from this point forward.

Aggie

And once again, Byker Bob opens mouth, and swallows foot. See the evidence here.

PH,

I believe you’ve got a real problem.”

Yeah, my problem is you, Bob. Denial much?

“…I’ve watched you demonize almost all Christians…”

I know at least three Christians who I have had dealings with over the past year, who would disagree with that.

“You went after Dwight Armstrong’s daughter or niece, whoever she was….

She fired the first shot. Best to get your facts straight, Bob. And, oh yes, please quote me exactly where I “went after” her — I added to the discussion on the Wiki webpage. If that’s your version of my “going after her”, then so be it.

“….and you took Monte to task for your nightmares that you feel were due to his father’s art.”

I never had nightmares. I actually believed that everything in TBC was true, and everything that was predicted in the Youth Bible Lessons, was going to come true as well.

“You are irrationally striking out at people and it is embarrassing to watch.”

Oh, pardon me, I wouldn’t want to embarrass your oh-so-holy self. If you’re so “embarrassed” by me, maybe you ought to examine why I say the things I do, to the people I say them to. And examine also why you are “embarrassed” by it. Perhaps because you’re feeling that “I’m-going-to-hell” patented Christian guilt for having once been a freethinker?

“The fact is, you don’t hear the prayers of those whom you are attacking.”

Please quote me chapter and verse on where I have “attacked” any of these people. Am I suing them? No. Am I stalking them, sending hate mail to their houses, leaving hang-up messages on their answering machines? No.

All I am doing, and all I have ever done, is point out how the church has impacted me, a fact which all of the people you claim I have “attacked” (please show me where I have attacked them) would like to whitewash, and pretend it wasn’t so bad.

“Get-over-it-itis” Bob? Really? Can’t you bring something a little more original to the table, after all we’ve been through?

“Being as anti-Christian as you portray yourself to be is just as ignorant and irrational as being a racist.”

I know at least three Christians who I have had dealings with over the past year, who would disagree with that.

“To speak of lynching, what’s the difference between you and our American KKK?”

I have no political power, I have no money, I don’t walk around shooting people or hanging people or burning crosses on people’s lawns, I don’t spread hate speech (I’m 100% certain you’re going to disagree with that last part, but really, I don’t.), would you like me to go on?

All I am doing is typing words on a computer screen, and sending them out to the Internet. Really, if you take that perspective on it, instead of viewing it from your goldfish-bowl-sized little bubble, I’m really not as evil as you’re trying to persuade everyone here that I am.

“I’ve had about 7 years now to watch people very similar to you.”

And aren’t you just so full of yourself and so far above the rest, hmmm?

“Your blind hatred makes you attack well intentioned people, and brand them as hypocrites, simply because they believe in Jesus Christ.”

“Blind hatred”? Oh, and please show evidence of my “attacks” on “well-intentioned” people. (Monte Wolverton is anything but well-intentioned, whitewashing TBC the way he is.)

“You want to shoot all of the ducks to get at the ones who were actually responsible for your pain.”

Nope. I just want the truth to exist, somewhere, even if it’s on as small a back-water dark corner of the Internet as the ex-Church of God websites, forums, and bulletin boards. That’s all my goal ever was, and ever will be.

“I’d like to see you get some healing, because it is very plain to me that you are in a world of serious hurt.”

LOL! On the contrary, my life is several orders of magnitude better than it was, when I was in. Sure, I may go through periods of “my life sucks”, but they are passing phases, because overall I have much more stability and confidence, living a life bordered only by freedom of thought.

“On the other hand, I’ve also watched self-righteous types tell folks of your viewpoint to “get over it”.”

Aaaaaaaaand you’re not saying the same thing at all, right? Noooo, you’re not saying that……

“….they fail to take into consideration that you have been hurt, and need healing if you are to enjoy any type of happy or productive life….”

All things considered, I actually do enjoy a happy and productive life, now that I think about it. Something hanging around these places doesn’t really highlight, given that we self-limit by and large to only one topic of discussion.

There’s a lesson in that.

“BTW, you’re really not hurting the Christians. Most of them will just pray, “Father, forgive her, for she knows not what she does.”

Nice one! You’re implying that I’m like the fictional Roman murderers of your fictional dying-rising-godman.

Yeah, that’s not hateful. Not at all.

I think we need a change of direction. Breathing space, if you will, considering how things have taken a downturn of late. Let me tell you about the swimming hole.

I still don’t swim. I guess I should call it the “skipping-rocks-and-communing-with-nature hole” instead. It was one of those breaks in the trees, on the banks of one of the Great Lakes. During a time where the smell of raw sewage only rose if the wind was going in a certain direction. The water was clear, and looked (for the most part) endless, at least from the elevation of that particular haunt of mine.

The pebbles on the ground had been worn smooth by millions of years of erosion. Being the Intelligent Design believer that I was, as a naive child, I used to think about how “god” had personally shaped each pebble, and knew that I was holding each pebble in my hand that “he” had shaped. (Rather self-centred view of the world, but that’s the kind of god the church’s belief system created for me.) Driftwood and a few large boulders provided an adequate place to sit and not think.

Not think? Correct. In all my years of living in various rural settings, from one end of this country to another, the only times I found peace when I was a child, was when I was not thinking about the future (apocalypse), or fleeing to Petra, or the coming kingdom, or whether or not I was “faithful” enough in my “works” to get in.

Sitting in the crook of the root of an old-growth tree and watching an ant-hill. Sitting on the shores of a lake (Great or unnamed and unmapped). Watching the fish break the surface at dusk. Watching birds squabble and fight over the tastiest morsels. Gathering bundles of sticks and piling them together into a freeform structure to “mark my place” in the world. Dipping my toes in lakes both large and small, and in oceans on either side of this continent. Tipping my head back and seeing the ghostly outline of our galactic neighbourhood in the Milky Way in the night sky above me. These were all times when I felt at peace.

For whatever reasons, when I was out in the natural world, I never thought about the bible, or the apocalypse, or fleeing, or the kingdom, or the world tomorrow, or my incredible human potential. When I was younger, I would think piously about the Intelligent Design dogma I was fed, but even then, those thoughts were fleeting and quickly passed. I would like to think I have matured since then, and don’t have nearly as self-centred a view of myself as I used to.

(I have good days and bad days.)

As I grew older, I always had a sense of an encompassing emptiness. A paradoxical emptiness, that was fullness and emptiness and everything in between. What the gnostics call “ineffable”, although I don’t deify the feeling personally. “There is no spoon.” ?? Maybe.

When I am in the woods, or even sitting in my backyard and watching the winter swallows chatter and bicker at the feeder, watching the clouds race each other in the sky; when I am staring across the expanse of the Pacific or the Atlantic, at a sunrise or a sunset, from a star that is beyond the farthest distance that I can imagine; at all these times, I find myself without thought.

Are believers afraid of the emptiness, that they must create their own gods to fill them? Perhaps, but those gods aren’t everything they’re promised to be. Maybe really seeing the “face of the divine” (if there is such a thing) is acknowledging that there is no “face”; no anthropomorphic spirit or sky buddy or deity or anything that the conscious mind can comprehend. There is only the emptiness.

Sitting with the emptiness is harder to do, when I am inside a building or a house or a supermarket. It’s easier to do when I am in the natural world, in the environment as it is. I don’t know why it works like that. Maybe I’m the only one.

Ten billion humans on planet earth, third rock from the sun, and we are still only a drop on the back of a speck in the vast cosmos that surrounds us. Neither atheism nor religion is required to acknowledge that fact, but both sides put a different spin on it.

I’m so not about the spin anymore. If you are doing no harm to yourself or others, spin like a top, for all I care. Tell yourself whatever you need to, to get through your day, and your life without causing others distress.

I have no stories to tell myself, I have no myths that I believe as “true”. (We grew up way too fast/Now there’s nothing to believe/When reruns all become our history.) I can change my myths, or adapt them if I feel like it, but at the end of the day, even under all the myths, there is nothing. Which is just the way it is, always has been, and always will be. Long after all of our bodies have decomposed back into the ecosystem from which we came.

For all of us who are observing or participating in the latest round of “discussions” on AW, I recommend that you turn off the computer, open your front door, walk outside, and observe the environment around you. Even if it’s an urban setting, there will still be natural life there. The earth, if it has taught us nothing else, prevails against whatever mankind has thrown at it, during our brief span of self-awareness and civilization. Watch the stars, looks for shapes in the clouds. Take some time, to just stop.

Things on the Internet won’t seem nearly so pressing. I guarantee it.

The fact of the matter is that how much Joe Tkach, Jr. gets paid, is none of your business. And it isn’t mine either.

So speaks a current member of the church on Ambassador Watch.

I think that pretty much speaks for itself, don’t you?

The changes in the WCG happened in 1995, right about the time when I was… 20 or so. I was in college, I was still attending the WCG, but a part of me was starting to question everything I’d been taught – a process that was accellerated by the Christmas Eve sermon, at which point I just kind of gave up on the whole thing.

I found myself a “girlfriend” who lived in Colorado – her name was Elizabeth. Nice girl. But she was a Wiccan. At that point, however, I didn’t particularly care. She was female, she liked me, and… well, that was enough for me at the time. She recommended the Celestine Prophecy as a book to read, and I went and bought it and read it (my father wasn’t happy with this, but I was 20, what could he do?).

And it resonated with me.

No, I never expected to be able to see anyone’s Aura. No, I didn’t think that James Redfield was some kind of spiritual master or anything. But what it did do was help to solidify some things I already was thinking.

And I could see many of the things that he was “teaching” in the book in my own father.

I saw him cycling through the “power dramas”. I saw him leaching energy (not literally saw) off of everyone he was around.

Finally, there was something out there that explained some of the things that I was experiencing in my life – and it wasn’t Christian.

So did I become some new-age moonbat? No. But did it help me to leave the WCG for good? Well, let’s just say… it got the seeds going.

And no matter what else you may think of the book… that was a positive thing for me.

I was raised in the WCG for many years. I converted to Christianity for a few years after that. I remember the day when I deconverted entirely. I was in a United Methodist church, I was a pianist. And I was working on doing some musical stuff. That night… I just got up from the keyboard, told the pastor “I can’t do this anymore”, and I left. I never looked back, and I never went back to church after that.

But… was I ever a Christian?

I believed what my parents told me to believe. They told me to pray for a half an hour every week. I was 5 or so, so I managed five minutes, maybe. But I never felt like I was praying to anything. I just scrambled for stuff to say, and then left the room. I believed there was a God, but I hated him. I was scared of him. The “sacrifice of Jesus” meant absolutely nothing to me. I followed the rules because I was scared of what would happen if I didn’t, not because I wanted to.

For sure, there was nothing living in my heart.

After the WCG did their ill-conceived lurch towards mainstream Christianity, I enjoyed the freedom (I didn’t have to be scared anymore, although I still was in many ways). But I didn’t believe. I went to church because it’s what I thought I was supposed to do. I stood in a circle with all of those other men and prayed because it was what I was supposed to do. But you know what? I hated doing it. I hated it because I thought it was stupid – somewhere deep in my heart I knew that it was just for appearances – no one was listening. I even got panic attacks sometimes. I attributed it to my social problems, but that’s not what it was. I didn’t believe.

And finally, on that fateful day, I just couldn’t keep up the pretense. And I decided to admit what I’d always knew. And left.

I have never been a Christian. There was never a God living in me, there was never anything in my heart. There was never any belief. I did what I did because it’s what I felt I was supposed to do, not because I believed it or because I wanted to.

It was all I knew.

Have I always been an atheist? No, but I have always had questions in my heart that religion could never answer, even though I asked many different people. There were, of course, the staple questions… “How could God allow suffering?” or “How come I’m called and these people aren’t?”. But there were the more esoteric questions, too. “What if there are extraterrestrials, would Jesus’ sacrifice cover them too? Would every society need its own Jesus?”

No one could answer them. Eventually, they’d be just like “You have to take it on faith.”

I don’t want to take it on faith. I want answers.

And there being nothing makes a hell of a lot more sense than the answers Christianity gives me. No, not complete sense by a longshot. There are a hell of a lot of coincidences in my life I can’t explain. But Christianity? Pfft. No.

I have never been a Christian. I have been an atheist for many more years than I realized at first. It just took a while to get past the fear enough to embrace it.

OK, OK, OK. So I screwed up. (Can’t even say I “f’d” up because the first few sentences make it into the RSS sidebar feeds.) No, I didn’t realize how much of a fracas the title of my post was going to make, when it hit the other ex-CoG blogs that link to ISA. I was just unhappy at being smacked upside the head with the same attitude problems that I was getting from fundamentalist Christians, from an alleged “allegorical” Christian.

But that’s neither here nor there. What Russ said in his last post, about your attitude affecting others around you, thus having an impact on yourself, it’s true. Whether you believe in a Sky Buddy or not, it’s true. I spent the last couple of days in a sour mood, and found myself surprisingly on the receiving end of random badness from friends, family, and co-workers, which I had not been getting since I started down the particular path I had been (or so I thought) so neatly diverted from.

The fundamentalist Christians think I’m a demon, and I’m not even close to Christian enough for the allegorical Christians’ liking: They made lots of noises about how ecumenical they were, and how accepting they were of people who viewed the texts as allegorical, but the minute I started trying to discuss the texts in an allegorical manner, they pretty much squashed me like a bug. As Christians are wont to do.

But the past few days have been instructive, in that I pretty much tossed out the meditation, the thinking about myself in relation to the rest of the world, and others, and thinking of myself as being a part of the collective whole of humanity. Gone, it was all gone, in a flash of what I thought was “reality” and “no longer deluding myself”.

In WCG terms, from the first moment they told me where to stick my discussions of the “allegorical” texts, I began to backslide into my fundy-preachin’ atheistic ways.

(”Oh, it’s perfectly acceptable for us to SAY we’re welcoming towards those who view the texts as “allegorical”, but if you didn’t have our hit-by-a-lightning-bolt-SpirrriiCHOOOOL experience, then you’re just crap, aren’t you, and you can’t be talking about our special version of Jebus like he didn’t exist! Even if he didn’t!”)

Yeah no. Religious Gnosticism is seriously, seriously, fucked up. They wanna be Catholics, only without the literalism, basically. So mentally, I did an about-face.

The world is made up of masses of humanity all bound by having the same spark of human consciousness? Bullshit. We’re all mostly hairless apes, and the world at large is Darwinism and Social Darwinism writ both large and small, and that’s just the way it is. There’s an “ineffable source” for everything that no one can see, touch, taste, hear or feel, but oh yeah you’ve “experienced” it, and my “experience” doesn’t meet the qualifications for being the same as yours, so I’m clearly not a member of your special chosen tribe? Bite me, cracker-boy.

So that’s the attitude I’ve been walking around with, since about the middle of last week. Which is when things started inexplicably backsliding around me. Not towards the catastrophic mind you (fortunately), and nothing nearly so bad as what’s happened to Russ (for which you have my sympathies, and all my best wishes that things work out for the best for you), but I have noticed a difference.

Now, is this difference because I’ve stopped meditating? Oh HELL no. The difference was in my attitude. That’s what changed. Prior to that, my change in perspective has gotten me farther in the past few months than I’ve gotten in the past twelve years.

Do I attribute this change to some external force or attribute or “spirit” or Ineffable Unknowable Other? Fuck, no, I’ve made this change IN MYSELF, BY MYSELF, and FOR MYSELF.

Which sounds self-centred, until I remember that the change I made for myself, allowed me to interact better with others. What Russ said, about people being able to tell what your attitude is, no matter how well you’re (you think) hiding it, they can tell. And they will. Point which has been brought home to me, sharply, in the last week or so. Hmmmmm guess that means I should “get back on track” then.

We are all in the same boat, we ex-members. Especially those of us born and raised in the church. How can you possibly attempt to change yourself, when you haven’t got the faintest clue who you are? Knowing that, determining that, that’s half the battle won right there. Applying that knowledge, to the rest of the people in your life, or to any given person you might come into contact with during the run of any given day, that’s the tricky part.

I will make no bones about it, I talk a good game, but I’m still pretty much the anti-social paranoid personality type IRL. I probably always will be. But I’m working on it. As best I can, given my past, present, and future. Any improvement, no matter how insignificant, is improvement nonetheless. I keep reminding myself of that, and pushing for more.

(Please keep in mind that in the below paragraphs, I am approaching this from the perspective that “time” is a subjective illusion of the human mind, which has been proven by quantum physics.)

We are all bound to one another, all of us, Christians and atheists and splinter members alike, because we are the children of the church. We always will be. It is our alternate history, a parallel timeline that we participated in, not by our own choosing, but as a result of where and when and why and how we were born.

That timeline has, since the middle of the 1990s, merged with the “main” timeline of consensual history that the world has agreed upon. To greater or lesser degrees, depending on the individual. There are still pockets of time where the splinters are, where the alternate history continues, as it always has been, and always will be. In those pockets of alternate time, the empire never ended. (That was the primary thought that struck me, after watching UCG’s “75 Years of the FoT” video.)

So, our alternate history, our parallel timeline in which we were born, no longer exists for us. We couldn’t get back there even if we tried. (Would you really want to?) As I have more thoroughly assimilated into the world around me, that pain of displacement, that feeling of sheer alienation, has dwindled, to a bittersweet realization that I was born, grew up, and lived, in a parallel universe with only a few hundred thousand other humans.

The course correction of our alternate history merging with the main timeline was not a good one. It was not painless, it was far from easy. Some of us have not assimilated completely; some of us never will. We will always, to one extent or another, be strangers in a strange land. We were not born in this world, even though we were born of it.

This “strange land” is not so strange to me as once it was, however. Like a landed immigrant from a far and distant shore, I have started dreaming in the language of the world in which I have found myself, which is supposed to be a sign that my brain has finally accepted the circumstances it has been placed in.

I am still bound to my past, by virtue of having been a part of it, and it being a part of me. With that, I am bound to all of you, and we are bound to one another. We retain within our minds, to greater or lesser degrees, vestiges of the parallel timeline from which we came. That is why we spar and spark and fight and make up and agree and disagree with each other, so passionately: Because we are all from the same place, a time that no longer exists. Like it or lump it, we are the only ones who know how it really was, because how it really was no longer exists, and in point of fact, never existed at all as far as this reality is concerned.

Regardless of whatever timeline we have each individually emigrated to, we all come from the same place: And that will bind us as children of the church together forever, whether you like it or not. (Some days I like it, other days I don’t.)

From a strange and distant land, I look back at the time in which I was born, and I wave both hello and goodbye.

No, this post isn’t saying I’m closing the blog. If I had planned that, I probably wouldn’t have spent most of the evening last night upgrading and tweaking it. I still like the new theme. No, this site will continue to be a thorn in the side to obnoxious assholes and completely irrelevant to everyone else.

The last couple of weeks hae been personally very stressful for me. I can’t go into details as to why, but I can say that about 10% of the workforce of the company I work for was laid off on Thursday. Thankfully, I was spared. I was spared, but I was not untouched. I can’t go into the specific reasons why, though.

For reasons both internal to myself and external to myself, this has made it very clear that it’s time to move on, at least in some ways.

How you behave affects people. IF you run around acting all negative and angry all the time, it affects people. And they notice. They don’t know or care why, but they do notice, and they make decisions appropriately. The same applies to people who behave in a condescending, arrogant, or holier-than-thou manner. They may not say it to your face, but they notice. And at some point, you’re going to reap the consequences for your attitude.

This is something that many people don’t understand. This is something I didn’t understand myself until this week.

They won’t always tell you. And the ways in which you will finally find out are not always ways that will be easy, or non-hurtful.

The challenge is what you do with it once you find out.

Are you going to hold onto the behaviors that are holding you back? Or are you going to try to do something constructive about it?

This is one of the things that is particularly self-destructive about Christians. They have no motivation or drive to make themselves better people. They just trust God. “I’m not perfect, just forgiven”, or “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” And what generally happens is that they make an effort to act like better people, but the darkness, the rot underneath comes out. It just comes out in a more Christian manner.

They make no effort to find out what lies underneath.

And since you claim to be Christians, since you claim to have a direct path to God, your behavior reflects on your God.

And you completely refuse to see it. Because the only people who have the balls to tell you this are those who don’t believe.

And we’re the scum of the earth.

It doesn’t matter whether or not you call yourselves Christians. Your behavior matters. It matters to everyone who is around you and has to deal with you. And being arrogant and condescending about it does no one any favors. Particularly you.

People are noticing. People know. Even if you don’t.