The Painful Truth
10th Anniversary 1997 - 2007

by Gavin Rumney

When I first hooked into the Internet, the Painful Truth was, along with Bill's Ekklesia, one of the first ex-member sites I stumbled across. Under Ed Sr's oversight the PT had pioneered a new approach to WCG commentary: loud, proud, and salted with an in-your-face skepticism on all things religious. I spent an awful lot of time on the site filling in gaps in my knowledge. Ed continued a tradition begun by the late John Trechak of Ambassador Report fame, and it was great to see those ARs later appear on the PT, available for a new generation, ensuring that the dubious history of Armstrongism, so brilliantly documented by John, wouldn't be buried by a new wave of revisionists (most recently PCG's dauphin, Stephen Flurry.)

What's the special appeal of the Painful Truth? I'd like to suggest that, in part, it links together those of us who are latecomers to the modern world, only now feeling the warm breezes of the Enlightenment blowing our way. Religious critiques and a radical reappraisal of the Bible may be several centuries old, but some of us are just catching up. If you were a member of a fundamentalist sect like the Worldwide Church of God it stands to reason that you weren't up-to-speed on these things; I know I wasn't!

In fact I was too busy hunkering down under my wide margin KJV Bible, trying to avoid dangerous Satan-inspired doubts. The Painful Truth has been here, prodding us all on and delivering an occasional kick in our comfort zones, for a full decade (as the title says, the truth is, after all, often painful.) Those who still prefer a world-view with dogma and a human-shaped god – clinging to the placebo certainties of the past – have lots of other options, as is obvious from the countless WCG splinter franchises touting for tithes.

Was it the moral turpitude of the Armstrongs that first caused many of us to ask questions? People believe a lot of silly things, but as long as the fantasy is played out with conviction most folk are quite content. The Elmer Gantry pratfalls of Ted and Herb were almost impossible to ignore despite the slick magazine PR and mind-numbing sermons. It scares me a bit to think that, if those two had been more conventionally “moral”, I might still be singing Dwight Armstrong hymns and tithing to pay for someone's swimming pool! It was only after having our confidence shaken in the church's leaders that many of us started to ask questions about the ideas behind it all, the trumpets sounded, the walls were breached, and there we were blinking in the sunshine (unexpectedly, and a bit stunned!) With any luck most of us have kept on with the habit of questioning.

We all started out at different places before we rode the Armstrong train, and it'd be unreasonable to think we'd all disembark at the same station. Skeptic, agnostic, atheist, independent Sabbatarian, Evangelical, Catholic or just confused? As the WCG went into terminal mode it spat out members – mainly good, sincere people – like sparks from a Catherine Wheel, and the reality was that we all went in different directions. In the cultic mind-set it was essential to locate the right pigeon-hole, but humans actually make decisions based as much on temperament as logic. Wherever we end up, it's important that we get there with some personal integrity and authenticity, and that's a hugely subjective experience. That's why it's important to focus on asking questions rather than settling for easy answers. Of course, when you come across people who've simply stayed-put in the gulag, whether WCG or one of its pathetic imitations, it's hard not to do a bit a harrumphing!

Websites come and go, and this one has had its stressful times. Ten years of any volunteer website is an incredible achievement; a decade of The Painful Truth comes close to miraculous (a thoroughly secular miracle of course!) Behind the screen are real people with a high level of commitment. Thanks John! I for one hope the Painful Truth will be around till Armstrongism finally implodes without trace... a process that happily seems well advanced.

--9/01/2007

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