(For the record, AW regards British Israelism in any form as irredeemably fallacious, totally discredited, and intellectually indefensible.)

All2True Editorial

December, 2004

Bananas

In the 1971 Woody Allen Movie, Bananas, Woody Allen plays the lead as a man who becomes a freedom fighter in a banana republic and finally becomes dictator. He starts out with good intentions but power corrupts and...

It becomes the law that people must change their underwear every four hours. The military police must check the people to insure that they did change their underwear. Another law is passed that in order to facilitate checking the underwear every four hours, they must wear their underwear over their outer garments.

While this is utterly preposterous and you would not expect this to happen in real life, many in the Churches of God do not realize how typical the behavior is in the CoGs. If you do not believe that, then hearken back to the days of yesteryear of 1981.

For those of you who were there, you should be able to remember the ruling about makeup. In fact, up to that point, the WCG under Herbert Armstrong did flip-flops. From the Fifties onward, it was out, and then it was in. It was permitted and then prohibited. The hammer fell in 1981 when Herbert Armstrong demanded that all women take the 'colored dirt' off immediately! I remember the announcement well. Right after services, the women were out in the foyer wiping off makeup.

The thing that makes this so crazy is that makeup was raised to the status of an issue of salvation. Those who continued to wear makeup would end up in the lake of fire. Herbert Armstrong punctuated the point by coming to Seattle and bringing Robert Fahey with him. Mr. Fahey preached the sermonette about responding to the Apostle. Herbert Harangued. Makeup was evil. Only prostitutes wore it. Godly women would not wear makeup.

To make things worse, Herbert Armstrong went to dinner with all the ministers in the area that evening. They were all the way from Canada, Idaho and Oregon. He stood Dennis Luker up for two hours and falsely accused him of not responding to his demands that all women under his administration remove makeup. It was extremely unpleasant and unsettling to say the least. Herbert Armstrong certainly could yell for hours at a time.

This was insanity. It just seems as if any two-bit religious leader gets into a position of power with a bunch of money and they just go bananas. They demand stupid things and people cooperate and respond to it.

We all know that it takes exceptional effort to support this kind of nonsense. It is an emotional and physical drain on people to undergo tumultuous changes at the whim of a cold, calculating, sometimes passionate narcissist. The cultmeister makes unreasonable extreme demands and people try to tolerate the abuse and respond.

Over time, apathy sets in. The get up and go gets up and goes. People become tired. They want to do the right thing. It doesn't matter how much people do, the narcissist demands more and more and more and makes it all seem so very reasonable.

In the January 2005 issue of Asimov's, Matthew Jarpe makes a statement in his science fiction article, "City of Reason" which rather speaks to the whole Church of God experience:

"I've never heard of a philosophy that didn't cripple a society from defending itself properly".

Many of the philosophies which have crippled us from defending our families properly are extremely trivial and immature at best. Some of them are positively destructive. Philosophies are raised to eternal eschatological matters of salvation from mere opinion through the passion of powerful but immature men who gain control of our lives. They make us accountable while they have no accountability themselves.

In a working and workable system, true leadership is always accountable. It cannot make rash wild unsupportable assertions expanded to mortally dangerous proportions. Reasonable people are not going to endanger lives by insisting that their little pet peeve be supported by the masses. Yet, people do endanger their own lives and the lives of their family members by submitting themselves to absolute madmen. In the case of makeup, it's not a life threatening situation. However, in the matter of health it often is.

Alcoholics cannot drink alcohol, ever. It is not a matter of controlling it in moderation. There is no such thing as moderation. The liver does not process alcohol properly in alcoholics and alcohol becomes a poison to them. For a religious cultic leader, who appears to be an alcoholic with diabetes himself, fairly demanding that all his members drink red wine and insist that they must drink it during the Feast of Tabernacles can, indeed, become life threatening. It doesn't just become a silly inconvenience any more: It's deadly serious.

Anyone in a position of power over people, particularly religious power, needs to understand the impact they have on people. People will try to respond. They will suspend their own sense of self-preservation for the perceived good of the group, not realizing that by doing so, they threaten the existence of that very group just beyond their own existence. Opinions don't count. Feelings don't count. Emotions may run high, but they don't count either. Facts count. Scientific knowledge counts. Safety and well-being count.

Prior to the Seventies in the Radio Church of God, people were not permitted to go to the Doctor except to set broken bones. Pills to cure your ills were out of the question. It was a matter of faith in the opinion of the Apostle: Either you were anointed and allowed God alone to heal you or you were reprobate and not in the faith if you went to a doctor. People in the church had to wrestle with their conscience to have a Caesarian Section. The medical opinions of a man were medically dangerous, and, in fact, his own wife died from a bowel blockage because he would not allow doctors to work on 'the temple of the Holy Spirit'. It was nothing short of a plumbing problem and had nothing to do with the spirit, but because the man was in charge and he had to maintain the integrity of his nutty ideas, his wife died. Dangerous doctrines unrelated to spiritual salvation can end in death.

Those still not convinced should consider the story of David Brame. David Brame was a corrupt Police Chief of the Tacoma Police Department. He was mentally unstable. He should have never been hired into that position, but people gave him the power anyway. He badly abused his wife, Crystal and she had no where to turn. Who could she report him to, the police department? He was a particularly nasty person. When he came into office, the assistant police chief had 30 days until he could take full retirement. David Brame terminated him immediately. When the poor man asked why he did it, David Brame told him rather chillingly, "Because I can". David Brame fatally wounded his wife on April 26, 2003 and then committed suicide in a parking lot. The incident cost the city millions of dollars. He had the power. Not even ministers at the top of the heap have had the real power he had, yet they call the shots in the lives of their membership because some how it is 'of God'. When a minister demands that you change your life on what appears to be trivial, ask the question, "Why are you doing this to me?". Watch for the response in what ever form it is, "Because I can".

Cultmeisters have what they asked for. They treat those they dominate as children and not very bright ones at that. Why should they be shocked that 'their people' act like stupid children? The people are merely rising to the insultingly lowered expectation of their 'leaders'. Treat them as adults and they will act like adults. Allow a true consensus and the people will prove the cultmeister wrong and come up with an even better solution than just one person can achieve by himself. And a little accountability goes a long way to find a better way. Otherwise, people will leave. It's unwise to treat people with anything less than respect. One day the dictator will find others are better than he is and he will be history and, in any event, eventually he will die--they all do.

The dictatorial power wielded in the movie Bananas might be amusing with people being required to change their underwear every four hours. In real life, dictatorial power can be deadly. Each of us need to watch very carefully that 'no man take our crown'. We need to guard ourselves from those who would take our lives. We can't let others demand us to do what we know is stupid, foolish and wasteful. God didn't give these people power. They took it away from us for their own. We need to take it back for our own sake, the sake of our families, the sake of our country and for the sake of the world.

Also visit http://www.cultabuse.com

Last Updated: Saturday, December 11, 2004