"Caste System" By Douglas Becker |
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And so it begins: We don’t care, we don’t have to — we’re the ministers! You lost your job; you’re struggling to exist? We don’t care, we don’t have to — we’re the ministers! Now send in more money so we can keep our elite privileges of easy living with our Luxury Fund. You desperately need transportation to get to work? You need new clothes because you are threadbare? You need health care you can’t afford? We don’t care, we don’t have to — we’re the ministers! Now send in more money so we can keep our elite privileges of easy living with our Luxury Fund. You face retirement and don’t have enough? We don’t care, we don’t have to — we’re the ministers! Now send in more money so we can keep our elite privileges of easy living with our Luxury Fund — we have our own retirement to worry about. Any problem you face, from having mentally ill teenagers, to having a teen pregnant out of wedlock, to having to live in a poor neighborhood threatened by crime? We don’t care, we don’t have to — we’re the ministers! Now send in more money so we can keep our elite privileges of easy living with our Luxury Fund. The ministers live a life of power and privilege not accorded to the average person in the congregation. The ministers never have to pay more than one tithe: Their feasts are paid for by you, the Prole at the bottom; their homes are paid for by you, the peasant; their fleet autos are paid for by you, the untouchable. You are lower than the low. You are worth nothing. You deserve nothing. You only exist to provide for those in the lofty castes above you. Know your place: You are nothing like the ministers who are so far superior to you in every way, led from the top by the all glorious grand leader of your cult religion. We don’t care, we don’t have to — we’re the ministers! You need to care about us! It is your destiny! Make every sacrifice so we don’t have to make any sacrifice. An anonymous commenter at Banned! says: In the early 1980s, when I was attending Worldwide in Pasadena, I was hit with a stomach virus and couldn’t seem to shake it after a pretty rough couple of days. I regained enough strength to make a trip to the store for some Pepto, juice, etc. and decided to stop at the Hall of Administration to be anointed. It was a Friday afternoon. I entered the local church office and was face to face with one of the pastors who now chairs the council of elders of one of the splinters. He was dressed casually and was sitting on the corner of a desk in the lobby, talking to someone in a side office. I knew him, said hello, told him I’d been ill and asked to be anointed. I was shocked at his response. He said they were getting ready to leave for a department camping trip that afternoon and that he was too busy, and referred me to the Church Administration office upstairs. I stared at him for a moment with, I’m sure, a look of disbelief on my face. He just looked back at me. I thought, we’re supposed to call on the elders of the church, and that’s what I’m doing, so there’s no way he could be saying no, is there? So I asked again if he could just take a minute to do this for me. He reiterated that he was too busy but that someone upstairs would be able to help. He was doing nothing, just sitting there shooting the breeze with someone else in the office. Even the look on his face let me know that he couldn’t be bothered with my request. I was stunned. I turned around slowly and left. I very nearly walked out of the building and out of the church. Instead I went upstairs to the Church Administration office, and was able to be anointed. But the attitude of that Pasadena “pastor” was not lost on me. It was, from my experience, consistent with the attitudes of so many pastors and Pasadena department heads who regularly lorded over people with a lofty view of their titles and offices. Over the years I began to realize that it was not possible to separate such attitudes from the doctrines and practices taught by HWA and Co. The hierarchy, the control, the capriciousness, and the downright shoddy scholarship had everything to do with what was taught and why. It appears that it continues today, which I guess shouldn’t come as a surprise. Personally, I moved on 20 years ago. It’s sad to see that people remain under the grip of such controlling tactics in the various COG organizations. Don’t bother us — we’re busy! We are so important that you need to drop everything for what we need and want because nothing you do has any importance in the scheme of things at all.
Certainly one of the most illustrative examples of the hubris of the elite is contained in The Failed Experiment as illustrated by the treatment of 1-W Conscientious Objectors on the Ambassador College Big Sandy Campus. The stomach turning disgusting behavior of oppressing the helpless by the members of the higher class and their teen children represent some of the worst examples of humanity. All of Armstrongism is a failed experiment: The caste system is unChristian, artificially promoting stratification of social classes where the elite does not care because it does not have to.
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