Party
Month: March 2005
Easter
Easter "vacation" is over. It was pleasant enough, but I was a little sad at the end, knowing it was the last major holiday that Kinga will be in her native country for some time. All things come to an end, I suppose, but that particular end is creeping ever closer.
The surprise of the weekend for me was how Wiktor, Kinga's two-and-a-half-year-old nephew, was virtually obsessed with me. Every time he saw me, he was asking, “Wujek, co robisz?” (“Uncle, what are you doing?”) I enjoyed spending time with him, and I actually looked after him for quite a while Friday – or was it Saturday? Can’t recall. At any rate, I enjoyed it, but it was difficult understanding him sometimes. Understanding “baby talk” that’s in a foreign language -- it’s a nightmare. I felt, once again, like I was new in the country, fresh off the plane.
The second surprise: an evening of bridge with everyone. Jan (my father-in-law) taught Daniel (my brother-in-law) how to play bridge, and we played until after midnight Sunday. Kinga and I were partners, and it turned out that she’s an excellent bridge player – better than I am, for sure. We cleaned up, that’s for sure.
This was the first year I didn’t go to the resurrection service. We changed to summertime that Saturday evening/Sunday morning, and the thought of getting up at four (body time) to be at the church at five (again, body time) just did nothing for me.
I went for the blessing of the food -- a Polish tradition that involves going to the church Saturday morning to have a basket of food for Easter breakfast blessed by the priest-- and I went for the night watch, but I just decided to pass on the early morning mass.
A Walk
Sympathy for the Devil
Can we forgive someone who hasn't asked for forgiveness? There seems to be a lot of people who feel that we can’t assume any mercy for Ratzmann because of the enormity of his crime. Not only that, but some are implying that it would be wrong to suggest that mercy would be the right response. It would be the equivalent of sympathy for the devil.
Or would it?
Despite the havoc the 44-year-old Ratzmann wreaked on his congregation, [LCG member Thomas] Geiger said, church members heard a mostly upbeat message of forgiveness and hope.
"We hugged and cried over this, even Terry's family," said Geiger. "We've made our peace with them."
Geiger, like some of the others in attendance, had family members killed or wounded in the rampage at the Brookfield Sheraton hotel.
Among them was Bart Oliver, Geiger's nephew. After attending Ratzmann's funeral and getting a quick bite for lunch, Geiger and his family moved on to the 15-year-old's funeral, held at the Country Springs Hotel in Waukesha.
Glenn Diekmeier, who survived last weekend's shootings and whose father, Harold, was killed, attended the Ratzmann funeral ("JS Online).
I’m strangely moved by the fact that victims’ families were in attendance at Ratzmann’s funeral. I doubt there were many, if any, families of Jeffrey Dahmer’s victims at his funeral. I doubt very much that there would be victims’ families at the funeral of Atlanta gunman Brian Nichols had he killed himself. Thinking about the nature of these three different crimes clarifies for me why it’s possible to speak of mercy in Ratzmann’s case.
This was not an extended killing spree, as in the Dahmer case. Nor was it the act of a desperate man trying to escape from the police. This was an otherwise “normal” individual that inexplicably went berserk. Recall that when a member addressed Ratzmann by name and asked him, “Why are you doing this?” Ratzmann stopped. Whatever clicked in the first place clicked again, and I would imagine that in that moment he possibly realized what he had done and realized the simplest way out would be to take his own life.
Was it premeditated? It seems so —- he did buy the gun in the summer. Was it planned, as a terrorist attack is planned? I doubt it. He came to church with his Bible, and then returned home to exchange it for a gun.
It all revolves around whether Terry Ratzmann was a victim in this too, and I believe he was. It now appears unlikely that this would have happened if he’d sought professional psychiatric help; if he hadn’t been a member of a legalistic sect that prescribed whom he could date and actively forbade people from dating whomever they chose; if he’d had a better relationship with his father; if his parents hadn’t divorced; if the WCG hadn’t split apart -— all these have been bantered about as causes, which lumped together with whatever other demons that haunted him, pushed an instable man to a point of vicious violence.
Views from the Apartment
Around Centrum
Spring
Spring is arriving on time with the calendar here.
The snow is finally beginning to melt. I saw the ground for the first time in months yesterday. Of course there’s still about three feet of snow in most places, so it’ll be a couple of weeks before there’s more green than white, but it’s a start.
Behind the Scenes: The Wisconsin Shooting Tragedy
This is not the first time that someone associated with the ideology behind the Living Church of God committed such a vile act.
The Living Church of God (LCG) split from the Worldwide Church of God (WCG) in the mid-90’s over doctrinal differences. The founder of the WCG, Herbert Armstrong, died in 1986, and his successor, Joseph Tkach, began dismantling the doctrinal distinctives of the WCG. Those who wanted to remain faithful to Armstrong’s teachings left in droves in 1995, and one of the organizations formed was the Global Church of God (GCG), which eventually transmuted into the LCG, both led by Roderick Meredith.
Before Tkach made the drastic doctrinal changes, the WCG was a cult, pure and simple. Distinctive theological elements included
- Rejection of the Trinity.
- Observance of Jewish, Old Testament holy days.
- Rejection of “worldly holidays,” including Christmas and Easter.
- The teaching that the WCG alone was the true and undeceived church of God, and that all other Christians were merely “professing” Christians, deceived by (and ultimately worshiping) the devil.
- The belief that the United States and England are peopled by the descendants of the original Ten Tribes of Israel.
- The belief that Germany will rise again and defeat America in a nuclear World War Three.
The Living Church of God still holds to all these doctrines.
Precedent
Herbert Armstrong wrote his heretical theology up in many books and smaller booklets.
One of them was 1975 in Prophecy written in the 1950’s and predicting Jesus’ return in 1975.
The book had a violent effect on one Michael Dennis Rohan.
In an effort to hasten the building of the temple and resumption of Jewish cultic sacrifices in Jerusalem, Rohan set fire to the Al Aksa mosque in 1969. No one was killed, but there was significant material damage. The ripples of the attack continued through the years: fourteen years later, Hamas began a series of terrorist attacks scheduled to coincide with the Al Aksa attack.
Trying desperately to distance himself from the bad publicity the act generated, Herbert Armstrong responded by denying any connection between Rohan and his church:
Every effort, it seems, is being made to link us with it in a way to discredit the Work of God. The man, Rohan being held as the arsonist, the dispatches say, claims to be identified with us. This claim is TOTALLY FALSE. The first any of us at Pasadena ever heard of this man was when the press dispatches began coming over the Teletypes in our News Bureau. Checkups revealed that this man had sent in for and received a number of our Correspondence Course lessons. Last December he had sent in a subscription to The PLAIN TRUTH. But any claim to any further connection or association with us is an absolute lie.
Rohan claims he’d been in contact with a WCG minister, and that, combined with the fact that Rohan not only had subscription to the Plain Truth but also had received church literature, makes Rohan a “P.M.” – prospective member.
According to a Wikipedia article, Armstrong stopped claiming that a physical temple would have to be built
because at the time he was trying to establish a relationship with the government of Israel. He had previously developed a relationship with King Hussein of Jordan prior to the Six Day War and had actually signed a contract to go on the AM and shortwave [sic] Jordanian transmitters located in the West Bank with his daily radio program called The World Tomorrow. When Israel gained control of the West Bank it also voided Armstrong’s contract and as a result he then courted the favors of the government of Israel by becoming involved with such projects as the archeological digs in the area of the Temple Mount.
Practicalities won out over “God’s truth!”
Armstrong had a choice, it would seem, and in this case, continuing to preach “God’s truth!” as it had been “cried aloud” before would have been tantamount to Armstrong shooting himself in the theological/fiscal foot.
Unfortunately, Armstrong was not an idiot. He chose to tone it down.
Funny how “God’s truth” can be so self-defeating in some contexts.
A Walk
Living Church of God Tragedy
I'm in a bit of shock. I just found out about the shooting in Wisconsin, and I'm in even more shock about the church in which it happened.
The Living Church of God.
A splinter group of the Worldwide Church of God. The sect I grew up in.
I know many people in this group, though none in the area this deplorable tragedy took place.
A comment at a website about this:
Considering the fact that cults tend to become a magnet for the unstable and knowing the large number of unstable people that I’ve seen come through and still attending church, I’m surprised it hasn’t happened much sooner.
True. David Koresh, Jim Jones -- many others. Fringe groups lead to fringe behavior.
To put it lightly.