Random Sunday Ramblings, Part 2

As readers can guess, I'm still in the midst of a busy period, and am trying hard to tame my schedule.  So today's post will be short.  But I want to mention that I just finished listening to the latest installment of the podcast "In God's Name: An Unseen Cult."  This latest episode dealt with the abuse perpetrated against women by the fringe group known as the Assemblies of George Geftakys.  It is well known that the Assemblies largely disintegrated after the revelations of the horrible domestic violence perpetrated by George Geftakys' son David and the fact that George and his lieutenants covered up this abuse for over two decades.  But the latest episode of the "In God's Name" podcast also sheds light on a number of cases of domestic abuse among rank-and-file members of the Assemblies that did not at first attract notice because they blended into the toxic cultural miasma of these groups.

It's interesting to note how the Bible was used to justify this toxic culture, as well as to note how extreme even some of these rank-and-file cases became.  I can imagine how much of an aversion to the Bible many women might now have after suffering the long-term experience of a group such as this.  I am not a woman but a man, and yet as a Black man I can tell you that over the last few years I too have struggled at times with the same aversion.  The aversion is triggered by the experience of encountering prominent people behind pulpits who waved Bibles in our faces and said (in so many words, even though they would deny that this is actually what they were saying) "THIS BOOK SAYS that God has given US the RIGHT and the MISSION and the MANDATE to MAKE OURSELVES GREAT by trashing everyone we can get our hands on!  Therefore it is the WILL OF GOD for you who are not of our tribe to willingly submit yourselves to us so that we can turn you into our toilet paper, our vomit buckets, our spittoons, our diapers, our doormats on which we can wipe our feet, our beasts of burden, our crates full of china dishes that we can fling against a wall whenever we need to get our angries out, our furniture that we can kick, our clay pigeons, our punching bags!!!"

Regardless of what white evangelicals might say, this has been the message of white American evangelicalism for far too long.  And my, how prominent white evangelicals (and some nonwhite evangelicals who have drunk the same Kool-Aid) have perverted and bastardized Scripture to justify their message and their treatment of the rest of us.  Eventually, however, even the most passive of victims gets tired of being treated like a clay pigeon.  Which is why I'm not attending church today and haven't attended a church since March 2020.  I still read the Bible, as can be seen from the posts I've written for this blog over the last six or seven years.  But I'm figuring things out for myself.  And I have abandoned treating other people like clay pigeons.  I am now ashamed of the times in which I was guilty of dishing out such treatment to others, especially women.

One last note: as has been mentioned frequently, the Assemblies are by no means the only misogynistic conservative evangelical group to appear in American culture.  According to a recently discovered source, Grace Community Church in Southern California has been obstructing the efforts of women in its congregation to obtain protection from abusive husbands.  Grace Community Church is pastored by John MacArthur, a man who has publicly denied that the Bible contains any mandate for social justice toward the poor and those who are not of the dominant culture.  MacArthur seems to be yet another evangelical doofus who has perverted the Gospel of good news for the poor into a message of dinner time for the rich and powerful.

A Few Thoughts On The Death of Betty Geftakys

My foray into blogging initially began while I was living in Southern California, in the aftermath of my departure from an abusive evangelical group known as "The Assemblies."  Those who want to find out more about the group can click here.  My first blog was an account of my experiences in that group (especially as an African-American in that group), and my thoughts and reflections upon leaving it.  When I left the Assemblies back in 2003, it was because I had come to realize that the family that was in charge of the group - namely, George and Betty Geftakys and their two sons - were a collection of crooks.  Back then I was under the impression that the Assemblies were an example of a "fringe" group that did not reflect white American evangelicalism as a whole, and that evangelicalism was, by and large, healthy - so that I believed that in order to heal from the damage I suffered, I simply needed to find a "healthy" church after leaving the Assemblies.  What a far cry from my attitude today, when most of the world can now see that white American evangelicalism is a disgusting barrel of monkeys, and that it has been so for a rather long time!

As I mentioned, the Assemblies were abusive.  This abuse was an outworking of the way in which the head family exploited the members, and an outworking also of the way we were taught to relate to each other in our bid to climb the ladder of church leadership.  But some small element of Scriptural truth managed to seep into the consciousness of most of us members - especially the part of Scripture that teaches that when you do wrong to others, you need to repent.  And that this repentance must involve making things right with the people you wronged.  So when the Assemblies were blown apart by scandals in 2003, many of us hoped, prayed, and half expected that George, Betty, and their two sons would sooner or later take that step of repentance.

In the years since my departure, George Geftakys died (in 2014), and his son David died (in 2017).  I learned today that George's wife Betty died just last month.  I am ashamed to admit that upon hearing of the deaths of each of these people, my first reaction was a rather strong feeling of schadenfreude.  Today I have once again needed to repent of that feeling.  For I still follow the Good Book, which says in part that God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked.  Yet as I read that same Good Book, I can't help but shudder at the thought of the legacy these people have left and the future that awaits them.  Their later years remind me of a chapter from a Chinese sci-fi book that I recently enjoyed, namely the Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin.  The chapter in question is titled, "No One Repents."