Reflections on the Death of an Old Tyrant, 20 Years Later

In my play "None Dare Call It Treason," the action begins with the death of the "Old Man," a tyrant whose death ushers a great deal of chaos and misrule into the land of Cog. In real life, this particular man, by the name of Herbert W. Armstrong, died on January 16, 1986, when I was (to the day) four and a half years of age. As such, at the outset I must say that I did not know the man myself at all, but rather my view of him reflects a second hand understanding of those virtues of his that many vociferously claim as well as those faults of his that others just as loudly proclaim.

Regardless of whether one idolizes or abhors HWA, there is no denying that he was a person of great importance, especially for those of us who were either converted or who through accident of birth were involved with the Worldwide Church of God. Unfortunately, the main source of information about his life is through his two-volume autobiography, which is the genre of literature where one is the least likely to find truth (this is because of all the things people lie about, they are most likely to lie about themselves, and then after that to lie about their enemies).

The claims made for HWA by his friends and supporters border on (if not cross the line of) the idolatrous. Some people behave as is every word he wrote was in red letter and was canonical (which is frankly ridiculous). Some people behave as if he were an apostle (which is against the qualifications in the Bible in Acts 1, among other places, which states that an apostle must have a direct apostolic calling from Jesus Christ and must have been instructed personally by him, qualifications which HWA did not meet). Others behave as if he had no sins of all to speak of, and that that only flaw he had was to be a poor judge of character (this seems to be quite true, but it would hardly be his only flaw).

There are others though, who just as vehemently claim the most outlandish and severe sins for HWA. While the allegations of his plagarism of certain literature from other British Israelite sources seems quite true, and negates any sort of idea one must have about his intellectual honesty, this is merely the least of the comments people have against him. There are bizarre allegations of him keeping a log of certain autosexual activities and allegations of incestuous relations with his daughter, which at this date can only be classified as hearsay. Given the length of time after the supposed events, any sort of evidence for or against seems somewhat difficult to fathom beyond savage accusations. As far as certain allegations to the reasons for his about face on the issue of divorce, I have my own opinions about it, but they must remain my personal opinions. It is obvious that both the pre-1974 and post-1974 decisions were lacking a certain moral sense. In such contentious issues, though, one can have excellent theory and woeful practice. I have commented earlier on my own rather tangled and complicated thoughts about divorce, so I will not repeat them here.

It seems a bit unfortunate to dwell on the negative, but the legacy of HWA has been quite negative. Those who hold him in the highest regard reflect poorly on his memory by their behavior as rigid and narrow minded people unwilling to see the tiniest human flaw in him or in his atrocious understanding of political theory (indeed, it is his views on government that have proven to be his most lasting legacy, and his most bitter). That said, the good parts of his legacy (including, but not limited, to the injunction to look at the Bible rather than to him) have been ignored as his successors have in many cases built up cults of authority around individuals or classes within the various orginizations of the Church of God. Thus while honoring HWA in words, they have not taken his advice seriously. Perhaps that is our fault and not his, but it reflects poorly on him.

HWA was in his age a maverick, a person of limited education but boundless zeal for the truth of God who sought (sincerely, from all I have been able to judge) to restore the truth of God and rid it of the pagan traditions that had been built around the Bible. He sought reasonable and straightforward interpretations of the Bible rather than tortured fictions. That his views were somewhat limited and flawed is inevetible, but he plowed a lot of ground and left a blueprint for how further eradications of the taint of paganism and wicked human tradition can be done. So let us remember him for that. He never saw the promised land, but at least he pointed the way for us to follow. We cannot be content merely to do what he did--we must go beyond, further and deeper, into the truth of God. But we have a lot to appreciate him for, even if he was, like all of us, merely a human being whose human nature held him down to the ground even as he reached up towards the heavens.