At what point..?

At what point do you decide you are in a cult?   The group you’re with has already told you that such thoughts are evil or to be distrusted and dismissed, so now what?

Will some of you realize where you are when and who you’re with when the group begins asking for money?   They’ll tell you that 10% is a good amount of your check to set aside for them; ‘this is founded in scripture and is entirely biblical’.   ‘All things belong to God and you only have it in your possession by His grace.. why don’t you just give a little back – not much, He doesn’t want all of it – that’s really a reasonable request, isn’t it?’.   No – most of you will nod and smile and go right along with it, won’t you?   Feel good about it even?   And just to really bring this home, ALL of your possessions should be given away.. every last cent down to the widows mite.  ‘BUT HEY.. who’s counting, right?   Just give us 10% – it’d be a damned shame to see what happened to your spirituality if you didn’t.’   I mean, the early church was practically a Socialist model with members throwing all of their wealth and possessions into a pot to be meted out as needed and to further their agenda – talk about faith, but that’s a discussion for another time.   The point is, the amount being asked for or demanded by the group either is or is not correlated to how far on the ‘Cult scale’  that group may or may not be.   If everything you own is being asked for, and ‘everything’ is only what the truist cults would ever ask for, then early Christianity is as cultic as they come.   By this test alone, providing the correlation is true, Christianity is a cult… so when will you come out?

Well how about if the group and the book you read demands your time?   All.. of.. your.. time.   Every waking second of every waking minute of every waking hour of every waking day.. and, of course, all the time you were asleep as well – all of it.   It all belongs to Him.   It was first given to you in its entirety and you have the temerity, the gall, to hold on to all of it.  What?  Do you love it or something?   Because if you love it, you are going to lose it.. you got to hate it if you want to keep it and if you want to keep it, then you don’t really hate it, do you? .. so shit.. I have no idea how this is s’posed to work but you got to do it.   Maybe you rationalize and get around it by saying that the sanctification for the doing, follows the doing.   In other words, you do what you want to do and then thank your god for leading you to do the thing you did.. on the back end, like.   Unless of course you were sinning and then you’re on your own, that was all your fault and you can whimper about that on the back end too.   Isn’t that exactly the way it works?   Jesus dies for all those sins, you go about doing what you do and hope your being led, but hell.. who knows, right?.. and then, since the books have all been settled up, you just take care of everything on the back end.   It’s called a blank check.   You keep drawing on it as if it’s going to last forever – you have ALL the time in the world and then some – forgiving yourself vicariously for sins you let someone else vicariously commit and spend your vicarious eternity with the minutes and seconds you have now.. and now.. and now..

And all you own belongs to the group and all your time belongs to the group.  At what point do you realize you’re in a cult?

And finally, here’s the kicker.

You are told how disgusting you are; a filthy menstruation rag.. in your God’s eyes, your a dirty, used tampon.   How do you feel about that?  Wait.. never mind.. moving on…

So you’re pathetic and beyond, ad infinitum; and in identifying with your groups leader, you are supposed to become less so that he can become more.. and more while you become diminished.   And eventually, the great big goal is that you completely disappear so that there is only him.   This is nothing less than suicide of the self.   You are on a path that leads to suicide, motivated and justified by self-loathing taught to you by the group you are in so that you learn to think of this death as glorious.. the.. goal.. a wonderful thing.   The death of self, because though he slay you, yet will you trust him?

I want you to know, you are not worthless, truly.   You are not disgusting or reprobate, you are not evil.   If anyone tells you otherwise, well, that’s a cult.. and that’s the very point where you can walk away and don’t look back.

Crazy or not enough faith?

When God tells you he has your baby daughters diabetes under control, the whole situation really and you need not fret.   You want to rush to the hospital but he whispers, ‘Not yet’.  ‘Are you willing to trust me here or did you think that I’d forget, that I love you?’.

You could put your trust in Science or in the Maker of all things.   Even if the Lord did take her, she would get some lovely wings.   There’s no room for one iota, not one scrap of doubt or fear because the Jehovah God of Israel will wipe away your tears.

Oh!  But you could save her, and so can He.   You can save her, but so can He.   But He might not want to, Oh could it be, that He won’t save her.   She’s stopped breathing, Praise be!   She’s gone now, Glory to Thee!   For it is His will and if He will, she will rise again, why don’t you see?   He can save her, you could have too, but He can save her – He just chose not to.

 

At what point do you begin to question whether what you believe is simply crazy, or do you just lack faith?    When you’re faced with a serious trial, at what point do you ‘let go and let God’?   What does it feel like to throw away your life on a promise written on the wind?