Chapter 2

A cult? Really?

As I mentioned in my introduction it took me several months after leaving the cult in June 2008 before I could actually call the church I had been a member of for 25 years a cult.

Part of it was because of a misconception of what a cult was – the word is often associated with Satan worshipping, goat slaughtering, blood, pentagrams, hallucinogenic drugs etc. The other part of it was that it felt gravely wrong. Even though I had reached the decision to leave it took some time for me to actually believe that the church was not of God. I felt that to throw words like “cult” around was blasphemous and at that stage that wasn’t something I was at all comfortable with.

However over time I came to the realisation that the church was not godly, that it was wrong, false, created by man and not God and that if there was a God that He had nothing to do with that place. It was hard, because I had experienced things in that place that I could not attribute to my understanding of the natural secular world. Some of those things I still can’t explain and some I still don’t want to talk about though I hope that through authoring this blog and eventually the book that I will be able to explore those things and put them in neat, orderly boxes.

One thing that did help me was the checklist in the book Recovering from Churches that Abuse (Enroth, R., 1994, Zondervan) that my partner lent me. All my answers were consistent with the characteristics of cults.

1. Does a member’s personality generally become stronger, happier, more confident as a result of contact with the group? No, people feel beaten into submission, depressed, anxious, living in fear.
2. Do members of the group seek to strengthen their family commitments? You have nothing to do with family outside the cult.
3. Does the group encourage independent thinking and the development of discernment skills? Absolutely not. You don’t have your own thoughts. You don’t think. You just do as you’re told.
4. Does the group allow for individual differences of belief and behaviour particularly on issues of second importance? No, you conform to the doctrine, the teachings of the ministry even the personal opinions and preferences of those in the ministry.
5. Does the group encourage high moral standards both among members and between members and nonmembers? On the surface, the absolute highest morals.
6. Does the group’s leadership invite dialogue, advice, and evaluation from outside its immediate circle? Yes, but no. The pretence of openness – but if you ask questions you are reprimanded, sometimes even put out of fellowship.
7. Does the group allow for development in theological beliefs? There is only one way.
8. Are group members encouraged to ask hard questions of any kind? No.
9. Do members appreciate truth wherever it is found, even if it is outside their group? There is no truth outside the church. The world is considered an evil cesspool of sin full of dangerous people who are just waiting to drag you down to Hell with them.
10. Is the group honest in dealing with nonmembers, especially as it tries to win them to the group? Many people come expecting one thing based on what they’re told initially – but once they’re inside those walls they find a different story. Many don’t come back the following week.
11. Does the group foster relationships and connections with the larger society that are more than self-serving? The church is an oasis of purity, the world is something that should be kept at arms length. You don’t make friends with those outside the cult, you have the absolute minimum contact you need in order to work to earn money and to preach the Gospel. That’s it.

The checklist gave me something a bit more solid, but still – why should I believe someone just because they’ve published a paper or written a book? This was a very tumultuous time for me psychologically with me going through a complete upending of everything I knew about the world. Leaving a cult isn’t like giving up yoga classes.

If you’ve seen films like The Matrix or The Island perhaps you might be able to grasp just how significant the transition is and how different the two sides of the fence are. When you’re going through such a massive life change you’re not so keen on accepting things on face value because everything you thought was solid fact turns out to be utter lies.

I believe the turning point for me where I finally came to truly accept that I had come out of a cult was simply bringing the two ends together, closing the loop and cross-checking what I knew of the world and seeing what added up. Why did we exist? If God truly had created us then what is the purpose of us enduring a lifelong test of our love and commitment when everyone’s situation is different and some people are placed in circumstances where they are set up to fail His success criteria? Why did attending the church meetings, listening to sermons, tolerating fellow churchgoers and doing everything else required by the pastor and church doctrine feel so contrary to my nature?

It didn’t add up. I know people can come up with explanations for those questions – I know because I listened to them for 25 years – but when I really considered it, it did not make sense. If we are made in the image of God then following Him should not be a chore. If we are being tested then the test should be fair.

For example, take homosexuality. Not tolerated in the cult. If you’re gay then God hates you and you will be put out, condemned to eternal damnation in Hell. How is that fair? If that’s the DNA you’re born with then no amount of prayer or wishing is going to fix that. Or people born with mental disabilities who will never be able to grasp the complexities of the Bible and how to find Salvation. How is that fair?

The church had instructions from God to go and preach the Word to all humanity … which of course is an impossible goal as there was only around 5,000 people worldwide in the church and most of the members were very reluctant when it came to evangelising. But it was taught that those people who die never having heard the Gospel would go through a different judgement. They would be judged on the state of their hearts rather than those who had been unfortunate enough to have been preached to by members of the cult who were then condemned to Hell automatically unless they then attended the church, repented of their sins and so on.

So it sounds like you’re better off if you never hear the Gospel, doesn’t it?

I’ll go into more detail on some of the topics touched on by that checklist in later blog posts, but I just wanted to look at it briefly now as one of the tools that I used to help convince myself that the church was indeed a cult which helped me distance myself from it.

Some of the things I mentioned here such as the church’s stance on homosexuality – that’s something I had made a decision on years earlier before I have left the cult. I had already realised that that the church’s strong anti-gay position was wrong and was one of the many, many factors that resulted in me eventually leaving the church.

Even though I had physically left I did for some time later still believe that I had turned my back on God and was going to Hell. I’ll also go into more detail in later blog posts about what I went through in the month following my escape because it was quite traumatic but that turning point where I accepted it was a cult, from then on the rate of recovery increased dramatically. It was no longer a church, a holy place, a place of God … it was a cult, something wrong, something damaging, a thing not to be respected and revered but rejected.