downfall of the cults

 

one of the first decisions nik and i made together was to make a conscious effort in changing our entertainment values- both how much time we spent on, and the actual content of, what we would watch. it was helpful for me, because i knew i spent too much time with some tv show or other running in the background while i did housework or crafts and such.  i enjoyed having the sound of conversation in the house, and so i got used to listening to netflix shows even when i wasn't actively watching them. nik pointed out to me on a few occasions how much time the tv spent being on, and the conviction cut deep- rightly so.

this decision we made was also helpful because it gave me that extra motivation to lean into my nerdiness and see that list of documentaries on my watchlist.

bunny trail: so far, my favorite was the docuseries about the black plague and how it helped shape society- and how society actually affected how, when, and where the plague spread. i may have watched half of it twice.

 

in addition to stuff in the science and history worlds, i have a fascination with cults- how they formed, how they veered off the path of truth, how to have intelligent conversations with those in a cult, etc. turns out there's a fair amount of audio and visual learning freely available.

bunny trail: feel free to give me any suggestions of random, good, clean, podcast/video/shows on anything cool.

 

my new series is brought to us by netflix, and is entitled "leah remini: scientology and the aftermath." to say the least, it is eye-opening. every episode reveals yet another "woah" moment where scandal after scandal has been covered up, families broken apart, lives ruined, local and federal officials manipulated, non-scientologists targeted and children taken from parents and brainwashed and abused for years. and this is if even only half of it is true.

don't even get me started on the whole "xenu the alien god" thing.

 

bunny trail: ask me about the whole "xenu the alien god" thing. woah.

 

not only has dear leah remini displayed sooooo much that the scientologists would love to keep hidden for always and eternity, but amazon also recommended a kindle read for me, which of course, i read, about another well-known cult: mormonism. 

 

this book was an autobiography of a barely-15-year-old child who becomes the (6th) sister-wife of a major leader of the mormon branch that relocated to mexico in order to continue their practice of polygamy. "favorite wife: escape from polygamy" was so interesting i could barely put it down and interrupted nik's work multiple times to tell him new developments in the story. it was exciting, sad, weird, personal- so many things all at once.

quick history lesson: after joseph smith had a revelation that started mormonism, he engaged in polygamy and then stated he'd had a revelation from God revealing that polygamy is awesome. after they all moved to the utah territory to escape persecution, they continued polygamy until the US government made outlawing polygamy a condition for making utah a state.  then joseph had another revelation from God revealing that polygamy is no longer awesome. but he forgot to edit that verse out of their book of doctrines, he kept having contradictory revelations, and then he died, so i guess we will never know how God really feels about having dozens of wives.

 

i both love learning about these cults and hate seeing how many ways there are to distort the truth and lead people astray. it doesn't take much to turn a soul-saving message into a soul-sucking one.

 

my main podcast resource (for cults, anyway), is Cultish, where 2 christian friends interview others who have come out of these erroneous belief systems.  they find many of the same issues with the jehovah's witness cult as leah does with scientology, and in a hypothetical question to her, they ask the crucial question: what have you freed them  to ?

 

coming out of something bad doesn't really do much, if it lands you in something only slightly less bad. this isn't one of those "mostly dead is slightly alive" kind of things, even with chocolate-coated pills. a faith is either true, or it is not true. leah can pull folks out of scientology all she wants, but then she drops them into a spiritual landscape of barren wilderness. dropping your phone into a full bathtub might be mentally easier than into a toilet, but in the end it doesn't matter because your phone is still KO'd.

 

the answer to that all-important question posed by "cultish" is both obvious and mysterious. it is easy and extremely difficult. it can save your life in one sense, but could also kill you in another.

 

those who have come to Jesus with a background of cults are fighters- truly. years of hardcore intentional brainwashing and indoctrination are seemingly impossible to put down and walk away from.

but some did. and it's because they found that answer- a tool, a weapon, really. 

a cult's worst nightmare.

it's called the Truth.

 

i got a vague sense of something in "favorite wife", and got super excited when i discovered i was right.

this 20-year old girl, after suffering 5 years of use, abuse, neglect, and more under the authority of the elected "preacher" (her husband), the "prophet" (her brother-in-law), and the "super-sleazy evil, creepy, lying, murderous scumbag" (her other brother-in-law), she is confronted with an idea from another disgruntled mormon: don't just blindly follow what you're told when your eternal soul is at stake; find the truth for yourself.

 

she took that idea and ran with it. and for an under-educated woman with no human to help with her theological dilemma, she caught on pretty quickly.

 

guess. what.

all she did was pick up a Bible and start reading.

 

if her husband hadn't been busy with his mission work and 9 other wives and 40+ children, maybe he would have noticed and made her stop.

the funny thing is, she didn't even get very far before she realized something was seriously wrong (with mormonism). she found a seed of truth in a verse that I NEVER would have referred anyone to. the seed sprouted and grew. it took a couple years, but the fruit of her search was worthwhile. at the risk of her safety and that of her 5 children, she left the whole community (while they excommunicated her; in essence, it was a mutual ditching), moved back to the states- and kept reading the Bible. she finds the Way, the Truth and the Life, and plays a part in the salvation of several of her old sister-wives and many of their children. chains busted, prisoners freed, gates of hell slammed shut, eyes opened, souls saved- all because she picked up a Bible and started reading.

 

i go through phases where daily quiet time is not very "daily." i've been reading through Ezra, and lemme tell you it is not a thriller tale. i alternate between that and my Bible memory verses, which is good because Bible memory is good, but also kinda bad because it's partly to avoid Ezra, even though i am almost to the end. even by typing this out the guilt is rising.

 

i know i underestimate the value of the Bible. i have a glimpse of its full worth in my head, but acting on that knowledge is a regular struggle. even for someone who loves books as much as i do.

but the Bible is so much more than just a book. it's satan's kryptonite. it's hubbard's worst enemy. it's mormonism's antidote. it's a formidable weapon that God put in our hands, and that many of us shove onto our shelves and forget about. we accept whatever the man behind the pulpit says, regardless of whether he's speaking from the Bible or maybe just holding one closed in his hand- then we slip back into a spiritual coma for another week.

 

sometimes you just need to see what life is like under the corrupted version before you can recognize and fall in love with the Truth all over again. that might be another underlying reason i have this odd fascination. the more i hear of these distortions, the more i tighten my hold on what i know to be true.  i can still remember what my life was like before i could clearly see what the first apostles did; it was not to the same extreme, but i recognized the look in the eyes of leah remini's friends- grief, shame, loss, fear, hopelessness. most of that is because leah only brings these friends halfway. out of one cult, into another: the cult of "find your own truth," "you do you," "love is love is love," etc. what has she freed them to? what CAN anyone free them TO? the answer to this cult is the same as the answer to all the others, and indeed, to all the false religions.

 

the answer is the Truth, and His name is Jesus.

only the Truth can truly liberate one from the slavery of a cult to the wide-open freedom of Christ.

the Truth can only be found in Him. and He chose to reveal that Truth about Himself in a book, which He describes as a sword. Jesus knows the strength of the falsehoods that surround us. Jesus also knows the power of the Truth, because He IS the Truth. it's His people who forget that the Bible IS the revelation of the Truth- of God Himself!- so that by using this "sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God" we are really letting the Spirit work through us to bring the salvation of the Son with all the power and authority of God the Father in heaven. if we remembered this, we would never neglect the Bible like we do.

 

the time is now to unsheathe the Sword and join the war against falsehood. read Ephesians 6 and you'll see that we have been called up for active duty and given all the unlimited resources of heaven itself, to bring emancipation to those enslaved to sin and to help bring about the downfall of the cults. we will not see the complete end of them until the second coming of Jesus but under His banner we wage this war "against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places" emboldened by the confidence of ultimate victory. 

 

so grab your (spiritual) fighting gear and come with me as we follow the LORD of hosts!!!

… as soon as I finish Ezra…

abidin' my time

thinking about it right now, this week is a first for me.  i've never just up and taken a week off work with no specific plans.  but after 4 straight weeks of working at least 1 overtime shift, i'm worn out.  and since my sister and i hadn't had time to make plans… i just kept the time off.  that time is now over half gone, but i've caught up on sleep, my blood pressure's gone back down and i've been able to do fun things like stain the new deck, start painting the front hallway and take in a stray kitten who is a 550 gram walking skeleton, but the cutest skeleton you've ever seen.  she's been to the vet, eaten as much as the 11 pound cat and hopefully will be booger-free once her antibiotics are done.

i've only had to turn down 2 requests for work.  it was hard both times. i love my job, too much if that's possible.  i like being busy, i love doing things, i love seeing good spread and knowing i had a part in it.  i am by nature a problem-solver, and broken things that i can't fix are hard for me to accept.  i hate hearing statistics that say non-Christians give more, do more and do it faster and bigger than churches and religious organizations.  even if they're not all true, or twisted, i have this burning aching desire to find a million dollars and go on a thousand mission trips- all while running a house full of cats, working full time overnight hours and even the inside of a gym once in a while.  we have yet another mission team serving in South Africa right now, one headed to Memphis next month, 5 missionary families we support and at least 3 missions in Jackson.  i want to do all of them.

beyond impossible, it's insane.

so…. what, then?  God tells us to do good… and this world is in such desperate need of good that it's exhausting to even think about the enormity of the mission given to us. the new testament is chock full of parables and commands and lessons on  bearing fruit, making disciples, loving everyone everywhere all the time.  like, my mind is whirling faster than a spinning top.  how?  how on earth can i get it all done?!?!

is your pulse rising yet? mine is.

and then….

then i heard just what i needed to hear. our Bible study group is working through James this summer and chapter 2 again explains how faith without works is dead and beyond useless. and again, we were all drawn to the needs we saw and felt drawn to participate in.  the "doing" had become the main focus in about 2 seconds.  we know that works have nothing to do with salvation, but that they draw a clear line between genuine faith and the fake stuff.  and if i needed more confirmation that i was forgetting a key part of the deal, i came across this entertaining sermon as well:

 http://www.summitrdu.com/message/you-cant-do-it-but-he-can/

flip back a few pages to the tail end of the book of John, who knew James.  i'd pay a booger-load of money to be able to hear the conversations they must have had.  John had the heavy privilege of hearing Jesus's most intimate sermon ever, the night before He was arrested. right about the point where His disciples were probably going dizzy in the head from all He's said, He brings everything together and sums it up with three little words: "Abide in Me."

that's it.

not, "Pull out your planners and wallets and smartphones" or, "here are My top 10 ministry choices, ready, set, go"  or even a "good luck."  all He says is "Abide in Me."

but the ministries that need volunteers and donations? "Abide in Me."

or the refugees that need food and water and homes? "Abide in Me."

but… but what about those missionaries who's funding got cut?  "Abide in Me."

and the homeless here?  with the poor and under-educated and ex-cons shunned by others? and the environment and abandoned kitties and the polar bears?  WHO'S GOING TO SAVE THE POLAR BEARS?!?!?

 "Abide in Me."

those few brief sentences outline His whole plan for us.  He's the vine and we are the branches.  now, if you, unlike me, did NOT have rosebushes larger than a minivan (no lie) that you had to prune back to the ground, you may not know what branches do.  it's not a whole lot.  they abide.  even on a cellular level, branches are like tubes that water pushes up through from the roots and the vine.  the nutrients go straight through from the bottom, and then, as long as the branch is attached, all kinds of blooming and fruit happen on the top.  the only prerequisite is that the branch abide.  it's a rather passive word, 'abide.'  so little  to 'do' and plan and … that's the beauty of it. He does it all.  we're the channels, and if we abide, the fruit of His Spirit will spring out the ends of branches faster than the hungry, aching world can devour it.  there's nothing He can't do, and there's everything we can't if we're reading calendars and budgets instead of His word. not that we should never do anything, especially when we are called out to do His work, but that we should recognize that it's His work, not ours.

i'm putting "abiding" at the top of my to-do list.  yes, there are still things that need to happen, and the stay-cation is more than half over, so i'll be back at work soon.  but that, and everything else in my life, will be a billion times more productive if i keep my eyes on Him.  abiding in Him, there's no time for all this stress.

He's got it all under control.

even the polar bears.