“I Wanna Join a Cult, Ma!”
That’s what it sounds like these days if a kid gets too excited about Jesus Christ: “You’re in a Cult!”
I first encountered this when I started a Bible study with Kyle, my 7th-grade son, and Sean, my handicapped, 8th-grade son. It was a circus, or what some would call a “Cult”.
The “Wonder Years”
“Wonder” was my co-leader (Neil Wonderchuck), with a bare-breasted woman tattooed on his arm (crude, but nice boobs!), and he always wore wife-beaters to show it off. Not quite two years old in Christ, “Wonder” soon took a Sabbatical to study “The Attraction of Canine Regurgitation Habits in North America”, or some nonsense.1 But we did start a Bible study with a motley crew of Jeff, Steve, Tom and BK. The kids were mostly interested in hanging out at the Black Wolfe pool hall after a brief Bible study.
Some new kid came one night, and we were entering the pool hall when his mom came peeling into the parking lot and shouted through her car window: “Get in!”
I motioned to Wonder to cover that tattoo, then went to introduce myself, but she was too angry. Her son told her he was going the pool hall, not a Bible study! When she found out about the Bible study somehow, she went ballistic.
I explained that we always told the kids to make it clear it was a Bible study, not a pool hall event. But we only studied the Bible about 30 minutes (they couldn’t handle more), and it was a good thing to that gave kids a chance to hear about the Bible. It was an informal thing, just a few friends getting together, I told her.
“That’s what I thought,” she said, putting the car in reverse. “We’ve already had one cult in this area, and we’re not going through that again!” She drove away with her son sulking in the back seat.
I was stunned: pool halls are OK, but not a Bible study?
Did she know what teenage boys usually do at pool halls? Yes she did, because the community was up-in-arms over the Black Wolfe—it was a great place for sex, drugs and fights. The Stow police raided the place occasionally, and the owners complained of being harassed. But this mom was OK with it, not only because she told me, but her boy often loitered around the place.
Cult-Terror
If you start a new Bible study, people think it’s a cult. I realize that, and I know it’s scary especially for parents.
For decades we’ve been exposed to all sorts of Cult-legends like Jim Jones, the Moonies, Children of God, David Koresh, the Japanese Serin-Gas Cult, and that crazy Star Trek cult of suicides.
But I wonder, does anyone know how widespread this Cult-thing is? That mother claimed Stow already suffered from one Cult and didn’t need two. I can’t find anyone who remembers our predecessor.
When a couple kids started spreading macabre stories about our Cult-like-ways, the whole city was in an uproar. The Mayor, police, high school, high school security officers, a local church, parents, and even the Akron Beacon-Journal joined in to give us front page coverage. The stories includedD
- Sexual molestation on camping weekends,
- Midnight rituals at local graveyards,
- Sneaking kids out of homes at night,
- Teaching kids to shoplift,
- Harassment if anyone left the cult… (Oddly, the stories about Xenos harassment contradict the stories about Xenos “snubbers” and “shunners” but nobody notices it—all the stories are true!)
It’s a Cult-Terrified cult-ure today. More precisely, it’s a Christian-alienated culture.
So why start a new Bible study if it causes all this grief? Why not just work with a more-established Christian group and quit playing the “outsider” role?
Over The Edge
The real problem is the isolation of Christian groups today. Stow high school has about 2,500 students, and no Christian Bible study. The Mayor claimed Atheletes-in-Action were working there and said they were doing a fine job, so why does Xenos need to start something? Nobody heard of this group. It must have been a decade ago, or longer.
But there was a Christian Group called “On the Edge” or something like that working at the high school when we first moved there. They didn’t have a junior high group, so we started one. But I took Kyle and a few kids to their meeting once, and it was an eye-opener for my innocent and naive boys who weren’t raised with the Institutional Church model.
There were about 10 high school kids there, and they began with 45 minutes of singing Christian songs! Both Kyle and Sean hate singing (unless it’s Nirvana), so I was curious how they’d handle it. Sean just sat back and did nothing. Kyle was creative: he leaned forward, focused on the Powerpoint projection, and pretended he was trying hard to “get it” and understand the words. But he never sang one note.
Then the leader chewed-out the kids for another half-hour for being half-assed, uncommitted Christians, and he cited the case of a Stow kid who recently committed suicide. If these Christian kids hadn’t been so selfish, maybe that kid would still be alive! But they never tried reaching out to him, so he’s dead now. That’s just great.
I was raised in the Institutional Church, so I’m not weirded-out by it like Kyle is. But I couldn’t wait to get out of there, and Kyle was leading the way, as soon as possible.
So “On the Edge” went “Over the Edge” and dissolved soon thereafter, of course. Apparently they never figured out the kids weren’t reaching non-Christians simply because they didn’t want to bring their friends to such a goof-ball thing.
Let’s Start a Cult
We always get dinged as a “cult” because we’re reaching non-Christians. It’s that simple. We’re exposed to the secular world, which isn’t familiar with Christian groups working among non-Christians. Churches just don’t do that anymore, so that means we must be a cult; we don’t act “normal” (in many ways, including booby-tattoos).
More significant, we can’t find any churches across the nation with such a high percentage of un-churched attending. It’s around 80% here.
It means growing a church from scratch. (Is it really so bad to have a new church start in the area?) But non-Christians and people alienated from their Christian backgrounds (a growing population) simply won’t tolerate the crazy, silly singing thing called a Worship Service. A group largely composed of church-hoppers will embrace the traditional Worship Service. Christians demand the Worship Service even if it means alienating non-Christians.
But the Worship Service isn’t even biblical! Read what Joel Hughes wrote about it (see “Why don’t we sing?”).
Since “the new group” is always a Cult—as everyone knows—and since we’re reaching non-Christians, we will be a “Cult”. The non-Christian crowd is like the beer-hall or pool-hall crowd (figuratively-speaking). They’re crude, rude, and socially-unacceptable in Christian circles. They also take Sabbaticals to study “Canine Regurgitation”, and that causes more problems.
So let’s start a “Cult”, I say. It ain’t so bad, even with all the headaches. It’s at least better than going “Over the Edge”.
Additional Information
- A reference to 2 Peter 2:22 [↩]
Hell yeah baby. I am so glad to be following Christ and not the institutions of man.
We have seen 6 salivations come from the direct involvement of CBS. I think the lord is blessing our work, even if the world system chooses to call us a cult.
Canine Regurgitation? WTF?
Anyways i wish i would have seen that happening at the black wolf, it would have been sweet. I wonder who it was and how they found out later that it was actually a bible study.
The black wolf was sweet though, it sucks that they shut it down.
If we are a cult, so be it, I dont see why its such a scarring word anyways? Why do the nonchristians see calling us that like they are hurting us or something. I think denying we are a cult is goofy especially if we dont understand the term in the first place, (either do the people calling us it probably). We can be called a cult, thats fine with me, I wont say it to everyone though, thats wierd.
Proverbs 26:11
Like a dog that returns to its vomit Is a fool who repeats his folly.
I believe “canine regurgitation” referenced this passage.
Nice post, Keith! How do you harass someone and shun them at the same time? I just finished up a 3 year stint leading a cult of junior high boys in a Friday night bible study. If I would have actually called it the “BS Cult” we probably would have gotten a bigger turn out. From the one-true-church mom who pulled her kid because we taught that you can’t work your way to God to the mom who didn’t want her son exposed to the Bible (but he has an unfiltered internet PC in his room) we got all kinds.
And, yes, I am proud to be known in the local subdivisions as “that crazy bible study dude.”
I pretty much acknowledged the whole cult thing when I accepted Christ with Keith…. I figured “what the hell, even if it is, I want in!” These people are friendly, intellegent, happy, and productive! I don’t think by the worlds standards we are a cult. There is nothing that is hard proof of “culty” things. But if that’s what people want to call this, let them! Who cares? This is one of the best things that has happened to me. I don’t care what people call it.
hehe, Well Icy Mt, that’s the real trick: to harass and snub at the same time! It’s a delicate balance…
But seriously, I think the person-in-question really wanted to transfer schools more than anything else.
And mwalker, I do hope you’re kidding (I think you are) about being into it just because of the “nice people”…!!
lbeech, you beaned-it pretty good!
mwalker saw (and sees) what many of the adults that we reach out to see…John 13:35 “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” They see it, they don’t understand it, but they know they want it. The acceptance of Christ and the walk comes later. Once they realize that Christ is where that smell comes from. Oooo, oohh, that smell… that smell that’s around you!
Well said. And I’m continually amazed at how much people love to hate & fight constantly, 7/24 in this realm.
I noticed a weird thing, Keith: you used the words “love,” “hate,” and “fight” all in the same sentence.
i.e. “People love to hate and fight…”
At the risk of being my typical overtly-analytical self, I am going to ask exactly what kind of “love” this is. It seems to violate the law of non-contradiction to say “People love to hate.” I wonder if you asked those hateful people if they liked or loved their current hate-filled situation, would they say “Oh yes, I love it.”
The problem seems to arise that if we consider loving God to be existentially experienced in loving people and hating people is something loved by people, then there would be some form or function OF love IN hate. It doesn’t seem like too big a stretch of the imagination for someone to say that one way they serve people is to hate them, because they love to do that.
You basically end up with a twist on the second greatest commandment- “The best way to experience love is to hate your neighbor.”
I’ve seen some married couples who seem to be constantly fighting and the natural question is “Do they LIKE to live like that?!” Obviously they don’t, because 50% of marriages end in divorce.
It seems that people just don’t know any way of living that doesn’t include constant conflict.
This is because:
1. They don’t know any better.
2. They do know better and do not care.
Either they are ignorant or lazy or both.
I think this is because it is easier to breed conflict than to solve it.
A catchy phrase is “It is easier to ask for permission than to ask for forgiveness.” I don’t know who came up with this phrase because everyone doesn’t do either of these things. No one asks for permission and no one asks for forgiveness. What you end up with is a bunch of people doing whatever they want relationally regardless of whether or not it is wrong and they never seek reconciliation. I would term this “Relational anarchy.”
It is a system in which everyone does anything they want to anyone they want. The natural existential outworking of this is conflict- the victims want justice when no one knows what that is.
We know that anarchy as a cultural system does not work. How it was adopted on a much smaller relational scale is beyond my capacity to understand.
Jz,
I don’t think you are being overly analytical at all. This is an incredibly insightful post. I had to read it 3 times. “Victims want justice when no one knows what that is.” Absolutely. Without a Creator and arbiter of Truth this is where it ends up. People get obsessed with all kinds of crazy stuff and call it love: “OMG, I love this song!” I think our current culture breeds relational anarchy in order to separate us from our neighbor. This is the evil one hard at work. It is much easier to control a population that doesn’t trust each other.
Hey Jeremiah & Icy — I’m up here in Canada attending Bruxy Cavey’s “Meeting House” tomorrow morning, and thought I’d drop a quickie on you, because you’ve both hit on a most fascinating feature of love: namely, it can be “decomposed”, or broken-down into some discreet components. In fact, Paul certainly does this in 1 Cor. 13, “Love is this & that…”
The irreducible minimum component of love is Love Feelings: required for survival, courage to face life, motivation, etc. (Check out The Power of Love – the irrational section). We can experience love feelings without the other components of love (such as truth, for example). So non-Christians can experience Love Feelings from Christian fellowship when God’s love is working there (2 Corinthians 2:15 “For we are a fragrance of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing;”). An infant feeds off a mother’s Love Feelings without understanding the other components of love.
Love Feelings can come from Ecstasy (the drug) at a Rave, random sex, etc. Even negative emotional can produce love feelings, which is oftene the experience of the male Work Substitute Love Defect, who teases and chides or criticizes. (See Love Therapy — the section on Love Defects.)
So people can get Love Feelings by hating someone: through hatred, they get emotionally-entangled & charged-up, which is far-better than living in an emotional vacuume. For many people this is their primary source of Love Feelings: bitterness, hatred, negative relating, etc.
The problem is, all the above approaches are essentially immature: they can only work in the shortest-of-terms, because they’re destructive, dangerous, create dependancies, slavery, and eventually produce death.
Mature Love acquires the other components of love (check out “Biblical Love” in the Love Therapy paper), so the mature has more control over how & when Love Feelings appear. But simply because someone’s love may be immature doesn’t mean they aren’t experiencing real love feelings.
Does that help?
I think I do understand your comment Keith. What I am not clear on is the value of love feelings that are attained through these destructive means.
I think that some people would be better off living in an emotional vacuum because of the way they gain their real love feelings- by tearing down others.
In an emotional vacuum, I am the only one who suffers. I am the only one hurt. In the other system, I reach outside myself and damage others as well as myself.
It is kind of analogous to the suicide bomber. If you want to commit relational suicide, is it better to do it all by yourself, or to do it in a relational way that destroys or contributes to the destruction of others. I would say by yourself.
I wonder if experiencing love feelings that can only come about at the degradation of others can really be called “experiencing love feelings.”
I mean, when I go to sleep, I might have a dream. But do I experience the dream?
Instead of saying they experience love feelings, I would reduce that to say they experience feelings.
I forgot to ask also,
Are you saying that hate can be a quality of immature love?
Hey Jeremiah, good questions. First, re: “love feelings” vs. “feelings” — I’m not exactly sure why you’re making a distinction, but I’m guessing it’s because you’re saying, “One works, and the other doesn’t…” And it that’s true–in the long-term.
But from a physiological perspective, as Dr. Ankenman pointed out, crippling emotional disorders arise from emotional needs which we associate with “feeling loved” — security, emotional warmth/tenderness/sensitivity, and elation/excitement, emotional courage, and the stimulation which love relationships provide are some of these Love Feelings. These fuel human life, and machines don’t need them. Their absence or presence alter the body’s chemistry too, because they trigger hormones (like neurotransmitters and adrenalin), which in-turn regulate our bodies & our immune system. By God’s design, these vital feelings are richly supplied through healthy love relationships.
So we call them Love Feelings because they’re supposed to be love-caused, and everyone who’s ever been loved knows love is the source for Love Feelings. When the immature don’t get these Love Feelings from their love-relationships, they resort to demands, theft, trickery, bribery and other means to get them. In fact, the immature MUST demand to be loved, because they don’t know how to get Love Feelings any other way.
It’s like food: we need food & the energy & nutrition it provides. But some eat junk-food, which is still food, to be sure, but not “great food”. More important, junk food only works temporarily, and it has terrible side-effects.
And it’s not a dream: Love Feelings still feel like Love Feelings even if they come from an illigetimate source. That’s what makes the illegitimate source seem legitimate. The Love Feelings are very real, unlike a dresam, and “cannot be denied,” as Juliett said.
“I think that some people would be better off living in an emotional vacuum” — but the problem is, people WON’T live in an emotional vacuum, so they become “Love-Takers.”
I checked out http://www.themeetinghouse.ca/
That’s a very interesting group, much like Xenos. Did you tell them you have a cult? I like their idea of “purge Sundays” but I digress.
I think about it this way:
Immature or dysfunctional love is when you have a church member demanding attention from the leader. Maybe even committing sins just to get the attention. The leader withdraws the constant attention and suddenly the member feels abandoned or “shunned.”
On the other hand, I don’t need the constant attention of my home church leader to feel loved. When I see them prepare a teaching, encourage (or admonish) another member, or give the gospel to someone we just met, I feel loved. I see the love of Christ in them and the love of Christ that is in me responds.
Icy, you’ve gotta check out our Meeting House visit at the NeoZine. You’re right, they are much like Xenos in many (most) respects, even theologically.
Your example of mature love which understands someone is loving them aside from Present Love Feelings is an excellent example; because mature love doesn’t need such emotional reinforcement.
However, we still need emotional reinforcement in order for love to qualify as genuine love. It’s just that it isn’t the only way to be loved, as the Infantile believes.