An Agnostic's Look at The Bible - Part III (Prophecy...Or Is It?)

Recently a Jewish friend commented about Christians stealing her book. She was, of course, referring to the way the Tanakh (what Christians call the Old Testament) had been coopted by Christians and how sections were reinterpreted to fit with real or legendary aspects of Jesus' life. According to the writers of the Gospels, the Tanakh was full of prophecies, foretelling Jesus' ministry. 

An objective reading of the Tanakh will reveal the surprising fact that actual prophesy is pretty thin on the ground throughout. An apt example is Isaiah 7:14 (KJV) "Therefore the LORD himself shall give you a sign; Behold a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel". Most Christians, or even non-Christians living in a majority-Christian culture, will recognize this verse as the supposed prophecy referenced in  Matthew 1:23 (KJV) — which an angel tells Joseph after he found out his wife-to-be was pregnant without his assistance: "Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, "God with us". There are a number of things wrong with this. Nobody, as far as The Bible records, ever called Jesus (or his name) Emmanuel. The second thing is that the word that is translated from the Hebrew as "virgin", almah, means "young woman". It could refer to a virgin, who were typically young women, but apparently no one in pre-Christian Judaism interpreted the word as virgin. Thirdly, if you read the context, it is referring, not to a future messiah, but to a contemporary event — the loss of "both their kings" (Isaiah 7:16) — referring to both Israel (the Northern kingdom) and Judah (the Southern kingdom). It's a prophecy to Ahaz, King of Judah, that both he and the King of Israel will be dead before the child Emmanuel is old enough to discern good from evil. Additional confusion arises due to the tendency of some of the Gospel writers to use the Septuagint Greek translation of the Tanakh, where Hebrew almah is translated into Greek as parthenos, which does mean "virgin. The Gospels are full of examples. 

One of the things about so-called prophecies is they're easy to fake. Look at the virgin birth prophecy that I unrolled in the previous paragraph. Nowhere else in the Gospels or anywhere else in the New Testament is Jesus' alleged virgin birth brought up. I'll be discussing the evolution of the concept of Jesus as the son of God, as well as God The Son in a later installment, but as an agnostic I'm skeptical of any supernatural claims — virgin birth is one of those. It's easy to imagine a Gospel writer scouring the Septuagint looking for promising passages that can double as prophecies. "Ooh, look, this Greek Old Testament (and the Gospel writers were without a doubt Greek-speaking) mentions a virgin conceiving a child — claiming good ol' Jesus was born of a virgin ought to polish up his divine credentials!" Pile on references to Bethlehem in Micah and Egypt in Hosea and you have an unlikely tale of a pregnant woman hiking all the way to another district for a census because their distant ancestors came from there and fleeing to Egypt. A skeptic would wonder whether these stories in the Gospels actually happened, or they were put together in order to make these older passages seem like prophecies. 

As I said in Part Two, the Tanakh was written to and for a specific people, the Hebrews/Israelites/Judeans/Jews. Despite Jesus' Jewishness and Christianity originating in the capitol of Judea, Jerusalem, it very quickly became a separate religion with no real continuity with Judaism. The early Christians included the Tanakh as part of their scriptures to wash away the taint of newness that was problematic not only among the Jewish population, but among mainstream Roman society. The Torah and the rest of the Tanakh became, in Christian hands, starting with the writers of the New Testament, merely a run-up and prelude to what they considered the main event - Jesus' life.

Start at the beginning: Part I

Go to: Part IV

An Agnostic's Look at The Bible - Part II (Inerrancy & Canon of Scripture)

Back when I was involved in a Christian-esque cult, we used to sign a green card when we registered for its foundational, introductory class. The card listed a number of supposed benefits of this class — one of them was "explains apparent Bible contradictions". We believed, as do most evangelical and fundamentalist Christians, that the Bible is inerrant, i.e. it contained no errors, and therefore couldn't contain any contradictions. So what seemed like a contradiction was really our own lack of understanding or a mistranslation. Lack of understanding might include lack of knowledge of the customs of the Biblical era and milieu, it could be that the meaning of English words had changed since the Bible version that we were reading had been published, or we hadn't properly looked at the immediate and remote context. The cult that I was in had some interesting ways of harmonizing it all, sometimes bending the words into a metaphorical pretzel to get it all to fit, but if you are familiar with the evolution of the doctrine of the Trinity, it wasn't too unusual. If you are going to insist that the Bible is without error and internally consistent that's what you're going to have to do. There are parts that blatantly contradict each other. There are parts that seem to describe Jesus in one way and other sections paint him with an entirely different brush. To make it all fit, including the Old Testament, a lot of mental gymnastics will have to be involved. 

If you read the Bible, not as "a" book, but as a collection of books, which it undeniably is, then the need to explain away contradictions disappears. Or at least the need becomes less urgent. If it's a set of books about the same subject — God — even if you concede for the sake of argument that the God of the Bible exists, different people are going to have different opinions based on their experiences and mindsets. You would expect the different writers to emphasize different things, to interpret experiences differently. 

The Tanakh, what Christians call the Old Testament, can be divided or categorized in a number of ways. There's the Torah, i.e. the Law, the first five books; there's the prophets; and there's the other writings which include books of alleged history as well as "poetic" books like Psalms and Proverbs. Some books are subcategorized as books of history. The first five books are traditionally credited to Moses, Psalms to King David, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes & The Song of Solomon to King Solomon. The various books of the prophets usually are considered eponymous. Various others round out the team. 

The first book, is called Genesis ("beginning" in Greek) by Christians, or Bereshith in Hebrew (From the Hebrew phrase bereshith barah Elohim — "[in the] beginning created [by] God").  Although it is included as part of "The Law", it actually is comprised of a creation myth and a legendary account of the origins of the people of Israel. This is not unusual, most cultures have, or had, creation myths and legends about the foundation of their nations. Within Genesis you'll find many of what we think of as "Bible stories": Adam & Eve, Cain & Abel, Noah's Ark, Abraham almost sacrificing his son, Sodom and Gomorrah and Lot's wife turning into a pillar of salt and finally Joseph and his family's sojourn in Egypt. It is self-evidently a book written to and for a specific tribal group, the Hebrews. Most of the Hebrew Bible does not read as universally applicable either. So how did it become part of the holy book of the Christians?

Things were a bit jumbled in Christianity's early days. Jesus, of course, was a Jew, descended from those Hebrews and Israelites who wrote the Bible. His followers were all Jews. After his death and alleged resurrection and ascension the first wave of followers were also Jews. They were all people who followed and revered the Torah. They were not out to start a new religion. Something that I will bring up as this series progresses is that when they followed Jesus, what he was preaching was that God would soon intervene in the world, overthrow the old order, and institute the Kingdom of God (or Heaven). This, boys and girls, was the end of the world! All the "love thy neighbor", all the "get rid of all your possessions and follow me" — all that stuff was in order to get yourself right to enter the new world ruled by God. But let me say it again, these early followers of Jesus were all still Jews and the Old Testament (which wasn't old to them) was still in force. This was one reason why, when Christianity moved beyond it's Jewish origins, that Christians retained the Old Testament as part of the holy book. 

During Christianity's early days there was a Roman cultural bias toward religions that were "ancient" and a suspicion, if not an outright prohibition, of new religious movements. As Christianity became less a Jewish sect and more a new religion, it got around this by claiming the Old Testament, which was undeniably ancient, as its own. Sections of it were reinterpreted as prophesies of the Messiah in ways that would have (and did) surprise Jews then and now. By piggybacking this new faith on the ancient religion of the Jews, even claiming via supposed prophecies that the the ancient religion of the Jews predicted Christianity, Christians could have the best of both worlds. 

After around fifteen to twenty years people started writing things down, mostly famously the man we know as the Apostle Paul. We'll revisit Paul later, but he was instrumental in spreading Christianity to non-Jews, and for writing some of Christianity's foundational documents. Most of the New Testament outside the Gospels is credited to the Apostle Paul. He wrote over a period of around twenty-five years. Others started to write things down as well, including the first of the canonical Gospels in around 70 BCE. Christian leaders in the Second Century began discussing which writings were legitimate and which ones weren't.  

Although Jesus in the Gospels quotes the Old Testament, and refers to "the scriptures", and his follower Paul does the same, some Christians noted that there was a stark difference in how God was portrayed between the Old and New Testaments, almost as if they weren't the same God. Some went beyond the "as if" and declared unambiguously that they weren't the same god. Marcion was the most well known and influential of these. He completely rejected the entire Old Testament as being about an evil God of this world, while Jesus represented the "true" God. He was the first to compile a "canon of scripture" which viewed Paul as the ultimate authority. His "New Testament" included the epistles of Paul and the Gospel of Luke, all heavily edited to remove theology that Marcion did not approve of. Although Marcionite Christianity was later condemned as a heresy, Marcionite Christian churches at one time outnumbered Orthodox/Catholic churches. Christianity could have very easily become a brand new thing, totally divorced from the culture and religion from which it sprang. Marcion's canon may have been the impetus spurring the creation of an official canon.

There's a verse in the Second Epistle to Timothy (which probably was not written by Paul) that states that all scripture is given by inspiration of God. The Old Testament, however, doesn't say that about itself. 

Start at the beginning: Part I

Go to: Part III

An Agnostic's Look at The Bible - Part I

One of the criticisms of the Bible that is tossed about is that there's no proof that any of it happened, or that there's no contemporaneous confirmation of its contents. One of the most attention getting statements that I have read in recent years is there are indeed historical documents regarding the life of Jesus Christ — the four gospels. To those of us with a non-religious orientation that statement sounds ridiculous. Of course they're not historical documents, they're religious texts! The people who wrote them had an agenda! Yes, both of those statements are true, the gospels are religious texts and they were written by people with an agenda. We've all heard the saying "History is written by the victors", which is just a different way of saying that history is written by people with an agenda — always. 

Over the last few years I listened to a few history-themed podcasts — the history of Rome, of Byzantium, of the successive Persian Empires. In each of them I was struck by how often the only information that we have about an event was written decades or generations after the event took place. How there are often gaps in lists of rulers that can only be filled in by speculation. How the only contemporaneous documentation of an era has been long lost and all we have are fragments by historians quoting earlier historians. While there are exceptions, for the most part ancient historians were employed by their rulers to make them look good, or to make the ruler's opponents look bad. Or it was a citizen of the winning side wanting to paint his people in glory. Or maybe it was the losing side trying to depict their people as something other than abject losers. Yes. They had an agenda.  

The writers of the Gospels had an agenda too, which doesn't make them any better or worse than any other writings from that time period. The first of the surviving Gospels, "Mark" was most likely written around 70 C.E., i.e, around 40 years after Jesus' ministry. This gap in time is brought up a lot to disparage the authenticity of the Gospels, but it was not unusual, especially since it is likely Jesus' early followers were illiterate or at least not educated enough to put together a narrative like you see in any of the Gospels. It's also apparent that, since they believed that God would be imminently intervening in human events, there was no reason to write anything down for future generations that they didn't think would exist. So a written account during or immediately following Jesus' life would not be expected. The utter lack of any originals of the Gospels or even the epistles, or even any copies dating any earlier than hundreds of years after Jesus' life is also cited as problematic, yet you'd be hard pressed to find an original edition of any of the classical writings, or any writings that have as many extant manuscripts as does the Bible. (The number of manuscripts on the other hand doesn't prove anything other than people valued them enough to make lots of copies)

Historians will examine any historical document to determine, not only its authenticity, but to discover any biases that the author had; they also have a number of ways to test the reliability of the claims made in any history, any ancient biography. Unless one is of the opinion that The Bible is the "revealed Word of God", inspired by God Himself, it makes sense to subject The Bible to the same scrutiny that any other historical document would be. 

For most people, however, The Bible is an either-or proposition. Either it's God's Word delivered via prophets of God to His people, or it's a book of fables with no truth in it whatsoever. (Of course there are intermediate positions — some believers admit that some passages in The Bible may be metaphorical while some disbelievers accept that there's some decent morals and ethics in it.) 

In this series I take the position that there is good reason to accept that there was an historical Jesus that the New Testament was based upon, but that not only are there contradictions regarding him among the different books, but that Jesus wasn't who most people think he was. I'll be touching on the milieu in which Jesus lived, the Jewish scriptures that he was taught, contradictions between how the Gospels differ from the message of Paul in his epistles, how how it all morphed into "The Church". 

And off we go!

Go to Part II

So, You Want to Join a Cult - Conclusion

No one wakes up in the morning, and after a shower and that first cup of coffee, decides that they’re going to join a cult. No one approached by someone with an engaging smile and an encyclopedic knowledge of the bible thinks “Cool! A cult! Just what I’ve been looking for!” Yet, every day in America, people join up with ...cults. 

From "So, You Want to Join a Cult  Part I"

I have documented my time in a cult through 41 blog posts, with an additional 13 outlining cult tactics and strategies for recruiting, retaining and controlling people. If you have read through the series, one of the themes that you may have picked up on is how ordinary it all seemed, how banal. I wasn't holed up in a "compound", prohibited from leaving; there weren't any mass suicides; we weren't immediately identifiable by our bizarre clothing. We certainly didn't think we were in a cult when we were, in fact, in a cult.  No one who is in a cult thinks that they're in a cult. Most people believe that they would never be taken in by a cult, that they're too smart. They're wrong.

Part of why I wrote this series was to show how easily someone could get caught up in a cult. Cult members aren't stupid. Cult members aren't brainwashed. Cult members see something in the cult that appeals to them. They make a decision every day that what they are getting out of the cult is worth what they are giving to the cult. For many, it becomes the sunk cost fallacy, i.e. they feel that they can't leave after investing so much time and energy, for others, they're ashamed to admit that they were wrong. One way or another the goals and priorities of the cult become their goals and priorities. They refuse to consider evidence that they're wrong. Opposition to the cult is viewed as foolish, deranged, evil. 

Some of you who have stuck with me through this whole series have made the connection between what I experienced in a religious cult and the political cult that millions of Americans have embraced. People who looked down their noses at those poor, deluded, fools at Waco, or in Guyana, have walked open eyed into devotion to a man who stands for everything that they just a few years ago would have been against. They don't believe they're in a cult, but no one who is in a cult thinks they're in a cult. 

My years in the way have made me a skeptic. Not only of charismatic leaders and pat answers to complicated questions, but to anything or anyone who claims to have The Answers. I hope I have inspired some skepticism in a few of you. 

Start at the beginning: Part I

So, You Want to Join a Cult - Part LIII - Stupid People Often Assume Everyone Is As Stupid As They Are

An aspect of cults that is at times overlooked is that there isn't always a clear dividing line between those who are fooled and those who are doing the fooling. Even at the very top levels, there's often some question whether the cult leaders believe their own press clippings. Was a con always being run, or did the leader little by little come to really believe they were the anointed one? 

In any cult, there has to be intermediaries between the top dog and the flock that is being fleeced. Between 1970-1980 the Way Corps program graduated hundreds of field leaders. I was never privy to the qualifications that were looked for in leadership, but like in the business world, I saw many "leaders" who exhibited no leadership qualities whatsoever. If I had to guess at the prerequisites for being given a leadership assignments, I'd say that loyalty to the organization and the top leader, including obedience, were the primary criteria. There were also exercises within the Corps training that served to weed people out. L.E.A.D. was one of them. 

The initials (if I remember correctly) stood for Leadership, Education, Adventure, Direction. The participants had to hitchhike in pairs from the Way Corps headquarters in Emporia, Kansas to Tinney, New Mexico with only ten dollars in their pockets and still have ten dollars when they arrived. Their time in Tinney involved a number of outdoors tasks and ended with hitchhiking back to Emporia. For some reason rappelling down a cliffside, surviving alone in the forest for 24 hours and thumbing rides were crucial skills needed to lead God's people. The other apparent stumbling block was money. There was tuition to be paid for the two years of training "in residence", i.e. at one of The Way's properties. In my observation every Way Corps rejectee of my acquaintance was sent home over money — or the lack thereof. 

For a "Biblical Research" organization, many leaders had an abysmal lack of understanding of the Biblical texts. I was aware of several who were functionally illiterate. With few exceptions their "teachings" in home fellowship meetings were nothing more than rehashing what they had heard promulgated from headquarters. Sometimes the Way middle managers, the Way Corps branch and limb coordinators, were dumber than the rank and file membership. They would deliver information that was so obvious as if it were secrets that only the elect could understand. I remember one year Fred, our local leader telling us all, with a look of utter seriousness on his face, that Christ wasn't Jesus' last name. I imagine that there were people in the world that thought that Christ was his family name; Jesus Christ, son of Joseph Christ and Mary Christ, but I felt insulted that he thought I need to be told that. Somebody higher up was dumb enough to believe that Christ was Jesus' last name, and the assumption was that everyone was dumb enough to think that. 

I remember sitting through a class at Way headquarters taught by Way President Craig Martindale. He went off on a long tangent about an Old Testament tribe called the Kenites. His rant assumed that, due to the similarity in the name to Cain, the son of Adam and Eve who murdered his brother Abel, that their evil ways were due to their ancestry. I remember sitting their thinking that according to the Bible, Cain didn't have any descendants at that time — they all drowned in the flood. I looked up the names later and saw that although similar in English, they were not the same in Hebrew. Another teaching that I recall vividly was based on the teacher confusing the Greek word aleitheia (truth) with athleo (to contend or struggle), which was further confused by the insistence within Way leadership that athleo must imply an athletic allegory throughout the epistles. 

Cults are based on the assumption that knowledge derived from outside the cult is tainted. Only that which originates from within is legitimate. It doesn't matter whether or not the inner knowledge is fact-based or not. In fact, ignorance of what the experts are saying is required. My own exit from The Way began with my own questioning of what was being taught. Anyone who dares to point out errors is dangerous. 

Start from the beginning: Part I

Go to: Part LIV

Women Are Not Property

Epstein and his enablers. The online "rape academy" with 62 million views in one week. College athletes enabled by their coaches. No, it's not all men, but it's certainly a lot of men. A recent article quipped that "It's not all men but it's always men". And yes, there are women who enable rapists — Ghislaine Maxwell is as guilty as Epstein was — but even when women are involved it's always for the benefit of men. A critical step to attacking the rape culture is for men to speak up and confront other men. 

Why don't men confront other men who are abusing women? One reason is the suspicion that the abused woman will defend her abuser. This happens, as any cop who responds to domestic disturbance calls will attest to. I ran into this problem in my own life over twenty years ago, I heard some shouting outside my bedroom window and saw a family member assaulting his girlfriend. I ran outside and intervened. When the dust settled, the abuser claimed that I had attacked him, unprovoked, and the girlfriend backed him up. Other family members took his side. After everyone left I realized that there was one person besides myself who had witnessed the assault. When I asked him why he didn't intervene and had remained silent afterwards, he told me he didn't want to get involved. 

And that sums it up. Men don't want to get involved. Maybe it's fear of the abuser turning on them, maybe it's a cynical belief that as soon as they get home the abuse will continue. Maybe they just think that perhaps she provoked him. Whatever it is, it has to change. This is not to suggest that women aren't perfectly capable of defending themselves. A few years ago I witnessed a customer in the bar where I was sitting grab a woman bartender, before I even knew what was happening the other two women on duty intervened and threw the guy and his two buddies out. But it's a fact of life that the typical man outweighs and is stronger than the typical woman. A man determined to abuse a woman who is by herself has the advantage. 

One strategy that some men employ to assist a woman who is the subject of determined unwanted attention is to pretend to be her husband or boyfriend, whereupon the "bro code" kicks in and the woman is left alone. Women will often tells the creep that she has a husband or boyfriend to fend off potential trouble. I'm not going to suggest not doing this, but why does it work? The reason the "I'm her boyfriend" intervention works is that men will respect another man's property while not respecting the personhood and autonomy of a woman. It's definitely the mindset of the creep in this scenario. He has zero respect for the woman's disinterest, for her right to determine with whom she will interact, for her very rights as an independent entity; but once it is suggested that she belongs to another man, he backs off. But what does this say about the mindset of the intervening man? True, he is to be lauded for involving himself and getting the other guy to back off, but he is doing it by pretending that the woman in question is his property. 

Okay, maybe the term "property" is a bit harsh. Maybe "under the protection of" is more politically correct. But it can't be denied that in terms of the larger culture we are going backwards in the realm of women's rights. The right-wing "trad wife" movement is advocating for a barefoot and pregnant past. Members of Congress are suggesting that the husband be the one to cast votes for his entire family, disenfranchising women. 

This isn't going to change because I write a blog about it, but it has to change. 

Stupid Social Security Reposts (Again)

This stupid post makes its way around Facebook periodically. No, I do not copy and paste, because it's mostly bullshit. The original post in ARIAL, my comments in bold courier font

Concerning Social Security payments, my contributions have been made for nearly 40 years on every salary I received. I always had a job. The Social Security check is now (or soon will be) referred to as a "Federal Benefit Payment?" I'll be part of the one percent to forward this.

Well, it's probably more than 1% that forwards it — because people are dumb. Social Security payments have been called "benefits" for as long as I can remember. It's nothing new.

I am forwarding it because it touches a nerve in me, and I hope it will in you. Please keep passing it on until everyone in our country has read it. The government is now referring to our Social Security checks as a "Federal Benefit Payment." This isn't a benefit. It is our money paid out of our earned income! Not only did we all contribute to Social Security but our employers did too. It totaled 15% of our income before taxes.

One thing that I don't understand though, is what is the big objection to calling a Social Security check (more likely a direct deposit) a "benefit"?. I met the requirements by having payroll tax deductions taken out of my paychecks and I BENEFIT from my meeting of those requirements. I guess the idiots who make these up got tired of getting "entitlement" explained to them.

If you averaged $30K per year over your working life, that's close to $180,000 invested in Social Security. If you calculate the future value of your monthly investment in social security ($375/month, including both you and your employers contributions) at a meager 1% interest rate compounded monthly, after 40 years of working you'd have more than $1.3+ million dollars saved! This is your personal investment. Upon retirement, if you took out only 3% per year, you'd receive $39,318 per year, or $3,277 per month.

That's almost three times more than today's average Social Security benefit of $1,230 per month, according to the Social Security Administration. (Google it – it’s a fact).

And your retirement fund would last more than 33 years (until you're 98 if you retire at age 65)! I can only imagine how much better most average-income people could live in retirement if our government had just invested our money in low-risk interest-earning accounts.

I won't argue against the figures that indicate that privately invested money would have yielded more retirement income than what the typical person receives as Social Security payments, but seriously, how many people would do that? Investing 15% of their income? Especially in the early years of lower income? Many people living paycheck-to-paycheck find it very difficult to save, let alone invest.
Even as it is, I just calculated that if I live until 80 I will receive roughly twice what I and my employers were FICA taxed over the course of my working life (51 years). I don't argue that it would be more than if invested in something like a mutual fund, but it's certainly more than if there was no Social Security.

A big myth is that what we "paid in" is our money setting in an account somewhere. The money that came out of our paychecks immediately was used to pay people who were then receiving benefits. OUR benefits are based on a formula that takes into account a portion of our lifetime earnings.

Instead, the folks in Washington pulled off a bigger "Ponzi scheme" than Bernie Madoff ever did. They took our money and used it elsewhere. They forgot (oh yes, they knew) that it was OUR money they were taking. They didn't have a referendum to ask us if we wanted to lend the money to them. And they didn't pay interest on the debt they assumed. And recently they've told us that the money won't support us for very much longer.

But is it our fault they misused our investments? And now, to add insult to injury, they're calling it a "benefit", as if we never worked to earn every penny of it.

Just because they borrowed the money doesn't mean that our investments were a charity!

There's another big inaccuracy in this copy & paste job. The whole myth of "they took our money & used it elsewhere". Until just a few years ago the amount of revenue collected via FICA payroll deductions exceeded what was paid out in benefits. By law, this surplus was invested in US Treasury bonds, which paid interest into the Social Security Trust Fund (SSTF). Right now it's reversed: the benefits being paid out exceed what is coming in, so the difference is being taken out of the SSTF. The SSTF balance will be down to $0 in around 7-10 years. After that payroll deductions of current workers will cover 70-80% of benefits payments. The whole "Congress raided Social Security myth" persists. Democrats blame the Republicans, Republicans blame the Democrats. But there's no blame needed, because it didn't happen. The Social Security Administration is required by law to invest any surplus in US Treasury Securities. This is what is meant when you hear about "the government" borrowing money from the Trust Fund. Look at what happens to your money when you deposit it in a bank. Even though there is a vault in every bank with cash in it, this does not represent all the bank's deposits. Once you put your money in a bank, a percentage of it is loaned out, and some is invested in interest-bearing securities. Currently, banks are required to have a cash reserve of 12% of assets. That means that 78% of what has been deposited in a bank isn't physically there in the form of piles of cash. It's earning its keep. This is similar, but not identical, to what happens to the surpluses in the Trust Fund. The Trust Fund, rather than sitting on a pile of cash, is freeing up the cash for current use, paying out benefits to current retirees. If, rather than investing in Treasury securities, the Trust Fund invested in private securities, it would be a similar situation, except that the cash would now be in the hands of private companies (or individuals), rather than the US Government. Having this cash in government hands, rather than private investors reduces the amount of borrowing needed to make up annual budget deficits.

Let's take a stand. We have earned our right to Social Security and Medicare. Demand that our legislators bring some sense into our government.

Find a way to keep Social Security and Medicare going for the sake of that 92% of our population who need it. Then call it what it is: Our Earned Retirement Income.

99% of people won't Cut and Paste this to their timelines. Will you?

Please, for the sake of our country, Copy & Paste. It's important. Then type Done!

This affects everyone! I don't know what the originator of this, or other Social Security posts, intends to accomplish. The problem isn't that Congress or a past president "stole" or "borrowed without paying back" our money, it's not that your direct deposits are called benefits or entitlements. What are the people who repost or share these posts demanding be done?

In reality, what needs to be done is to find a way to make up the 20-30% gap between revenue from payroll taxes and paid benefits that will exist when the Trust Fund is depleted in 8-10 years. Increase or eliminate the income cap? Increase FICA withholding by a percentage point? Means test benefits? Something that no one yet thought of? That's what we should be getting worked up about. Not these imaginary "raids", or whining about "our" money. Previous articles about Social Security: https://tjpolitics.blogspot.com/2020/01/social-security-tutorial.html

https://tjpolitics.blogspot.com/2017/12/social-security-trust-fund.html

https://tjpolitics.blogspot.com/2021/07/social-security-misunderstanding.html

https://tjpolitics.blogspot.com/2018/10/entitlements-social-security-trust-fund.html

https://tjpolitics.blogspot.com/2022/01/social-security-part-2.html

https://tjpolitics.blogspot.com/2022/06/are-republicans-eliminating-social.html

https://tjpolitics.blogspot.com/2022/01/social-security-part-1.html

https://tjpolitics.blogspot.com/2024/03/the-myth-of-them-borrowing-or-stealing.html

https://tjpolitics.blogspot.com/2022/05/another-blog-post-about-social-security.html

So, You Want to Join a Cult - Part LIV - Hidden Knowledge & The Pseudo-Caste System

Among the many ways that cults use to recruit and retain members is by the hint of a special or secret knowledge that is only available to the initiate. It's reinforced by a hierarchical structure where more special knowledge is revealed as you move toward the center of power. 

The Way's initial appeal for many was that they claimed to be able to teach you the Bible "like it hadn't been known since the First Century". Anyone who has studied the Bible from a scholarly, disinterested point of view knows that it is full of contradictions. I won't spend time here pointing them out, but they are numerous. They range from historical and archeological mistakes to different Biblical authors describing the same events in mutually exclusive ways. There are also many instances where the average Christian believes something about the Biblical narrative that is totally at odds with what it actually says. The founder of The Way was well aware of these things and did a great job spotlighting them in his Power for Abundant Living (PFAL) class. His purpose, of course, was to undermine trust in mainstream Christianity and its leaders and traditions in order to substitute his own foundation for belief. 

At face value, he was substituting simply "reading what was written" for tradition. But the Bible is not a simple book. It's not a book at all, but a collection of more than 60 books by almost that many different authors. Despite his "keys to interpretation" that emphasized reading what was right there on the page, in the context, the contradictions and difficulties still existed. They called them apparent contradictions, and set about constructing logic-twisting explanations to harmonize the various discrepancies. One of The Way's more obvious doctrinal deviations from mainstream Christianity was a disbelief in The Trinity. The Trinity is the doctrine whereby God is a threefold entity, consisting of The Father, the Son (Jesus Christ) and the Holy Spirit. You can't find it detailed explicitly anywhere in the Bible, but is the result of centuries of early Christian theologians attempting to reconcile the conflicting descriptions of Jesus' nature set down in the Bible. The Way's unitarian view of Jesus was a similar attempt, albeit one that took significantly less time than the development of The Trinity. 

But the fact that a different conclusion about Jesus' nature was reached isn't the point, it's the use of that unique take, that special knowledge which was part of The Way's hold on people. The undermining of trust in mainstream Christianity, replaced by reading what was written, cemented a trust in what Way leadership was teaching, making it clear that The Way was the only place where you could find Biblical truth. If that was important to someone, that was a powerful tool to keep people from straying. In fact, so much emphasis was placed on the trustworthiness of the teachings of Victor Wierwille, The Way's founder, that any questioning of his conclusions were brushed aside. However, it was never framed as "Wierwille is infallible", but suggested that you should hold your questions "in abeyance" until you understood more, i.e. became as knowledgeable as Wierwille — which was effectively never. 

The special knowledge did not end with what was presented in PFAL. The class itself was only part of a series of classes, culminating in the "Advanced Class". This class was billed as training in more special, secret knowledge, including spiritual healing, discerning of spirits, and revelation from God. As I look back on it 40 plus years later, it was a bit of a disappointment, but Advanced Class Grads still had that elite cache, and got to wear a special nametag identifying them as such. (The Way was big on nametags identifying which caste you belonged to) But taking the Advanced Class only took a couple of weeks out of your life and a few hundred dollars. The next circle included participants in The Way Corps "leadership training program", which was effectively a lifetime of servitude. 

The structure and time commitment of Way Corps training varied during my time in The Way, but it was never less than two years, spent at one of The Way's properties. Graduates of the Way Corps training made up the leadership cadre of The Way. Upon their graduation they were given assignments, either at Way headquarters or "in the field", i.e. running fellowships, or state programs. Although initially billed as a program to turn out the best "Twig" (aka local fellowship) leaders, in reality, you were in it for life. Dismissal from the Way Corps was viewed as shameful, a failure. 

These Way Corps grads typically had a higher level of commitment and loyalty and helped standardize fellowships around the country and world. To the rank and file "believers", Way Corps leaders were the authorities. You didn't question leadership. They themselves were recipients of more special and secret knowledge that the non-Corps weren't privy to, tantalizing their egos and locking them more firmly into the system while simultaneously keeping the non-Corps in a state of obedience. If you weren't a Corps graduate you were conditioned to trust Wierwille and in turn, logically accepted the virtually infallibility of those he had deputized to lead in his place. There was a balance between feeling above the riff-raff of the world due to being holders of secret knowledge that the non-Way didn't possess and being inferior to the Way Corps who had even more secret knowledge and who were spiritually incapable of steering you wrong (God just wouldn't allow it). 

Those who came to The Way because they were lonely, or fell in love with the person who "witnessed" to them, typically did not stick around. The Way's appeal was intellectual. I don't mean that intellectuals were attracted to The Way, although some were, but that it was a search for answers based on logic (with the Bible's inerrancy as the basic premise) and not faith, that attracted the vast majority and kept them around, often for decades, if not their whole lives. The hook that snared many of us was the declaration that on one hand God's will was easy to understand and apparent to anyone who could read, yet at the same time hidden away from the ignorant hordes of mainstream Christians. 

The seeds of The Way's destruction were sown from the first days, although it took 40 years for them to come to fruition. The special, secret knowledge had always been based on the promise that The Bible was very literally an open book. Anyone could read and understand it without the aid of priests or theologians. This was never strictly true, but it was the selling point and it kept people around. The trust that was engendered in Wierwille and his successors sealed most people's compliance. But that required unity among the leadership, which fell apart after Wierwille died. 

Control by the elite required a membership body that was unskilled in actual Biblical research. Wierwille's "research" was shoddy and incomplete. He quoted scholars such as E.W. Bullinger without understanding the points that they were making and had no understanding of Hebrew or Greek grammar beyond what could be looked up in a concordance. His definitions of Greek words would have surprised anyone who had studied Biblical Greek. But most Way members had no such expertise, so they were easy marks. A lot of what was taught sounded right if you didn't have the educational background to separate truth from utter bullshit. 

Internal dissension was usually handled by kicking people out, often in the middle of the night. And in pre-internet days, the dissenters might never be heard from in Way circles ever again. In the late eighties though, there was a very public "civil war" amongst Way leaders in the wake of the death of founder Wierwille. Instead of one voice parroting what was coming down from the top, various leaders began developing their own followings and "ministries", people began to see this lack of direction and began doing what they had been promised they could do — read, study and understand the Bible and make their own decisions. Eventually this all began to be played out on message boards and websites all over the internet. The Way splintered into dozens of groups all competing to be the true heirs of Wierwille's mantle. 

The Way still exists, as well as a multitude of Way-derived groups promoting various versions of Way doctrine. But it's no longer what it was, and the control mechanisms that were in place for many years were no longer effective. I have no idea if the raggedy remains of The Way can still be considered a cult, since I have been out and away for 25 years, but cults proliferate and they don't have to be religion-based. 

Start from the beginning: Part I

So, You Want to Join a Cult - Part LII - Everyone Else is Wrong

One of the hallmarks of political social media is the straw man. Someone posts something that they allege the opposition said, when a teeny, tiny bit of digging would reveal that they didn't. They then attack the fictionalized version, and then a bunch of followers pile on and they attack the imaginary offense, which they assume is the truth. It's especially egregious when the offender posts a link to a news article and the headline contains information that is at odds with what's in the article. Not so different in the word of cults. 

One of the basic moves of any cult is a form of Gnosticism, the claim that there is special, hidden knowledge that is available only to the cult, sometimes only to the inner circle of the cult. Related to this is a misrepresentation of what the mainstream believes in order to mock it. One of the core beliefs of The Way is that Jesus Christ isn't God. They aren't the only self-described Christians to believe this, but they are certainly a tiny minority of Christians. This is one of the doctrines which they used to set themselves apart, to show their followers that they were adherents of the truth that no one else believed. Like today's social media conspiracy theorists, they cherry-picked the available information to come to their conclusion. The Way's leaders employed insults, calling mainstream Christians worshippers of a three-headed God and other misrepresentations of what people who believed in the Trinity actually believed. Granted, the actual theological doctrine of The Trinity is pretty complex and evolved over centuries, and the average Christian had not the slightest grasp of the nuances. From my vantage point of a disbeliever in the inerrancy of the Bible, I can see that the problem is that different writers of the various books of the Bible had different opinions of who and what Jesus was, and there was an evolution in what people thought of Jesus even within the pages of the Bible. However, both The Way and mainstream Christianity were of the opinion that what the Bible said about Jesus was Truth, and they had to find ways to explain away the inconsistencies and contradictions. They each resolved these contradictions in different ways with different endpoints. They both insisted that they were right.

The difference, at least in modern times as opposed to the early days of Christianity when the term "heretic" was being thrown around willy-nilly, is that most churches are part of a tradition in which, in their minds, the question was settled 2,000 years ago. The Way is making their differing understanding of the question a central part of their identity. Any deviation from this interpretation of Jesus' nature would result in the 21st Century version of accusations of heresy within The Way. There is no question that they are right and everyone else is wrong. 

Another tactic where The Way was similar to today's "do your research" crowd is their constant encouragement to "do your research". Just as today's YouTube "researchers" pontificate as if there had never been any legitimate study of virology, Constitutional law, or climate science, The Way embarked upon research by people totally unsuited to the task. If you had a Greek-English concordance and a working familiarity with parts of speech you were a Biblical researcher. I could spend thousands of words giving examples of amateurs interpreting Greek words in novel ways — but this enabled Way members to promote their supposed superiority over those poor dumb Christians who studied their whole lives and built upon the work of others going back decades or centuries, learning Biblical Greek and Hebrew. Of course John Doe high school dropout knew the truth when theologians who had dedicated their lives to studying the Bible couldn't see it . 

So yes, in a cult, everyone but you and the people who agree with you are wrong. Everyone else is a sheep. Just like on the internet.

Start from the beginning: Part I

Go to: Part LIII

So, You Want to Join a Cult - Part LI - Could I Be Fooled Again?

Am I susceptible to getting sucked into a cult again? Did my experience inoculate me from similar influences? Am I as smart as I think I am?

If the culture, as well as the state of technology in 1978 been what it is now, would I still have been convinced to become a cult member? What-ifs are "iffy" things, you never really know what you would have done if circumstances had been different, nor do you know what the cascading effects of your actions had been if you had chosen differently. But one of the main differences between now and then is the widespread availability of information. Not that all the available information is accurate, but it's orders of magnitude easier to not only access information, but also to spread lies. In 1978 the internet was a science fiction dream, not to mention the possibility of everyone holding a powerful computer in their pocket being outlandish fantasy. What would my teenage self have done if the internet and smart phones had existed in 1978? 

Me in 1978 was intensely curious not only about my own religion, but about other religions as well. Part of this was because I was bemused by the huge number of religions to choose from. In addition to Christianity, the faith I was raised in, there was Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism and others I was only dimly aware of. And not only that, besides Catholicism, which I was taught was "The" Church, there were a number of Protestant Churches. (I naively thought that the Episcopal, Lutheran, Presbyterian and Baptist churches in my neighborhood were the extent of it) I visited the churches of the other Christian denominations in my neighborhood and read all that I could about other religious traditions. It didn't lead me anywhere. It wasn't until I met people from The Way that anyone so much as suggested that firm answers could be found. Since no one else was making any kind of case for determining truth, I defaulted to the only people I knew who at least attempted to do so. But what if resources available on the internet had been at my fingertips? Hard to say.

The vast pools of information would have definitely given me more options. A deep dive into Catholic theology may have served to convince me that truth could be found there, or the labyrinthine and evolving arguments on the nature of Jesus could have convinced me that it was all double-talk. Educating myself on theology would have likely inoculated me against the facile and simplistic descriptions of what Catholics and mainstream Protestants believed peddled by The Way. It's almost impossible to speculate what direction I would have gone in spiritually, but with virtually unlimited options, I doubt that I would have settled for joining one little group that claimed to have all the answers. 

Another question is easier to answer. When accusations of being a cult first surfaced in the late seventies, the information was scant. Newspaper articles by disgruntled ex-Way people or Christian pastors copied over and over so you could barely read the print were the main source of anti-cult information. I was never swayed by the information that I saw, mainly because it bore little resemblance to what I saw in my interactions with other Way people. Church centered people often threw the "cult" label around based mainly on doctrinal differences. I was far from convinced, and the attacks strengthened my resolve, kind of like a martyr. But in 2001, when Wayworld was roiled by accusations of sexual coercion and corruption in the lofty ranks of Way leadership the internet was available. It wasn't just people who objected to The Way's nonstandard theology or misrepresentations of fairly innocent situations, this time it was internet posts by people currently in The Way who shared very plausible stories that were consistent across wide parts of the country. People compared notes and researched Way beliefs and the background of The Way's founder. This information helped solidify my reasons for getting out. The problems that could with little effort be swept under the rug in 1978 were revealed in the bright light of day in 2001. 

Would I have gotten involved specifically in The Way if the internet had existed in 1978? Would I get fooled again? Probably not in that way, but I'm not so egotistical to think I'm so much smarter than the rest of society that I wouldn't have fallen for something. After all, I would still have been a naïve teen, searching for answers. The 1978 Tom hadn't seen or experienced everything that the 2026 Tom has.

The internet is not an unalloyed positive though. Millions of people have gotten caught up in outlandish beliefs based on unsupported and twisted information on the internet. Would I have become a wearer of the metaphorical tinfoil hat if all of this was available in 1978? Impossible to say. I can say that the one thing that my involvement in The Way and my escape from it have made me a skeptic. One of the positive aspects of the methods that The Way used to indoctrinate was by undermining the authority of what they called "denominational Christianity" (as if they weren't themselves a denomination). Naturally this was done in order to bolster their own credibility, but in most cases the contradictions in mainstream Christian doctrine and the misunderstandings of what was written in the Bible were correctly identified by them. The Way substituted unquestioned beliefs in their doctrine instead, but for most of us, the tendency to question and "research" was too ingrained. It proved their undoing. Once I was no longer involved in cult life I found that not only was I no longer interested in being a "joiner", I was skeptical of any dogmatically stated opinions, no matter whether it was religion, politics or any other category. 

Start from the beginning: Part I

Go to: Part LII

So, You Want to Join a Cult - Part 50 - Insidious Leadership Influences

One of the hallmarks of cult involvement is obedience to authority. If you're a cult member you're expected to obey, no matter what, and if you're a cult leader you expect unquestioning obedience all the time. Deviation from this standard is seen as no less than sin. How does this translate into the non-cult world? 

I didn't finish college. I didn't have any technical or vocational skills. In order for me to make a living wage at any job that I had, management was the only realistic path to make more money. Eventually I became good at it, but I first had to unlearn my cult's attitude toward management. As it happens I was first attempting to climb the management ladder while still involved in a cult. I was 19 when I first became involved with The Way International, and in my early twenties when I first became a manager. Add to the mix having grown up in New York City, where being direct is valued more than being "nice", contrasting me with the people I was managing. 

One of the core tenets of most cults, and The Way International was no exception, is that the leader is not to be questioned. This, of course applies primarily to a cult's "supreme leader", but it also applies to anyone down the line in any kind of leadership role — local or state leader, even parents. The presumed infallibility of any subsidiary leader is subordinated to the levels of leadership above him, but is considered sacrosanct within his area of responsibility. So much so, that even when a leader is shown to be wrong, or even kicked out of The Way, that leader's previous decisions are considered to be blessed by God and not subject to questioning by the peons. 

Shortly before I left The Way Craig Martindale, the Way's President, was forced out following legal action against him involving coerced sex with a follower. My thinking, and the thinking of many Way followers at the time, was that Martindale obviously did not have God's Word foremost in his mind — how could we trust the doctrine in the extensive series of classes that he had been putting together if he thought it was okay to cheat on his wife? His class series, The Way of Abundance and Power contained many novel takes on The Bible that many were unsure of, but the remaining leadership assured us that what he taught was still valid due to some mystical connection due to him being the "Man of God" at the time. 

The Way underwent a "civil war" during the late 80's after the death of its founder. Martindale, his replacement, had to deal with dissension amongst upper leadership and when the dust settled the organization had splintered leaving a stub of its former membership and leadership. This caused the new Way president to conclude that any questioning had to be the result of demonic possession. After all, he was the anointed  as the leader of God's people (he was literally anointed by his predecessor in an installment ceremony) and any dissension had to be rebellion against God. He adopted a "yelling" style of addressing the membership and became even more insistent on unquestioning obedience. While not universal, his style soon became the norm among subordinate leadership and his harsh methods of communication became the standard and influenced any Way men and women interested in becoming leaders. 

Leadership style was also something that set a terrible example to those of us who had less lofty leadership roles. Martindale's style, as I mentioned before, was yelling. His style could also involve name-calling and insulting those who weren't on board 100%. Think Donald Trump, but spouting Bible verses. This leadership template made its way down the ladder to local leadership, who also got their points across with unyielding bluster and yes, yelling. Even the ones who didn't yell, were inflexibly dogmatic in their approach. These were my examples of how to be a godly leader. Or even a secular leader.

In my work life I gravitated toward management roles — managing people and operations was something I was good at. Each year The Way put on a conference called God's Word in Business and Profession. In its early iterations it had sessions geared toward specific businesses and gave guidance on how to apply Biblical principles at work. There was an opportunity to meet with people in the same line of work and compare notes. Eventually it became just another "teaching" event, with nothing specific to business or profession. But I would attend these conferences and soak up the example of what being a leader meant and became a bit of a yeller myself. (To be fair, my own dad was a bit of a yeller himself. I respected his example as a father and picked up some of his habits in addition to the example set in The Way)

During most of my time in The Way in the nineties (after having been out during the eighties) I worked for the Omaha World-Herald newspaper as a Circulation Manager, but in 1999 I changed companies to become a manager with B&R Stores, a local grocery chain at one of their Super Savers. With the World-Herald my management was mostly at a distance, but at Super Saver there was much more face-to-face management. In my management series I talk about different types of managers, but in retrospect I was definitely a bad one in my first years there. In Managers Part-III - Sources of Power I cover the ways managers can assert their influence over subordinates. I relied upon what is called "Legitimate Power", which is simply the authority that comes with the title, rather than any personal charisma. I was swayed by my Way experience to think all it took was the title and the implied authority that came with it. In a cult like The Way that was all it took; if you're claiming that the title as bestowed by God, then anyone arguing with the cult leader was arguing with God. 

Of course in the real, non-cult, world, you can't claim divine favor in order to get people to listen to you. Nonetheless, I had internalized the idea that my job title entitled me to lord it over people. Even in the non-cult world this is not uncommon. There are several sources of management power: 

1. Legitimate Power: The ability to influence other due to one's position, office or formal authority
2. Reward Power: The ability to influence others by giving or withholding rewards such as pay, promotions, time off, etc.
3. Coercive Power: The ability to influence others through punishment
4. Expert Power: The ability to influence others through special knowledge or skills
5. Referent Power: Power that comes from personal characteristics that people value, respect or admire

Many managers, especially inexperienced ones, lead with a combination of numbers 1-3, while effective managers lead from number 4 or number 5. As a new, inexperienced manager I not only harbored the misconceptions about leadership that most rookie managers entertain, but I had the additional burden of years of examples of poor leadership from cult leaders — including the way that information was conveyed — by yelling. Even after I left The Way, the ingrained habits that I had developed didn't disappear. I gained a reputation for being rough on people and stalled in my advancement in the company. It didn't help that my immediate supervisor was a "nice guy" (not necessarily an effective manager, just very likable!) and the contrast between us made me look even worse. Not to mention my very East Coast personality! 

This isn't to say that there aren't managers out there who don't have cult backgrounds but are nonetheless dictatorial in their leadership style, I've worked for a few of them in my time. In my case it was the cult influence that molded me into the type of manager who expected unquestioning obedience and who yelled when I didn't get it. Fortunately I had several bosses who recognized my potential and took the time to show me how my approach was suboptimum. They gave me constructive feedback regarding my style and how it was perceived. By this time I was out of The Way and was open to different ways of doing things. By the time the company decided to rotate all the Assistant Store Directors (my position at the time) to different stores, I had rehabilitated my reputation and was viewed as a straight-talker, and was very direct, but a manager who coached and developed younger employees and managers. 

As time went by the template of dictatorial leadership started to fade. What really changed my outlook about leadership was a change in my immediate supervisor. The new boss was most assuredly not the same as the old boss! Not a "nice guy" at all. He was convinced that he needed to restore order to a lax work force after the benign leadership of his predecessor. He wasn't all wrong in his assumptions, but he came down hard on the managers and employees. We also got a new Human Resources Coordinator, a former school principal who was every bit as tough as our new boss. The change in circumstance — observing the affect the new guy had on morale, allowed me to see just how toxic my own approach had been. I spent a lot of my time talking people out of quitting in response to the new manager's style and the rest talking my boss out of firing good people. Within a short period of time I became the "good cop". 

In response to seeing someone else as the "bad cop", I began to reevaluate my own approach, putting my Way-influenced management style behind me, revisiting the management lessons I learned from "Managing Management Time". By the time I was transferred to another location a few years later I had completely rehabilitated my reputation among the managers and employees. Unfortunately corporate management still saw the "old me" and it was a long time before I saw a promotion. 

Cult involvement can be all-encompassing. It can affect everything you do. Even when you get out, it can take a while to flush the toxins out of your mental and spiritual system. What had been impressed upon me as godly leadership poisoned the career path that I had taken. It could have been worse but I eventually changed course. 

As part of my new approach I was far from a pushover. I still had employees who viewed any type of correction as getting "yelled at", and I was not at all patient with employees who persisted in arguing about everything. However, instead of yelling, or demanding blind obedience, my goal was to teach employees why they had to do things. 

We're all products of our environment, nature and nurture, and my environment for decades was a religious cult, which couldn't help by affect my outlook on life, but once out, I was willing to make changes and put it behind me. 

Start from the beginning: Part I

Go to: Part LI

So, You Want to Join a Cult - Part XLIX - So, You Think You're NOT in a Cult?

Cultishness is not just one thing, it exists on a continuum. On one end there's the People's Temple of Jim Jones, which ended with scores of dead adults and children, on another end there are groups where people live among us, with regular jobs and ordinary lives, with the cultishness out of view. 

At several points in this series I have emphasized that what makes a cult isn't what you believe, it's what you do. Groups which are regularly characterized as cults often have beliefs that fall outside the mainstream, and are often viewed as "wacky", but what about those mainstream beliefs? Aren't they a little wacky too? 

The main reason that a belief is not considered crazy is that it's familiar. If you grew up in a "western" nation, it's likely that you were raised in a Christian family, in a predominantly Christian community. Even if you're not religious yourself, the underlying assumptions are bound to have influenced you. Assumptions that there is a God, that there's an afterlife that includes some version of Heaven and Hell, that praying is something that you do. But if you were brought up without any religious influences, how likely would you consider any of those things? And if you are religious, are a regular church goer, your beliefs are a bit more specific: you believe that God exists as a Trinity composed of three "persons" who are at the same time separate and distinct, while the same; you believe that one of those persons became human due to a "virgin birth"; you believe that this person broke multiple laws of nature and physics (miracles); you believe that he was killed, but was alive again three days later and subsequently "ascended" into "Heaven" (when you know that there's nothing up there to ascend into) and on and on. You believe these things because someone told you to believe them. There's no way to objectively checks these things out, no way to verify them, yet you choose to believe them. As part of your belief you accept the authority of leaders (they may be ministers, bishops, or even the pope) as they extrapolate the beliefs in the religious realm and apply them to political, social and family matters. Everyone who believes differently than you is wrong, society must be molded to conform to your beliefs.

Sure, you're not in a cult.

Maybe you think that you're not in a cult because you're not being brainwashed. But you cling to your beliefs and will not even consider that other points of view might be valid. If someone in what you call a cult thought like that, wouldn't you consider them brainwashed?

Okay, well, you're not drinking poisoned store brand Kool-Aid knock off, or letting your teenage daughter marry the Man of God. But those are just the extremes. There's plenty of cultishness in between free-thinking and group suicide.

Think about what you unthinkingly accept, and how you want those things to be imposed on everyone, and tell me again that you're not in a cult.

Start from the beginning: Part I

Go to: Part 50

So, You Want to Join a Cult - Part XLVIII - Infallibility

Tied closely with the need for promoting division, the idea that the cult leader is infallible is an essential ingredient in cultishness. You'll probably never hear a cult leader unambiguously claim to be infallible, and often they will insist that they're not, but their action belie their words.

In the cult that I was a part of for many years, one of the attractions was that the cult leader was insistent that he would teach us how to read and interpret the Bible for ourselves and we would not be subject to any man's interpretation. He preached that the Bible in fact interpreted itself, and if you just kept in mind several "keys to interpretation", everything in the Bible was crystal clear and unambiguous. This, as I later realized, was bullshit. Even if you accept the idea that there is a way to glean the Bible's meaning without any ambiguity or contradictions, the shear number of groups, all insisting on different interpretations should put that idea to bed. 

When I first became involved in this cult there were few churches who claimed to encourage their members to study the Bible, rather than merely listen to what the pastor had to say about it on Sunday. Anyone who was saying that study of the Bible would result in understanding the Bible was rare, if not  unique. This is no longer the case, evangelical and fundamentalist churches and their members have multiplied across the land, and they all believe that their interpretation is the right one, despite multitudes of differing interpretations, all insisting that they're right. It's not so different in the political realm. Everyone is a Constitutional scholar these days, and anyone who thinks that the Constitution is clear and not open to interpretation is engaged in wishful thinking. But I digress.

In any cult that professes to show the way by allowing self-study, you'll sooner or later run up against a disagreement with the cult leader. And the cult leader always wins the argument. Have you been studying as long as the leader? No? Then how can you even consider disagreeing with his conclusions? Do you have the spiritual connections that the leader has? No? Maybe come back when you do. Or perhaps the rebukes are a little softer. It's suggested that you should hold your objection "in abeyance", put it "on hold" until you are spiritually mature enough to understand. It doesn't take long, if you stick around, for you to simply stop questioning and accept whatever is presented to you. Interpretations and explanations by the leader that are clearly unsupported start to sound logical. You start spouting them yourself, even though you really can't explain them. You internalize what you've been told and convince yourself that it all makes sense. You eventually reach the point where you can barely tolerate differing opinions, because in your mind, what you believe is so self-evidently true, and anyone who thinks otherwise is a fool. 

One example of the cult I was in parroting something the leader said despite the evidence of their eyes involves a book called Witness of the Stars. It was written in the 1800's by an ultra-dispensationalist Anglican minister — its premise was that God had arranged the constellations in such a way that they told the story that is written in the Bible. The cult's founder latched on to this theory. One of the things he used to say regarding it was "there's no stars in the north" (never mind why he said that — it's a long story). But if you look at the northern sky there is no shortage of stars! Years later his successor claimed that he had figured out what he meant: there were no stars in the "gap" between the constellations of Ursa major and Ursa Minor. But guess what? There are stars visible to the naked eye there too! I once asked a leader to explain that to me. The "answer" was that there were no telescopes in Biblical times, so they couldn't see those stars. What? Even something that could clearly be seen to be false had to be "explained" so that it wouldn't look like the Man of God had made a mistake. 

Things that can be checked physically, however, are rarely where a cult leader invests his authority. It's usually the interpretation where he claims his connection to truth. As I have pointed out in other parts of this series, the road to establishing an aspiring prophet's bona fides begins with undermining conventional authority. For a religious cult examples of how mainstream Christianity deviates from what's actually written in the Bible aren't difficult to find. Oftentimes they're insignificant, not having any real effect on core doctrine, but they serve the purpose of pointing out the perception of erroneous teaching. Contradictions, real or perceived, within the Bible are also abundant. The cult leader, now that he has succeeded in undermining the credibility of the consensus authorities, offers his own explanations for the contradictions, how they're not really contradictions, at the same time chastising the mainstream denominations for ignoring these apparent contradictions. By now it's clearly established that the cult leader knows what he's talking about and can graduate to inventing his own unique doctrines. The cult members had been groomed to be so enamored with the cult leader's wisdom and godliness, that they will accept virtually anything he says as truth. 

In order for a cult to maintain control whatever the leader says has to be treated as Truth. The core beliefs have to be treated as beyond question and dissenting views as ridiculous or even dangerous. 

Start from the beginning: Part I

Go to: Part XLIX