Reflections Along the Jesus Way
June 25, 2024 – Quote for the Day:
“I was once a card-carrying member of a cult. I bought into the teachings of Herbert W. Armstrong (the collective body of these teachings today is often called Armstrongism) hook, line and sinker. I was a true believer. It’s fascinating to see the reactions of people when I tell them I was once in a cult. If I’m talking with a group of people and the subject comes up, it’s as if all the air has suddenly been sucked out of the room. Everyone gets real quiet, while they anticipate me telling lurid stories about how I once sacrificed goats and defaced cemeteries. Polite society, especially ‘good, church-going folks’ tend to regard someone who is an ex-cult member as being roughly equivalent to an ex-convict. The typical, usually unstated reaction is something like, ‘How could you have been so stupid?’
There is no doubt about it – I was a sucker. I bought into a spiritual snow-job. Armstrongism seemed so plausible, because it was based on my ability to make God happy. Of course, I believed what I wanted to believe. I believed I had the spiritual power to please God. According to Armstrong-in-speak, I could ‘qualify’ for the kingdom of God. I could ‘make it’ if I built enough ‘holy, righteous character.’
Armstrongism appealed to my vanity, because I was told that the vast majority of people didn’t ‘have the truth’ like I did (in retrospect, I can only say ‘thank God’ they didn’t!). It was a religion, in that it filled me with fear of God’s punishment if I failed to measure up. Like any and all religions, my experience with cultic religion manipulated my guilt and shame. I didn’t know it at the time, but Armstrongism ‘shut the door of the kingdom’ in my face (Matthew 23:13).
Cultic religion (and all religion for that matter) exercises control over your life with long lists of rules, accompanied by the punishments exacted and the shame doled out when you are unable to measure up to those rules. Religion, whether it is deemed by the culture to be acceptable or unacceptable, is all about human performance and how that performance is presumed to please and appease God.”
Originally published in:
Plain Truth Ministries | Box 300 | Pasadena, CA 91129-0300
