Thursday, July 12, 2012

Kat's Brush with a Cult

        I met a woman today giving out pamphlets. She told me that superior beings would be landing soon, and there would only be enough room on the flying saucers for true believers. I asked her what I was supposed to believe, and she said the pamphlet explains everything. I read it, and it said that the Supreme Leader would take everyone who believes and worships him to Phlamboyah, a paradise world where everyone lives happily forever. It said lots of other things that did not make much sense.
        I hate to admit it, but when I traveled with Carter through Dearth (the land beyond Dead Forest), we joined a group of people for a short time who said they had an easy shortcut to the “final destination.” I feel bad about it now because our friend, The Guardian, told us to stay on the eastern path until we came to an adobe building. The eastern path was brutal. It was littered with rocks and shrubs, and pocked with chuckholes and huge cracks. It was narrow, difficult to travel, and dangerous. We were exhausted. Given the chance to travel with a group of, seemingly, kind, pleasant people who knew an easy shortcut, it was too good to pass up.
        The leader of the group called himself, Jud Rack. He was powerful, charismatic, and very persuasive. His followers were totally committed to him. If it hadn’t been for Raymud, a man who confronted Rack and challenged his leadership, Carter and I would have followed the group to destruction. Now that I think of it, it was creepy how Rack’s followers hung on his every word and followed him without question.
        Maybe people join these cult groups because, like Carter and I when we abandoned the eastern path, they get tired of struggling with life and trying to make the right choices. It’s so much easier to let someone else take responsibility. People who get involved with cults don’t question things. They let someone else do their thinking for them. They give their power away to someone who appears to have their best interests at heart, but the one they trust uses them for their own selfish purposes. What do you think? Am I missing something?

3 comments:

  1. Hi, Kat. My friend Traci is letting me use her profile to comment, since I don't have one of my own yet.

    Your experience with cults is frighteningly similar to what my younger sister Brigitte went through not long ago. She was taken in by a cult because she wanted to be part of something exciting and different, and the group's leader, Joseph Zacharias, was a charismatic man with a great ability to lead and persuade people.

    He also turned out to be a controlling man with a messiah complex and a violent temper. When he thought my sister had betrayed him to the police, he raped and beat her, and would have killed her if another woman in the group hadn't intervened. He escaped arrest and is still at large, and we've found out that his name isn't even Joseph. He's a dangerous man, wanted in several states for a number of felonies involving fraud, forgery, larceny, assault and murder.

    My sister is now dealing with the consequences of her decision to join the cult, and some of those consequences are permanent. I don't want to share too much; she wouldn't be happy with me airing her life story on the Internet like this. Just wanted to let you know I understand all too well what you've experienced. You and Carter are blessed to have gotten out of the situation unharmed.

    Your friend,
    Chantal Atherton

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  2. This is Kat speaking, "WOW, Chantal, that is so scary! Thank you for sharing what happened. These cults can be so dangerous. I hope your sister will be okay. She sounds very brave."

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  3. Sometimes people take things to the extreme. Sometimes people take advantage of that. That's just how life works. One benefit to such things is that we can learn to refuse them and to choose the better part. The dark of the night helps us to appreciate the light of the day.

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