Cults: The folly of faith
YOUR BELIEFS define your vision of the world. They dictate your behaviour and how you live your life. A successful life comes from developing skills, working hard and overcoming obstacles, or by murdering, stealing and committing other evil acts. You have a choice.
Then there’s religion. Christianity to be exact. Walk the spirit, live a life of faith, for a good life. There’s the old cliché: religion makes people better, more loving and more peaceful. Simply put, however, it neither makes humans better people, nor makes them worse; it makes them people who are more likely to do what their religion says – whether that means helping or hurting. Like the highly religious United States, which has had more messiahs than any other country, Jamaica also has its fair share.
Alexander Bedward, a preacher of the Jamaican Revivalism cult, comes to mind. A self-proclaimed reincarnation of Jesus Christ, he, like Elijah, wanted to ascend into Heaven in a flaming chariot. Unfortunately he didn’t get to fly, but instead was grounded on a hard asylum floor. Like all self-respecting Christians, many Jamaicans, driven by their faith (not reason), as well as obeahism and superstition, will easily become entrapped by the next cult that comes along. I suspect that there are numerous religious cults in Jamaica.
Enter pastor, oops sorry, His Excellency Dr Kevin Smith of the Pathways International Kingdom Restoration Ministries – a charismatic leader, an object of worship, brainwashing and sexual and psychological exploitation of his followers, and murder, all the attributes of a cult. What makes a religious cult, cultish, is not so much what it espouses – the worship of God, like conventional churches – but how much authority its leaders grant themselves, and how slavishly devoted to them its followers are. If he becomes Jesus, even more power to him.
CULTIC OFFSHOOT
The JCC ( the Jamaica Council of Churches ) is livid: “We denounce all forms of religious practices which exploit and endanger persons, and expose them to harm and distress.” It condemns killing and defends true Christianity But it seems to forget that Christianity also began as a cultic offshoot of Judaism in Palestine in the first century CE. If a cult, (or if you prefer to call it the less pejorative ‘sect’ or ‘new religion movement’) gains enough adherents and other appurtenances of respectability, it generally becomes either a recognised denomination, or a fullfledged religion in its own right.
Some Christians still dismiss Jehovah’s Witnesses and Seventh-Day Adventists as cults. Pentacostals, once regarded as outside the mainstream of theology, now represent the largest branch of Christianity after the Roman Catholic Church. Frank Zappa, an American musician and avid misanthrope, once observed that the only difference between a church and a cult is the amount of real estate each owns. A bit of exaggeration, but it has some semblance of truth.
SERVICE OF GOD
Most Jamaicans believe in God. There is no better way to be good, and lead good meaningful lives, than to put themselves in the service of God. Without religion their lives would be meaningless. It is tempting to declare that there is nothing more to be said – and tiptoe away. Who would interfere with that? Can just ANY religion give lives meaning? Cults do give lives meaning. After all, they are a religion. What about people who fell in the clutches of cult leaders. Do their lives still have meaning even though their particular ‘religion’ is a fraud? Poor people emptying their wallets into the collection plate, thrilled to be getting salvation from these charismatic phonies. Should we leave them to their comforting illusions, or blow the whistle? Should someone who doesn’t believe in Heaven tell a Godfearing person on her deathbed that she is going to Heaven? It might be cruel to disappoint her.
Perhaps its malicious to interfere with life-enhancing illusions of others, unless those illusions are themselves the causes of even greater ills. Keeping secrets from people can often be wise, but it takes only one person to ‘let the cat out of the bag’, with grave repercussions.
If you choose to live your life by your faith (God forbid), then you should be allowed the freedom to practise your religion, if this will make your life ‘better’. New and controversial religions or cults will assuredly continue to emerge in the coming decades. A new cult might well be asking useful questions that the religious mainstream has scarcely yet formulated; and we should exercise great care in accepting the negative charges likely to be made against any new denomination. It is the society that lacks rigorous scrutiny of emerging cults that we should have the most to fear. While religions exist, there will always be religious cults… and messiahs. We’ll let Steven Weinberg, physicist, Nobel Laureate and atheist, have the last word: “Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you have good people doing good things, and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, it takes religion.”