Wasted Years but no Magic Underpants

I'm getting complaints and congratulations on criticizing Mormonism, although no one is taking up for Islam or the Jehovah's Witnesses, which I also labeled "cults." Am I a bad person for criticizing other religions? I don't think so. Maybe I shouldn't be so irreverent about it, but I believe a religion that qualifies as a cult needs to be criticized publicly, because cults are very hard to quit, and they rob people of their lives and of the opportunity to know God. I think religions that are blatantly fraudulent--not quite the same thing as cults--should also be criticized openly. I'd call Islam a cult, although I wouldn't call it blatantly fraudulent. Mormonism fits both categories. Scientology is a little hard to pigeonhole. It's definitely a cult, and it's definitely fraudulent. On the other hand, at the lower levels, it actually works, and I don't think they feed you the fraudulent stuff right off the bat. They teach you a lot of useful stuff about believing in yourself, and it's only later that they spill the beans about Xemu or Xenu and the planet Teegeeack.

I was thinking about all this, and I realized that my own religious background is somewhat cultlike.

I used to be a member of an Assemblies of God church. I witnessed events in my life that I was convinced were supernatural, and there were other things that confirmed my faith, and I figured that since the reality of God was so obvious, the charismatics were perfectly sincere when they talked about healings and miracles and so on. I mean, if things like that happened to me, they probably happened to all sorts of people. I was kind of naive. I'm a pretty sincere person, and I have had a hard time teaching myself that most people are full of it. Back when I joined the church, I was less skeptical than I am now. Today, I realize that almost every person who claims--on national TV--to have had a supernatural experience is a giant festering bag of bullshit who deserves to go to hell.

Here is what the church was like. They had services on Sunday and Wednesday, and I would say more than half of us went to both services. We were expected to donate generously; although tithing was considered obsolete Jewish law, the practice was mentioned frequently enough to make it clear that the ten percent range was a good place to be. We were constantly told that the more money we donated, the richer God would make us. We were supposed to pray in tongues, and each of us was supposed to have a special "prayer language" handed down by God, and none of the sounds ever made any sense. Drinking was allowed but discouraged. Sex outside of marriage was considered sinful; no argument there. We were supposed to be healthy and wealthy and happy, and if we were not, it meant we were doing something wrong and we needed to try harder.

Some parts of that are a bit cult-like. The long, frequent services are an example. On the other hand, participation was voluntary, and a lot of ordinary Christians go to church two or more times a week. Prayer in tongues, like chanting and meditation, is considered a cultish practice. It took me forever to get it. Like I said, I tend to be sincere, and I refused to pretend, and the "prayer language" was not in me at first. Then one day, mysteriously, it happened, and I figured since so many other things had turned out to be true, there was no reason to question it. And there were a tremendous number of scriptural references that seemed to support it. I now think it was a lot of nonsense, but I don't fault myself for giving it the old college try.

The part about being blamed for having problems is very cult-like. I used to hear this from ministers like Kenneth Copeland and Jerry Savelle. You're sick? You must not be saying aloud that you're healed. You must not be telling the demons to get out of your body. You must have an unconfessed sin. One idiot said you had to raise your arms and wave them, or you were not "worshiping," and if you did not "worship," you could not be healed. Regardless of what your problem was, Copeland and the rest had an excuse for God failing to deliver on their promises, and it was always your fault. The apostles had problems, but we were not allowed to. Go figure.

If you watch these characters, you'll see a pattern. Check it out. They spend the whole sermon reaming out the congregation. They do nothing but beat believers down.

The prosperity preaching was a big "cult" flag. Evidently, God really wants you to give old bald Benny Hinn your Social Security check so he can buy another $5,000 pink suit with white shoes, to go with his two-foot-long, lacquered-down combover. God wants Kenneth Copeland to have a jet, because after all, Jesus had one. So mortgage your house and send him the cash. One guy--John Avanzini--had the gall to make prosperity preaching his speciality. It was his "special anointing" to get people to send money to him so they could be rich. Robert Tilton (Youtube's original "Farting Preacher") had the same shtick. I assume they're still at it.

Of course, these people were--and are--all pigs. In my humble opinion. I would not be surprised if they were all atheists. I would be VERY surprised if any of them had ever flown coach in the last ten years.

I think Kenneth Copeland is a gigantic liar. You want proof? I'll give it to you. Maybe some of you are charismatics, and you still buy into his crap. Okay, here goes. What's the test for a false prophet? If he says ONE thing that doesn't come true, he's a fake. Every charismatic knows that. Okay, what do you do with false prophets? You kill them. At least, that was the case before Jesus came along. So presumably, while we're not allowed to stone them, we should quit listening to them and sending them money. Fair?

Here's the proof. Back in the 80s, I saw Kenneth Copeland start babbling in tongues and "prophesying." And he told the crowd all sorts of wonders were about to occur, and that we were going to hear about lots of miracles, including people being raised from the dead in Mexico. He didn't say it would happen and no one would know; he said we would HEAR about it.

Did that happen? Uh...NO. So you can scratch this guy off your donation list. And stone him, too, if you think you can get away with it.

The Assemblies of God was not a TV ministry, but it was in league with TBN cronies like those mentioned above, so going to an Assemblies church was about the same thing as having these parasites as your pastors.

Faith has a way of making you vulnerable. You see a few things that prove God is real, so you think there has to be more. And you're told more will come, if you believe more strongly. So you condition yourself to believe. And once you're conditioned to believe, a crank like Oral Roberts can tell you damn near anything, and you'll swallow it. It's not that you're stupid. It's that you deliberately developed the habit of opening your mind. You wanted to open the door for the Holy Spirit, but instead, the rats ran in.

The Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses qualify as cultists partly because they make it hard to leave. They persecute quitters. The Assemblies of God didn't do that. BUT they kept you on the hook by promising you a life free of problems if you just held out a little longer. That's extremely powerful, as brainwashing goes. It's what keeps people shoving money into slot machines. That next nickel might do it. Of course, the nickels the Christians sent these greedbags weren't going to build relatively harmless casinos where people gambled and had sex with hookers. No, they were going to pay for Jim Bakker's air conditioned doghouse. Which is actually worse. Casinos and hookers don't defame God, and they don't steal money from God and the poor, and they don't turn people off of Christianity. TBN's sorry collection of filth did--and does--all those things. And you know what the Bible says about people who throw stumbling-blocks in our paths and those who cause us to offend.

I guess it wasn't a true cult. The celebrity ministers were generally worthless, but I know many of the lower-level pastors were sincere, and the church let people come and go, and they didn't restrict information, and they didn't cut members off from the world. But was more like a cult than it needed to be.

I don't know where I fit into the picture now. I still believe faith will physically heal you, because I've seen it, but I have prayed for people, including my mother, who subsequently got worse and died. I know spirits exist, and I believe there are good and bad angels, but I don't think we know much about who they are or what their abilities are or what sort of hierarchy, if any, they have. I'm not even sure Satan and Beelzebub and Baal are the same person. The Bible is pretty vague. It talks about "princes" and so on, but it doesn't tell us who they are or what they do. People like to pretend that the Bible is very clear and detailed, but it isn't. It's very clear about some things, but when it comes to the rest, we have to guess.

I believe God will bless you with success if you support ministries and charities, but only if they're good ministries and charities, and you can't talk about what you give, and you don't get points for guessing wrong. I think you can bring ruin on yourself by failing to honor your parents and grandparents, even if they don't deserve to be honored. I believe you can be cursed for sins committed by your ancestors, for sins you commit yourself, or for no good reason at all. I believe the benefits people get from sinful behavior are always illusory or temporary, so there is no point in envying rotten people who appear to succeed.

I think people should go to church, but I gave up looking for a church that was sincere yet not caught up in the charismatic/televangelist suckhole. I believe in hell, but I have a hard time believing it could be permanent, or that it's anything like as bad as the Catholics say it is. I just don't believe God would put ordinary people in a place that literally feels like being burned alive, or that they stay there forever. Even Hitler would eventually suffer a trillion times as much as all the people he wronged, and that number would eventually reach a trillion trillion. That is excessive, no matter how you try to justify it. I think people who believe in Christ will be saved, even if they do wrong, but I am not positive that everyone else is screwed. I pray twice a day for a good long time, but I also watch R-rated movies and use awful language.

Should I feel bad about calling other people's religions frauds or cults when that's what they clearly are? I don't think so. I have an obligation to do it. I know from past experience that I can be fooled, too, and I wish someone had come along and talked some sense into me back before I realized I was being deceived by scum. I hear Copeland and Hinn and some of the others are being investigated right now, and I am tempted to say I hope they all end up in federal penitentiaries for life, and that while they're in there, they become sincere Christians.

I'm not a big fan of Catholicism, but I'll say this. The leader they pick is generally a serious and honest guy, and I've never seen a Pope with a big gold watch or a private yacht. It would be nice to see Bible-believing Protestants choose as wisely.

I'm not trying to cause ordinary believers pain when I threaten to post photos of the magical Mormon underpants, which actually exist. I'm just venting my disgust at an obvious con job. I admit, I would be pleased if I knew that Mormon bishops and revisionists and so on were crapping themselves and getting ulcers and migraines over what I write, because I think of them the same way I think of drug pushers. But I don't want to inflict misery on their victims.

If you're going to run a religion, give believers their freedom. Don't screw with their information supply. Don't lie in your documents. Don't try to rehabilitate obvious lies and deceptions like the ridiculous Abraham diary. If believers want to leave, don't persecute them. Don't promise rewards you'll never provide. Don't have secrets from the general public, like the Mormon secret handshakes or the passwords you use to get into heaven or the "secret names" Mormons give to adherents. Tell the truth, let people choose without coercion, and keep it all above board. Otherwise, kiss my behind right in the crack. I'm not going to help anyone hold people captive, even if you call me intolerant.