How To Leave A Cult
I’m not going to go into a ton of background information about this, because really, I tell the story a lot about how I was raised in a cult. If you, by some chance, have not heard this story from me, go ahead and look up Rev. Sun Myung Moon on the internet. From birth to about age 21, I was in the Unification Church. This isn’t going to be a dramatic “poor me” story, because honestly, it was fine. It just wasn’t my truth. I happen to think it’s not The Truth (I’ve since been baptized as a Christian) but I’m not in the mood to unpack the mysteries of the universe today. That’s not what this is about. The only background you need to know is that I was born and raised in a cult, that I later left.
Today, I want to talk about my leaving.
I talk about my stories from being raised in a cult often, because it wasn’t a traumatizing childhood for me, and quite honestly, there are some really good party stories. I was in a mass wedding (not legally binding). I went to a compound in Korea where Korean grandmas “beat evil spirits out of me”. I sprinkled salt on new groceries. I prayed at a lot of rocks. I lived in a van with six other girls and a crazy Russian. This is interesting stuff, and people enjoy laughing about it. My experience was weird and fun and I don’t regret it.
But the leaving part, that’s something I don’t talk about very often. I had to reckon with the shame of being wrong — like, really wrong. I had to be very vulnerable and painfully honest with myself. I lost friends. I lost a husband (a legally binding one). I was afraid of losing my parents (I didn’t, they love me too much). I had to reframe my entire worldview, one that was bestowed upon me at birth. It was scary and embarrassing and sad and difficult and confusing.
I had invested so much of my life into my beliefs, and to throw them away, at the time, felt like I was throwing away all those years, all that energy. I would never get those years back, never get to go back and redo the choices I had made. I couldn’t go back and ask for a refund. Oh, it was painful to decide.
So, how did it happen?
First, the disparity between central truths and leading figures: My cult has a central theology, called the Divine Principle. I have read this book… well, a lot. At least fifty times. At one point, a friend opened to a random page and read a sentence, I would be able to recite the next sentence. I knew this book inside out. Occasionally, Rev. Moon would speak and I would listen to him speak — not prewritten speeches, but when he would speak off the cuff. He would say things and I would think, “Hmm. That’s not quite right, actually.” A sneaking suspicion began to grow that I might know the Diving Principle better than Rev. Moon. (In hindsight, there was another man, Hyo Won Eu, that was the likely author, so that explains a lot. But at the time, it was just a growing suspicion.)
Second, my compassion: I really believe in gay rights. I really do. I believe that gay people have a God-given — emphasis on God-given — right to exist and love fully. I think that marriage should be left to churches and that government should only provide civil unions — to both heterosexual and homosexual couples — but that’s a libertarian opinion for another day. In terms of having a fulfilled life with a loving partner, I am here for it. The Unification Church theology… is not, to say the least. I couldn’t reconcile my faith in a loving God with a theology that limited my compassion.
Third, my sense of curiosity and love of debate and exploration: I took an Intro to Religion class in college, my first semester, that encouraged questioning and looking at religion through myriad lenses: literature, history, politics, etc. I loved it. I am a deeply faithful person, and part of my faith is knowing that there is no unanswered question — I just might not ever have the answer. That’s the beauty of faith, is that I can have the question and always hold a little uncertainty in my heart. That uncertainty is the bedrock of my faith, and I can debate others and I can read books on other faiths and I can amicably disagree with other faithful individuals on the nuances of faith and religion while simultaneously appreciating that we all choose to have faith in light of uncertainty, in whatever form we choose. I wanted a faith that allowed me to broaden my experience, not limit it. A cult requires absolute belief without question. Faith allows for limitless exploration.
This is a rough draft, and it is indeed, very rough. I’m going to post it anyway. Why am I sloppily and desperately trying to get all this out there?
Because today, my Capitol building was overrun by cult members.
To be clear, I’m not saying all Trump supporters are zealots. Not at all. But the ones storming the Capitol are in an “absolute belief without question” mindset. They are ignoring the nagging feeling that maybe their actions are incongruent with their Constitution. They are forgetting their compassion for the elected officials and Capitol workers and bystanders and staffers and police that they are endangering. And they are not having faith in our country, in our democracy. They are stuck in a limited view of “only my view could ever possibly be right without question.” That is not faith in our democracy. That is not faith at all. It is blind loyalty. Which belongs to cults.
(And absolutely, the Left has its cult members, too. Anyone with half a brain can spot them. But they aren’t overrunning the Capitol today, so I’m not going to psychoanalyze them today. Though… it’s exactly the same fanatical mindset. Not much variety in analyses.)
I feel for the radical extremists on our political spectrum because I get it. I’ve been there. It’s really hard to backtrack once you’ve committed. And undoing it is so painful that people don’t often get to the other side. It’s really hard to be wrong. It takes a lot of resilience, or so my past therapist told me. And everyone is ready to throw shame at you. Especially anyone who might have resented you at any point in your entire life, oh, they are there and they are joyfully ready for your downfall. It’s so hard.
But if you can get to the other side of being wrong, you know what happens? You are so much wiser and seriously, your brain is better for it. I think. I hope so, anyway, because I’d like to think that my brain is pretty good for having survived it.
I just realized that I don’t have a conclusion to this. Maybe I’ll rewrite this one day after I’ve slept (please forgive how rough this is, I finished my seventh consecutive night shift last night), put some more stock photos on it, make it clearer and more concise. But today, I’m just going to throw this rough draft out there, because I feel helpless in the face of watching our democracy be threatened and I have to try and put something out there to help. God Bless America. Today I’m going to pray for my country and pray for the people who are going to go on the same hard journey of learning how to be wrong.
