A Double Standard: My Experience as a Christian Cult Member -- Part 7
1. Why I decided to write about my experience as a cult member
2. How I was duped into joining the cult
3. The issue of mind control and manipulation in cults
4. The issue of poverty and malnutrition in cults
5. Hard labor for no pay in cults
and
6. The fact that there was no consideration for personal property in the cult.
Another common issue in cults is the double standard in lifestyle, between the cult leaders, and the "peons" that make up the bulk of the cult members.
As I wrote about in part three of this series, as cult members, we lived lives of poverty and malnutrition. The approximately 60 people who lived there ate on a grocery budget of $260 per month, or a little over $4 per month per person.
I'm not sure what the cult leader's grocery budget was, but the cupboards and refrigerator in his home were stocked like a "normal" home would be. I know this because since I home schooled his son, I was in his home on a regular basis. I was given the option to help myself to whatever I wanted, and I'll admit it was tempting. But other than making myself a cup of tea each day (quite a luxury actually), I never took him up on his offer to help myself; it just didn't seem right to have access to all kinds of good food when everyone else was eating little but beans and potatoes.
Speaking of being in his home, he actually had one. That may seem like a strange statement, but all of the peons in the ministry were living in very small trailers or busses that had been converted into homes.
The cult leader's home was not luxurious by normal American standards -- it was either a three or four bedroom home that was pretty average. But compared to the way the rest of us lived, it was a palace.
In addition to the different living conditions, there were also different rules in terms of "morality." The cult leader chided us often about how wrong it was to watch T.V. And yet when I showed up at his home in the morning to teach his son, the T.V. would be on. I didn't then nor do I now think that it is wrong to watch T.V., but the issue was that the rules that applied to everyone else did not apply to the cult leader.
A common issue in cults is that there is a double standard between the leaders and the rest of the members of the cult.
The next part of this series will cover a bright spot in this entire story -- the way I met my husband in the cult. That was truly one of the good things that came about as a result of my time in the cult.
Published by Rebecca Livermore - Featured Contributor in Travel and Lifestyle
Rebecca Livermore has been a freelance writer since 1993. Although she started off writing for print magazines, in recent years she has switched her focus to writing for the web. She writes on many subjects,... View profile
- The Star Trek Experience in Las VegasA review of The Star Trek Experience museum and ride at the Hilton in Las Vegas.
- The Tattoo Artist, Design and ExperienceTattoo: An Experience in Ink outlines one person's experiences with the tattoo process, supported by history of tattooing, cultural aspects, and the state of tattooing today.
- Burger King's New Double Cheeseburger: How Does it Really Compare to McDonald's?Have you seen the Burger King commercial featuring the guy with small hands advertising their double cheeseburger and comparing it to McDonald's double cheeseburger? Here's how it really compares...
How to Get an Office Position with No ExperienceWhether you are coming fresh out of high school or just desiring to switch from one career to another, it can be very difficult to find office work with no experience.- Using Your Past Experience to Build Whatever Career You WantNo one has perfect experience on their resume. But that shouldn't stop you from building a career that really gets you excited. Here are some great tips to apply your experience to build the career you really want, no...
- How to Spot a Religious Cult
- Father Images in Cults
- The Heaven's Gate Cult: When Propaganda Becomes Fatal Coercion
- How I Met My Husband: My Experience as a Christian Cult Member, Part 8
- No Regard for Personal Property: My Experience as a Christian Cult Member, Part 5
- Mind Control and Isolation: My Experience as a Christian Cult Member, Part 2
- Jose Luis De Jesus Miranda: A Cult Leader Preying on Hungry People
- Cult members were malnourished; the leader and his family had ample food.
- Cult members lived in busses; the cult leader had a home.
- Cult members weren't allowed to watch t.v.; the cult leader watched t.v. daily.
10 Comments
Post a CommentWhere is the part 6?
Okay, did I miss part 6? i can't find it on the page. I see the intro and then the sections, but not part 6. Humm...okay, back to reading.
The movies that I have watched all ring true with what you've described. Seems those leaders are the devil's tools! You poor thing!
Wow! This is just getting odder and odder. I'm glad to hear there was a bit of good there, though. That bit of good likely helped you get through the other conditions. Adam, that's interesting.
Anyway, I just found many of the similarities to be interesting and I figured I'd share them.
Bahama vacation alcohol tab on the ORU bill and I've heard from employees who've visited their mansion that they've got several bottles of wine lying around. I think alcohol's fine (like your thoughts on TV), but I think the double-standard sucks. Also, professors were used to home-school the Roberts' kids (maybe even do their homework for them), like you were used to homeschool your cult leader's kids. One major difference is while people might've been discouraged from leaving your cult, they're practically encouraged to leave ORU, even kicked out. Students are expelled and professors are fired for disagreeing with some element of doctrine or financial mismanagement. In chapel, they sometimes encourage people to leave if they disagree. And, ORU has a rotating membership, only 4-6 years at a time, so most people don't get too entrenched. Oh yeah, and most the professors don't fully buy the party line, so you can get a pretty dang good education while you're there, too. Anyway, I
Now this is a topic I can relate to; I think it's true of many leaders throughout the world. It actually kind of reminds me of ORU in a few ways, as if your cult was a much smaller and diminutive version of ORU. Your cult had 60 members, ORU has a rotating student body of about 5,000. They forced you to live in cruddy warehouses, ORU forces single people to live on-campus (in some pretty nice dorms, all things considered). Your leader had his own house, ORU's (former) leader had his own huge mansion complex (probably better to scale from dorm to mansion like from your warehouse living to a regular house). If ORU students are broke from paying for school, the leadership still asks them to give more offering to the school and says they should do it instead of going to see a dollar movie and buy stuff for themselves. ORU forces everyone to sign an honor code (including no alcohol drinking, etc.) but apparently someone in the Roberts party put their Bahama vacation alcohol tab on the ORU
sigh
I'm glad you had some bright spots in your life there.
I hope anyone thinking of joining a cult reads your series and realizes what they are getting into.