life

<p>The line between organized religion and cult can be blurry. But luckily, some people realize they&#39;re involved in a cult before it totally takes over their lives.</p><p>A <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/n93y5x/redditors_who_were_raised_in_cults_when_was_the/">recent thread</a> asked, &quot;Redditors who were raised in cults, when was the first time you realized something was wrong?&quot; The answers prove that no one&#39;s safe from predatory fake religions.</p><h2>1. Yeah, that&#39;s a red flag.</h2><blockquote> <p>When I realized that the doors to the 13 story former hotel building we were all living in was locked and you had to sign out to leave.</p> <p>No one (from children to adults) could leave without an explanation to where they were going and when they&#39;d be back.</p> <p><a href="https://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/July-2016/Institute-in-Basic-Life-Principles-Hinsdale/" rel="noopener nofollow ugc" target="_blank">Pretty indepth interesting article written about the whole thing</a> - g1ngerguitarist</p> </blockquote><h2>2. Any time you&#39;re not allowed to do research, it&#39;s not a great sign.</h2><blockquote> <p>Ex-Jehovah&rsquo;s Witness here.</p> <p>My first hint that something was wrong was the amount of control exerted in our day to day lives. No beards, no long hair for men, no tattoos or piercings, no shirts with &ldquo;edgy&rdquo; artwork like band shirts or shirts with skulls, no entertainment they don&rsquo;t approve of, etc.</p> </blockquote><div className="ad-splitter"></div><p> </p><blockquote> <p>Other witnesses are trained to report you to the elders if you&rsquo;re not following their guidelines, such as if you have a position of respect in the congregation but someone sees that you have a rated R movie, they&rsquo;ll report you to the elders and you could lose your position and good standing, which will change the way the congregation treats you.</p> </blockquote><p> </p><blockquote> <p>What really tipped it over the edge for me though was their doctrine that all non-witnesses deserve to die at Armageddon by gods hand, simply for not being witnesses. Armageddon is supposed to be urgently imminent, and over 99.9% of the world will die just because they&rsquo;re not witnesses. That didn&rsquo;t sit right with me. I had been working in retail for some time, and the people I worked with were every bit as intelligent, compassionate and loving as any witness I knew.</p> </blockquote><div className="ad-splitter"></div><p> </p><blockquote> <p>Eventually, these issues became too great for me to bear, and I committed the ultimate sin, researching information that criticizes the religion. We were taught to be terrified of anything that remotely criticizes the religion and it&rsquo;s leaders. I finally pushed against that fear and did the research. Woke up instantly. Realized why they taught us to fear &ldquo;apostate&rdquo; information so much, it&rsquo;s because they know it&rsquo;s all true and they don&rsquo;t want us to see it - excusetheblood</p> </blockquote><h2>3. All it takes is one outsider.</h2><blockquote> <p>When it came time for me to leave for my own mental health. I became the villain and when confiding in my college tutor she was horrified to learn even a fraction of what I had grown up with. She was the main encouragement I needed to gtfo when I did - Broken-Sushi</p> </blockquote><div className="ad-splitter"></div><h2>4. The most &#39;80s cult escape story ever.</h2><blockquote> <p>After watching The Day After in the 80s, I asked my mom if we knew the nukes were coming, who would she rather spend her last moments with me or the cult leader, she choose him. I came up with my own survival plan after that. I was going to skateboard to safety. - TheBonkBonk1973</p> </blockquote><h2>5. There&#39;s more to life than going to church!</h2><blockquote> <p>When the &#39;Elders&#39; told me that I could no longer speak to my younger sister anymore because she was in &#39;bad standing&#39; with the organization. She&#39;s the only family I have left. They made her out to be this monster just because she wasn&#39;t actively going to church. That&#39;s when the glass shattered for me - BananasAnd69</p> </blockquote><h2>6. Who does that to a five-year-old?!</h2><blockquote> <p>When I was five and the leader, who claimed to receive messages directly from God, accused me of doing something I knew I had not done. - RSchlock</p> </blockquote><h2>7. Great parents, wow.</h2><blockquote> <p>When my parents told me they&#39;d let me die rather than allow me to get certain medical procedures. - Schnauzerbutt</p> </blockquote><div className="ad-splitter"></div><h2>8. This definitely wasn&#39;t an accident.</h2><blockquote> <p>Not in a cult per say, but was in one of those evangelical megachurches. Started as a nice corner church; the piety was genuine.</p> <p>I dont think that the pastor planned the whole thing - he seemed a genuine preacher until the church grew exponentially. Like went from a few hundred members to 15,000 in less than 2 years. Then his main focus was maintaining (entertaining) the masses, which drove him to do stupid things.</p> </blockquote><p> </p><blockquote> <p>Many weird things started happening. Especially, one day he &quot;had a revelation&quot; that the congregation needs to expand further and members have to, I am serious, give out all the GOLD they were wearing. I know a lady that got into serious trouble with her husband because she gave away her gold wedding band.</p> <p>My last straw was when he promoted himself to Apostle and renamed himself &quot;Paul&quot;. Apostle Paul. Okay. - jetiro_now</p> </blockquote><div className="ad-splitter"></div><h2>9. It shouldn&#39;t be hard to answer these questions.</h2><blockquote> <p>When my brother started asking (politely) how our religion was founded and how our family got involved and generally just questions about life: they don&#39;t believe in evolution or kissing before marriage.</p> <p>And they would bite his head off about it at age 11 It made me realise they were being defensive because they had no answers. If you can&#39;t explain why you&#39;re in a religion, you get the f*** out. - PurelyAmy</p> </blockquote><h2>10. Hmmm... not seeing how this math works out.</h2><blockquote> <p>When my youth group leader said that telling poor people about Jesus was more important than feeding them or housing them. - republican-jesus</p> </blockquote><h2>11. If people who are also religious find your church creepy, there might be a problem.</h2><blockquote> <p>When my other friends came to my church for the first time. Most of my friendships were isolated to church members until middle school.</p> <p>I started going with my other christian friends to their churches which were all similar to each other. When they came to mine they were uncomfortable and they all started telling me my church was weird.</p> </blockquote><div className="ad-splitter"></div><p> </p><blockquote> <p>Around 13 years old a friend&#39;s mother asked me a few questions about my church and I had recently gotten the internet so I started asking questions at my church, and the questions were not welcome. - kruxader</p> </blockquote><h2>12. If you can&#39;t run your own family, why should people listen to your advice?</h2><blockquote> <p>In my teens we went to a church that told you who you could hang out with, what you could watch on TV, what movies you could see, and picked who within the church you could be friends with. 99% of the leaders told you how to run your family but had kids who were either teenage pregnancies or a baby daddy, illiterate homeschoolers, high school drop-outs or drug addicts. There were stretches where we went to church two times a day - even during the week. They encouraged people to get their kids out of school for revival meetings, home schoolers postponed their classes - it was consuming. They started arranged marriages, with several families petitioning my parents for me to marry their daughters - they almost went for it but stopped because it seemed &quot;weird&quot;.</p> </blockquote><div className="ad-splitter"></div><p> </p><blockquote> <p>As I moved off to college they recommended a mega-church they got a lot of their messages and such from. This church did more of the same. They encouraged high school seniors to put off college a year and PAY THE CHURCH $3,000 for an opportunity to work there for year for an internship program that guaranteed ministry work experience. This program micro-managed your life to the hour, included intense hazing for new members that routinely sent students to the hospital and stacked them all into student housing so that you could focus more on the program. - Worlds_Best_Coffee</p> </blockquote><h2>13. Yikes.</h2><blockquote> <p>My mom being like &ldquo;we are NOT a cult! I mean sure ex members got hitmen sent after them a couple times but that does NOT define us!&rdquo; Yeahhh Also the fact that even though me and my siblings repeatedly asked what our religion was, our parents refused to tell us until we were all 16-19 because they didn&rsquo;t trust us to not look it up or tell other people. - Ok-Fan-2331</p> </blockquote><div className="ad-splitter"></div>

13 people who were raised in cults share the moment they realized what was going on.

The line between organized religion and cult can be blurry. But luckily, some people realize they&#39;re involved in a cult before it totally takes over their lives.A recent thread asked, &quot;Redditors who were raised in cults, when was the first time you realized something was wrong?&quot; The answers prove that no one&#39;s safe from predatory fake religions.1. Yeah, that&#39;s a red flag. When I realized that the doors to the 13 story former hotel building we were all living in was locked and you had to sign out to leave. No one (from children to adults) could leave without an explanation to where they were going and when they&#39;d be back. Pretty indepth interesting article written about the whole thing - g1ngerguitarist 2. Any time you&#39;re not allowed to do research, it&#39;s not a great sign. Ex-Jehovah&rsquo;s Witness here. My first hint that something was wrong was the amount of control exerted in our day to day lives. No beards, no long hair for men, no tattoos or piercings, no shirts with &ldquo;edgy&rdquo; artwork like band shirts or shirts with skulls, no entertainment they don&rsquo;t approve of, etc.   Other witnesses are trained to report you to the elders if you&rsquo;re not following their guidelines, such as if you have a position of respect in the congregation but someone sees that you have a rated R movie, they&rsquo;ll report you to the elders and you could lose your position and good standing, which will change the way the congregation treats you.   What really tipped it over the edge for me though was their doctrine that all non-witnesses deserve to die at Armageddon by gods hand, simply for not being witnesses. Armageddon is supposed to be urgently imminent, and over 99.9% of the world will die just because they&rsquo;re not witnesses. That didn&rsquo;t sit right with me. I had been working in retail for some time, and the people I worked with were every bit as intelligent, compassionate and loving as any witness I knew.   Eventually, these issues became too great for me to bear, and I committed the ultimate sin, researching information that criticizes the religion. We were taught to be terrified of anything that remotely criticizes the religion and it&rsquo;s leaders. I finally pushed against that fear and did the research. Woke up instantly. Realized why they taught us to fear &ldquo;apostate&rdquo; information so much, it&rsquo;s because they know it&rsquo;s all true and they don&rsquo;t want us to see it - excusetheblood 3. All it takes is one outsider. When it came time for me to leave for my own mental health. I became the villain and when confiding in my college tutor she was horrified to learn even a fraction of what I had grown up with. She was the main encouragement I needed to gtfo when I did - Broken-Sushi 4. The most &#39;80s cult escape story ever. After watching The Day After in the 80s, I asked my mom if we knew the nukes were coming, who would she rather spend her last moments with me or the cult leader, she choose him. I came up with my own survival plan after that. I was going to skateboard to safety. - TheBonkBonk1973 5. There&#39;s more to life than going to church! When the &#39;Elders&#39; told me that I could no longer speak to my younger sister anymore because she was in &#39;bad standing&#39; with the organization. She&#39;s the only family I have left. They made her out to be this monster just because she wasn&#39;t actively going to church. That&#39;s when the glass shattered for me - BananasAnd69 6. Who does that to a five-year-old?! When I was five and the leader, who claimed to receive messages directly from God, accused me of doing something I knew I had not done. - RSchlock 7. Great parents, wow. When my parents told me they&#39;d let me die rather than allow me to get certain medical procedures. - Schnauzerbutt 8. This definitely wasn&#39;t an accident. Not in a cult per say, but was in one of those evangelical megachurches. Started as a nice corner church; the piety was genuine. I dont think that the pastor planned the whole thing - he seemed a genuine preacher until the church grew exponentially. Like went from a few hundred members to 15,000 in less than 2 years. Then his main focus was maintaining (entertaining) the masses, which drove him to do stupid things.   Many weird things started happening. Especially, one day he &quot;had a revelation&quot; that the congregation needs to expand further and members have to, I am serious, give out all the GOLD they were wearing. I know a lady that got into serious trouble with her husband because she gave away her gold wedding band. My last straw was when he promoted himself to Apostle and renamed himself &quot;Paul&quot;. Apostle Paul. Okay. - jetiro_now 9. It shouldn&#39;t be hard to answer these questions. When my brother started asking (politely) how our religion was founded and how our family got involved and generally just questions about life: they don&#39;t believe in evolution or kissing before marriage. And they would bite his head off about it at age 11 It made me realise they were being defensive because they had no answers. If you can&#39;t explain why you&#39;re in a religion, you get the f*** out. - PurelyAmy 10. Hmmm... not seeing how this math works out. When my youth group leader said that telling poor people about Jesus was more important than feeding them or housing them. - republican-jesus 11. If people who are also religious find your church creepy, there might be a problem. When my other friends came to my church for the first time. Most of my friendships were isolated to church members until middle school. I started going with my other christian friends to their churches which were all similar to each other. When they came to mine they were uncomfortable and they all started telling me my church was weird.   Around 13 years old a friend&#39;s mother asked me a few questions about my church and I had recently gotten the internet so I started asking questions at my church, and the questions were not welcome. - kruxader 12. If you can&#39;t run your own family, why should people listen to your advice? In my teens we went to a church that told you who you could hang out with, what you could watch on TV, what movies you could see, and picked who within the church you could be friends with. 99% of the leaders told you how to run your family but had kids who were either teenage pregnancies or a baby daddy, illiterate homeschoolers, high school drop-outs or drug addicts. There were stretches where we went to church two times a day - even during the week. They encouraged people to get their kids out of school for revival meetings, home schoolers postponed their classes - it was consuming. They started arranged marriages, with several families petitioning my parents for me to marry their daughters - they almost went for it but stopped because it seemed &quot;weird&quot;.   As I moved off to college they recommended a mega-church they got a lot of their messages and such from. This church did more of the same. They encouraged high school seniors to put off college a year and PAY THE CHURCH $3,000 for an opportunity to work there for year for an internship program that guaranteed ministry work experience. This program micro-managed your life to the hour, included intense hazing for new members that routinely sent students to the hospital and stacked them all into student housing so that you could focus more on the program. - Worlds_Best_Coffee 13. Yikes. My mom being like &ldquo;we are NOT a cult! I mean sure ex members got hitmen sent after them a couple times but that does NOT define us!&rdquo; Yeahhh Also the fact that even though me and my siblings repeatedly asked what our religion was, our parents refused to tell us until we were all 16-19 because they didn&rsquo;t trust us to not look it up or tell other people. - Ok-Fan-2331 

The line between organized religion and cult can be blurry. But luckily, some people realize they&#39;re involved in a cult before it totally takes over their lives.  A recent thread asked, &quot;Redditors who were raised in cults, when...

13 people who were raised in cults share the moment they realized what was going on.

1. Yeah, that's a red flag.

2. Any time you're not allowed to do research, it's not a great sign.