In Reply to: Re: Where did my faith go? posted by rgg2201473 on December 29, 2003 at 09:21:26:
Hey rgg2201473 (can I call you "RGG"?) and Erika!
RGG, I like what you wrote and agree with most of it. I thought I'd add a little extra something, not to contradict you but to build on what you already explained.
While it's true that much of our cult experience was a psychological experience, and we could go as far as to say the "faith" we were taught to live was so corrupt or even completely bogus that you couldn't really call it "faith", there still was/is a spiritual element involved.
We were subjected to what I'd call spirtual abuse. We did surrender our spirits. Our souls were held captive. And it's not just a question of sematics.
Many spiritual principals are universal, cross-cultural, transcend religious affiliation and our puny egotistical membership concerns. Nobody owns them, and nobody can. They are placed there to function, like all other laws of the universe. Lots of people discover them, tap on to them and start using them, and teach others what they've learned. The problem is when they get carried away, insist others do it exactly their way, form little clubs and membership rules, and suddenly you've got something called religion.
The group may have tapped on to many great ideas and spiritual principals, but mostly it stole them from other sources, repackaged the whole thing, took credit for it, and sold it to us as "the special exclusive stuff only God's endtime elite knows that other spirtual weaklings don't!" So in our spiritual vanity (or egos if you wish), we bought into it.
I don't know that this was the case for others, but fortunately for me, I came away from my experience, pretty clear about what was a universal spiritual principal, and what was filtered and misused by the group to manipulate me into believing in them.
When we prayed, things happened. For me, the faith and miracles certainly were there, but it didn't necessarily mean that God was blessing the group, any more than when a con-artist gets a "blessing" just because he prays "Oh please God don't let me be caught this time!!" and he doesn't get caught.
Sometimes when we prayed in the group, things happened for us in unexplainable ways. I see it as God answering the person, the individual, despite his/her human frailties and sins. Lots of miracles happen to people of other faiths too. God is big enough to overlook our bad choices and to be with us. I'm sure God would have answered those prayers if I'd been a church systemite. And I'll even go as far as to say God would have answered my prayers if I wasn't even that!