It took away the purity of the bible's intentions. Leaving a cult may leave a person with some symptoms of post traumatic stress and the bible is going to be a huge trigger as it was used to instill those things that made the group a cult and destructive. It was the anchor of control and someone who is trying to regain the control may want to do that on their own. After they are able to rediscover their own values and beliefs they may be able to read it again. It is a book that is to be interpreted. People leaving cults need to establish a new refrence point before they can look at the book without thinking about their previous experience. It is classical conditioning to use a psych term. The cult and the book become one.

CultStalkker,
That is exactly what I would of said if I could have found the right words. You hit it. Thanks!

People raised in authoritarian Christian homes are made vulnerable to becoming cult members later in life. It is mentally healthy to abandon these beliefs entirely. An excellent book is “Deadly Doctrine: Health, Illness, and Christian God-Talk” by Wendell W. Watters, M.D.

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DinaM2
What ways was the Bible twisted in the occult that turned you away from reading and studying the Bible?

Considering the "name" of this thread says "Cult" I'm going to take a guess and assume the real point of this question is "cults" and not "the occult".

My bible based cult was heavy on control scriptures twisted to serve the purposes of a nasty sociopath. The source cult of my little one started this tradition and these things are now a generational trait within an extended cult traditional that IMO holds true for many different small groups, especially as the parent organization has for the most part crashed and burned.

Hand in hand with an abusive and controlling authoritarian system went a manner of elitism that IMO overrode what for a lot of folks is simple human decency.

Since coming out of my former cult I have found it to become very easy to give decent people of different religions credit and respect based on attributes that IMO run beyond which particular religious doctrines a person holds. Even though it felt strange for me to stand up for a pagan when I felt a Christian that I happened to respect in other circumstances wasn't being particularly kind, it felt right for me as I was explaining to this person that this particular pagan deserved to feel something better than scorn from us. I believed this particular pagan when they shared they believed their pagan friends were more decent than the form of Christianity they were exposed to in one of my former cults. Even from denominational Christians this pagan asserts that they commonly receive scorn and mocking.

This pagan said one of the most insightful things I have ever heard a non-Christian say about Christianity and it was something to this effect. "I think Christianity has the potential and should be a truly amazing religion." Given this particular person's history being led about in a group controlled by a sociopath sexual predator I am still sometimes amazed by her insight as to what Christianity could and/or should be. Needless to say I am not hesitant to tell Christians, even ones I respect, to respect other peoples and religions.

Once I confronted a local Christian clergy man to respect the local Somali Muslim immigrants. I told him that they would never hear what he is preaching since they (IMO correctly) perceived he was mocking their culture and religion.

Lately I have seen the movie, "The Book of Eli" and I was surprised by the moral of the story. In my own words it was along the lines of,"The bible may be twisted to control people in a cult like fashion or it may be used for the benefit of all mankind."

When I see former cult members who have turned from the bible I treat them with as much kindness and respect as I can muster, especially if it is evident to me that they are actually better people now than they were led to be in their former bible based cults.

But as to "WHY" they have turned from the bible I believe it is fairly simple to understand. IMO it is because the supposed bible believer they followed actually hurt them and others badly, and maybe harm is all they ever saw the bible cause. IMO it seems pretty simple.

Faith is to look to ones self, to know yourself
Love thy neighbor means....To get close enough to learn their weakness.
The God of the Old Testament was the God of Dominion and Jesus came to save us from him.
That the sun is the son

I could on but there is so much crap I really don't want to expose people to it.

I grew up Christian and had never questioned my beliefs. While I was still a member of the bible-based cult I joined at age 18, I started reading The One Year Chronological Bible. It was full of inconsistencies and contradictions that I had never noticed before because they usually aren't directly side by side like that. So while still a member, a couple of years before I left, I started questioning the fundamentalist belief that the bible is inerrant. And because inerrancy was one of our conditions for believing the bible had any religious authority, its obvious 'errancy' eventually made me disbelieve in it completely (like someone else mentioned, a "black or white" reaction). Interestingly, I had no problem reading the bible after leaving -- as long as it was in a different translation than the one used in the cult. In fact I really got a lot out of reading it without being biased by the cult doctrines. But gradually I stopped reading it as I started moving away from my Christian beliefs.

I now know that most Christians don't believe the bible to be inerrant; i.e. they aren't Fundamentalists... but they are still able to be Christians. In fact, here's a very good article I just read about this. [www.huffingtonpost.com] Ironically, I grew up Presbyterian, and Presbyterians aren't fundamentalists, but that view didn't make sense to me as a child. I always wondered how people could believe "parts" of the bible but not all of it. And that is part of what led me to join the cult.

If the bible's reliability were the only reason I stopped being a Christian after I left the cult, I'd probably change my mind and become a Christian again, now that I understand that one doesn't have to be a fundamentalist to be a Christian. However, so much of what the bible says about God's character really bothers me, to the point that I really no longer want to follow that kind of God, even if he is real and I'll go to hell for not following him. In addition, my religious beliefs are now based on actual experience and what can be observed to be really occurring in the world. For me, this includes plenty of evidence for a spiritual realm, and of a supernatural being or beings which is/are personally involved in people's lives -- ALL people, not just Christians and not just "good" people. My understanding is that the bible indicates that God only loves and cares for certain people based on conditions. However, this might even be wrong, since I read the bible with cult-colored glasses for so long. But it seems odd that God would be thus involved in taking care of people while they live here on earth, only to damn them to a fiery eternity once they die if they are not Christians. So these are the kinds of issues I deal with when considering the bible's veracity. I try to be objective, but of course I know that my conclusions could easily be biased by my cult experience.



Edited 6 time(s). Last edit at 08/19/2011 09:41PM by Splash90.

Hi Splash90,

I'm certain many self professed Christians would eagerly jump all over you for having beliefs concerning a spiritual realm, but still not professing to know the God of the bible. I personally just wish they'd realize that early Christians, especially Paul would be able to say of themselves that they had not even blasphemed the pagan gods as Paul did say of himself. Nor did they start culture wars, or wars of any kind in order to allow people the chance to be amazed by this God who redeemed them as they were first and foremost....sigh.

But that personal take being said, you certainly seem reasonable enough to me. I think it's cool that you are willing to admit that your views may be colored by your bible based cult experiences. If it means anything to you it does seem rather certain to me that they have been, but that may be said of things that may be held as beliefs by subsets within even more mainline denominational Christianity too, perhaps.

I think one of the problems is the mainline churches. After reading from the Bible the preacher says, "May God bless the reading of his Word." Now, most folks in the pews interpret this to mean that the church and the preacher do, literally mean and believe, that the Bible is the literal Word of God. Of course, it is not. The Bible was written by people, after having been passed down orally for hundreds of years. This leaves a lot of room for error or changes. Also, we do not have any original manuscripts. Everything that is interpreted into the Bible comes from copies of copies of copies. Scribes copied these copies from other copies and given the human tendency toward error and also manipulating things according to what one believes, it is hard to tell what the originals really said.
That said, many educated preachers in mainline denominations do not believe the Bible to be the inerrant Word of God, but may unwittingly give the impression that it is.
The person in the pew, believing the Bible to be God's Word becomes susceptible to "cults" and fundamentalist groups which tell them what the Bible means. False leaders are able to take passages out of context and persons blindly follow them because they are quoting from "the Word of God." The mainline churches can easily act as gateways to cults. This is dangerous.

I think after cult abuse it becomes hard to read anything and take it in properly. You don't trust any teachings or words on a page. What you seek is not knowledge after that if you have been badly burned and traumatised.

A lot of ex-cult members suffer PTSD-like symptoms from their experiences. One prominent feature of PTSD is that events or items which trigger memories of trauma can cause flashbacks, anxiety, and terror. Asking an ex- bible-based cult member to read the bible is like asking somebody who has been stabbed to handle a knife. A knife is not a bad tool in itself - it is extremely useful. But when it has been used to attack you it becomes something very frightening.

If there is a loving God out there I do not think he would judge a cult survivor for finding it too hard to read the bible. In the same way he would not damn a child who is born without access to one. I like to think that it would be more important to him for us to lead good lives and be kind to others. There are other ways of learning how to do this without reading the bible.