Previous | Next 

Cults

James Toews

“Cult!” The word sends a chill down the spine of most people. It brings with it a collage of images – bloated corpses rotting in the jungles of Guyana, a fiery compound in Texas, the eerie death ritual of a group of California computer geeks. Even when the images are not of death, they still are haunting.

Skjold Photos

There is nothing pleasant about destroyed relationships and the distant vacant eyes of someone you love.

In late 1997, the cult spectre raised its head in southwestern British Columbia. A 27-year-old woman was caught up in a cult-like organization called the “Churches of Christ”, sometimes known as the Boston movement. In a desperate attempt to reach their daughter, the family hired an American cult deprogrammer to try to re-establish contact. The story, as it was reported, was a familiar one – a bright, young, university student from a loving family is suddenly caught up in a secretive organization and separated from those who love her.

Experts emerged from everywhere, and some of their solutions were nearly as disturbing as the cult itself. One expert said of cults: “They seek out people with deep inner needs and offer them something that regular society does not give them. They offer a close and loving community. They create a new circle of relationships that often separates them from their old friends and family. Organizations like this must be banned from the university!”

For Christians, the cult issue raises conflicting responses. On the one hand, Christians are not immune to seeing those they love drawn into cults. There is no pain like that of a relationship breaking up and slipping through your fingers like dry sand. On the other hand, since its inception 2000 years ago, Christianity has repeatedly been charged with being a cult.

So what’s the difference? Probably the lines are not as precise as we would like them to be. Christians make no apology for seeking out those with a deep inner need that regular society cannot meet. Christians are to be part of a community – specifically, a living local organization called “the church”. And Christianity clearly separates its own from “the world”: “Therefore come out from them and be separate, says the Lord” (2 Corinthians 6:17). If these characteristics define “cult”, then Christianity is guilty as charged.

However, there are also things that separate true Christianity from the cults.

First, Christianity does make a claim to having “the truth”, but that truth is not confined to any contemporary leader or organization. The “truth” that Christianity offers is Jesus’ own claim: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me” (John 14:6). Any organization or leader that sets itself up as the way to “the truth” can never be truly Christian. That claim belongs to Jesus alone.

There is another profound difference between cults and Christianity. Christianity is not secretive in its beliefs and goals and in the structures and accountability of its organizations. There have been times in history when Christianity has been driven underground, but secrecy is always uncomfortable for the Christian. When Jesus was accused of leading a secretive cult, He replied, “I have spoken openly to the world. I always taught in synagogues or at the temple, where all the Jews come together. I said nothing in secret” (John 18:20).

The Bible makes it very clear that destructive and dangerous cults will always be a part of human society. Cults are a reflection of the fact that we all have a deep inner need that human society, by itself, cannot adequately fulfill. Because of this, Christianity’s answer to the question of cults has remained the same since the beginning. It is Jesus’ invitation: “Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28).

James Toews is senior pastor of Neighbourhood Church in Nanaimo, B.C. this article was originally published in the Nanaimo Daily News in 1998.

Previous | Next 

Last modified May 4, 2000.

© 2000 Mennonite Brethren Herald.
Published by the Canadian Conference of MB Churches.
Masthead and usage information.