Why Did Your FAMILY Member Join a CULT? (r/AskReddit)

our slashes credit redditors who have lost a friend or family member to a cult how did it happen my older brother joined the cult he had a huge drinking problem most of his life and drug problems in high school he joined the Coast Guard after high school that he was getting into trouble at work coming in hungover all the time not really caring about his job one of his superiors despite the trouble at work really cared about him and wanted to help him he recommended that my bro start going to church so he didn't it really turned things around for the better my family and I were all so proud of him he was really happy for the first time in a long time and then it just progressed from there what first seemed helpful started to get out of control the cult that he's in he found online obviously they don't outright say they're a cult my bro saw it as an online community that supported his religion made him feel like he had others to talk to at first we just thought he was taking this whole religion thing too seriously but then he went a war for one of their meetups slash functions he ended up getting discharged from the military and then he began calling my parents less and less he moved to the city where the cult is based out of and got some job using connections from the church him and I were still close and we called slash emerald a few times a week starting before his discharge from the CG in just about every conversation he would bring up doomsday punishment and he'll eventually he began telling me that God told him that he can't change me and that unless I decide to accept Jesus as my savior he could no longer contact me we haven't talked in years I was the last one he cut off he still talks to our biological dad once every few months my brother told my dad that God spoke to him through prayer and told him he still got a chance to save my dad I honestly think he's just too afraid to completely let go of his old life and entire family and that's why he still keeps contact with my dad he gets updates on me through him but I come to terms with the possible of never seeing my brother again after his discharge from the military he met a girl from the cult and they have three lovely children seriously they are adorable my dad sent me pics while I don't agree with his beliefs and being cut out of his life hurt a lot I'm happy that he's content and he found some way he feels he belongs he seems like a great father more of a friend of a friend really I knew her in college this happened just a couple years ago she started off totally normal as far as I knew she was a freshman on the soccer team outgoing person we had this preacher guy for some fringe Christianity religion who dressed in brown robes and frequently came onto campus and yelled stuff about how we are all going to hell you know typical hateful campus preacher stuff he usually got taunted by the students he was in his late twenties sometimes he brought women in their early to mid-twenties with him they dressed kinda like a mesh we mean or Mennonites not sure what exactly but they only ever sat silently to the side while he ranted and strutted around in front of the library well my friend paid too much attention to him and somehow his bizarre hateful beliefs resonated with her she started hanging out with him and his curled group over the course of a semester she dropped out of the soccer team started writing religious poetry and eventually dropped out of school altogether when her parents found out they tried to intervene they blocked the preacher from her phone but when she found out she threw the phone away she cut contact with her family and spent a few months following the preacher around homeless hitchhiking around the country and living off the generosity of strangers the last time I saw her was when I went out for dinner with her and our mutual friend it was bizarre to say the least friend and I discussed grad school and life after college while curled girl had nothing to contribute to the conversation except her plans to wander around spreading the word of God and witnessing miracles when asked how she planned to survive he said God would provide yeah I guess he provided the food she ate when me and the mutual friend paid for her meal because she conveniently waited until we'd been seated at the table to tell us she had no money and couldn't afford to eat there I have no idea where she is now but I can only hope God provided her with some common sense or at least the decency to eat wild berries or something instead of mooching off people and acting high and mighty about it I dated a girl many years ago we dated for quite a while and even discussed marriage she wasn't an atheist that she was very indifferent about religion and God she started reading books about being spiritual she explained it as believing in a higher power but not following a religion that didn't bother me she was into cosplay and Renaissance Fairs she had a few friends who were into a - they seemed cool she started hanging out with two of the girls a lot they were into this spiritualism and one was into some kind of paganism I didn't really care for that one but my girl was unbelievably intelligent and strong-willed I wasn't too worried well I should have been she eventually sat me down and told me she'd been going to this pagan friend's religious rituals she said it was a sect of Wicca she said she'd seen amazing things at these ritual services and she even cast a few minor spells of her own that really paid off she told me one was for her to pass one of her graduate course requirements basically a big researched speech and she passed well no [ __ ] she was a straight-a student from first grade through college she was very smart it had nothing to do with her spell she claimed she passed because of these spells and prayers to earth deities so I'm trying to take all of this in and understand understand what the [ __ ] who the hell are you I was just [ __ ] lost in this sea of insanity she finally tells me that I need to join this group too I tell her I don't even understand it and I'm very suspicious she tells me daily life won't change but we all need to share our with members who have fallen on hard times she made it sound like a very good Samaritan type of religion she also mentioned a 25% tithing that would unlock more beneficial spells she kept saying the more we gave the more people we'd help and the better spells we'd get then we could use those spells to make more money so the 25% would come back to us plus a lot more in other ways I needed some time on this I didn't know if she was serious or [ __ ] with me or what over the next couple days I ask questions and get salesman answers I try to research it but the internet wasn't nearly as informative as it is now this was 20 plus years ago she asks me to come with her to a ritual okay I love her I'll give this one shot and see what's up I was mostly going so I could try to formulate a plan on how to talk some [ __ ] sense into her we get there at dusk it's in the [ __ ] Forest Preserve so first off we are going to some religious ritual that's predicated on trespassing on county land and we can be arrested great we go and there's a circle of logs there are like 40 people there half are pretty normal half look homeless the ritual is just this guy named Ron all talking about how the earth has power and we can channel it to energize our souls lots of power of the mind through worshipping the earth but he made it a point to constantly point out that he was the main content to this power everyone needed to be connected to him to bolster their souls it was weird [ __ ] afterward everyone sat around drinking tea with a bunch of leaves he picked up off the ground that was weird - I didn't drink the tea I listened to him as he went around chatting with people one of the homeless looking guys was talking about how he lost his apartment and was trying to save up for his spells it had a name but I don't remember what it was something like profligate spells I'm telling my girlfriend to listen to the conversation and she's like yeah that's Tom he sum up the management at a bank his wife left him because she was a tortured soul and refused our health our help hmm I think she's been doing this longer than she let on Ronald comes over and starts asking what I thought of everything and I have non-committal answers like it's given me a lot to think about he seemed nice enough that he was also obviously nuts she and I end up talking later and she spills the beans she's been into this for five months she has one more month to decide if she wants to become a member she tells me I have to join two or we have to break up I'm praying this is some goofy ass face and she'll grow out of it so maybe I joined pretend to believe this [ __ ] for a year and then I get her out maybe nope she says the initiation ritual is to connect with Ronald yeah you guessed it [ __ ] the leader guy and it's not just women if I were to join I'd have to get [ __ ] by Ronald - then to strengthen all our powers there will be a post initiation orgy with everyone else in the group then she tells me that she's been receiving power from the one girl who brought her into this [ __ ] what does that mean apparently when my girlfriend goes down on this fat pagan pig she's absorbing fergus power and since piggy is connected to Ronald Pig he doesn't lose power she just channels it yeah channels it into my girlfriend's tongue through her [ __ ] I was done crazy religion cheating on me with some fat lesbian wanting me to get drilled in the ass by some lunatic cult leader no thank you I told her I couldn't handle this [ __ ] and she went nuts telling me I was selfish and I had a tortured soul that would never be quelled she went off about how I was judging her I just say quietly and listened yeah I was pissed but you can't argue with crazy eventually she stopped she cried she asked me to leave that was it we had many mutual friends she got rid of almost all of friends over the next year the ones who weren't in the cult she seemed to disappear for about a decade and no one knew anything about her then I heard from a mutual friend that my ex contacted her here's a story after I was gone this is all secondhand my ex dumped me and joined up with the cult she dropped out of grad school she eventually got a job as a manager at a gas station she had like ten people living in her two-bedroom apartment the leader guy was coming around to connect with whatever hole was available Hearst someone else's whatever she eventually lost her apartment because she couldn't support all these people who had already been tapped out financially by Ronald who I noted was driving a 7 Series BMW he mentioned that acquiring it was due to his profligate spells [ __ ] it was from collecting 25% tights from 40 to 50 dump ships anyway she moved in with someone else and a whole bunch of other cultists they eventually bought some kind of farm and all lived like it was the [ __ ] Little House on the Prairie Ronald [ __ ] indiscriminately and everyone let him finally after almost ten years she realized she wasn't happy and wanted to go back to school Ronald punished her for even thinking about going back to school he locked her up and basically raped her for a month when he let her go he said she wanted to stay in the group and she was an idiot for wanting to go back to school but as soon as she was able she ran away she went to her mother who she had shunned when she joined her mother took care of her and got her back on her feet she went back to school now she's a sociologist who works with people who've escaped cults she's even written a couple books about it she seems to have a normal life now she's married and has like six kids based on her Facebook page a couple looked pretty old so I don't know if they are on old kids anyway I haven't spoken to her and I haven't even read her books quite honestly that part of my past is a closed chapter I'm happy she's safe and doing well but I don't need to go opening that up again and that's my story edit I just want to clarify that while my ex said it was a sect of Wicca I don't believe it was I think it was just some goofy horny dude who swindled a bunch of religiously confused bisexuals into giving him money and allowing him to bang them I think she just told me it was associated with Wicca becuase at the time Wicca was gaining acceptance as a non-threatening earth-loving religion I think she said that so I didn't think she was getting into anything weird she somewhat kind of maybe slowly led into weird I have a bunch of friends and a Korean Christian cult I hung out with their group for about a year before I stopped going there are actually a bunch of cults out of Korea the one I was with is called Shen Chiayi Church of Jesus Christ the Temple of the tabernacle of the testimony it was a slow process that happens over the course of a year the spend that year slowly teaching a new way of looking at the Bible I found it all quite convincing but I just didn't care the goal of each student is that they desire to be one of the 144,000 found in Revelations who are sealed with a word of God my personal philosophy is that if there is a limited number of spaces for someone to be saved I'll let someone else take the seat and I'll look for another path there are little benchmarks to being able to qualify as being sealed and that involves a 100 question test they call it a test but they give you the answers and it is a students responsibility to repeat the answer word-for-word personally that is not a good test because I believe that a test that measures concepts is more valuable that a test of rote memorization when you become a member you cannot question the teachings only accept them because they were given to man healy by Jesus to question MHL is to question Jesus so shut up and accept everything you are told pretty basic indoctrination my friends bought into it they've been in for a few years now so they are pretty much set they teach classes on how to different scenarios how to introduce / invite people to scj and how to respond to being told that scj is a cult I assume there is a class on how to talk to someone like me who within the church but left it takes a few hours for them to respond to my texts this is because before they say anything they have to clear it with one of the higher-ups at the church so many questions while I was in were answered with we should ask teacher about that now that I'm out you be sure as hell that my whole conversation is screened and monitored the funny thing about the lessons is that everyone was acting like their mind was being blown with every lesson about 1/2 to 2/3 of the class on maintenance members of the church acting like they are new students they are terrible actors many of your interactions in scj will be with three people the one who invited you the teacher of your small group and a maintainer your maintainer will typically have similar interests to you they aren't picked at random if you find yourself in a Bible study where everything is in Korean and they don't attach themselves to another Church at his occult there are quite a few Korean cults so it doesn't necessarily mean they are Shin Cheon G it is important to note that nobody is held there against their will are left with no issues they all genuinely want to be there if you are and you can just stop going they are not gonna chase you down at least that is my experience being in for only a year I'm going to talk directly about the hare Krishna belief system in this post so if you follow it or disagree with me then that's fine I'm sure there are plenty of good people in the group but the way it affected my friend was horrible in my opinion I'm going to call my friend R I met him when I was 18 and had just started going to a university in a state other than my own I thought he was sort of strange at first but I realized very quickly that he was just trying to be friendly and so we formed a fast friendship we had similar taste in music and are both musicians so we would occasionally play listen to music together we'd often go on walks and help each other out through the rough times and we'd have a blast together when things were going well there was this girl he had fallen hard for and he dedicated a lot of his time trying to win her over and to his credit he had basically succeeded but she had a boyfriend back in her hometown so when it was time for her to go back for the summer they parted ways and it broke his heart I believe this was the catalyst for him joining a cult or at least what I would consider a cult the Hare Krishnas I returned to my home city to resume university there instead of the new state and my friend are and I would stay in contact pretty regularly one day he brought up Krishna and being a generally open-minded person talking with a close friend I was Lear's I listened to him talk about it and congratulated him on finding something he was so interested about outside of music and I guessed his heart was still broken so I figured anything was better than what owing in pain as the days went on our talks grew more and more focused on Krishna and the hare Krishna group and less diverse he insisted on sending me a book about the hare Krishna group and I agreed he also sent me some beads they used to pray again I was happy my friend had found something he was enjoying so much but it was beginning to dawn on me that this might not be just a hobby more weeks went by and now he directed every topic to Hare Krishna he was laser focused on it and he wanted me to read the hare Krishna book with him over the phone and he wanted me to give my thoughts on it whenever I brought up the fact that it reminded me of Buddhism or anything else he would claim that Krishna was in fact the true God and that Buddha and Jesus were creations of his something like that maybe creations isn't the right word I wasn't upset I'm agnostic atheist myself so I just sort of shrugged it off and said okay man it was getting a little tiresome at this point it was around this time that he started suggesting I joined the hare Krishna group I explained to him I only had a few years left in university and I wanted to finish what I started his response was well you like music I know you would be playing so much music as a Hare Krishna yay thanks man but I really just want to finish my degree this went on for some time until he realized I wasn't budging and then I just stopped hearing from him for about a year I couldn't even get a hold of him sometime after that I think it was his mother I got a text from and she explained that our have given her my number and that he was detained while trying to book passage to India he was sleep deprived in the airport and not wearing any pants he had taken it quite literally when he was told people really didn't need more than a couple of hours of sleep per day or more than a few grains of rice she asked me to call him and she had explained to me that he had been cutting off contact with his friends and family and that all he ever wanted to talk about was you guessed it Krishna so I called my friend up and tried asking him what happened but he wouldn't explain anything instead he asked me to get the book he had sent me and he told me to read passages of it to him so I read a few and then attempted to ask him more about what was happening didn't work that was years ago I haven't heard from him since Missy Anne are not exactly a cult but Maya became a born-again Christian and joined this crazy fundamentalist church within a few months months she had married a man she met there and pulled her kids out of public school and enrolled them at the church's tiny private school the church doesn't allow women to cut their hair so she quit her job as a hairstylist she started wearing ankle length skirts and made my cousin do the same my cousin wasn't allowed to wear normal clothes when we went on our annual Beach vacation my cousin couldn't wear a bathing suit she had to wear knee-length board shorts and a t-shirt joining that church completely changed my aunt's personality she used to be a really cool person she would take me and my cousin's to do all kinds of fun stuff when we were kids I remember her being my phone and she was also a talented painter and extremely creative she doesn't paint at all now she became completely submissive to her new husband who is super manipulative and a compulsive liar I don't think she's being physically abused but she's not allowed to leave the house alone she can only go places with her adult son or her husband my mom tried to convince her to leave and now she is banned from talking to my mom on the phone unless her husband supervises the conversation he works from home so he is literally always around micromanaging her life joining that church also changed my cousin's life she was probably about 12 or 13 when this all happened she wasn't allowed to cut her hair and she was only allowed to wear full-length skirts and long sleeves they wouldn't let her see her old friends she was only allowed to associate with people from church we lived in different states but we were extremely close and she used to come visit my family several times a year those trips stopped I could only see her when we drove out to where they lived and even then she wasn't allowed to be unsupervised with my mom who was deemed a bad influence because she called my aunt in to her husband out on their [ __ ] it was really hard on my cousin she ended up legally emancipating herself at 16 and moving in with our grandparents it was an ordeal the church school she had been going to was unaccredited and essentially useless so she had to repeat a lot of high school online the happy news is that my cousin finished high school went to college and now she's happily married to a great guy she's totally normal and super cool my aunt is still in the church but honestly now that my cousin is free from all that [ __ ] I could give a [ __ ] I kind of hate her for what she put her daughter through it definitely really hurts my mom though she was super close to my aunt their entire lives until she joined this church now there have basically no relationship there phone calls and visits are supervised by her husband all she ever wants to talk to my mom about his converting her and saving us from going to hell even though my mom is a Christian and goes to a normal church every Sunday it's really sad I feel bad for my mom especially since their other sister passed away suddenly a couple years ago my mom has been pretty lonely she tells me sometimes she feels like she's lost both her sisters I had this friend growing up and we were the best of friends our summers were spent sleeping in my parent's camper swimming jumping on her trampoline we would ride our bikes around town and did everything together growing up my parents always sent me to church Sunday school and Bible Camp she never went to church and would kind of make fun of me for not being allowed to have Saturday sleepovers she had a lot of doubt but I didn't really care she was my friend and if she didn't believe in God then whatever who cares let's watch blossom then her mom got sick they kept her illness very private but it became obvious she lost a ton of weight stopped working and slept a lot around this time my friend's family joined a church it was called New Life Church my best friend got super into this church and she would invite me to their youth group and it seemed okay we would eat chicken burgers and and watch Sister Act - one day she asked me if I wanted to have a Saturday sleepover and attend Sunday service with her family my parents were okay with it because they assumed it was like normal Church it was no normal Church it was a new wave Christian Church and their minister was a faith healer I mean people speaking in tongues and he would perform healing ceremonies people would come up to him and he would use his palm to smack them on their foreheads and they would shake on the ground he told people that he could use God's power to heal cancer it was scary and the people attending fully believed that this man could save them on the way home from the service my best friend's mom asked me what I thought I was honest and said it was weird nothing like my church she asked if I would go back and I said it wasn't the right fit for me after that my best friend was not allowed to hang out with me if her mom saw her talking to me around town she would yell at her my best friend told me that it was because her mom said I didn't have a pure Christian heart her parents ended up putting her in the church's private school for a few years and by the time she came back we were in high school and she was far gone her mom died when we were about 19 her dad left the church but she did not she met her husband and they have two adorable children but she is in so deep I miss my best friend and I'm sad that church took advantage of them and gave her mom false hope I had two cousins who went to Jonestown I was born two years after their deaths so everything I know is a kind of family law they were my dad's best friends and he rarely talked about them but my mom was pretty open about it the following is me paraphrasing what my mom has told me about them getting involved in the People's Temple they joined in San Francisco it began as a utopian community which followed the teachings of Christ they gave literally everything they had away blankets food whatever the group had they would give away at the time communes were common so what they were doing moving and with a bunch of like-minded people didn't seem that odd to their family it seemed like an idealistic hippie community then they started asking for money always under the guise of feeding the poor or something like that it didn't begin with asking for money because Jim was the second coming their parents sent all the money they had but my cousin's just kept asking for more eventually this was how he isolated his members from their family if the family kept giving money then the members could keep in touch if the money dried up the family was blamed the members would cut off from contacting them my parents were living in Seal Beach at the time my mom says the first time they noticed the cousins seemed a bit strange was when their cousins were on a mission trip with Jones I believe he was preaching at the Crystal Cathedral and he brought a bus of his followers down it rained like one of these rare downpours in SoCal the bus didn't have a windshield so everyone was just getting soaked so Jones walked up to the front of the bus held out his hands and spoke storm stopped and the rain stopped so that was the story my cousins told my parents that was the first sign my cousin's had been brainwashed I asked my mom what her response was and she said we just laughed it was so ridiculous we had no idea what was coming no one had heard of a count by the time they left for Jonestown my dad says he knew he'd never see them again but at the same time he was shocked when it happened we have letters from their time in the church all the way up to in Jonestown so you can read their progression into brainwashing in the end Nancy freely took the kool-aid Ronnie was injected with cyanide their deaths have been ever-present in my family I'm on mobile so please forgive any errors relevant family information my parents are divorced and I live with my mom my father side of the family is part of the message cult my grandmother arns and most of my cousins believe that a man named William Branham was a prophet that spoke to God and he could perform miracles Branham was part of the post-wwii healing revivals apparently he also had some role in the Jonestown Massacre Branham died in the sixties but his followers do some crazy [ __ ] I've gone to my grandma's Church in the services usually than listening to a tape recording of one of branham's sermons it's weird women are not permitted to wear pants cut their hair wear mock hoop or practice birth control women are encouraged to stay at home and care for children it's seen as shameful if a woman has to work outside of the home other rules include no alcohol men cannot wear shorts only pants no secular or worldly music no playing card games people are encouraged to date within their own race many strict families won't own a television or computer reading books is not encouraged most children are home sholde and not encouraged to attend college or learn on their own young men often learn a skilled trade usually taught by a father banker or family friend my father is not a believer and is only tolerated because he helps provide for his mother my grandmother even though they are only a phone call away the church encourages them not to engage with non-believers it hurts it's hard to visit them sometimes by the short-haired lesbian who wears mostly cargo pants while nobody ever says it I feel judged and excluded I live several states away and nobody calls to tell me about family news my uncle thinks I'm possessed by a demon when my grandmother opens photo albums there's a lot of faces I can't recognize family I never get to know I know one day I'll be asked not to come to Christmas dinner all weddings I know but it still hurts thank you so much for watching the whole video please leave a like and subscribe

Channel: Slime King

Views: 14,858

Rating: 4.8414097 out of 5

Keywords: high school, reddit stories, askreddit funny, askreddit scary, reddit top posts, askreddit comedy, comment awards, askreddit, top posts, dankify reddit, brainydude reddit, tz reddit, r/, askreddit creepy stories, toadfilms, reddit and chill, middle school, middle school cringe, teacher, pupil, parrents, tantrum, askreddit friends, askreddit secrets, askreddit parents, family secrets, askreddit kids

Id: rw1OhSeqvXs

Length: 32min 8sec (1928 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 29 2019