Zoe posted a young life story and link that struck a nerve with me. I have family affected by this cult.
Her comment–—As for (kids) shutting you down, it’s common. Cultish teachings alienate followers from their families, talents and community. They teach that anyone outside the group (you) doesn’t understand, can’t understand and won’t understand. They see themselves as the highest ideal and others as non-enlightened.
Then it becomes all about getting everyone else in the group. In other words, the cause of Christ. They martyr their own identity and authenticity believing they will be rewarded here and in the after-life. It’s insidious and over-whelming and it becomes the focus
my comment—It got my nephew. It’s sickening. He’s oozing with Jesus all day long and life is passing him by. It hard to be around him any more. Everything is young life, young life this, young life that. My brother, an atheist of forty years let him go to camp with some friends. Bam! I don’t care what kind of belief you have, this type of zealousy is the product of a cult. My neuronal compassion goes out to them.
TheCommonAtheist 
I don’t see much difference between a cult and a street gang. Sorry to hear about your nephew , hope he out grows it. Hugs
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I have a friend who grew up Baptist. He is gay and went through gay-rehab therapy. He wanted to kill himself because of it, but managed to realize it was them that was wrong, not him. Now, he does outreach to gay young men who got through the same thing. His family couldn’t love him because of his gayness. That is very cultic like to me especially when people do preach unconditional love.
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It’s happening less, but still way too much. The nature of Christian faith, no matter the intent, is globally damaging to all of us
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The harmful side of christianity
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It’s an entire sphere of harm. Individually it may feel good like a placebo, but globally we’ve gone nowhere nice because of it.
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Religion is poison…pure and simple
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Fortunately more and more people are learning that the so-called “gay conversion” therapy is nothing more than abuse and mental (and often physical) torture that causes the victims an enormous amount of psychological harm that can last their entire lives. Some states, at least those that aren’t controlled entirely by the GOP, are calling it what it is, psychological torture, and banning it, as are some cities in states where the far right controls the state government.
And as for their “unconditional love”, well, that applies only to those to share their beliefs. Anyone who doesn’t quickly learns that their “love” consists of hatred, bigotry, and abuse directed against anyone who doesn’t think like they do.
I have a friend who believes that teaching religion to anyone under the age of 18 should be a felony, and there are a lot of times I think he’s right, especially when I see abuse like what happened to your friend and what’s going on in the Catholic church.
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Neptune:
Unconditional love is for a favoured few (namely the undiscerning). For myself, my love has to be earned—reflect my values, I love you; that’s the whole thing. Anyone who ‘loves’ indiscriminately is demonstrating self-loathing, a complete lack of values.
My advice to the young is to extend your goodwill to all (until/unless they show themselves to be not worthy of it) but let your love be earned—guard it as a precious thing.
Goodwill gives them leeway with which to show that they are worthy, to demonstrate their love-worthy qualities. But love a total stranger? Ain’t gonna happen …
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Obviously it isn’t only young people falling for cults!
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Yes. But, the Christian Right is all about having the right to raise their own children to this indoctrination, but they think nothing of dragging others kids into their world.
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Agreed, but people in the teens to early adult age seem to be pretty vulnerable to the whole thing, so they’re popular targets. Many people in the older crowd have seen it before so would (hopefully) know better. Of course you do get many disaffected older people joining cults too.
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In high school Young Life was after me big time because I was an openly professed non-Christian (somewhere between Agnostic & Humanist then) and it was like I was wearing a target on my forehead and great-looking ass. 😉 😬 Cult is absolutely the correct term and probably too tame a term.
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Some multi level marketing is the same, but when you can’t recruit your friends you give it up. Religion has the same vibe with no viable product, but euphoria and herdsmack before acquiring knowledge is a cultish business
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With clear symptoms of codependency, addicition, and/or problematic psychological religiosity.
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It’s easy for the ‘Godly’ to target and acquire the young. Most youngsters have never been taught to think.
By which I mean to think rationally, for themselves. Blind acceptance is easy, it comes with the turf, but thinking per se does not. Religious is a given—rational is a reward.
Rational bloggers rave on, endlessly spouting good stuff; some of of the more clever try to destroy the foundations of irrational faith by using reason (doomed from the start, but it’s a forlorn hope that makes the player feel all warm and fuzzy).
The answer has to lie in teaching the youngsters the noble arts of thinking-for-themselves; such that Reason can reach and actually get through to them.
Until this happens we rational folks are a striving lost cause … as used to be said in the navy “Pissing in the wind”.
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Hey! Go piss over there in YOUR breeze Mister! I’ve got mine! 😉
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Boom boom!
(Glug …)
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Btw and on a different sidenote…
Mr. Mason FINALLY approved my last comment from the other day. I haven’t read it all, but it seems he had no time to reply well and it is a very hasty comment; not really covering at all what I wrote. Then he quoted me a bible passage it looks like. LOL 😉
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A guy at my uni befriended me. After a while, he tried to get me into this NetworkTwentyOne MLM business. He was a real asshole to me after I told him I wasn’t interested, and I haven’t seen him since. When I went to the meeting it felt pretty cultish, and that’s without going into the fact that most people don’t make any money there, much like a legalised pyramid scheme really.
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I’ve seen a few of them in action through my studies. If your Friends don’t join with you, you need new friends. And it works well at repelling family members.
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Oh, and young life is bad enough, but most of the MLM’s come out of Mormon Utah. The fraud capital of the USA
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LOL. Did you hear recently one of the Mormon leaders asked people to stop calling them Mormons? Sure buddy, I can think of a few other names.
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Lol. I do think it’s funny that all the other Christian cults, including SDA and JW call the Mormons a cult. Takes one to know one I suppose.
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Mormons, SDA and JW’s are the favourite punching bags for other Christians. They’ll happily acknowledge their cult status while turning a blind eye to their own beliefs and actions.
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They were doing the don’t say mormon thing when I was a kid in the 50’s. They wanted the full name to refer to it, & I thought one word was a hell of a lot easier to say that a whole mouthful, so I said the one word.
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Now that they made an issue of it, I say Mormon on purpose.
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Yup, defiant me always did it. Now of course, I say moron.
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Haha that’s exactly what I was gonna say!
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Thanks, Jim
Well the moron shoe fits…..!!!
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Covert:
Mormon. One ‘m’ too many~?
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Probably the most difficult part about all this is the “recruiters” are totally unable to see what they’re doing. It’s all about reaching the world for Jesus! Truly, whether they want to face the fact or not … their brains have been reprogrammed.
Sorry about your nephew.
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He went to the fair with a buddy to make burgers. It’s been young life ever since. Difficult to watch.
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The more scared believers get that they are wrong, the more dastsrdly ways they think up
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(Sorry.)
…they think up to hold onto what they think they still have. This is one of many “last gasp” efforts to try to survive the unsurvivable. People are getting hurt, intentionally, but they see this as a war, one they know they cannot win without being underhanded. Compare it to Trump, and how he is desperately fighting for the existence of republicanisum/conservatism. He has gone crazy trying to save “his” way of life. Young Life has obviously gone as crazy as Trump has. More people are going to get hurt, and I feel for them. But this is not a war of our making, so we cannot take responsibility for the casualties.
But we can be there to try to nurse them back to health, if they allow us to. Not everyone will…
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Brain sucking parasite comes to mind.
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Another great one Jim!
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“Young Life” = “Your Life now Belongs To Us” life. Eff this crap. This is what makes religion so horrible. This is as bad as getting young people hooked on heroin. It’s disgusting and wastes lives.
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Depressing. You never know how your impressionably aged neurons will react to the aura of revival and religious trance. Sickening
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My neurons were screwed up (family issues) the last year I went to Bible camp. I was a vulnerable teen. Years later, and several years in lay youth ministry with Biker Dude I started to see how insidious it all was. Would take some time to get out. We did.
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Thanks for the post Zoe. It seems so innocent to some parents and before you know it, half your life is gone for nothing.
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What the hell is “young life”? Never heard the term.
You know what…it’s all going to blow up someday. There are so many cults and just crazy people anymore. You’ve got these extreme and not so extreme religious nuts, idiot trump supporters, conspiracy theory nut cases, alternative medicine, alternative foods, anti vaxers, climate change deniers, road rage, drive by shootings, meth addicts and other hard drugs, gambling addictions, pedophila addictions, people who believe they’ve been abducted by aliens, people who believe in ghosts…and the list is virtually endless.
And we are seeing more craziness as time goes by. This cannot bode well for the future of civilization or the planet…
Yes, these people have been indoctrinated and brainwashed and drugged up, but they are also insane. It is straight up mental illness.
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Take any other subject and treat it the way religion tests religion and you’d at least get an MHP visit. It is nuts.
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This is what they do. Cults are not new, but they are dangerous. It is such a waste.
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I haven’t heard much of this ‘Young Life’ group until now. Their website portrays themselves as an organisation to help disaffected youth, but when you read between the lines and know a bit about cults, it isn’t so rosey. Plus they don’t mention much about religion on their front page; dishonesty by omission is a somewhat red flag for me.
The thing about all this is, I could’ve easily been sucked in by something like this as a young Christian youth. Everything seems so awesome when you’re wearing rose tinted glasses and riding a roller coaster of emotions, that you don’t stop to consider: “where am I actually going, and why am I being led there?”.
Sorry to hear about what happened to your nephew. I hope he can find some more freedom in his life, whether he adheres to religious beliefs or not.
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Sins of omission. It’s ok, as long as thine intent be pure.
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I’m sorry to hear about your nephew and wish there was an answer to this, but I don’t think there really is one.
When it comes down to it, all religions would probably fit the definition of “cult”. I know the Catholic church would – blind obedience to an “infallible” leader, the pope, making you believe that they are the only one with all the right answers, a hierarchy that is more concerned about money and covering up their own crimes than in the welfare of the members, bizarre sexual demands, i.e. celibacy, virtual worship of virginity, condemnation of all sex acts except specifically for procreation. It pretty much fits all of the criteria for a cult.
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Every similarity. I may be off +/- .01% but I’m positive the pope knows the entire scam is bullshit, and the power, greed, status, and fame is too alluring to those mindsets
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