The One Where I Accidentally Join a Cult

 

So I’m standing on a cliff (well I’ve been told it’s a cliff), and since I’d been blindfolded by a bunch of people I met the day before, I clearly didn’t know any better. It was April 2^nd or 3^rd of 2008 and I was 2,700 miles away from anyone I knew. I’d left everything and everyone on April 1^st in a desperate attempt to put my life back together by way of losing myself in the service of others. I applied to the Atlanta Dream Center Masters Commission. In less than a week after I had applied, I quit my job and bought a plane ticket to a program I knew hardly anything about except that it involved feeding the homeless and was similar to a program a friend of mine was in (also in Atlanta). 

Now back to the cliff story. Myself and another girl had both joined the program mid-year and because we were new, we had to go through a “boot camp” or initiation into the school.  A few hours into my first night in Atlanta, I was blindfolded and put into a van and driven an hour out in the country. I was then left in said van for what seemed like an eternity with the same song playing over and over.  Finally, I was pulled out and the blindfold was taken off. I was in a graveyard in the dark and I was told to confess all of my “baggage” and write it on a pillow case. Little did I know, I would spend the next 4 days carrying that pillow case filled with 15lbs of cement mix on my back. We had to wear it every moment that we were awake and soon it started rubbing my shoulders raw. That first week in Atlanta was designed to “break me down spiritually” so that I could be rebuilt. But after spending hours in the van blindfolded only to then be pulled out, forced to do pushups in the dark, and run for what felt like miles while being chased by other students, still carrying the backpacks  ,by the time the expereince was over I was certain that I’d lost my mind and joined a cult… So one afternoon I was taken out of the van and told that I was going to go to something fun. I suddenly stopped and the people with me told me that the only way to get back to the van was to fall backwards. They also told me that I would hit the water and need to tuck and roll so I didn’t hit any branches on the way down. Naturally, I was scared out of my mind but because I was being so rapidly indoctrinated with the theology of “The Gospel of the Kingdom” that preached total obedience to leadership, disobeying leadership was direct rebellion and meant disobeying God. Consequently, I complied with even the craziest of requests. After sobbing for what seemed like hours I realized that there was no other option than to just let go. As it turned out, the trust fall was only a few inches and I didn’t have to fall far. I should have seen this as a sign that total, blind adherence to authority would only lead to the destruction of my entire self-worth, and cause me to struggle with creating firm and healthy boundaries . 

ATLDCMC   was run by one man who was the ultimate authority on everything we did. Before you made any decisions about your own life, you had to present it to him and beg him to give you his blessing like a child[ There was little accountability for him and the leadership beneath him was taught to behave in the same oppressive fashion. During my second year I was in charge of mentoring and managing 6 girls; one of which decided to leave the program early and didn’t inform me of her descision until she left. My direct leadership pulled me out of a meeting and told me that because my student had left, she had “forfeited her salvation” and I was directly responsible] . I remember feeling the impossible weight of that and wishing I could just run away because clearly I wasn’t capable of doing what I needed to do in order lead others correctly. The director was also constantly declaring himself to be our protector and spiritual father, thus filling a need in many girls’ hearts for a dad. But the minute they made a mistake he would reject them.

As time rolled on, I continued in the program and began to realize more and more that though I was making life long bonds with people, I was rapidly becoming burnt out. I struggled with the total adherence to leadership and the constant connection between my obedience and my salvation. Things like doing our chores or not cleaning our rooms were grounds for “rebellion and witchcraft”. Dating was strictly forbidden during your first year, and we were forced to go through a ritual called “covenant] ” where we went through a marriage-type ceremony and pledged celibacy for the year (there was even a ring ceremony).  When I say forced, I mean that often with things like covenant our choice was obey or go home. And since we were taught that to leave the program without permission of the director was to forsake our salvation, that didn’t really leave us with much of a choice[.

Another concerning aspect of the program was the embracing of the “patriarchy movement” and the strict observance of traditional gender roles. Every Friday we spilt into same-gendered groups and had “roles class” which was described as “learning to be the man or woman you were created to be”. In reality it was an archaic and misogynistic program that taught us that our worth as women was measured simply in our ability to get pregnant, clean our houses and keep our mouths shut. We studied a book called Created]  to be His Helpmeet.  

One section of the book says ”A common man does not want his wife involved in any project that prevents her from serving him. If you’re blessed to be married to a strong, forceful man, it’s important that you learn to appeal to him without challenging his authority.”

For most of the time we spent in that class, we did things like learn why it’s terrible to use birth control and how if you’d ever used it, you unknowingly aborted your unborn baby, how to cook and clean, why having a baby in a hospital was dangerous and against God’s plan, and why vaccinations were unnecessary. We often performed chores or manual labor for friends or family of the pastor.  Meanwhile, the guys were out shooting guns, making jokes, throwing knives and learning that the whole purpose of having a wife was to be waited on hand and foot. My most memorable class was one where we learned how to plan a wedding. It was only a few months after I’d been left by my fiancé, and just the mention of weddings was enough to send me into a panic attack. I begged and pleaded to be allowed to do something different. I even asked to sit outside or in the other room but I was told that I just needed to stay because it would help me get over it. Halfway through the presentation, I ran out of the room and proceeded to have a full blown panic attack. Shame was a constant companion in the 18 months I spent in Masters Commission, whether it was because we were often reminded how “God didn’t need us” or how big of a favor he was doing us by not smiting us off of the earth, or even how all of the decisions we’d made in the past would haunt us for the rest of our lives via God’s justice] .

Every Friday we had class with a man who liked to teach the entire class by screaming [at us and taught us this bizarre doctrine about how when the Lord came back, he would give us literal swords and we would be charged with killing our unsaved family members . I spent most of the class hiding under a bench praying for it to be over. If you ever disagreed with any of the doctrine you would quickly be labeled a heretic and told you were in rebellion and would soon be out of the Kingdom. During the fall of my first year we were gathered for a Friday school chapel service when my pastor explained to us that because of a pattern in the Jewish holiday calendar, a dream his wife had, and a specific interpretation of the book of Revelation, he was convinced that the Lord would be returning the following October 9^th. This in was late September when he shared this, and it threw the entire student body into a panic. We spent hours repenting for our perceived sins and racking our brains to come up with anything we needed to ask forgiveness for. A few days before October 9^th we went to a conference with other  similar programs from all over the northeast. We were told often that others in the church didn’t have the same gospel as us and to be careful what we listened to from their pastors. So we went with the skeptical attitude we were taught to have. On October 9^th we spent the day fearfully trying to explore national monuments and attend services for the conference. I remember feeling sick to my stomach the entire day. As it turned out, Jesus didn’t come and it was never explained to us why or ever brought up again . During this trip it came to light that I had “broken covenant” with a 2^nd year. We were on our way to the beach when I was pulled aside by our director in a mall food court and asked why I had lied to him. We had never had a conversation about anything going on with this person, but he felt it was a lie of omission (i.e. not telling him). He sat me down and called me “a threat to the boys in Masters Commission” and a “whore” and told me what a great favor he was doing by sending me home from the trip and not from the school. Meanwhile, my male counterpart was not given any punishment and was instead praised for his honesty. I cried the entire 14-hour trip home to Atlanta, and was convinced that both God and my leadership hated me.

As the 18 months I spent in MC wore on, I became more and more exhausted, anxious and malnourished. We lived in a dilapidated apartment building that belonged to the church, and shared a one-bedroom apartment with 6-8 other people. Despite the fact that we all paid six thousand dollars a year in tuition, we never had enough food and the food we did get was often peanut butter and jelly or day-old pastries from a local grocery store that were donated for our homeless outreach. During one particularly rough stretch in my second year, the school had moved the kitchen a few blocks away to another building owned by the program. Since we couldn’t walk by ourselves (and I was often in the office saddled by the administrative responsibilities of three different departments) I just stopped eating regular meals and lived on old bread, whatever food I could squirrel away from donations, and the occasional money from my parents. Between classes, outreach, administrative responsibilities and chores, we often worked 14+ hours for 6 or sometimes 7 days a week. Exhaustion was all we knew and when I finally returned home from the program I slept for a full 24  hours before I felt human again.

The most traumatizing experience for me came while I was still in my first year. We went to Asheville, NC to attend a SOZO inner-healing workshop. It had been explained to us as a program where elders trained in this specific type of prayer counseling would walk us through various life traumas and show us how Jesus was there in the midst of it. What it turned out to be was an odd experience. We were put in tiny, closet-sized rooms with total strangers who did bizarre prayer rituals, asked to apologize for things like sexual assault, and had weird predictions made about our futures. One of my classmates was informed that he was a direct descendant of a biblical character and would be martyred because of it. They even tried to “put me back in my mother’s womb ” which was a terrifying experience involving a blanket and strangers dancing around me and pulling on my legs. I left that trip being convinced that the Lord hated me because only someone who hated me would put me through that kind of trauma.

Not all of my experiences in MC were negative and as a matter a fact I honestly don’t regret my time there. I got to experience so many different cultures and traveled to more states in 18 months than I had ever been to in my entire life. I spent time working many different “fundraising events” to pay off my tuition and mission trips, and despite the working 16-18 hour days on one meal with inadequate water, I actually enjoyed working fancy dinners and the opportunity to work at the US Tennis Open in New York City. I also have formed friendships with many people who went through the program with me that will last a lifetime.

The overwhelming theme of everything we went through during MC was obedience through performance and that your needs, desires and goals were worldly, selfish and unnecessary to attaining perfection.

In the years since I’ve left, the biggest struggles for me have been redeeming my sense of self-worth. I had allowed my self-worth to be entirely tied into my performance and what I could do for God. My relationship with and ability to hear the Lord was tied into a single man’s approval of my every move and I had to realize that I could be happy and healthy without the explicit permission of the organization . I believe that often people who are manipulated by these types of programs don’t speak out because they’re so conditioned to be “forgiving” and not bitter. I believe with 100% of my being that for me to be spiritually and emotionally healthy I have to draw a hard boundry with those people despite the fact that in doing so I am labled “crazy” and “bitter”. The most freedom I have ever found in this experience is in being honest about my experiences, honesty has allowed me to walk forward in freedom and no longer under the shame I carried for years of emotional manipulation.