I still remember one of the last big Bible Studies I went to.

It was in the dying days of my Youth Grouping – It was already apparent that I didn’t fit in spectacularly well – in a church basement filled predominantly with clean cut teenagers, there I was, 105 odd kg of long haired, wild bearded 20 year old who gave every impression of being an atheist and wanting to convert all of the dry-gentialled children to same.

My group, led my a stupifyingly attractive South African woman by the name of Sam, and her husband (who’s name I wasn't familiar enough with South African names to ever actual hear properly), discussed mainly the Mormons and the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Now, I was pretty well prepared for this – I had had the same two JW’s on my doorstep for the half dozen preceding Saturdays, and I visited the central office of the Church Of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints the day before the study to get a comprehensive overview of their beliefs from their point of view before I heard it funneled through Presbyterianism. (I took fucking with the Church pretty seriously back in those days – I miss that level of commitment…)

So anyhoo, Sam took us through the study, treated me with surprising patience given the sheer volume of my “Hol’ on there, cowboy, you've got that point wrong”, and, at the end of the study, in a particularly Presbyterian flourish, held up the book that she had got all of her information out of, and pointed out in a “think about this, then” voice, that, along with the JWs and the Mormons, the book named the Catholic Church as a cult.

Ruining the aesthetic of the moment, I said that it wasn’t a surprise, because the things mentioned in the book, and related back through the study, were pretty much just standard Christian operating procedure. No one challenged me on this, because, hell, by that point they knew it wasn’t a terribly productive way for any of us to spend our nights, so they just smiled, nodded, and all went home.

The things that made the Mormons and the JWs cults? Well, first of all, their outlandish beliefs – You see, believing that a man could walk on water, turn said water into wine, and raise himself and others from the dead, was completely logical, and made perfect sense. But to believe that he then went and founded a church in the Americas is just silly. The idea that we’re all going to spend eternity in a dimension of suffering if we don’t believe in said wine lush is perfectly lucid, the idea that we aren’t (as advocated by the JWs) is nonsensical.

Apparently cults were dangerous because of their worrying conversion tactics. They did things like befriend the friendless, offering them acceptance, a place to belong. They went out and found people in positions of emotional weakness, and offered them rhetoric filled false hope of a better life, so that these people would devote themselves fanatically to the cause. They would try to compel new converts to cut all ties to their former lives, they would make them insular to the church.

Now, the more alert of you will have noticed a couple of problems with a pack of fundamentalist Christians saying these are bad things.

I lost count of the time I was told by a fair number of people in my Church that I really shouldn't hang out with all of "those people" -(ie, my non-Christian friends ) - It does say in the Bible somewhere that you shouldn't associate with people who will lead you down the wide road to hell (I think it's a good signpost of my spiritual evolution that I don't remember exactly where in the Bible it says this...). But, hell, that was my Church - they also told me to get a haircut, but I couldn't find any Biblical evidence to back that one up (although I'm fairly certain a couple of them did try...)

So anyway - what separates a Church from a cult? You know, the difference used to be very clear to me. I guess I used to base it on how much free will is being employed by the congregation.

But...

The kids in my Youth Group were free to leave, but it was made clear to them (in a friendly, non-threatening way) that the road to hell started outside the doors to the Church. The Church elders weren't plotting against them, but I did find out about a scheme run by the Elders, Youth Group leaders and senior (read, most devout) members of the Youth Group called the Intensive Care Unit, where, basically, the more spiritually secure Youth Groupies would monitor the personal lives of the others, and report back to the leaders and elders with anything that could compromise their walk of faith, so a strategy could be decided on. Yeah, say I.C.U. out loud to a mirror, and feel the comfort I felt when I found out that that system may or may not have still have been in place when I was hanging around with them...

So maybe it's about beliefs - There certainly are a pack of weirdos out there. I mean, if you believe that a spaceship hidden in the tail of a comet is coming to take you back to a paradise without genitalia, then surely you're a little more unhinged than your average good Christian civilian.

But wait - how does it make any more sense to believe in a guy that could raise people form the dead, walk on water, heal lepers - the tales of whom are chronicled in a book which openly contradict parts of itself? How much sense does it make to steadfastly cling to the story of the ultimate superhero, to the degree that you're willing to impose apologetics to the point of nonsense?

Maybe it's about numbers - surely a cult is a small, shadowy organisation without, well, the cred of numbers? I dunno - My old church is as middle of the road in their beliefs as they come - they were the closest thing zealous homophobic extremists can really come to being non-offensive - and from all reports they're dying. Last service I went to, there were barely three dozen people there, and from all accounts that grown smaller in the considerable time since. Now, if you were to go to a meeting of the local branch of Church Of Christ (recognised New Zealand wide as an unsavory cult), you'll probably find far more than that.

The difference between a church and a cult is that you belong to a church. You believe what you believe, whether that is that God exists, that he doesn't, or that he was really a pack of alien scientists who have chosen a French racecar driver as humanity's last prophet. And no matter how outlandish these beliefs, you can't understand how no-one else can see this incredibly simple thing that's staring them in the face...

Meanwhile, the world continues to turn, and in Heaven, someone is laughing at 99% of us...

--Apathy Jack