Our Cages
Even though I haven't been part of organized religion for a long time, you can see from my writing that there is a part of me that searches for god and structure/community, and it is a strong force. After leaving the cult I was raised in Ive walked a long road, passing through anger and resentment, biblical apologetics and atheism (and not the atheism many faithful claim they 'overcame'. I wrote extensively for years about it even on debate forums, and it still forms a big part of my dissonance). Anyway, when talking about synchronicities, yesterday was very insightful.
I finally gave up on god, since this being born again thing is terrible and almost impossible to survive it seems. I prayed and asked why everything is based on hearsay, begging for god to just talk to me. I felt, and still feel like just giving up on that. That was about two days ago.
So yesterday I was watching a movie called Heretic. If you don't want spoilers, don't read this post. I was enjoying it, having watched to where the sisters started to see something was wrong. At that moment there was a commotion at my front gate, so I paused the movie to go and see who it was. It turned out to be missionaries from my old cult.
The man introduced himself, but I knew him. He then recognized me and a very strange dialogue ensued. I knew what he was going to say since I spent many years doing the same preaching work. But it was the new changes in the cult that fascinated me. They are now accepting back shunned people, and it is explained by the loving kindness of god. It (shunning) broke down my whole world but now it has changed. Thanks god. I saw he had a shadow beard, and it seems they now allow beards. He commented on mine and I said I grew it extra large after I left because they did not allow it. He told about his own story and how he was also shunned, but realized if he wanted to be with his family he would need to fix himself, and that's how he got back in the religion. Some other missionaries that were in his party passed by, including some attractive women, and its a bit shallow I guess, but In my loneliness I wondered if I would meet them if I returned. He also expressed that god loves me.
So we have the changing of rules on shunning, facial hair, and the prospect of love and community. Very enticing. But I need to say, the whole twenty minute conversation took place through the bars of my front fence, with its sharp spikes on top. And then, for a moment I wondered as I looked at this man through the metal bars, which one of us was in the cage. The truth should set you free after all. Who of us has freedom?
So I finished the movie, and the bad guy, the 'Heretic' said that the true religion is a cage of control basically. In the end one of the sisters escapes and she hallucinates that a butterfly sits on her hand. I could not ignore my own dreams of butterflies and transformation.
In the view of the cult I am a heretic, but I'm not in a cage. Maybe god sent the missionaries to bring me back to the truth, or maybe God sent them to me to show me the cages organized religion construct. I think of all the suffering that shunning brings about, which was written on that mans face, and I recall God's warning to his people to get out of Babylon the Great. False religion is a cage of man made construction, and whoever is part of such organizations suffer the plagues that God is bringing on it, plagues like the burdens of shunning, closed mindedness and deception amidst revelation, and their inevitable decline while truth blossoms. I don't know God or who he is, he never talks to me personally, and I'm trying to figure it out, but my eyes are now open to the prisons of organized religion. Maybe my concept of God needs to change as well.
Maybe the born again thing must continue. Ill listen to the shadows and dreams and synchronicities, at least they don't hide chains.
