There is a virus in this world that is more deadly than corona. It spread fast too like an epidemic but with deceit and division. It is the virus of a cult.
And yesterday, its founder did what he needs to do to preserve and protect his deluded legacy. He apologised, with head bowed, sporting a gold watch, given to him by the disgraced former president Park Geun-hye.
Lee Man-hee, 88, is the founder of the Shincheonji Church of Jesus the Temple of the Tabernacle of the Testimony (“SCJ”).
Claiming to be the Messiah, a second Jesus, and promising refuge from the end of times, which happens to be ”akan datang”, a teary Lee said: -
“We did our best, but were not able to stop the spread of the virus. I am really grateful, but at the same time, asking for forgiveness. I never thought this would happen, even in my dreams.” He then bowed twice as a portrayal of humility and regret.
You must know that Lee, being the messiah, also claimed that he is the only one who can interpret the Bible. And “only those who had the “revealed word” taught by SCJ would be saved during the end times.””
SCJ was founded in 1984. It is organised into ”12 tribes”, each named after one of Jesus’ disciples. If you surf its website, you will discover that it claims to have 300 mission centres in 15 countries, including US, China, Australia, Japan and the Philippines.
It even opened a branch in Wuhan, “where the coronavirus was first reported, last year.” A church member who was infected, known as patient 31, went on to infect many, and caused a great alarm in Korea. It was “the first wave of infection to hit the country.”
And due to the way they conducted themselves, in strict secrecy, encouraging its members to leave their family so as to deepen the insidious indoctrination, Lee’s church compounded the epidemic in Korea, causing an outburst of infection.
FYI, Seoul city authorities have “filed a murder complaint against (Lee) for failing to cooperate in containing the epidemic.”
One mother, Ms Lee Yeon-woo, 54, in a tearful vigil, said that, “she had not heard from her daughter since she joined the church six years ago.”
It also reports that “some former church members said many young believers were forced to leave home as part of the initiation, breaking ties with their families.”
She said: “I can’t sleep at night thinking my daughter might have been infected and is groaning in pain in seclusion.”
Lesson? One, that is, a memory lane.
I was once accosted by some members of some Korean God the mother cult.
Thrice, in fact, they trounced on me when I was coming out of the mrt. I was then a little jaded, but decided to indulge them.
Long story short, they left me alone after some time of trying to win me over. I guess I was a lost cause for them.
But my point is that cult leaders like Lee or Reverend Moon of the Unification Church will prowl the streets for wandering sheep to pen.
In economic terms, the supply of such cults is always there. If not Lee, there will be another Lee of another cult or Moon of some loony church. And if not for some dizzy name like “Shincheonji Church of Jesus the Temple of the Tabernacle of the Testimony”, they will come in some much longer and more religiously wacky name.
So throw all the stones or boulder you want at people like Lee and his cult, and they deserve it anyway. But at times, we as parents and church leaders have to look at our own hands holding the stones and ask ourselves this, “why do they still flourish? Why do the young still flock to them? Is deception the only reason?”
Maybe here’s another angle to look at it.
Shanice, a former member of SCJ, “felt she did not find satisfactory answers to questions and doubts she had in church, the classes (in SCJ) gave her some comfort in the way they addressed apologetics such as the topic of suffering on earth and the reason for difference in Christian denominations.”
Shanice added that “she feels the episode is a reminder to young Christians to find a trusted church or person to discuss their doubts with, and that mainstream churches should engage more with young members, as groups like SCJ try to capitalise in these doubts to win new members.”
Well, I can form a case for gullibility and one against gullibility, but in the end, there is always a pull and push factor for leaving mainstream and joining a cult.
Take this quote by a philosopher Jason Brennan, for example: -
“Human beings are wired not to seek truth and justice but to seek consensus. They are shackled by social pressure. They are overly deferential to authority. They cower before uniform opinion. They are swayed not so much by reason but by a desire to belong, by emotional appeal, and by sex appeal.”
There is some truth in that, especially about the uniformity of opinion, the belonging, the consensus and the sex appeal part. That’s the same pull factors a cult exploits to draw in unsuspecting young members. But there’s also the push factor.
The young may be “shackled by social pressure” but they are also turned off by inauthentic leadership or leaders.
Some church leaders turn scriptures into a honeypot for earthly successes, and repackage faith as a surefire way to personal prosperity.
Not that Jesus does not want us to prosper, but some preachers go overboard with the bait of prosperity to hide the hook of humanising salvation, which downplays its true Calvary message of what it means to overcome the world, counting the costs.
In other words, it is not richness in self, but God, not prosperity as an end, but as a means to a redemptive end, and not about gaining the world, bathing in its glory, and then losing one’s soul in the journey.
The young sees through us. They can tell what is real and what is counterfeit. They can tell whether their parents love God as they profess or love the idea of God with little of Christlikeness to show at home. They can also tell what the church with all its programs aim to achieve, that is, a numerical explosion within a rushed deadline rather than a fruitful nurturance of a young life that often takes time.
In the end, the push factors make for ready ripening for the plucking, and that is where cults emerge. By then, discerning or not, they get lured into its fancy, empty promises of an escape pod towards some imaginary end of the world timeline.
So, it always takes two hands to clap, and where the family and church leave the soul stranded, groping for deep relations, the occultic vultures will eventually swoop in for the picking just so as to provide a false sense of belonging to profit the man at the top of this religious ponzi scheme.
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