What if an angel threatens you to take on more wives?

The recent article about Joseph Smith confirms that he had about 30 to 40 wives, and some of them were already married. The age of his harem ranges from as young as 14 to as old as 56. I guess any younger would be quite awkward and any older would be rather backward. 

I also discovered that you can’t really blame Joseph Smith for the polygamous union. It appears that he was under divine duress. Apparently, the angel made him
 an offer that he couldn't possibly refuse.

The article mentioned that “an angel appeared to (Smith) three times between 1834 and 1842 and commanded him to proceed with plural marriage when he hesitated to move forward.”  It was at the third try by the disgruntled angel, most likely in desperation, that Smith finally succumbed. But this was not before the angel threatened to kill him if he still defied the divine edict. The report puts it this way,
“On the angel's last visit, the church said, "the angel came with a drawn sword, threatening Joseph with destruction unless he went forward and obeyed the commandment fully.”” Well I guess a life of guilty pleasures is far better than the prospect of being wipe off from the face of this earth.

So, my sympathies are with the founder of Mormonism. He sacrificed monogamy for the monotony of extramarital autonomy. He must have had an
 agonizing time struggling with the decision to take in more wives when he was already married to his first namely Emma in January 1827. I can imagine Emma’s shock when Joseph told him that he had to do what an angel wanted him to do unless she wanted a dead husband. She must also have thought about all the in-laws that she had to deal with.

Further, what was she going to do with all the children of his many wives. Coming up with
 their names was the least of her problems. Admittedly, there was just too much managing and organizing to do and the magnitude of the sibling rivalries would be astronomical. In fact, it was recorded that Emma “was very bitter and full of resentment and anger” over her husband’s marriages to other women.

I guess the only gossamer of a consolation for Emma was that her husband did not have sex with all his wives. Thankfully, he exercised some sexual restraint 
because some of his wives were “sealed” to him only for the next life. Whatever that meant, Joseph claimed to have never deflowered them as he wanted to keep them after his demise. They are like spares for the afterlife.

Of course, Emma must have been the most confused and unsettled first wife of the elected prophet. You see, even if her beloved had practised selective and limited consummation, Emma’s marital torture would indefinitely ensue from this life to the next. Imagine 
the demise of all the relevant spousal parties and then discovering to her continued despondency that her god-fearing hubby can now start deflowering those whom he had once kept undefiled on earth. I guess the consolation is more a matter of postponement than one of enduring comfort.

Indeed the god of Mormonism works in the most mysterious ways. If the situation had been reversed, I wonder what would poor Joseph do. That is, what if
 the angel had appeared to Emma and told her in no uncertain terms that she was to take in more than one husband? Would she have folded? Would she have readily agreed to it? You must understand that it was the same angel who appeared to Joseph and you can expect the same irresistible offer: "Commit polyandry Emma or I’ll kill you!" What would poor Emma do then? Will Joseph agree to it? Imagine Emma having 20 to 40 unwitting hubbies and all Joseph could do was to suck it all in and resign to
the fate of being a perpetually pissed-off cuckold.

Alas, Joseph’s god had preempted that. In a somewhat twist of sexist's fortune, the reverse scenario for Emma would never come to pass; not if the prophet's divine benefactor has his way. At Revelation’s fifty-fourth verse, Joseph's seemingly misogynistic god warns with these words, “And I command mine handmaid, Emma Smith, to abide and cleave unto my servant Joseph, and to
 none else. But if she will not abide this commandments she shall be destroyed, saith the Lord; for I am the Lord thy God, and will destroy her if she abide not in my law.” So, I guess that self-serving scripture just shut Emma's door tight to a world of plural marriages. And you can't say that the Mormon god was not specific enough...her name was literally spelt out in the self-styled book of revelation!

At this juncture, you really have to understand the heartrending
dilemma inherent in this so-called cosmic gambit between Mr. and Mrs. Smith and the mafia-like angel. It really makes the whole thing sounds like a horrible joke. Of course, Joseph might have appeared hesitant at first and needed to be phallus-wrestled into multiple conjugal partnerships. But somewhere in his eagerness to obey the commandment to plural marriages, he went on a sexual overdrive. He even took his members’ wives, which must have at least provoked a little 
squirm in the angel’s face. It is also reported that Emma did not know exactly how many wives her husband had taken in. It is further rumored that the descendants of Joseph Smith numbered about 2000. Wow, talk about bursting at the promiscuous loins!

I guess Joseph’s god must have been pleased with his voracious appetite to obey the commandment and the three occasions of angelic persuasion were definitely worth every effort
 expended and mortal threat issued. He would even be more pleased with this declaration made by the president, prophet and seer of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on 4 January 1880: “We believe in honesty, morality, and purity; but when they enact tyrannical laws, forbidding us the free exercise of our religion, we cannot submit. God is greater than the United States, and when the Government conflicts with heaven, we will be ranged under the banner of heaven and against 
the Government…Polygamy is a divine institution. It has been handed down direct from God. The United States cannot abolish it. No nation on earth can prevent it, nor all the nations of the earth combined…I defy the United States; I will obey God.”

I guess if polygamy was a divine institution for the Mormons, then it would naturally be a male-dominated one with the women playing their role as the eternally understanding, patient and tolerant spouse amongst the
 many others, each dutifully satisfying the godly sexual appetites of her husband.

On a personal note, I can only stand in awe concerning the strength of the delusion and the thoroughness of the deception of this truly phenomenal movement, which claims to have close to 15 million members worldwide. And I shall take my cue from the master Bard of Avon and the greatest wordsmith of all times as I close.


“But then I sigh and, with a piece of scripture,


Tell them that God bids us do good for evil;


And thus I clothe my naked villainy


With odd old ends stol’n forth of Holy Writ,


And seem a saint when most I play the devil.”

Cheerz.

I met the "god the mother" for the third time!

Last week, I met them again. The god the mother cult. This is the third time in 18 months. And it is unnerving and frustrating because their enthusiasm is ironically admirable. They prowl the heartlanders' estate of Bedok like a soft haze on a stale day. But this time, the one who approached me was more presentable - I mean, he presented better arguments to persuade (or unknowingly dissuade) me. He looked like an undergrad, spoke well, and had
 an honest bespectacled disposition. His name? Melvin.

I engaged him for 20 minutes. He told me the usual stuff about his belief. He said the second coming of Jesus was already here in 1948 (Israel became a nation-state). This descended messiah was reincarnated as their founder Ahn Sahng-hong, who strangely died in Feb 1984. Melvin kept showing me Revelation 11:3 which said that this redeemer would come with a new name and that name is, yes,
 Ahn Sahng-hong. I kept hearing that name from him until I had Korean-drama-like vision of him as a young heartthrob superstar.

I reminded Melvin that it is all too convenient and suspicious, but he upped the ante by telling me that all other religions are false. He started with the Catholic Church and then the Protestant Churches and the Methodist and so on. I asked him how he knew they are false. Without batting an eyelid, he replied, "They all celebrate Christmas. It's paganism!" He said quite triumphantly that Jesus was not born on 25^th December. But I told him that what we do on that day doesn’t define us. Still he didn't relent and kept pushing the same point.  So I asked him this, "If an Indian celebrates Chinese New Year, does it make him a Chinese?" He squinted.

From there, he talked non-stop, missing all my sarcastic undertones peppered here and
 there with apologies of course (old habits die hard). He even invited me to a group fellowship and told me that I would be convinced after that. Ah! Inviting an incorrigible old fox to a young chicken coop! (arrogance duly renounced... sorry). At the end, he wanted to pray for me in public (near Bedok MRT) where the human traffic is the heaviest. I declined and walked away. As I walked away, I thought to myself, "If I should ever pray with him, it will just go something like this..." (not to be taken seriously of course)

"Dear God the Father, God the son and God the Holy Spirit, in the absence of god the mother, I pray that you would open my eyes to false teachings. I invoke your Spirit of discernment to distinguish Truths from half-truths, your Word from man's word, and true prophets from false ones. Let your children not be misled by holier-than-thou preachers who hail from the east and proclaim themselves to be God or God-proxy and make incredulous claims that your divine "Facebook marital status" (for lack of a better description) has been changed from "single" to "married". You have said that in the last days there will be people claiming that they've come in your name but they are actually false prophets trying to mislead the sheep from you. And sadly, they are not without unwitting converts who believe everything they said hook, line and sinker. They would use your Word for their benefit and twist it
 so as to lend a veneer of credence to their questionable lifestyle and practices. So, I pray that although I walk through the valley of the shadow of confusion, deception and distortion, your word and staff are with me to guide me along the true and narrow road and away from the broadway of fancy exegesis, dizzy theology and empty hope. Amen and amen to the exacting divine trio of the Holy Trinity to the exclusion of the intermeddling god the mother." Cheerz.

Tips for setting up a new cult

How do you start a new cult? I have a few good suggestions here if you can spare the time. It is not too difficult considering how incurably religious we are. We worship anything and everything. And I mean everything. We pray to cows, to goats, to snake, to monkey, to donkeys, to elephants, to fowls, and to fishes. And most recently to a football oracle named Paul the Octopus. We pray for luck, for fortune, for peace, for health, for wealth, for soulmate, for marriage, for career, for promotion, for protection, and for life after death. We spend millions of dollars on the most incredulous beliefs, whether religious or political, that the toms, dicks and bushes of this world have come up with. The bottom line is this: We need to believe in belief even if the belief in itself is wholly unbelievable to us. So, this clearly sets the stage for the birth of a new cult.

There are essentially 6 ingredients to start a cult and if you persist in it, with the hope of a man on angel dust, you can very well succeed in growing your own cult into a worldwide phenomenon.

The first ingredient is a leader. This is obvious. More blindingly obvious is to have a dynamic and charismatic leader. It is even better if your leader is a little wonker on the side. This will of course rule out the insane or mentally unsound for obvious reason. But then, come to think of it, maybe I am being overly cautious. Aren’t all cult leaders mentally unsound?

So, let’s recap. Your leader has to be a mental case, preferably, someone who lives on the edge of reality. Or, someone who is willing to push reality to the edge in order to serve his own twisted purpose.

You can find such a person in an ultra-religious meeting, a you-can-do-anything-if-you-believe seminar or a trailer park for social outcasts. If in doubt or lost, bring along the latest DSM 5 as a guide. Look for people who suffers from comorbidity, that is, those who have a combination of two or three (or even more) of the mental or psychiatric disorders listed in DSM 5.  

In addition, the one trait to look out for is a narcissistic personality. This person must love himself more than he loves anything in this world or the entire universe. Also helpful is a bigoted outlook. This person must hate some people in some part of the world for no seemingly logical reasons. It can be the color, the sex or the race of the people that irks him to his grave. Or, it may just be a person’s demeanor, dressing or talking style. Whatever it is, this future cult leader of yours must be a bona fide bigot, period.

So, let me repeat the two traits to look out for in a cult leader. He must be a self-lover and an others-hater. Once you have found such a person (which is not too difficult to find in this materialistic, self-absorbed, power-driven world), half of your job is done. The other five ingredients, which relates to the belief itself, will naturally fall into place.

The second ingredient is a supernatural experience. This relates to the leader himself. He must be able to come up with an extraterrestrial, divine-inspired encounter in the likes of ET and Star Trek. Your leader can learn from the teachings of Joseph Smith who claims that he met with an angel called Moroni who gave him two gold tablets for translation into the Book of Mormonism. Or the experiences of Mary Baker Eddy who, in a lucky fall, came up with the foundational doctrine of her Christian Science Movement. She also claimed that she was miraculously healed of illnesses and was a divine messenger of God.

The third ingredient is a belief for deluded members to build their life on. This relates to the prospective congregation as a whole. A cult leader cannot stop with a supernatural experience without leading his members to the purpose such supernatural experience aims to bring. In other words, the exclusive encounter of the cult leader has to be interpreted and applied in the form of a mass belief.

So, the more outrageous the belief, the better. Just as grandiose is your leader, your belief must be equally, if not more, grandiose. This task is not too difficult. Just engage a credible Hollywood scriptwriter or read some out-of-this-world science fiction to cook up some pseudo-salvational, wholly-apocalytic, mind-numbingly incredulous, mumbo-jumbo and you would have gleefully arrived at the sweet spot of make-believe.

The fourth ingredient is to be a copy cat. They say plagiarism is the highest form of compliment to the original works or author. So, your cult will need the extra rocket fuel to boost it into fantasy orbit by borrowing ideas from the orthodox religions, in particular, Christianity or Judaism. This step is basically to add meat to your bony belief. The best way to promote your leader is to proclaim him the exclusive messiah who has come to save all and sundry.

This is no different from your leader engineering a babel-like coup to take over the mercy seat of the divine. I call this fourth step, “Dethroning the Orthodoxy”. Many false prophets have already claimed that they are the second adam, the christ, the savior of this world. And many have predicted that the end time will come or has come or has already come, or has just passed but will come again. The trick is to recycle the end time scare as many times as possible and never fail to tell the members that the end time will come in your leader’s lifetime.

This self-deification will give your leader the heavenly edict to do anything he wants and get away with it almost magically. Warren Jeff, the ex-leader of the Church of Jesus of the Fundamentalist Latter-days Saints, had done just that. He got away with many things because his members worshipped him as the christ. He got away with the celestial marriages of 180 wives, a coffer of more than a hundred million dollars under a Trust that he practically controlled, with men who are prepared to take a bullet for him and women, even young girls, who are all too ready to throw their virginity at him. Alas, he got caught eventually because he got ahead of himself I guess.

Now comes the fifth ingredient. This is the ingenious part and it is embedded in this caption, “Salvation by works only.” Unlike Christianity, where we are saved by faith through grace, your cult cannot “cheapen” itself to that confession. The mantra is: Work. Work. Work.

Mormonism, for example, is up to its blistered neck with rituals. They have the Mormon temple ceremony, the secret handshakes and the reception of special undergarments. The last ritual sounds like what Tom Jones would get thrown at during his mega-concerts.

You see, the last thing that you want in a cult is to cut off the middle man. You need to make the leader the sole custodian and dispenser of salvation. He would have to stand in between his deluded god and his disillusioned members. Telling them that they are already saved by faith and it is a free gift would cut off the middle man, that is, your cult leader, and it would give your member full autonomy (or freedom) to come to their savior directly (an a la Martin Luther’s reformation). This would make the leader redundant. This is a big NO-NO for cults to survive and thrive. In the end, it is all about control.

It is also incumbent on your leader to make the goal of salvation as unreachable as possible. The members must always fall short of the leader’s regal-like glory. It is therefore a never-ending measuring up of the unrealizable self-professed perfect attributes of the leader. In other words, the leader is the benchmark and the members are the gnomes that can never measure up.

In short, it is important to monopolize salvation and to keep it close to your leader’s chest as if his life depended on it. Remember, the moment you liberalize salvation, your leader and the cult will become obsolete, and your members will be free to seek the truth for themselves.

If this happens, more likely than not, they will find it (that is, personal salvation, which is another word for “wake up their ideas”) and your membership, your secret personal property accumulation, your bank account embezzlement, and your wives acquisitions will all suffer irreparable damage.

Finally, the sixth ingredient to establishing a successful cult is to always keep your organizational structure tightly controlled. The best structure for a cult is morbid authoritarianism. There must be a clear line of authority from your untouchable, unchallengable, and unimpeachable leader to his starved-for-truth members. Very much like a Mafioso family structure, your cult will benefit from a culture of fear, intimidation and threat of life and limbs.

Always let your members know who’s the boss in the organization and never hesitate to punish, with immediate effect and without exceptions, any transgressors, rules-infringers and rebels in order to set an example for all to follow.

In a rather twisted way, your cult leader will have to keep another insidious balance in mind, that is, the balance of vain hope and villainous fear. Keep the pulse of your members close to your leader’s heart and always read the right signals coming from the members. When hope is down, pump it up with more delusionary sermons. When freedom is threatening to erupt, rein it in with fear of earthly and afterlife punishments. Threats that one may lose his or her salvation for disobedience is a good measure to keep the members in their place.

Remember that your cult is only as powerful as your next obedient member. When you lose control over your members, when they see through your gimmick and hypocrisy, you will bleed membership.

So, don’t take away hope, an invaluable existential bait, from your members. Hope is the glue that keeps your cult “alive and kicking” and you will do well to not be miserly about dispensing it once in a while. Essentially, you can take everything from your members, their property, their integrity and their intellect, but leave a slender tortuous trail of hope behind for their feeble picking. Once this is done, no matter what happens, your members will be more than prepared to risk their lives for you.

Let me end with this quote from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, which is most apt here, “You can have power over people as long as you don’t take everything away from them. But when you’ve robbed a man of everything, he’s no longer in your power.”

So, good luck setting up your new cult. I hope the experience will be as fun as the tips I have given above. Cheerz.