Quote:
Originally Posted by djsFlames
Always been a proponent for practicing your beliefs and principles wherever you go, but not chaining yourself to a specific church or group. There is as much drama, guilt tripping and questionable behahiour as there is in offices/work circles.
Its when you become an integrated member of one of those communities when things start to get away from the core purposes that they were built on, because then there are expectations and people that take it way more seriously than others. You can volunteer and offer services when you want to give without committing yourself indefinitely.
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Here's a good and super minor example of this.
My parents are religious. My Mom was always the much more devout of the two, but now that my Dad is approaching retirement and winding down his life, my mom shoved him into Knights of Columbus with the husbands of her church going friends. I have noticed a very disturbing trend in my father where he has absolutely latched on to this. He is frequently doing adult serving now (not super common tbh, usually a deacon or something similar fills this role.) He has become more oriented towards the catholic church but still maintains a general lack of religiousness.
I had refused to get either of my kids Baptized. While my parents didn't put up any outwards resistance to this (they know my stance and know I'd sooner just revoke their grandchild privileges than suffer this indoctrination) it greatly disturbed them. It also disturbs them whenever I address my father as Grand Wizard when he is in an alb. But, what disturbed me was that they approached my sister in advance of her wedding, and proposed that they would give her an additional $10,000 towards her wedding (specifically so she could have an open bar) IF she got her daughter baptized the following day while my extended family was still in town. So, my sister accepted that.
I don't really care about the money; my wife and I are better off and don't need it anyways. But to me it exemplified how easily they were willing to throw aside the tenants of their faith - they had to lie to the church numerous times to accomplish this as a light example - just to create more acceptance among the church community they frequent.
That's a cult.