The other day my kindly youtube account recommended a number of videos for me. I suspect they do this by scanning the word themes of my subscribed channels and suggesting to me videos with similar tags or themes to those I’ve already watched. (I’m sure there is a specific technical term for this process – if you know maybe you can write it in the comments and I can amend this post!)

Since I subscribe to our Divine Truth Channel as well as our FAQ channel, which now has an entire playlist on cults, one of the videos recommended for me was “I Escaped a Cult” (clip below).

I watched the clip. I wept for these people. I felt about the reasons why people are drawn to cults. I prayed for the healing of those I saw on film and all others who are damaged by such horrible acts and erroneous belief systems about God and Love.

It wasn’t until I was finished with all that watching, feeling and praying that I suddenly realized that loads of people assume that my life is similar to those of the people described in the documentary. It also dawned on me that people might even think that we treat people like the ‘leaders’ in these groups treated the people who told their stories.

Its true that the false, slanderous, misleading and sensationalized media coverage of us in recent years has encouraged people to think in such ways. But I am also aware that many would assume these kinds of things simply based on our identity claims.

Now you might think I’m a little slow on the uptake when it comes to considering how others perceive us. Truth be told, I have (of course) considered it all before.

But given how different my life actually is to what the media has said about it, and given that I actively spend everyday attempting to grow in and extend love, truth and humility to others, and given that I am adored, encouraged and inspired by the man I live with, its easy to forget that people think that I live a tortured, power-hungry life with a narcissistic megalomaniac. So extreme is the contrast in viewpoints that the latter assumption can be swiftly dismissed by my heart and mind as utter absurdity (and is thus difficult to retain).

Put simply, such slander is so daft and uninformed that I don’t think about it much anymore. And I sometimes forget that many people are actually holding onto the daft, uninformed and absurd ideas about who we are and what we stand for.

So at times I still feel suddenly very shocked and naive when I watch these types of documentaries and realize that this kind of abusive behaviour would be associated in the minds of others with my life or belief systems.

You see, we are all about assisting people to end their acceptance of abusive and unloving behaviour. We teach the embracing of free will and that to receive Love from the One Absolutely Reliable Source is the surest way to happiness and growth – no intermediary necessary!

We preach that God is not One who punishes or requires penance in order to receive His Love, nor is any person more important or powerful in God’s Eyes than any other (so if we live in harmony with God’s Laws we would never be able to view each other in terms of hierarchy or to set up abusive power systems on Earth).

In short, we are the most anti-cult people I know.

I’ve written about this subject before, and I was considering writing about it again yesterday. But then Jesus had an email requesting an interview/ opinion on cults and he wrote awesome things. So I’m just going to share his words after the clip of the documentary below.

I know that if you read my blog regularly you might be scoffing at the necessity for me to write about such topics. You’re know you’re not a member of anything and you are completely relaxed in the knowledge that you aren’t in a cult, right?

Well, in my opinion and experience its always good to explore emotions around such topics. They are sensationalized in our media and our lives because many people – no, most people – harbor huge fears about being controlled, manipulated and hurt. (Jesus discusses this in more detail in the text below).

While we deny and suppress these fears, they have power in our lives. Fears of being abused, controlled and manipulated, when left unhealed and unchecked, can cause us to be needlessly suspicious of good people, and/or foolishly trusting of people with bad intentions. They are the very fears that people who want control use to manipulate us e.g. they accuse us of being controlled and manipulated in order to have us change to what suits them or to fall back under their control.

It can sound like a complex issue, and honestly unless we explore our doubts and fears things can become complex and confusing. Thankfully if we are willing to delve deep into our feelings, ask the tough questions, and feel our pain of past hurts and manipulation, we do emerge with the clarity to discern who and what is trustworthy.

If we involve God in the process, we also learn what Love truly looks like. With such knowledge we can never be fooled by dubious characters, peddling false teachings and tainted ‘love’.

Excerpt from a Response to a Media Request for an Interview Regarding Cults.

Written by Jesus

April, 2013

No matter what you have heard from other members of the media, we do not have a religion or a cult. All Mary and I do is speak at seminars we provide for free, provide information for free over the internet about Divine Truth, and share Divine Truth with anyone who questions us where possible. Just because we claim that we are Jesus and Mary Magdalene, it does not mean that we fit your assumptions of what persons making those claims would normally be like. We do not have any person staying with us where we live. We live on a 40 acre private property that I purchased quite some time ago when I was still computer programming. No-one else lives with us. We have no experience of living in a cult, and we are not “cult leaders” as the media has falsely claimed, we have no “following”, we do not interact with the same people on a day to day basis, we do not manipulate and control people, since that is against our teachings of love and the honouring of the free will of the individual, and so I could not provide you with any perspective on the matter aside from my own opinion.

I have also placed my comments about Cults on our Divine Truth FAQ YouTube channel for anyone who wishes  to see the truth about what we do, along with my general comments about cults and cult leaders as well. I do feel that many cults on earth are quite destructive, but I also feel that there are many institutions on the planet that are just as destructive in their teachings, because they are not based around love. I include some orthodox religions, economic institutions, political movements, and other professions amongst these destructive institutions. As I said, anything that does not honour the free will of the individual, promote the exercise of love in our day to day life, and allow for the discovery of further Truth, scientific and otherwise, is destructive.

I have a lot of compassion for people who have been a part of cults, and I do completely understand why people are attracted to them. I feel these attractions begin often because of the unloving treatment of parents towards their children, and this makes their children susceptible to the influence of self-installed “authority” figures when they become adults. In addition, many claims are made in the name of God, and people are even encouraged to go to war, and perpetrate violence, for the sake of their “Gods”. This is all cult-ish behaviour on the part of the people encouraging such actions. I have spoken of these things in my Divine Truth FAQ channel.

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I feel that the general population has a huge amount of fear regarding “cults”, and they bring this fear, which I believe comes from their childhood, and their experiences of being controlled and manipulated by society as children, into their adult life. As adults, we usually operate either in agreement to, or rebellion of, unhealed emotional issues from our childhood. This means that we are either attracted to persons who are “cult-like” authority figures, or we could say more like the impression we had of our own parents, or repelled by and afraid of such persons (and sometimes have both reactions at different times, just like when we were children).

If I, within myself, felt secure in my own search for truth, and honoured my own free will to make choices and decisions for myself no matter what other people in society or my family or friends generally thought, and understood what love really acted like, and could determine when someone was truly unloving in their actions towards me, then I would not feel the need to either follow a “cult-leader” or fight against one. I would feel secure in my own choices and decisions, and I would be able to change my mind at any time. I would not listen to anyone who manipulates me or attempted to manipulate or control me through force or threats, since I would see such an action as harming my own free will choice, and being out of harmony with love.

A person with conviction in their own belief system will be firm for what they believe, but they, if they were loving, would never force (either verbally, emotionally or physically) their belief system upon me, and require that I change my own belief system without applying logic and love to the analysis of the belief system they are sharing. They would honour my ability to choose for myself what I wish to believe, even if it disagrees with their own concept of what is right and true. Most religions do NOT do this. They instead attempt to force their beliefs, along with the threat that God will destroy or punish me at some time in the future for having the wrong belief. I feel that God does not punish us for wrong beliefs. I feel that the only penalties in the universe are for acting out of harmony with Love, and so, people who attempt to force me into a belief system are acting out of harmony with love and will eventually feel the weight of their own unloving actions. The pain and suffering in this world are the direct results of society acting out of harmony with Love.

I also feel that society has many false beliefs surrounding what is acceptable when we are a child, compared to what is acceptable when we are an adult. For example, the average Christian believes, as the Bible states in Proverbs 13:24 “Whoever spares the rod hates their children, but the one who loves their children is careful to discipline them.” For the average reader of this verse, it justifies spanking the child, or acting violently towards the child, in the name of “love”. So, many people feel justified in hitting their own children as a result, as a form of “discipline”. But if we hit an adult with a stick or even with our hand (even with the intention of correcting them), government law in most Western nations views that as violent assault, for which we can be incarcerated. So, a violent and terrifying act towards a child is tolerated by society (for many reasons including the parents concept of “ownership” over their child, and the acceptance of religious books that promote violence), and, at the same time, the same action perpetrated towards an adult is called a violent crime. This is a measure of the hypocrisy of society, allowing a violent action towards a child who cannot protect itself from such an act, while at the same time attempting to protect an adult who experiences or is threatened by the same violent act.

The result of this is that very few people have a correctly aligned “compass” when it comes to determining what real Love would do. Unfortunately there are many times when we are tolerant of what society calls “heinous crimes” towards children, for many reasons religious and otherwise, and I have only provided one example. These crimes are not tolerated towards adults. Of course, when those children grow up, it makes sense that their own concept of what love is will be severely crippled, and therefore, it becomes difficult for them to determine who actually loves them, and who is just making statements of “love” without any real love being present. It causes them to be open to people who use many words of “love”, but who do not have loving feelings or actions. It opens them to concepts that are flawed when examined by love, and they readily accept such flawed concepts, since those same concepts were forced upon them as children. It will also be very difficult for them to correctly reason about whether the group of people they are becoming involved with actually promote really loving teachings and actions.

As you say, society must learn “where to draw the line”, and I feel the line must be drawn by the thought I mentioned in my previous email to you, and that is; “anything that does not honour the free will of the individual, promote the exercise of love in our day to day life, and allow for the discovery of further Truth, scientific and otherwise, is destructive,” and needs to be corrected. This line would apply whether the problem is exposed within a family, within a community, within an organisation, within a religion, within a government, or within a country. If this line was consistent in all circumstances, then each individual, including children, could feel safe to explore the world and continue their own quest for truth without fearing potential violence, control, manipulation or any other act which would harm its own expression of free will. Then all of us would feel comfortable in the world, whether we had different belief systems or not.

What I am suggesting is that eventually we all need to agree about what is loving behaviour, and what is unloving, and make a personal choice to live in harmony with what is defined as loving. But this will need to be done with logical and reasonable discussion, not with emotive belief systems that have no bearing on logic, not relying on books (religious or otherwise) written hundreds or even thousands of years ago that are obviously flawed when we examine them from the perspective of love, or by reverting to character attacks of others just because they have a different opinion to ourselves.

Just my thoughts towards the discussion for what they are worth.

You can check out more from Jesus about cults here.

He’s so wise my guy.

I love how relaxed and jovial he is answering questions about cults! Every media outlet I’ve encountered accompanies such discussions with ominous, foreboding music. Jesus just cracks a smile and answers without hesitation or fear.