ჩემი გაქცევა კულტიდან: ღმერთის შვილები

In 1991, I lived in a commune with 200 other people in Japan as a member of a cult called the God's Children, which preached that the world would end in 1993. Everything I did - from where I slept every night to who I was allowed to sleep with - was decided by the leader of my commune. I was encouraged to keep a diary and then bring it to the leaders every night so they could look for signs of dissent. I was only allowed to listen to music approved by the cult and watch movies with happy endings, because those were the types of movies that the supreme leader of the cult - David Berg - liked. Berg's favorite movie was 'The Sound of Music', so we watched it repeatedly.By the time I was living in Japan, I was in my mid-30s and had been a cult member for 20 years. I was 16 when a young hippie couple first interested me and convinced me to leave my family and join a cult section near my hometown. I was a lonely teenager desperate for some kind of meaning. Everyone I knew worked in a lumber mill in my small town, and the thought of being destined for that life terrified me. The first time I visited, everyone hugged me and just said 'hi'. It was intoxicating.But by 1991, two decades into the cult, my faith was waning. It was becoming increasingly clear to me that Berg was wrong about the world ending in 1993. A series of events that were supposed to occur before the Second Coming never happened, and Berg, who lived in secret and communicated with his followers through written "prophecies," was coming up with increasingly implausible excuses.I was also becoming more resistant to the cult leaders who tried to control the most intimate parts of my life. When I joined the cult, it was very sexually conservative. If you wanted to establish a relationship with someone outside the community, you had to ask for permission from the leadership. But over the years, Berg began preaching a doctrine of sexual freedom and ordered his members to swap partners. I married another cult member in the 1980s, and I lived in a commune of God's Children in Japan with my wife. Because I opposed partner swapping, I was punished by being forcibly separated from my wife and forced to live alone in another commune.There was a darker side to the Children of God cult that I tried to ignore. Berg issued a written edict that allowed adult cult members to sexually abuse children. I never saw any sexual contact with children, and even though I had read this edict when it was released in the 1980s, I refused to accept it. It was still horrific.Separated from my wife and with Berg's teachings becoming more twisted, I was in spiritual turmoil. But it was only after hearing R.E.M.'s Losing My Religion that I was compelled to act. Cult members were allowed to have Walkmans, because the God's Children released their own music on cassette, but we were forbidden to listen to "worldly" music. As my blind obedience began to crumble, I started secretly listening to an American Forces Network radio station that broadcast in Japan. (Technically, I always had the ability to do this secretly, but it was a sign of how indoctrinated I was that I had never given myself permission to do so until now.) One day, Losing My Religion came on, and I remember the first time I heard it and froze. I physically stopped walking.It was that line, "It's me in the spotlight losing my religion," that struck me. It was the first time I had heard those words. Then I heard the line, "Every whisper I hear every waking hour / I choose my confessions," and I started thinking about how we were forced to submit our feelings in a diary and then be checked on. I had learned to self-censor, because I was afraid that expressing my true feelings and doubts might lead to punishment. I "chose my confessions" for many years.In 1991, Losing My Religion was a new song, and the radio station had it in heavy rotation. Every day, I would go for a walk and listen to it again, and at first, it scared me. I was a 36-year-old high-school dropout with nothing to go back to. You had to give all your money to the cult, so I had almost nothing. But with each replay, I became more and more determined to leave. I eventually fled the commune in the fall of 1991. I moved back in with my parents and eventually became a lawyer, but I remained haunted by the decades I spent in the cult. I spent my career advocating for children who were raped by Berg and some of his followers.A few years ago, I was surprised to learn that, according to R.E.M.'s frontman Michael Stipe, Losing My Religion isn't about losing someone's faith at all; it's about unrequited love. He explained that the phrase is a common saying in the American South "meaning to be annoyed or to lose one's courtesy, or to feel frustration and despair." However, like poetry, songs are open to interpretation by listeners who assign their own meanings to the lyrics. I connected the song to my life, and everything changed.