THE CULT THAT SWALLOWED MY CHILDHOOD

Before I was four, my family made the most tragic error of this or any other life: They joined a humorless extremist rightwing "Christian" cult.

This was to ruin many of my most potentially joyful moments for years to come.

The cult stole from me, and probably from hundreds of thousands of others(it now numbers five million) essential components of a healthy, happy childhood. As in other cults, the ancient Hebrew text was favored that says, "Spare the rod, and spoil the child." Taken literally, this is a full approval of child-abuse. Cult-elders taught parents to be grimly aware of the need to remain always disciplinarian and hyperauthoritarian.

The cult soon convinced my family of many grim and bizarre ideas:

Santa Claus was a lie, so it was evil and dishonest to tell your kids that he existed. Christmas was an evil and pagan celebration. There went the irreplaceable childhood-memories of Christmas warmth and brightness. All money that an ordinary family would have spent on Christmas gifts was to be sent to the "Organization," to promote the "work of Jehovah." Most Christmas-seasons were experienced as deflated and rather dead. I felt as if there were a thick glass wall between me and the laughing, singing children.

Birthdays were also pagan and evil. So, that very special day came and went every year without much fuss, and often, even without notice. Your birthday was regarded seriously as "too much attention paid to a creature, rather than to the Creator." (Their god had serious problems with selfesteem!) The real motive? You guessed it! The money was to be sent to the Org, not wasted on kids.

Predictably, Halloween was evil, too. And when other kids were laughing, cutting (and dressing) up, collecting candy, I too was going from door-to-door. But I was dressed in a suit. (Parents in the cult expect their small children to dress, and act, like full-grown ministers.) I was trying to sell extremely boring religious propoganda. Training in this saleswork began at age six, and we were taught that "Jehovah God" would murder us and our families if we did not participate regularly in selling the ragsheets produced by the cult.

The idea that "god" was an unforgiving macho-monster in the sky removed what little joy might have remained in the heart. I lived in ceaseless, relentless fear of a psychotic god! He was "very soon" going to bring about "Armageddon"-- an agonizing bloodbath of mass-murder, slaughter, and massacre that would make Hitler's concentration-camps look like a Sunday picnic! This absurd god was apparently bored out of his gourd, for he had nothing better to do than to watch me, twenty-four seven! And, if I slipped from the cult, or ever said anything against it, it was sure and certain that he would murder me! For he was planning to murder the population of the whole world, except for cult-members!

When you were a cult-member, everything in your life centered, day and night, around the cult. So, you missed so many warm, tender, intimate moments of family-sharing enjoyed by the normal family.

Even playing with other kids was often prohibited, lest they contaminate my "pristine religion," polluting it with theirs. For when Jehovah murdered all the children in the world, what would happen to me if I were among them?

Very early, I learned the art of fleeing from this frustrating life. My haven was books. There, you were not always under the magnifying glass of an angry, vindictive "god" or "his appointed elders."

The life-denying, mind-numbing, joy-killing cult made me superaware of how important and healing is humor, and childlike play. Now, as a writer/teacher, I try to apply those lessons every day. But still, it cannot really be denied, I wish that I had known a normal childhood, and often wonder how much richer this life could have been!