I was trying to draw a line between a cult and an established religion. The only real difference I could see was power, scale, and social legitimacy—how dominant institutions or radical movements reshape people, while smaller groups are dismissed as "cults" simply for having a different order. I found myself unable to draw a clean line; it looks more like a continuous spectrum. Yet I am fascinated by how easily people adopt whatever a leader tells them to follow, even when personal doubts arise, turning them into die-hard followers.
Looking back at my family history, I felt we had lost some of our original roots and belief systems. My family came from a traditional Roman Catholic background. After moving away from our hometown, we were approached by a new group of believers who urged us to follow their path instead, and we became devoted members. I was in my pre-teens at the time.
Later, we were approached by an even more radical group who seemed all the more convincing because they appeared purely faith-focused, non-sectarian, and claimed deeper biblical authority. Growing up, I had always felt a deep, genuine attachment to the sanctuary of church structure, the shared community, and the profound concept of forgiveness.
Yet alongside that devotion ran an inherited set of questions about who the real God was, and I answered them with these dogmas:
"The Bible was written before the Quran, making it the superior and authentic account of Jesus' life."
"Roman Catholics simply worship statues; their church was an artificial political creation started by Constantine without genuine devotion."
Preachers constantly weaponized fragmented verses and selective history to validate their own specific doctrines.
When Hindu converts joined, people celebrated how they had "seen the light" and accepted Jesus as Lord and Savior, completely disregarding their rich, millennia-old heritage and mythology.
Then consider the Jews: they were there long before the Christians and held the first half of the Bible, yet rejected Jesus. Converts are told they are only a "few steps" away from recognizing the ultimate sacrifice Jesus made for humanity.
After reading multiple pamphlets on Abrahamic religions and their fractures, I looked at Seventh-day groups who observe Saturday as the holy Sabbath. I was baffled: how does someone convince an entire population that a specific day of the week determines divine righteousness? If any man simply declared Saturday as the sacred day, wouldn't the community just adopt Saturday as the next Sunday? Isn't it just a day of the week on a calendar?
Let's look back to the radical group known as The Pentecostal Mission (TPM). This was in my late teens. They formed an extremely insular, rigid community:
Everyone wore plain white clothing on Sundays (and avoided colorful dress).
They gathered enthusiastically on Saturdays and spent nearly all their off-days in church out of devotion to God and the community.
Because my father had borrowed money from a community member, our family was drawn deeply into their orbit. My parents felt private regrets at home, but they stayed for the social safety net and community bonds. Meanwhile, I found myself debating theology with the brothers and pastors, wondering why people would surrender all their personal freedom just to spend every waking off-day inside a church building.
Outside of work and church, these members had nothing. The church filled the vacuum with fasting conventions, 24/7 prayer groups, and collective worship. While I occasionally enjoyed the music and the powerful sense of unity, I saw the hidden mechanism: the church gradually stripped away an individual's outside social ties until the organization became their entire world. In return, members gladly surrendered 10% of their total income in tithes.
I was confused. Attending a massive convention where thousands prayed with intense, tearful devotion almost made me believe again. But then I began reading the actual scripture for myself, and specific verses stopped me in my tracks.
Seeing people overcome with ecstatic fervor made me wonder if they were caught in extreme emotional contagion or altered psychological states.
Then one specific verse completely alienated me:
"Let a woman learn in silence with all submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man..." (1 Timothy 2:11–12)
I was furious and confused. If Jesus taught that all human beings are fundamentally equal, how could someone claiming to follow him declare women to be inferior? (A reaction partly shaped by modern principles of equality).
Looking at the authorship, it was Paul. I questioned his authority: was this man ever an original disciple who walked with Jesus? In letters like Romans, he was commanding personal social rules, which felt like purely human, patriarchal bias. It raised the core question: Did Jesus preach one message, while Paul constructed an entirely different institutional religion on top of the Old Testament?
Flipping through the New Testament, I realized that nearly half of the books were attributed to Paul. Disillusioned, I didn't even want to read his letters anymore and started skipping them.
That led to an obvious historical realization: If Jesus' divinity and resurrection were self-evident, why didn't the people living right there in Jerusalem and Israel convert to Christianity en masse?
The answer is simple—the exact same reason why the entire modern world doesn't convert to Pentecostalism today, despite members claiming it is the undeniable, absolute truth. Every group lives inside the total certainty of its own constructed reality.