In Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Harrison Ford’s character asks his father “What did you find Dad?” after the holy grail was lost. Sean Connery’s response was “Me? Illumination.”
Nearly everyone is looking for answers to the questions of life.
Over the last few months I have had an ongoing conversation with the young lady who cuts my hair. Beyond the small talk, we talk about faith. She is a relatively new follower of Christ and is excited about what she is learning and is looking for opportunities to discuss what is happening in her life and in her local church. When she talks I’ve heard a few comments that sound a little out of the ordinary, but nothing that was strangely out of place.
Recently someone gave her a used computer and she has discovered google and the internet. During her research she discovered that some consider her group to be at least somewhat cultish. While the Christian Faith seems to be biblical in its foundations, it focuses most of it attention on the teaching of a couple of individuals to the point that it appears to some that the founders carry greater weight than the teachings of Christ and the Bible. In this group there appears to be only one approved way to pray and studying the leader’s teachings are emphasized very strongly. It is not clearly a cult, but there are some real questions that should be answered.
She is asking questions. She really seems to desire real Illumination. Last week she described her group and asked me, “Does this sound like a cult to you?”. I responded with Paul’s words to the church in Corinth in 1 Corinthians 1:12,13:
“…each one of you says, I follow Paul, or I follow Apollos, or I follow Cephas, or I follow Christ. Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?”
It’s easy to follow a person who seems to have all the answers. The Truth is that a follower of Christ does exactly that. I have a number of people I trust in terms of spiritual guidance, but the test of their counsel or instruction must be in agreement with scripture. Otherwise, the foundation becomes more than a little unstable.
My friend is not the only person who may be receiving an incomplete or false gospel. But she is asking questions.
Years ago, when “church” was often a seven-days-a-week-event for us, my mother (or my sister-I can’t remember) called the pastor and suggested that we had the old-time holiness group into which we had bonded was a cult. I can well understand their fears. What we invested our lives into resembled nothing they considered “normal” and, to be truthful, along the way I questioned myself a time or two, not about Christ, but about the church. If our theology, while being Biblically based, isn’t “individually constructed” as we go, in other words, founded through a personal stumble taking us through life and all the religious mess that’s out there, while being groomed through a relationship with the reality of the Holy Ghost, I do think it possible to become not much more than a clone of someone else’s humanity….