Member-only story
If the Cult was so Bad, Why Didn’t You Just Leave?
This is a question I’ve been asked several times. Allow me to answer it here.
At age 16, I had been searching for a way to make my life meaningful — a cause to devote myself to that would help others. When I met the friendly, happy hippies of the then Children of God, I felt my hopes had been answered. I could live like Jesus’ disciples lived in the Biblical Book of the Acts of the Apostles. Perfect! I had found my place!
I committed myself to serving God in the Children of God, come better or worse, till death do us part. I gave my word to God that I would serve Him “with all my heart, with all my soul, and with all my mind,” just as the sisters had taught me to pray in my Catholic preschool.
I devoted myself to studying the Bible and the writings of the Children of God’s prophet, David Berg, which we members considered an extension of the Bible — “God’s word for today,” we were taught.
I moved to the other side of the world, to be “a missionary.” Isolated from anyone or anything I had ever known, I was a stranger in a strange land. The cult commune became my safe refuge.
Then my parents died, cutting off the last vestige of connection I had with my former life. The Children of God had truly become my…
