What is it like to be a cult member? Is it rewarding?

It's all tied up with guilt and anxiousness that you might do something wrong. I used to attend a youth group that started leaning more and more into cult realm - I bailed before they started talking about sneakers and kool-aid. The group wasn't part of my church, it was part of a small-town church that my friend attended. She was adopted, and her adoptive parents made her home-school and said she could only hang out with her friends if they came to her church. My parents said I couldn't go to church, but I could go to youth group (I was 14 when this all started). It started getting really weird - we watched a documentary about how rock and roll is evil, and they tried to get me to smash my Sgt Pepper's tape I had in my car. I wouldn't do it, because it was my dad's and I knew he would be pissed! They had me convinced my family was going to hell if I didn't get them to start listening exclusively to the Christian radio station. They told me I had the wrong version of the bible, and wanted me to buy a different version from them. They started demanding more and more time - meetings went from one night a week to three, then we were sleeping over at the church on the weekends and traveling out of town for a week to conferences. The conferences were some scary bs - hundreds of people all brainwashed and crying because they've sinned so much against Jesus or whatever. Like I said, it wasn't an extreme cult, but it got to the place where I was definitely brainwashed and my parents were freaking out. I finally got out, but the whole experience really ruined my feelings about religion. Not my feelings about God - I still consider myself spiritual, but I refuse to follow any of that dogmatic crap anymore.

I might agree CONUNDRUM: Over one million million Witnesses have left ago 15 years. There isn't any knowledge at the children born to Witnesses and under no circumstances obtained baptized or the "Bible experiences" that under no circumstances advanced to baptism. By the way in which, a truth no JW can deny and all ex JW's will affirm, is that the overpowering quantity of individuals who begin finding out the Bible with the Witnesses don't get baptised and in outcome reject the faith. Also, the rationale plenty of individuals did not comply with Franz is that the ones people who have been Witnesses while he left did not recognise some thing approximately him, his publication or why he left. The Society does now not put up those forms of main points. If that they had, might plenty of Witnesses have left? Yes however, most often now not immediately. The danger of disfellowshipping and shunning may be very strong. The man at Bethel who invented that obtained a significant bonus.

any religion is a cult,the words have the same meaning

and generally a cult is a religion that is not yours

you should specify witch religion your referring to for a answer if the cult is rewarding

not as rewarding as being a club card member.

It's like having an extended family. I can see how that would be appealing.