The Problem with Cults

What is wrong with a religious cult is not that those in it are insincere or that the energy it attempts to access and contain is not real. The reverse is more true. What is wrong is that a cult, by its very definition, tries to access the divine, the real divine, without the proper mediation and reverence; tantamount to somebody sticking a knife into a 220-volt electrical socket, the effect is real, but you are fried to death. That is precisely what happens in a religious cult, as can be seen in what happened to David Koresh and his followers in Waco and to the members of the Solar Temple…