How Growing Up in a Religious Cult Prepared Me for a Pandemic
by Teresa Roberts
Twice during my lifetime, I’ve experienced a form of mandated social isolation. The first time took place at the beginning of my life. Many years later, it’s happening again. The first mandate was to spare my soul from eternal damnation. The current one is a required measure of safety in order to avoid being stricken by a virus during a world pandemic. Mythological predictions from a holy book influenced the first mandate, whereas science determines my current state of affairs.
I grew up socially isolated in a cult. I received my pandemic training in religious boot camp.
When I compare the two, however, my current situation is far more bearable. I can watch TV, read books, play games, and virtually communicate with friends all over the world. These small pleasures were off limits to me in childhood. But that’s not all. I grew up with more NOs than Yeses. Can I go barefoot in the grass? No. Can I dance? No. Can I have a boyfriend? No. Can I read another book besides the Bible? No. Can I buy a new dress? No. Can I hang out with friends? No. No. No.
How did I survive such a grim lifestyle?
Well, for starters, I knew nothing different. This was my normal, but an added enhancement technique influenced my responses. I lived under constant threat of going to hell. If I didn’t die and drop off into hell for going barefoot in the grass, then I could just as easily wake up one morning to discover that my entire family had been raptured in the middle of the night leaving me to suffer the Great Tribulations — alone. The myths of our cultures are a powerful means of controlling behaviors, no matter how ridiculous they may be. Obviously, I grew up in a subculture that identified with the mainstream notion that the Bible was truth but morphed into a unique version of religious extremism.
How do my former experiences make it easier for me to self-isolate now?
No doubt isolation feels familiar to me. After all, I’ve already gone through a more demanding version. I also understand consequences. And, although the dire consequences I was told I’d face in my childhood for mixing with the rest of the world were fictitious, my brain adapted to hearing the word NO attached to a consequence. If presented with an unpleasant but avoidable consequence, I’m usually able to adjust my behavior accordingly without a lot of unnecessary pissing and moaning. In fact, I’ve got to admit, it currently feels kind of good to see the consequences of this pandemic playing out in “real time” right before my very eyes. I could only experience the consequences of ignoring a religious mandate in the afterlife. I’m still waiting.
And then there’s the part about how today’s pandemic isolation is a luxurious experience compared to my former religious isolation. If we were to require modern Americans to sit in their houses with no TV, computer games, cell phones, or friends on the outside to communicate with, I think they’d lose their minds rather quickly. People aren’t accustomed to entertaining themselves.
I don’t meet many people who have grown up only hearing the word NO either.
Most have had outlets where they could indulge, even if it meant hiding those indulgences. Plus, modern society isn’t about sacrifice. When people are constantly told that they deserve to feel good, to go where they want, do what they want, and seek personal pleasures, they do so without guilt.
Oh, yes, that’s the emotion that seals the mandate for someone growing up in an extreme religion. Guilt.
Eventually, guilt dominates your perception of pleasure. I spent time in therapy trying to figure out a way to retrain my brain so I would no longer equate pleasure with guilt. I’ve still not totally succeeded. However, when I face the scientific facts about how a world pandemic is devastating communities, my well-conditioned response to avoid pleasure rises to meet the challenge required to sacrifice going to a bar in order to not spread the virus. That stuff is “easy peasy” for cult survivors. Why? You guessed it. Bars were prohibited.
By age twelve, I was already a world champion at practicing self-sacrifice.
Sometimes, I can’t believe that I’m right back where I started, although for different reasons. Occasionally, I become a bit resentful that this has been my lot in life not once but twice. It irritates me that unlike so many others, I can’t cavalierly ignore the mandated community health practices in order to indulge in a few harmless pleasures. I watch others throw caution to the wind for a beer in a pub or a dinner in a restaurant, and I see a rather predictable modern behavior. Frankly, it’s annoying. When I start to feel sorry for myself, however, I soon realize that what I’m experiencing now is the realities of LIFE. The death of over 300,000 people is nothing new to humankind. I don’t have to look back in history very far to recognize that we’ve been down this road before. In fact, it’s been these kinds of traumas that caused people to invent gods. They were looking for answers and thus created stories to help explain so much human suffering.
We now know that epilepsy is a neurological disorder, not demon possession, but our ancestors didn’t know that.
They had to struggle alone in the dark with their fears. The worst part was not being able to explain what was happening or why it was happening. Would it happen again and when? Was there anyway to stop it from happening? What had they done to deserve such terror? All of those unanswered questions drove them mad, so they invented stories and sat around their fires at night telling those stories to their children.
Our ancestors were constantly being confronted with the grim reaper.
It was nothing to give birth to ten children, only to turn around and bury four of them before they were old enough to start school. In the not so distant past, this kind of firsthand relationship with death was part of every person’s life.
Our modern world has removed the average citizen from having to witness death.
We’ve become estranged from the very idea of our own mortality. It’s easier to believe that the pandemic is a hoax. In order to convince people of the science behind this pandemic, they would need instead to see bodies stacked in alleys first or their friends and relatives dying at home without a morgue available to take them away. Because of the advancement of society in the last 150 years, it’s very difficult for modern humans to accept that Mother Nature can still whoop our asses. But she can and she does and she will again.
It’s at times like these that my childhood experiences finally come in handy.
I know how to entertain myself. I’m familiar with being alone and am comfortable with self-sacrifice. Saying no to myself isn’t an impossibly arduous task. I’ve lived through many NOs and survived. What makes this period of self-isolation different, however, is that there’s an end in sight and it doesn’t have to culminate with my death.
There are people working diligently to develop vaccines and treatments that will eliminate the current threat.
I won’t have to die in order to reap my reward in the next life, but in fact, my reward is that I will live longer because I was lucky enough to be born during the age of scientific discovery. I don’t have to depend on a mythical god to reward my sacrifice. My reward is knowing that by accepting my responsibilities, I help my community. Bravely going through this pandemic with the entire world will help humans to gather more knowledge so that hopefully we’ll be better able to manage the next pandemic. When I understand that here and now is what’s real and that the future of my children and their children is in the collective hands of humanity, then any sacrifice I choose to make is worth it.
Yes, I can do this! I can self-isolate, wash my hands, wear a mask and make daily sacrifices for the good of all.
I can do this because during my lifetime science continues to uncover the mysteries of the universe, making it easier for me to understand what’s going on. Do I wish that I’d been spared the first years of solitary confinement? Of course, I do. It was an unfortunate waste of a potentially precious time in my life — childhood. That little girl that was me will never get to run barefoot in the grass. I weep for her.
But as I watch people all around me struggling with the idea of social distancing, unable to see the big picture while feeling resentful and mistrustful, I recognize a sad truth about modern culture as well. We lack the foresight and stamina to sacrifice for the wellbeing of all. Even with a death toll of over 300,000 and climbing, we refuse to believe our scientists. We also lack the historical perspective needed to appreciate having been born in an unprecedented time of scientific progress. We’re pleasure seekers who demand instant gratification and cavemen with cell phones.
That makes me sadder than not being able to walk barefoot in the grass.
