UNITED STATES
Huffington Post
Micah J. Murray
You know it somewhere in your mind before your mouth will admit it.
We talked about how it was a cult, joking at first. Outsiders could point and accuse and question, but we knew that it wasn’t what it looked like. “Don’t worry,” we told ourselves. “We know it better than they do.”
I remember saying, more seriously than joking, “If this is brainwashing, it feels good to be brain clean.”
But as I spiraled closer and closer to to the center, the realization began to sink in. The jokes became real. “Cult-like”, sure. I’d call it that. Authoritarian, legalistic, overbearing. But not a real cult.
The worst thing about brainwashing is that you can’t see it for what it is. You never think you’re in a cult when you’re in a cult. Until the day you can’t deny the reality of what you’ve seen, what you lived. Until the day you speak out loud what your mind has known for a while, “I grew up in a cult.”
There’s barely a memory from the first twenty years of my life that isn’t run through by the thread of the cult.
We joined the Advanced Training Institute when I was in first grade. Bill Gothard’s materials were the foundation of my homeschooling curriculum for the next twelve years. The Institute’s books began to fill our shelves; their routine became part of our daily life.
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