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- Verified Buyer
If you are an atheist, this book is for you. If not, get ready to be mocked - not because you are in a cult but because you have faith in a higher power. Whoever you are, get ready to be disappointed that the actual details of life in a cult is not the point of this book. Figuring out what the point is, however, isn’t an easy task. This book does have funny moments at first but I had a hard time laughing. It is absurd to consider the things brainwashed people will allow themselves to believe, however to mock them seems cruel. You are talking about victims of deep spiritual abuse and mind control. While she notes that she doesn’t see herself as a victim because she walked into it willingly despite warnings from others, many of the others she mentions and mocks were born into it. Book seems to be lacking empathy - this seems to be the point. But reading other accounts from folks who have gone through this and how they have recovered causes me to wonder if this person still needs a great deal of healing. While it’s clear that her intention is to relay in a funny manner the theology of the cult she was in, she branches out to mock other religions and sects as well. This would be ok if she had her facts straight, but it’s obvious that her knowledge of Christianity and Judaism are lacking. She’ll mock a story from the Bible making fun of the “silly” interpretation her cult had of that story, perhaps not recognizing that Christians and/or Jews hold the same interpretation. At other times, she’ll give an interpretation of a Bible story that her cult believed, but she’ll say, “The Old Testament teaches...” not recognizing that Christians and Jews don’t believe that the Old Testament teaches that thing, that is just a silly belief from her cult. At one point she starts off saying, “Young Earth Creationists believe...” then describes end of the millennium doomsday doctrine that is only specific to polygamous Mormon cults and that not one young earth creationist Christian, Jew, Muslim, or LDS Mormon believes. Does she not realize that there are both young earthers and old earthers within these major religions? So it seems that what starts out as a lighthearted humorous look at polygamy in a cult is actually a vehicle to mock God, religion, theists, the Bible. I want to know what happened to her but the book as some have noted does get boring because she moves away so often from telling her story to make blanket statements about what this group or that group believes. These boring rants and jokes about God and religion could have been replaced with more specific stories from her own experience. But it does seem like she’s leaving something out and maybe that’s the intention. Still wonder why she can’t tell the reader more of her real feelings during these experiences. It’s hard to believe as the reader that she lived through what she did and only ever had light hearted thoughts or made jokes about the whole thing. She mentions years of seeing psychologists so I imagine there was quite a bit she did need to work through. Seems as if she could have included a little more depth and vulnerability with the reader there while still maintaining the humor. Many people who leave cults do become atheists, and likewise many join various religions. So there’s nothing wrong with her sharing a bit about choosing atheism and even finding sanity in atheism. But she at several places in her book treats the idea of a higher power as if it’s just as absurd as being entangled in a cult. She mocks both. At the end of it I’m scratching my head and wondering why she wrote this book. Is she wanting to help people in any way, was this purely to entertain the curious, or is this written to laugh at all those who believe in God? It’s hard to see how this might help someone. Someone imprisoned in a cult who reads Irene Spencer’s books, for example, which are full of both humor and empathy, might make the decision to leave, but not so much here. People in cults generally believe that everyone on the outside is evil or against them and doesn’t care about them - those ideas may only be reinforced by reading this book because the person on the inside who reads this would feel scorned and mocked. So maybe the book wasn’t intended for those on the inside, but even so, a reader on the outside may have experienced spiritual abuse or be in a controlling relationship, and there is such a missed opportunity here to help others. She wouldn’t have needed to sacrifice the humor to include some empathy. If she wrote it to entertain the curious, then why not include more stories and specific details of life in the cult? At the end of the book, I’m kind of leaning toward the idea that the intention here is primarily to laugh at all those who believe in God, whether they are in a cult or not. The title and promise that the reader would dive into the world of a cult sells the book, but with the lack of details and the jokes about not only the absurd beliefs of her cult but also the jokes about numerous points of regular theology that many religions adhere to, the theme of the entire book is more anti-God than anti-Cult. She mentions that some in her own family felt that her book also mocked LDS Mormonism, but I’m not certain if she realizes that many Christians, Jews, and Muslims might also be offended by much of the content. There could have been two separate books. One - detailing life in a cult and telling the readers how crazy, absurd, dangerous cults are and then Two - a book that argues for atheism and against the idea of a higher power from a humorous perspective. That way she could attract the correct set of readers for each topic. As a reader with this one I feel a little ripped off - it’s marketed one way and then in the middle of it you find out it’s something else.