Anyway, it features a guy who left his well paid finance job to go dedicate his life to working at the Kalighat Home for the Dying. The whole movie is inspiring, but that particular section stuck with me.
It's stories like this article and the one in the movie I mentioned that make me excited for later life. Although, sometimes I think I should do it today...
I had a Déjà vu reading this BBC article because it is so close to the original Twitter thread, which appeared on my timeline a few days ago, that in my opinion it is borderline plagiarism. At least the BBC had the decency to link to the original source which most other newspapers never do nowadays.
To save you the detour to the BBC website here is the original:
I think the problem could have been avoided if she had entered a less strict convent/order (I imagine such a thing exists). That way she could devote her life to it yet still have visiting rights under normal conditions.
As an anecdote/aside, I have a long time friend who - when we met - wasn't religious or spiritual in any outwardly noticeable way. She had a handful of interests, enjoyed discussing many life topics, and had a well-paying sales job with a good company. As the years went on, she had three kids from unhealthy romantic relationships, became more and more spiritual and gave up her job to start a part-time, new age micro business. Not only did her income go way, way down to the point that she constantly struggles to pay her bills, but everything she says is spiritually-motivated. In a real sense, she stopped being a person and became a mouth-piece of her spiritual beliefs. I recently realized she's no different than a monk or a nun (whose beliefs are weaved into everything they say), only she still lives in the real world.
As a result of all this, our deep and diverse weekly discussions became less and less frequent (to the point of being almost non-existent), not to mention extremely unidimensional. She might as well have gone to live in a convent because I lost my friend all the same. Am I happy she's happy doing what she loves? Sure, but I also mourn the almost complete loss of the person I knew.
> no different than a monk or a nun (whose beliefs are weaved into everything they say)
How many monks or nuns have you know? I grew up going to Catholic schools, and can assure you that monks, nun, and priests are real people who have real conversation. Maybe not the ones who choose to join the specific order the woman from the article joined, but in general, yes.
I can sympathize that your friend grew apart from you. I've had friends do the same. But that is life. It would be short-sighted to write off entire groups of people because of one person's experience.
The Jesuit Guide to Almost Everything by James Martin is autobiographical and tells about his experience going from a Wharton MBA, accountant at GE making a lot of money to becoming a priest; sitting in a hot room in Haiti with bugs inside to take care of the sick and poor.
It really hit home with me because it was my dream to get a Wharton MBA. Then he says his balance would be higher at the ATM every week but it felt very meaningless. There’s also an interesting side story about the psychopaths (my word) in management at GE.
I am torn on this. On one hand I applaud someone who follows their dream in spite of societal pressures.
On the other hand, she only saw her son twice in 30 years. I would be pretty upset at my mom if she did that, and I can’t imagine doing that to my kids. Not meeting my grandkids, even though I am still alive? That is unimaginable to me.
It may be shocking, but this is often what happens when people discover their monastic calling in adulthood. Buddha famously abandoned his wife and infant son when he decided to pursue his path.
Furthermore, some people have little contact with their children for even weaker reasons. The fact is that we are inclined to judge women harshly for actions which would hardly seem remarkable for, say, a male rock star.
Eh, my mom's not 60 yet - but I wouldn't be mad at her if she did something like this (not that she ever would). I think parents are entitled to be individuals, especially if they've already fulfilled the core parental duties of raising their own children. They don't owe their kids anything else after that.
It sounds like you probably have a fairly healthy and loving relationship with your mother. Not all family relationships are that way whether at the fault of the parents, children or both. I recommend not projecting your family history on to others and judging them based upon it.
Some parents and some children don't deserve to be seen more than twice in 30 years. Some children should never suffer being exposed to their grandparents.
> I would be pretty upset at my mom if she did that, and I can’t imagine doing that to my kids.
Are you or your kids Catholic? I mean... some parents would be upset if their children decided to become vowed celibates, but if you're Catholic, and all your children decided to do this, you may be able to be happy. I am honestly shocked here that Hacker News is responding to this happening as if it is taking place in secular society, when the entire family seems religious.
She did see some grandchildren - tbh, with so many children, keeping track of every single one of their spawn would be hard even for a normal person.
Also, from back-of-envelop calculations, by the time she joined the convent her youngest child was in their 30s, the oldest in her 40s. It's not too different, in practice, from entering a hospice because of health issues.
Life does not revolve around a child, especially when you have several. Grandchildren even less.
A parent roamed the earth with their own desires and business long before a child came into the world. Children may feel they are the most important thing in a parent’s life because they are constantly fed, watered, and sheltered without fail, and they have known their parent their whole life. But a child is only a small phase of a parent’s life, a small piece of a larger plan, or sometimes no plan at all.
I'm not torn at all. I find it reprehensible, and I am genuinely surprised that more of the comments here don't find that behavior horrible. There is nothing noble about having 10 kids, then cutting them out of your life once their other parent died. I mean, wtf.
What a remarkable, long-lived life! It's common to turn one's attention to spiritual pursuits in one's old age, but a full third of one's life is very long and unusual indeed.
It is amazing that she could do such a radical change overnight, that too at an older age. Like, how can one go from luxurious lifestyle to sleeping on the floor overnight? Most people would have trouble giving up their luxuries for a couple of days.
Not to downplay her commitment, but given she joined immediately after her husband died, perhaps she wasn’t thinking it was going to be for a full third of her life when she started.
Alot of these comments seem to be some form of trying to justify her decision as not being unique or spiritually inspired. I would encourage you to let things be what they are and not over analyze them
I wish the article delved more into the rich spiritual life that these people have. The article dwells on the material goods and lavish lifestyle and abruptly shoves up the fact that she abandoned it all - almost as if the author can't believe it herself!
Recently I passed the Philadelphia downtown and noticed an amish family selling flowers from their truck. A large crowd gathered and wondered at the sight of the industrious family in 19th century garb. It's a sight unlike many city-dwellers, especially young people, get to see: chastity, family, religious devotion. People of today are so used to living in a culture that tells them owning more, having sex and expressing "your identity" is the path to happiness that many become stumped when shown this amish family doing business in a world so totally different than their own.
I love it. This is diversity of thought and lifestyle. In comparison, modern culture is extremely homogeneous and boring. I appreciate the witness of Ann Russel as a person who shows us that there's more to life than what we can see and touch, and that there's great joy in seeking spiritual union with God.
I find the concept of pleasure oppression to be interesting. Essentially, the idea is that puritanical roots teach us that things that are pleasurable must be sinful and wrong, and that the oppression is felt most strongly by marginalized groups.
Your positive manifestation of the simple life is living like the Amish. What you’ve omitted is the fact that the Amish/Mennonite societies run as authoritarian patriarchies, where the bishop figure and head of household (the husband) have the final word.
I think there is a misconception that religious people have about the non-religious where they assume non-religious people are living a life of consumerism and materialism in lieu of God.
Ultimately, those concepts aren’t related: believing in a particular brand of God isn’t a prerequisite to helping one another and living a life of service to others. The non-religious just don’t accept biblical stories as fact, and they might believe that any sort of afterlife is not a realistic expectation.
The religious and non-religious alike live within a wide spectrum of materialism. There are certainly materialistic Christians and materialistic atheists, but there are also the opposite.
Locking yourself in a self-imposed religious prison for 30 years is on the extreme end of the spectrum. The reason it’s a news article is because it’s an incredibly rare, strange thing to do. In my opinion, this reputation of strangeness is rightfully deserved.
Compared to everyone who is not a member of those communities, perhaps. But for the people who grow inside those communities, there's no diversity, the nail that sticks up is hammered down and everyone is just like everyone else. After all, those are religious cults that actively discourage diversity and encourage conformity to the community's norms.
I feel a little bit sorry for the woman's kids and grandkids, because having nearby grandparents, and specifically grandmothers, in your life seems to confer certain advantages in natural selection. [0]
Just this morning my wife and I were talking, almost excitedly, about what our last "job" will be: Helping to raise our grandkids, if and when we have any (in the not-too-distant future, perhaps).
- In the grandkids' infancy: Doing lots of playing, talking, laughing, reading to them, and other interaction with the little buggers, to help their brains develop.
- From their births onward: Being sources of patient, calm, unqualified love, taking delight in their mere existence (but always deferring to their parents). Giving their parents a break in childcare duties from time to time.
And of course your own kids are your kids forever. My parents and in-laws are long gone, yet even now I sometimes catch myself thinking, hmm, I should ask Mom and Dad about that. My wife has said much the same thing. We both want to be around for our own kids for as long as we're able and not a burden.
We're both really looking forward to being grandparents. It gives us a(nother) reason to continue eating right and getting lots of exercise to stay in shape: We want to be physically up to the task for as long as we can manage it.
Reminds me of Dolores Hart (who is now an abbess, IIRC).
I can't say the comments here shock me, exactly, but they certainly are revealing. Specifically, so many of them pass judgement on this woman as if she had done something terrible and project their own categories onto her, characterizing this, without the slightest shred of evidence, as somehow sad. How lost one must be to claim such a thing!
Sister Mary Joseph had only chosen to be a Carmelite nun after her husband had died and her children had grown up. She had no dependents or husbands for whom or to whom she was responsible anymore. She was not a single mother who had somehow abandoned her children. Would she miss her children? Probably, but she found a higher calling for which she sacrificed such contact and there is no higher calling than the religious life. In her case, she clearly felt called to devote herself in this particular way. I have no reason to presume that she didn't know what she was getting herself into (besides, religious orders do not simply let anybody in who isn't serious or even qualified in basic ways). Do her children miss her? Arguably, yes, but if they remain in the faith and see the world through a Catholic lens, they are likely to be joyful about having pursued this calling. There is nothing sad about it. It is a very joyful and wonderful thing. It is inspiring.
Catholics (not of the cafeteria variety, anyway) find happiness in sacrificing lesser goods for higher goods and in the sanctification that comes with the suffering life will inevitably inflict on us. So let's just say she didn't join the order to be comfortable, but to grow spiritually in a particularly austere order. If you aren't Catholic, this may not make much sense to you. Someone who is a slave to comfort and whose horizons are severely limited and parochial will think this is downright crazy. But the Catholic understanding of reality, of Man, and of God imparts a vertical dimension and a breadth that is absent otherwise. Catholic anthropology is not reductive, and Man, after all, does not live by bread alone.
You make it sound like she was forced to do this. There's nothing in Christianity that forces you to give your money to the Church or to become a nun. You do this on your own free will.
A religion is the embodiment of spiritual principle.
A cult is an institution which exists to empower and enrich leadership structure of the cult.
Given the infallibility of humans, there can be lot of cultishness in religion.
Paradoxically, a lot of cult members are actually true believers, often trying to - and doing - quite some good, meaning there can in many cases be some good 'conscientious externalizations' of even some otherwise crappy cults. This is harder to grasp but it's real.
There are many otherwise secular groups that exist in this sphere especially among 1) ideologically oriented groups - and 2) corporations. My personal exposure to these kinds of environments triggers that 'weird feeling' whenever I visit such-and-such campus, in the Silicon Valley and elsewhere.
There are political organizations, even 'nice ones' in 'nice countries' that take children, not even teens, off in isolation to places like 'camps on islands' to 'teach them their values'. Because of the lack of obvious religious artifacts, it doesn't set of the usual triggers, but when taking a more holistic view ... it seems a bit unhealthy.
Even more meta, it seems to me that cultures that have very deep and complex behavioural patterns, idioms, norms, language structure etc. exhibit a lot of the same attributes.
You could go so far as to point at many 'major cultures' ... but to be a little less controversial, my experience with both Amish and Mennonite community certainly has elements of this. But I reserve judgment. It's complicated. And also they are some of the most inconceivably kind people on the planet. FYI they are effectively pacifists, as 'God's Children should not take up arms against one another' etc. - they won't join the Army.
Edit: from a purely secular perspective, where the notion of 'there being a god or not' or where 'beliefs' etc. irrelevant ... than really what is the difference between the Soviet Union, for example, and a cult? They exhibit all of the same artifacts. The only difference being, in some cults, there might be some kind of supernatural extra beliefs to go along with it. Stalin used (perverted?) a secular ideology in the same way as a cult would use their own system of beliefs. 99% of the resulting systematic and authoritarian externalizations have nothing to do with the 'core beliefs' in both cases.
Edit 2: whether 'core principles' are ideological, spiritual, corporatist, nationalist, or even cultural, you get a lot of the same type of group dynamics forming.
I think she had her priorities a little mixed up. When you have a son, your duty, your number one priority, is him. Abandoning your child is a crime against humanity.
[+] [-] neom|4 years ago|reply
Anyway, it features a guy who left his well paid finance job to go dedicate his life to working at the Kalighat Home for the Dying. The whole movie is inspiring, but that particular section stuck with me.
It's stories like this article and the one in the movie I mentioned that make me excited for later life. Although, sometimes I think I should do it today...
[+] [-] kQq9oHeAz6wLLS|4 years ago|reply
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katie_Davis_(missionary)
[+] [-] pstuart|4 years ago|reply
The trick is to be excited for today. Of course that's much easier said than done ;-)
[+] [-] weinzierl|4 years ago|reply
To save you the detour to the BBC website here is the original:
https://twitter.com/4t9ner/status/1401458601462403077?s=21
[+] [-] personlurking|4 years ago|reply
As an anecdote/aside, I have a long time friend who - when we met - wasn't religious or spiritual in any outwardly noticeable way. She had a handful of interests, enjoyed discussing many life topics, and had a well-paying sales job with a good company. As the years went on, she had three kids from unhealthy romantic relationships, became more and more spiritual and gave up her job to start a part-time, new age micro business. Not only did her income go way, way down to the point that she constantly struggles to pay her bills, but everything she says is spiritually-motivated. In a real sense, she stopped being a person and became a mouth-piece of her spiritual beliefs. I recently realized she's no different than a monk or a nun (whose beliefs are weaved into everything they say), only she still lives in the real world.
As a result of all this, our deep and diverse weekly discussions became less and less frequent (to the point of being almost non-existent), not to mention extremely unidimensional. She might as well have gone to live in a convent because I lost my friend all the same. Am I happy she's happy doing what she loves? Sure, but I also mourn the almost complete loss of the person I knew.
[+] [-] codingdave|4 years ago|reply
How many monks or nuns have you know? I grew up going to Catholic schools, and can assure you that monks, nun, and priests are real people who have real conversation. Maybe not the ones who choose to join the specific order the woman from the article joined, but in general, yes.
I can sympathize that your friend grew apart from you. I've had friends do the same. But that is life. It would be short-sighted to write off entire groups of people because of one person's experience.
[+] [-] dragonwriter|4 years ago|reply
Non-cloistered orders not only exist, but are the largest for both men and women.
[+] [-] DavidPeiffer|4 years ago|reply
https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/deathsexmoney/episodes/...
[+] [-] user3939382|4 years ago|reply
It really hit home with me because it was my dream to get a Wharton MBA. Then he says his balance would be higher at the ATM every week but it felt very meaningless. There’s also an interesting side story about the psychopaths (my word) in management at GE.
[+] [-] cortesoft|4 years ago|reply
On the other hand, she only saw her son twice in 30 years. I would be pretty upset at my mom if she did that, and I can’t imagine doing that to my kids. Not meeting my grandkids, even though I am still alive? That is unimaginable to me.
[+] [-] xenocyon|4 years ago|reply
Furthermore, some people have little contact with their children for even weaker reasons. The fact is that we are inclined to judge women harshly for actions which would hardly seem remarkable for, say, a male rock star.
[+] [-] sudosteph|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tssva|4 years ago|reply
Some parents and some children don't deserve to be seen more than twice in 30 years. Some children should never suffer being exposed to their grandparents.
[+] [-] iammisc|4 years ago|reply
Are you or your kids Catholic? I mean... some parents would be upset if their children decided to become vowed celibates, but if you're Catholic, and all your children decided to do this, you may be able to be happy. I am honestly shocked here that Hacker News is responding to this happening as if it is taking place in secular society, when the entire family seems religious.
[+] [-] chairmanwow1|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thih9|4 years ago|reply
I’m very surprised at this reaction. I feel like the right approach would be to respect her right to make a personal decisions.
[+] [-] swman|4 years ago|reply
Doesn’t matter who they are to me, but life is complicated and ultimately it’s easier to just be understanding and let go.
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] toyg|4 years ago|reply
Also, from back-of-envelop calculations, by the time she joined the convent her youngest child was in their 30s, the oldest in her 40s. It's not too different, in practice, from entering a hospice because of health issues.
[+] [-] xwdv|4 years ago|reply
A parent roamed the earth with their own desires and business long before a child came into the world. Children may feel they are the most important thing in a parent’s life because they are constantly fed, watered, and sheltered without fail, and they have known their parent their whole life. But a child is only a small phase of a parent’s life, a small piece of a larger plan, or sometimes no plan at all.
[+] [-] Baeocystin|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mattbee|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] canadianfella|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] xwolfi|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] TMWNN|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] rmk|4 years ago|reply
An excellent human interest story!
[+] [-] akudha|4 years ago|reply
Incredible!
[+] [-] tw04|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nautilus12|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] agomez314|4 years ago|reply
Recently I passed the Philadelphia downtown and noticed an amish family selling flowers from their truck. A large crowd gathered and wondered at the sight of the industrious family in 19th century garb. It's a sight unlike many city-dwellers, especially young people, get to see: chastity, family, religious devotion. People of today are so used to living in a culture that tells them owning more, having sex and expressing "your identity" is the path to happiness that many become stumped when shown this amish family doing business in a world so totally different than their own.
I love it. This is diversity of thought and lifestyle. In comparison, modern culture is extremely homogeneous and boring. I appreciate the witness of Ann Russel as a person who shows us that there's more to life than what we can see and touch, and that there's great joy in seeking spiritual union with God.
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] dangus|4 years ago|reply
https://thefederalist.com/2019/10/18/gender-studies-professo...
I find the concept of pleasure oppression to be interesting. Essentially, the idea is that puritanical roots teach us that things that are pleasurable must be sinful and wrong, and that the oppression is felt most strongly by marginalized groups.
Your positive manifestation of the simple life is living like the Amish. What you’ve omitted is the fact that the Amish/Mennonite societies run as authoritarian patriarchies, where the bishop figure and head of household (the husband) have the final word.
I think there is a misconception that religious people have about the non-religious where they assume non-religious people are living a life of consumerism and materialism in lieu of God.
Ultimately, those concepts aren’t related: believing in a particular brand of God isn’t a prerequisite to helping one another and living a life of service to others. The non-religious just don’t accept biblical stories as fact, and they might believe that any sort of afterlife is not a realistic expectation.
The religious and non-religious alike live within a wide spectrum of materialism. There are certainly materialistic Christians and materialistic atheists, but there are also the opposite.
Locking yourself in a self-imposed religious prison for 30 years is on the extreme end of the spectrum. The reason it’s a news article is because it’s an incredibly rare, strange thing to do. In my opinion, this reputation of strangeness is rightfully deserved.
[+] [-] cheese_goddess|4 years ago|reply
Compared to everyone who is not a member of those communities, perhaps. But for the people who grow inside those communities, there's no diversity, the nail that sticks up is hammered down and everyone is just like everyone else. After all, those are religious cults that actively discourage diversity and encourage conformity to the community's norms.
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] lurquer|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dctoedt|4 years ago|reply
Just this morning my wife and I were talking, almost excitedly, about what our last "job" will be: Helping to raise our grandkids, if and when we have any (in the not-too-distant future, perhaps).
- In the grandkids' infancy: Doing lots of playing, talking, laughing, reading to them, and other interaction with the little buggers, to help their brains develop.
- From their births onward: Being sources of patient, calm, unqualified love, taking delight in their mere existence (but always deferring to their parents). Giving their parents a break in childcare duties from time to time.
And of course your own kids are your kids forever. My parents and in-laws are long gone, yet even now I sometimes catch myself thinking, hmm, I should ask Mom and Dad about that. My wife has said much the same thing. We both want to be around for our own kids for as long as we're able and not a burden.
We're both really looking forward to being grandparents. It gives us a(nother) reason to continue eating right and getting lots of exercise to stay in shape: We want to be physically up to the task for as long as we can manage it.
[0] https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/02/07/6920883...
[+] [-] bobthechef|4 years ago|reply
I can't say the comments here shock me, exactly, but they certainly are revealing. Specifically, so many of them pass judgement on this woman as if she had done something terrible and project their own categories onto her, characterizing this, without the slightest shred of evidence, as somehow sad. How lost one must be to claim such a thing!
Sister Mary Joseph had only chosen to be a Carmelite nun after her husband had died and her children had grown up. She had no dependents or husbands for whom or to whom she was responsible anymore. She was not a single mother who had somehow abandoned her children. Would she miss her children? Probably, but she found a higher calling for which she sacrificed such contact and there is no higher calling than the religious life. In her case, she clearly felt called to devote herself in this particular way. I have no reason to presume that she didn't know what she was getting herself into (besides, religious orders do not simply let anybody in who isn't serious or even qualified in basic ways). Do her children miss her? Arguably, yes, but if they remain in the faith and see the world through a Catholic lens, they are likely to be joyful about having pursued this calling. There is nothing sad about it. It is a very joyful and wonderful thing. It is inspiring.
Catholics (not of the cafeteria variety, anyway) find happiness in sacrificing lesser goods for higher goods and in the sanctification that comes with the suffering life will inevitably inflict on us. So let's just say she didn't join the order to be comfortable, but to grow spiritually in a particularly austere order. If you aren't Catholic, this may not make much sense to you. Someone who is a slave to comfort and whose horizons are severely limited and parochial will think this is downright crazy. But the Catholic understanding of reality, of Man, and of God imparts a vertical dimension and a breadth that is absent otherwise. Catholic anthropology is not reductive, and Man, after all, does not live by bread alone.
[+] [-] imwillofficial|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pyuser583|4 years ago|reply
I’ve had dinner at that Hilton several times.
[+] [-] premium-komodo|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] FounderBurr|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Thorrez|4 years ago|reply
Do you have a source for this? I don't see it in the article.
>and it was then she began the long, considered bid to join one of the strictest orders of nuns in the world.
It sounds like it was hard for her to get in, and the group is fairly exclusive. I think cults try to get people to join by making it easy to join.
[+] [-] anonu|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ekianjo|4 years ago|reply
You are assuming she had no choice to leave.
[+] [-] iammisc|4 years ago|reply
Because she could leave if she wanted to? Nuns leave somewhat frequently (so do priests). No one is stopping them.
The idea of giving all your stuff away to follow God is something people choose willingly.
[+] [-] jollybean|4 years ago|reply
A cult is an institution which exists to empower and enrich leadership structure of the cult.
Given the infallibility of humans, there can be lot of cultishness in religion.
Paradoxically, a lot of cult members are actually true believers, often trying to - and doing - quite some good, meaning there can in many cases be some good 'conscientious externalizations' of even some otherwise crappy cults. This is harder to grasp but it's real.
There are many otherwise secular groups that exist in this sphere especially among 1) ideologically oriented groups - and 2) corporations. My personal exposure to these kinds of environments triggers that 'weird feeling' whenever I visit such-and-such campus, in the Silicon Valley and elsewhere.
There are political organizations, even 'nice ones' in 'nice countries' that take children, not even teens, off in isolation to places like 'camps on islands' to 'teach them their values'. Because of the lack of obvious religious artifacts, it doesn't set of the usual triggers, but when taking a more holistic view ... it seems a bit unhealthy.
Even more meta, it seems to me that cultures that have very deep and complex behavioural patterns, idioms, norms, language structure etc. exhibit a lot of the same attributes.
You could go so far as to point at many 'major cultures' ... but to be a little less controversial, my experience with both Amish and Mennonite community certainly has elements of this. But I reserve judgment. It's complicated. And also they are some of the most inconceivably kind people on the planet. FYI they are effectively pacifists, as 'God's Children should not take up arms against one another' etc. - they won't join the Army.
Edit: from a purely secular perspective, where the notion of 'there being a god or not' or where 'beliefs' etc. irrelevant ... than really what is the difference between the Soviet Union, for example, and a cult? They exhibit all of the same artifacts. The only difference being, in some cults, there might be some kind of supernatural extra beliefs to go along with it. Stalin used (perverted?) a secular ideology in the same way as a cult would use their own system of beliefs. 99% of the resulting systematic and authoritarian externalizations have nothing to do with the 'core beliefs' in both cases.
Edit 2: whether 'core principles' are ideological, spiritual, corporatist, nationalist, or even cultural, you get a lot of the same type of group dynamics forming.
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] draw_down|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] VoodooJuJu|4 years ago|reply