In a time when truth can sound a lot like confidence, the most dangerous lies are those dressed in faith. We have seen it before. Leaders who sound so certain you start second-guessing yourself. Followers so committed they would endure anything if promised salvation. It is not a new story—just repeated in different forms: a “savior,” a set of rules called divine, and people too drawn in to question.
What makes people surrender that deeply? As development studies expert Jayeel Cornelio explains, it starts with longing. People are searching—for meaning, for connection, for healing. They’re welcomed, gradually isolated, and made to believe they finally belong. In time, doubt feels like betrayal, and the leader is no longer questioned.
I once read about a former follower online. She was intelligent and articulate. Still, she woke up one day living in isolation, cut off from family, giving her earnings to support a “mission.” Her turning point? Her five-year-old daughter asking why they could not visit lola anymore. It shook her. Not the rituals. Not the sermons. But a child’s innocent question. Because sometimes the truth does not shout. It whispers.
And maybe that is why moments like this Lenten Season quietly matter. Not because they are louder, but because they ask us to slow down. To listen more closely. To notice the small questions we often ignore—the ones that gently pull us back to what is real.
As an educator, I have seen how blind allegiance quietly shows up in the classroom. A student once wrote that their leader had “healed the sick by prayer alone,” offering no source but belief. I paused—not to correct the faith, but to ask where the thinking was. I marked it not for the belief, but for the lack of thinking. I asked: “What else could be true?” That simple question led to a longer conversation, one where she realized faith should not mean abandoning reason. Our role is not to mock belief, but to help students ask better questions.
During the pandemic, many found comfort in routines and certainties. Some found it in online communities with preachers offering prophetic answers. When the world was unraveling, they clung to anyone who sounded sure. And cults thrive in that vacuum—of leadership, of empathy, of stability. They offer something organized religion, government, and sometimes family could not: unwavering assurance, packaged neatly as divine order.
Maybe this is why it hits differently during Holy Week. Things slow down. The noise fades a little. And faith is brought back to its core—not the show, not the claims, but truth, sacrifice, and the courage to question what only seems sacred.
But that sense of order comes at a cost. We hear stories of members being asked to give up their homes, their bodies, their vote. Women told their purity belongs to the leader. Children denied education in the name of “higher truths.” It is not enough to say these groups are extreme. We must ask: Why do they flourish? Partly because they know how to manipulate love. They do not start by commanding. They start by caring. They study your pain, then claim to be its cure.
One of the hardest parts of this conversation is knowing when a group crosses the line. Because from the outside, many of these organizations look harmless. They hold Sunday services. They distribute relief goods. They preach values. But when obedience is enforced through fear, when questioning becomes sin, when the leader is seen as infallible—that is when worship mutates into control. And that is when vigilance must take the place of passive tolerance.
I, too, have made mistakes in judgment. I have given platforms to speakers who later revealed twisted intentions. I have trusted endorsements that were later regretted. What I have learned is this: humility must always accompany authority. No one is above being questioned. Not even those with microphones, robes, cloaks, tunics, temples, airtimes, or temples built in their name.
We need laws that protect without persecuting. We need schools that teach discernment, not just dogma. We need families that value curiosity, not blind conformity. And we need to remember that silence, in the face of abuse disguised as faith, is not neutrality. It is complicity.
So the next time someone claims to be the only way, the sole truth, or the appointed voice of heaven, ask yourself: Does this belief enlarge my world, or does it shrink it? Real faith should never require your fear. It should free you to love more, think deeper, and live better.|
