Cruising for a Bruising
13 Feb 2007
Of all of the articles I’ve written, none prompted more negative responses than “Poperah”—an article dealing with the Christ-denying false gospel of positive thinking spirituality being propagated throughout the world by Oprah Winfrey. In today’s celebrity culture, anyone daring enough to chip away at the glitter pasted on beloved celebrities by their adoring fans will certainly face a deafening public outcry. Such was the case recently when our Florida Baptist Witness carried my article: “‘Make-believers’ find a new ‘Christ’ in Cruise.” Although one would have thought that I had learned my lesson by taking on Oprah, I proved to be cruising (pardon the pun) for a bruising by taking on Tom, not to mention tackling Scientology, which happens to be the most litigious religion ever founded in the United States.
Some who negatively responded to my article insisted that it was fallacious. According to them, I lied when I wrote, “The British newspaper The Sun recently reported that Scientology’s leaders have dubbed actor Tom Cruise as their ‘Christ.’” However, the fact that this was reported in The Sun is easily proven and questioned by no one. Even my detractors admit it, but insist that The Sun is an unreliable tabloid whose word should never be taken over an official statement issued by the Church of Scientology in repudiation of The Sun’s report. While I’m not vouching for The Sun’s reliability, I do question the judgment of anyone taking an official statement by the Church of Scientology at face value.
Scientology was founded by L. Ron Hubbard, a man who was not only a proven bigamist—he married his second of three wives before divorcing his first—but also a proven prevaricator. Hubbard claimed to have an earned degree from a California diploma mill (Sequoia University) that was shut down by the state legislature in 1958. Although he liked to refer to himself as a “nuclear physicist,” transcripts from George Washington University, where Hubbard was placed on academic probation, show that he actually failed the only class he ever took on molecular and atomic physics. Another of Hubbard’s specious claims was that he was so severally wounded in World War II that he was pronounced dead twice and returned home crippled and blind; this, despite the fact that Hubbard’s medical records fail to show that he was ever wounded at all.
One thing for sure about Scientology’s founder is the fact that he was a prolific writer. Perhaps, no other writer in history can make the boast that Lafayette Ronald Hubbard could; namely, fifteen million published words in science fiction and twenty-five million published words in support of his own concocted cult. Hubbard’s transition from science fiction novelist to founder of his own religious faith supposedly took place after he announced at a New Jersey science fiction convention, “Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous. If a man really wanted to make a million dollars, the best way would be to start his own religion.” A short time later, Hubbard launched the Dianetics Movement that spawned the cult of Scientology by releasing his book, Dianetics: A Modern Science of Mental Health.
According to the official statement of the Church of Scientology, there is neither “scriptural background” nor any “basis in the theology of Scientology for anyone inside or outside of the church” to dub actor Tom Cruise as the cult’s “Christ.” That Scientologists would argue this point on the basis of its lack of “scriptural background” is most curious, since the only “scripture” they recognize is the writings of L. Ron Hubbard. Furthermore, according to the catechism of Scientology, which is found in the book What Is Scientology, the cult has no doctrine of God, leaving every Scientologists free to define for themselves “who God is and exactly what god means to” them. How, then, does such open-ended theology prohibit Scientologists, who are free to bow at the altar of anyone or anything, from confessing Cruise as their “Christ”? Obviously, it doesn’t.
Though the Church of Scientology’s official statement denies the cult’s deification of any man, including its founder, L. Ron Hubbard, who the statement says was “just a man” and “not [even] a prophet,” the truth is: Scientology teaches that all men are “part God.” In addition, the Scientologist’s magazine Advance asserts that L. Ron Hubbard was the second Buddha, the Meitreya—the predicted Buddhist’s redeemer who appears on earth to rule the world after achieving complete enlightenment. Despite Hubbard’s death certificate, dated January 24, 1986, attributing his death to a cerebral vascular accident (stroke), the Church of Scientology refuses to admit that their great “science of the mind” master succumbed to death, insisting instead that he merely “discarded the body” in order to move on to the next level of research. How Hubbard’s current disembodied research is going and how it will ultimately prove beneficial to the world is left unexplained to us by today’s Scientologists.
The Church of Scientology’s official statement dismisses reports like The Sun’s and articles like mine as “utterly fabricated” pieces “propagated in an effort to marginalize Scientology” by making its leaders and members “seem strange.” However, the old adage: “Truth is stranger than fiction,” has never been more applicable than in the case of Scientology. When it comes to marginalizing Scientology and making its adherents seem strange, Scientologists don’t need any help. They are completely capable of creeping others out on their own. After all, apart from our world’s most gullible souls, many of whom appear to be Hollywood celebrities, who isn’t creeped out by cultists who believe that all humans have an eighty trillion year old Thetan (spirit) inhabiting their skulls, a spirit that was possibly shot down for us from an implant station on the planet Mars and dumped into the sea by a flying saucer just prior to our birth.
Although Scientology has supposedly denied Tom Cruise as its “Christ” in an official statement by the church, I believe Scientologists should reconsider their position. I still stand by my original contention that Cruise, a Hollywood actor whose one claim to fame is pretending to be fictitious characters on the silver screen, is the perfect person to play the role of a phony messiah for a false religion fabricated by a science fiction novelist. If, as they say, Scientologists find this suggestion repugnant, then why not turn from Scientology to the one and only true Savior, Jesus Christ? This is no mere suggestion, but my sincere hope and prayer for every Scientologist!
Don Walton
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