I’ve been reading about how cults arise and evolve. In their early stages, they are marked by “apocalyptic enthusiasm,” i.e., unshakable conviction that the cult’s “messiah” will imminently “save” his followers by overthrowing the prevailing order and inaugurating a new kingdom—with either NO rules or, at least, NEW rules favoring the cult’s faithful.
It is not entirely surprising, then, that this enthusiasm often manifests itself in brazen LAWLESSNESS regarding the current order—unabashed transgression of “old” laws and “irrelevant, oppressive, outmoded” legal conventions. All that stuff is viewed as fake and superannuated—something to be destroyed and discarded in order to hasten the arrival of the Golden Age.
Usually the messiah himself makes a point of demonstrating this self-righteous, in-your-face lawlessness—as a kind of morality lesson for his followers, and as a gesture of contempt for enforcers of the existing (hence “crooked” and “disgraceful”) laws.
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