Join a Cult or make an Anonymous Friend?

I met some men in the street who wanted to talk to me about their faith. I listened, and actually I liked them. The bind with these conversations is they always ask “is this something you would be interested in?”, and as someone who tends to be curious, I always say and mean “yes, of course I’m interested”.

But they often take my answer as “I want to join” rather than the literal “I am interested”. So I gave them my number as they asked, and then they can send me a link to the church.

I don’t know how to tell the difference between a church and a cult, but when a congregation has 60 followers, is a faceless account and recruits people outside of the university, I err towards the latter. But anyway, he has my number now.

And for the past two days, he texted me small talk, not much mention of the church/the cult. And still I am curious. Because I could see this going down some interesting paths. On the one hand, I could follow that curiosity and go to a social meet-up they run, not to join the group, but to observe it. I have a fresh roll of black and white film on my Holga, and I am inspired to use it on the people in this group as I listen to their beliefs, which sounds fascinating to me.

But there is another path I see too, and another one which is hard to come by otherwise, to develop an anonymous friend, for I have a phone number, but no last name, no information on age, place of origin, profession, family life, home or wealth.

What would it mean to get to know someone only through their thoughts, feelings, desires, ways of seeing the world, without any conception of their material life? To know someone based only on their self-expression and not at all on their self-identities. That also sounds like a fascinating proposition also.

Build a friendship based solely on self-expression with no self-identifiers.

or

A roll of film at the cult social gathering.

I’ll continue to ponder, but I will commit to navigating one such path.