Cult or Religion

What's the difference between cult and religion?
Is it a matter of age or overarching vision?
Is it payable taxation or cultish moral ambiguation?
Asking a theist will garner no good reply:
"We have tradition and God on our side!" you'll hear them cry.

Maybe the difference lies
in that religion's morals are canonised.
A cult may be a tightly regulated social group
but the whole code of religious living is in a book.

Maybe the difference lies
in religion dooming us to our own demise
and the eternal damnation that will arise
from trusting our God given instincts which implies
He planned for us to struggle or fail when he laid the first brick
and there's never an excuse for just acting like a dick.

Ok, that's not the same for all religions
but nobody's winning if everyone's sinning;
begging for deliverance.
Who credited God with benevolence?
It takes a harder heart than mine to explain
to parents of a dead child this death was simply
down to prevalance
or random chance,
never mind using it to support the idea
of a cosmic or divine power making the universe dance
or trying to soften the blow by saying "this was all part of His plans".

Fuck.
That.