One thing I find absolutely fascinating are the myriad of theories, concepts, and ideas that explore our consciousness and existence. Science is out on what produces our awareness, and this leaves a massive gaping hole for individuals to explore where we come from, our purpose here, and where we’re going. Spirituality has such rich potential to send our awareness throughout the cosmos in search of what sets our souls alight.
Then there’s religion. Religion has risen to the peak of its prime, claiming to hold all of the answers with the offer to provide them to you in exchange for your undying loyalty.
And your fucking money.
But religion has really missed the boat on providing us all with the truth that underlies our existence, hasn’t it? Religion inoculates its adherents with easy and comforting lies, providing an other who serves as a scapegoat for all wrongdoing and keeping its members from looking within. And it’s this massive failure in offering any real guidance that keeps us walking around spiritually blind en masse.
Religion’s got it all wrong, but the only ones who care are the ones who have managed to wake up from the mentally debilitating drowsy and submissive existence that is impressed upon all its followers. Which is no easy feat, depending on a number of factors, not least of which is how controlling religion is with regard to what it allows its members to consume. This brings up an observation: the deeper involved in religion one is, the harder they stand against it when they break free.
We can see this at play with the exvangelical movement: former christians who decided to cast off the yoke of religion in favor of living with integrity and exploring their spirituality unencumbered by the overbearing constructs of an emotionally abusive structure. And physical and sexual abuse, if you include the former catholics among them.
There’s a problem when the scripture the church builds its foundation on says to relinquish greed and give to the poor, and yet its leaders are driving around in Bentleys and Porsches while calling for the mass incarceration of those who refuse to adhere to their belief system and refuse to donate their money. But those leaders will never see how amiss they are, how grandiosely they’ve failed spiritually, because they’ve managed to convince themselves that this is what their god wants for them. And they’re not wrong; their god does want that for them. They just fail to recognize that at some point in their journey, they stopped worshipping the god of Abraham and turned their worship to the god of money.
The god of money wants for naught but more money.
We should feel bad for them. After all, as Jesus says in Mark 8:36: “for what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit their soul?” These are the most spiritually bankrupt. These are the most spiritually poor. And they’re completely blind to this fact.
I recently started watching The Good Place, and one theme that fits the above narrative is that of deception. (I’ve placed the following section under a spoiler tag in case you have yet to the watch the show and don’t want to ruin it.)
And in the case of these these church leaders, when they come face to face with the reality of the spiritually bankrupt existence they’ve lived, they’ll be in the same predicament as the cast of characters who learn they were victims in a demon’s game. Except the demon is themselves.
We should feel sorry for them. But you know what? Fuck them. If there is, indeed, a heaven and a hell, let them discover and taste the fruits of their labor.