On Commercial Religion

Greater minds than mine have aimed withering fire at "organized religion."

There is, of course, a parallel line of thought which aims not just at the structures men erect to worship their God or gods, but at faith itself. Nietzsche said, "Faith means not wanting to know what's true." Voltaire added, "If we believe in absurdities, we shall commit atrocities."

I will not enter into that fray, the big ideas of whether or not there is a God, or whether or not we can know what God wants us to do.

I start from what I see on television, when I'm channeling surfing, looking for a baseball game while I'm on the treadmill. I have to pause at the televangelist channels. Here we have earnest, impassioned men and women beseeching you and me to come to their church, and to embrace what they say, and underlying every sentence, from every faith, from Christian, to Islam to Judaism is the tacit assumption: If you do right (as I tell you is right), you will be rewarded, or at least, (in the case of Judaism) you will not be punished quite so severely.

Listen to me, and you will profit. God will grant you wishes like the genie from the bottle, God will make you rich. God will heal your cancer. God will bring you a wonderful mate. God will take you into eternal paradise. God will get you laid. Whatever it is you are looking for, listen to what we say and God will do something good for you.

So, here's my question: How many people would go to church, would send these preachers money, would pray, if they believed God is not going to do anything for them?

Praying, is after all, always asking God for something.

Even those prayers which thank God for something, grace said over dinner, it's saying to God, thanks for the food, keep it coming.

But what if you knew God is out there, watching, but he is not going to do anything to help you, or--just as interesting a thought--he won't punish you for doing evil?

What if you knew when you got to Heaven, there would be Hilter and Stalin standing there at the golden gates, on the receiving line?

As the saying goes: Character is what you do when there's nobody around to see it.

What does it mean to "worship" God? Does "worship" not really translate into identifying all the things you like, and asking for more and more?

And then there is the whole social structure of "organized" religion. As soon as you have a mortgage to pay on a church building, or salaries or food to buy for a preacher, or money spent for Bibles and prayer books, or even money spent on soup for the soup kitchen, you have introduced something beyond what goes on inside your skull with neurons synapsing, into something money starts changing hands over.

I could dream up a religion which is organized which does not have any of that. You could meet in somebody's living room and talk about God, without a paid rabbi or priest. Maybe the Amish do something like this. But as soon as you have this, you have someone speaking for God, and then, pretty soon you have people asking for help again.

Just calling it "organized" religion is too neutral. Really, every religion I know about, and I'm sure there are many I don't know about and some that I think I know about but am misinformed, but from the perspective of a common man citizen, the better description of all Christian sects, from Catholic to Lutheran to Baptist,Mormonism, Judaism, Islam and even Buddhism, all offer something good for you if you follow, believe, and for the most part, pay money. (Buddhism may be an exception here.) So, the better, more accurate phrase should be "commercial religion." Try that on your focus groups.

And of course, where money is found, politics will follow.

In Texas, I read, there is a law that no one can hold public office if he doesn't believe in God.

So there you have it, believe and you will be rewarded: You can be governor of Texas.