My first tangle with mega-religion
I was sitting down to breakfast with my wife My wife is a little younger than me, be not a lot. She is a lifelong Buddhist in a rural area of Thailand. The first thing she said to me was “Ohhh I forgot it was a Buddha Day. Buddha has a lot of holidays and every one of them seems to have an obligation for Buddhist adherents to go to a Wat (the Buddhist name for their temples) My wife gobbled down her vegetable smoothie which she makes every morning for herself, and a boiled egg and grabbed her hat and off she went to the wat to do some praying and give food to the monks.
And I respect that except then I am a jerk. I commented to my wife that I wonder what Jesus Christ would do? And I went off on a short tangent and I said of course Jesus Christ is not really his name. He was a young Jewish man in a sparsely populated Judean area on the East End of the Mediterranean Sea. And that would be about 500 years before it is celebrated that Jesus Christ was born ( Buddhism is known to be 500 years older than Christianity.).
Then I membered that the current trend in Christianity is for charismatic religious leaders to ask for money. But living in Thailand as I do now, my reaction is to why? g There are two possible reasons to give money to a church. One is their church, whether it be Christian or Buddhist, will you use those donations, in this case cash, to provide religious based welfare to other people that need the money. In the case of Thai people going to the wat, usually in their own neighborhood, they take vegetables and other food products with them which sometimes seems to be all that the monks have to eat. It’s traditional for the monks to eat before noon, and then follow their religious meditations throughout the rest of the day at least that’s what I’ve been told not that I’ve really tried to find out.
But there’s plenty of evidence of what the other two possibilities are in the current trends of religion in America 1st those same charismatic religious leaders will tell people that they can plant a seed with their money and God will be so excited by their generosity that God will reward the person who donates money to the church. Let’s not be confused. So, in effect, the donations are a bribe based on a very questionable promise of getting the money back in some other way.
The third way that money Christianity uses is frankly used by those same charismatic religious leaders. There’s plenty of examples on the Internet and I’ll go to those sources and provide some names where religious people with many parishioners we’ll live in huge estates on property to give a place where their horses to graze and park their top of the line automobiles maybe even for a place to land their airplanes. Of course all Christian religious leaders qualify for those kind of assets but I can assure you many struggling religious leaders may have only 500 or 1000 parishioners and they want to get multi 1000 people and a radio station of their own so they too can live a life of luxury.
If they are confronted about living much differently than the people that are giving them money their answer is that their mission doing God’s work means that God is happy to see them be successful. Crazy stuff! it’s right out in the open but millions of people especially in America, but other places too. and, clearly understand the function of their religion in terms of economic benefit to them maybe they haven’t forgot that if they follow certain aspects of their religion they may go to a place called heaven but for now they can give $100 a $1000 or whatever to the big giant church down the street expecting to be remembered by God financially the rewards from God are turned in economic gain get a better job get a better house get some cash win the lottery. And that’s central to a huge amount of religious celebration especially in America and elsewhere too.
I think I’ll be quite happy to gather up some fruit go to the grocery store and pick out some things some monk might like of course before noon and feel that I’ve done more good than I would giving $100 to a mega church in America expecting to get money back from God
People who I would say fall for this way of behaving -I can’t say it’s a sham I can’t say they’re tricked. It’s their decision to give their money in that way. But other people who have not got involved in that understanding of religion would like to share some of these kinds of websites that explain this to me and yet I know they won’t pay any attention to that because they’re saving up their money so their charismatic religious leader can buy another airplane.
Here are a couple examples that bring me this opinion. Ignore this if you wish. It is up to you to make all decisions when religion is involved.
Remember this is the opinion of John, also known as the angry old man in his blog site raising all kinds of questions John sometimes thinks of himself as an amateur sociologist theology always comes before sociological academic study but when educated people struggled to understand religion maybe a sociologist even an amateur sociologist can offer some healthy opinions up to you use the comments below say whatever you want and I will reply. There’s a place there where you can respond if you’re positive regarding what I say by giving me a cup of coffee maybe 3 cups of coffee because there’s three of us working together my wife takes the camera pictures my friend Alan is my technical expert in many ways. There’s a place where you can sign up to the angry old man website please try to find that, because we have to fight back over google to be sure that we’re high enough on lists so that we’re easy to find OK OK OK did I say anything to offend you? Like I said this is right out there for you to realize for yourself maybe it’s still all about going to heaven maybe it isn’t anymore about providing food for the homeless and you can defend that in a comment this is John Kane the Angry Old Man signing off now to go think about other things
Try these on:
Critics of Protestant megachurches in the United States have described megachurches as “religion lite,” “undemanding,” and as using a “dumbing down” approach that makes the Christian faith “two miles long and one inch deep.” Drawing on–the “weak ties”of social network analysis.
Fordham Research Commons – Fordham University
This idea of planting “a seed” for which God will personally reward you for (usually meaning a cash donation to a church or it’s leader) is a growing phenomena.
Critics of Protestant megachurches in the United States have described megachurches as “religion lite,” “undemanding,” and as using a “dumbing down” approach that makes the Christian faith “two miles long and one inch deep.” Drawing on two different social theories—the “weak ties” aspect of social network analysis …
This is important see before ever going to church ever again
to The Dark World of Megachurches
