File photo: The writer says we should have a change of mindset about spirituality
We can assume without warrant that God exists, although he definitely does not. Or that he created the natural world and all that there is within it, although we can’t know for sure how. The next question will be: Has he commanded any of his creation to worship him? And if we answer in the affirmative, the next question will be “how?”
How does God want us to worship him? By serenading him and stroking his ego in praise songs, or mouthing gibberish and tongues, or stomping on the ground, or dancing around, or sitting in serenity under trees to reflect on the deity, or praying quietly in our rooms, or loudly in the open, or facing the sun in genuflection, or rolling on the ground in solemn penance, or repeating some incantations, or offering burnt sacrifices, or committing acts of terrorism against our enemies, or listening to a sermon in church?
Is God’s worship an immanent recognition of a son who died on the cross, or the obedience of his self-appointed prophets, or compliance with some authority on earth, or paying substantial sums of money as tithes and offering, or believing whatever you are told by his presumptive deputies?
What is the meaning of God’s worship? And how does it occur? How do we test for its consummation? In other words, what is the universal litmus test for the worship of God?
We will note for everybody here that there exist over 10,000 major denominations on earth; and that long before we reached this destination of poly gods, an equal number of gods had come into existence and perished in time: Zeus, Apollo, Aphrodites, Osiris…….Warfare and conquests had taken down some of the gods and established others, in the pattern of the outcomes of human conflicts.
Therefore the popularity of the gods had depended on the whirligigs of the times, whether the worshippers faced defeat or victories, with each period disgorging some gods and imbibing others. So the gods have also been the victims of births and deaths, of extinction and regeneration, all in pattern with the fortunes of nations…..
Until we have arrived at the conservative number of ten thousand denominations as we speak. Now with these ten thousand different ways of worshipping the same God, each group claims to be the ONLY one true pathway to God, disagreeing with all others with a deadly passion.
This exclusivity of worship broaches no challenge, such that most of the warfare on earth has been attributable to this sole question of religious superiority: Which religion is best of all? And if we weigh the animosity and antipathy amongst devotees within and inherent in these religious groupings, you will conclude that most conflicts in the present or the past, or the future will be attributable to religion.
So unless God admits of a multiplicity of pathways to his worship, we are looking at the conservative figure of less than 1 in 10,000 to be right in their path to God. So how likely is it then that these millions of people worshipping God within thousands of denominations will even get a nod by God?
And even if God were to accept a multiplicity of faiths into his imaginary kingdom, what is the guarantee that these devotees will not engage in internecine warfare in God’s kingdom? After all, they were fighting forever on earth; and whatever is bound on earth is also bound in heaven!
Please note that all those who made up all these stories about their gods lived in a period of ignorance. In their time, the earth was flat, with the sky covering it like a dome. There were bigger lamps and smaller lamps to govern the day and night, with the stars put in there as a twinkling little ornament for decoration.
What they conceived of God was some white personage sitting on his throne up there and looking down upon the deeds of all humankind.
At the time of the narratives of these simple-minded folks, there were no planes or cars or telescopes or electricity or tv or fridges or roads or Ipads or jeans or glasses…..In fact, if you cast your eyes around you right now, you will observe that there is nothing in your sight that existed at the time God was supposed to have given his laws and commands.
So each time humanity contemplates God in their context, we transport ourselves and minds to their time, and what we see is through the windows of the ancient worldview, when foolishness and ignorance form the context of the messages of the supreme one.
It follows that God spoke only at a time of extreme ignorance; a time when societies had no understanding of science and technology; a time when humans attributed to their gods anything and everything they could not understand; and explained their fortunes and misfortunes in reference to a god they confessed they neither understood nor agreed with ….A god they described as omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent.
These people abandoned any evidence or experiment they could perform to certify his existence: They broached no questions about how he looked. They allowed no challenges of his commands.
They merely invented faith and belief as a bypass for reasoning and rationality and installed their god they cannot describe in the psyche of the masses in any instance where they could not rationally explain natural occurrences.
A few that received training in the religious myths were let loose in the population, to collect money for free and to live on the largesse of the ignorant masses under the pretext that they understood God, and could interpret his presence and desires. These people have captured the popular imagination to date, and are leading the people into the great abyss.
They claim that they possess certain spiritual powers which they can neither prove nor describe.
They claim spiritual things are spiritually discerned; and yet they show no discernment for any spiritual thing. They perform no responsibility or duty which anybody can quantify. Only that when it comes to money, everything transmogrifies to the physical.
They receive physical, not spiritual, money in payments and prefer material things like a limousine, mansions, and even planes.
And so while they adduce spirituality in terms of what they do, they receive material things as their reward. And by these rewards, they display ostentatious wealth while selling misery to the popular masses.
It is all in the charade friends! From the beginning of the earth till today.
In this instance, as it was in the beginning, so shall it be to the very end. And if we don’t obviate the religious charade from within our minds, we do not have a smidgen of a chance to live intelligently or rationally, and we will be locked up in ignorance and poverty till the very end of our lives.