“Let not the moving about of the disbelievers in the land deceive thee.” – Sūrah 3:197

Being evil gets you far in this world. Take a look at the highest echelons of government and corporations. Evil pays, and it pays a lot. It pays even more when the masses have been conditioned to champion an evil cause through the guise of religion. 

One issue I take with religions that promise divine retribution against “the disbelievers” in the afterlife is that this idea keeps the masses complacent and relatively pacified. We may dive further into this idea later, but today’s post concerns the success of evil people and the importance of deep, critical thought about one’s religion. 

I am staunchly against the notion that religion arose as a method with which to control others, but it is undeniable that evil people manipulate it to their gain. This is one of those situations. 

Take a moment to think about this. The teachings of Jesus were more or less socialistic in nature. He seemed to care very little about homosexuality, but very much about greed, thievery, and hospitality. There are countless verses attributed to him in which he urges his followers to welcome the foreigner, share the wealth, and put the self last. 

Modern American Christianity stands in stark contrast to this. With the exception of a handful of disparate churches across the United States, American Christianity preaches rabid intolerance, prosperity gospel, and, in a historic twist of irony, a thinly-veiled egoism cast as piety. 

The modern church would be unrecognizable to the early church. This is true of many religions. Like people and societies, religions evolve and change over time. They adapt, they transform, and they often split. 

And they are not immune to people who seek naught but personal gain. 

It is almost insulting how willingly the supposedly pious lay down their values to worship their idols. It makes one wonder if there were values to lay down to begin with. People like those at the helm of our government today are so transparently evil and antithetical to the maxims they preach – and that are parroted by the masses – that it is nearly unbelievable how thoroughly their followers have been conditioned and brainwashed. 

There are many points of Christian theology I stand in disagreement with, but the core message of the religion is one I can relate to and support, and even admire at times. American Christianity does not fall under this umbrella. Evangelicalism has set society back countless decades and threatens to set us back centuries to come. 

Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “Any religion that professes to be concerned about the souls of men and is not concerned about the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them, and the social conditions that cripple them, is a spiritually moribund religion awaiting burial.” He was a Southern Baptist. 

This quote and the idea behind it inspired some as-of-yet unpublished work of mine: “A religion which places human well-being second does not deserve to persist. This is not to say that a faith may change and adapt, but rarely throughout history has religion been a driver of progress. Thus it is necessary and overdue that something new comes to blossom.”

It seems obvious to me that American Christianity is a thoroughly spiritually moribund religion. This statement only applies to the intolerant evangelical congregations, but it still applies to the vast majority of the church as a whole – enough so that it represents an existential threat to progress. 

I am a firm believer in universal justice, and I believe the arc of the universe bends toward justice in the end. That does not alleviate us, in the here and now, from working to make our world a better place and protect it from people who would gladly subjugate others for their own gain.