Did the title catch your eye?
Well, it caught my eye earlier this week when I saw link on friends blog post – at which I did what many of you did: I clicked the link to see what was going on. What I found (and what you will soon find) was a very thought provoking and hard-hitting article by Tripp York, religious studies professor at Virginia Wesleyan College in Norfolk, Virginia.
At the beginning of the article Tripp interviews a self-professing neo-druid priestess in North Carolina about her beliefs. At first her answers are fairly typical (“…we are our own gods and goddesses. We are our own inner light that shines through when we answer only to the authority that is ourselves.”). However as this young lady is pushed to explain how this belief actually affects her day-to-day life…well, she can’t….and sadly enough, neither can most Christians.
“I suggested that we were all being duped into thinking there was some sort of out and expressed my concern that, contrary to her best intentions, she was actually being trained to be exactly what she was claiming she didn’t want to be. She was being trained to fit within the system by purchasing her rebellion. This lovely, hairy druid was a picture-perfect example of what it means to be owned by a system that deceives us into thinking we can escape being owned. It is, forgive the pop culture reference, the matrix being the matrix. The matrix dupes us into thinking we can see our way out of the matrix by spiritualizing Eastern religions or—in her case, a religion from antiquity—as a possible way out. The fact that the matrix encourages us to do this, in order to escape it, is further proof that we are only falling deeper and deeper into the matrix precisely because we think we have somehow escaped it….
….At this point, she told me our conversation was over because she didn’t “need to be subjected to antagonistic people.” I apologized for coming across as such a jerk, I just wanted to help her see that her claim to be “spiritual, not religious” simply meant she was owned by that religious institution known as capitalism, and that we are all just targets of marketing schemes designed to convince us to sacrifice at its chief temple—the mall. It’s who owns us. We’re all shoppers. We shop for mates, friends, clothes, food, entertainment, and religions, as well as various forms of spirituality. Spirituality is a very conducive form of life to free market capitalism because what it means to be spiritual is whatever you want it to mean—which means the market will dictate what you need to purchase in order to be authentic to your own inner self. It’s a vicious circle.”
Tripp then goes on to explore Anton LaVey’s “The Nine Satanic Statements” as written down in The Satanic Bible and how capitalist they sound:
“Satan, LaVey continues, is not a god, a demigod, nor a fallen angel; Satan represents a force of nature that is natural to all humans that religions, Christianity in particular, have attempted to tame or domesticate for its own expansion…. The church, argues LaVey, is doing great harm by attempting to repress what is nothing more than the natural desires of humans. Like any other animal, we are merely acting upon our biologically driven desires for self-fulfillment. This can take the shape of sex, greed, lust, or gluttony—all of which, claims LaVey, are natural. These natural impulses are what make humans human, yet the church considers them to be vices. In this regard, the church is the true adversary of humanity—Satan, if you will—as it attempts to suppress what is only natural to being human.”
It is at this point that Tripp drops the ultimate hammer against the church and Christians:
“Self-denial is an absolute crime in our culture. If you start denying yourself material goods, you will end up destroying our very precarious economy. It is an absolute moral obligation of all citizens, Christian or not, to indulge their every whim, to buy the biggest house, to purchase a new car every four years, to shop for new clothes, accessories, games, et cetera, in short, to never be satisfied, to be perpetually in need of more, all in order to perfect the capitalist virtue known as greed. How dare these Satanists and black magicians accuse Christians of not fulfilling their moral obligation to perpetuate the American Way of Life! We can be preoccupied with sensual pleasure, worldly achievement, pride, strength, and force as much as anyone else! Indeed, I think we are close to perfecting it. Have the Satanists not paid any attention to the ease by which Christians participate in war? The obvious contradiction of Christians killing their enemies in the name of the God who tells them to love their enemies does not cause even the slightest feeling of discomfort for the majority of North American Christians. Have these Satanists ever stepped foot in a Christian Family Bookstore and counted the number of books glorifying war in their Christian Inspiration section? Next to books about so-called radical discipleship one will find such Christ-inspired literature as Lessons on the Battlefield, The Patriot’s Bible, and Walker, Texas Ranger’s soon to be classic, Blackbelt Patriotism—because, you know, Jesus was so obviously a fan of both the state (killed by it) and karate (taught nonviolence). In case reading is not your thing, there are also miniature solid gold crosses, encrusted with diamonds and draped with American flags, available for purchase for those needing to prove their faith and pride in a tribal god that has far more in common with Ares, the god of war, than Jesus, the Prince of Peace.
Silly Satanists.
We are far better at worshipping your god than you will ever be.”
Yeah…that hurts…but it is true…we have sold our souls to capitalism and the marketplace of goods. Look around you, look at the statistics and the numbers – there really is very little difference between those who claim to follow Jesus and those who don’t.
Something is broken.
Come Lord Come! We need to you break our chains and set us free so that we can join You in what You are doing.