The recent prediction of the end of the world by Harry Camping and his followers has brought into sharp relief how gullible people can be when it comes to the matter of religious belief. To believe that you can use some mathematical formula to calculate the end of the world and to embody your conclusions with religious imagery is bad enough. To convince thousands of people of the conclusion you have arrived at, to the extent that they will suspend their daily activities as a result, stretches the bounds of credulity and sanity. There is a very tragic sense in which religious belief can exercise great tyranny over a person’s mind. This tyranny often results in the tragic loss of lives and property as in the case of violent religious zealotry, or in the domestic oppression of family subjects by those who believe that God has given them the right to exercise dominance over other people’s lives.

The gullibility of the religious mind in the matter of this past failed prediction gives credence to the Marxian aphorism that religion is the opiate of the people. It also confirms the Freudian assessment of religion as an illusion which derives its strength from a person’s instinctual desires. It certainly confirms the atheism of those who have written God’s obituary and plays into the humanism and secularism of the age that have rejected any notion of God as having any relevance to life in the modern or post-modern world. Those who would want to find comfort in the kind of religion espoused by Camping and his followers as a way of denouncing God, must be mindful that this camp (no pun intended) is a mere fringe of religious thinking and aspiration. The fact that they are able to convince so many to their way of thinking does not nullify their peripheral religious status as far as Christianity is understood. The rich diversity of Christian religious experience has the fecundity to throw up fringe groups like these, but any serious scholar would be foolish to think that this is sufficient reason to sound the death knell of Christianity itself.

However, no defence of Christianity or of any religion for that matter can disavow the gullibility that religious people often bring to their beliefs. As long as religion persists in human culture there will always be those who will accept without thinking what is said to them by their religious leaders. Many are not trained or encouraged to ask questions about what they are told. Indeed, some are told that it is ungodly to ask questions, worse to ask questions of God. If this is the case, one wonders then why is it that God gave us that wonderful instrument called the brain. If God is as awesome as we often portray Him to be, then there must be some credence for the human mind by the power of imagination and even curiosity, to know more about Him and the fascinating world He has created. I am convinced that God has no problem with an exploring mind. it is only human institutions that teach that this kind of exploration or questioning is blasphemy.

It is an inability to ask questions why many religious people fall prey so easily to those who are willing to exploit them.

Religion imposes no obligation on us to take leave of our senses or rationality. The God in whom I believe does not impose this obligation on me. Often it is an obligation that is calculated to get into people’s wallets as religious charlatans have proved over the years. Some pastors and assorted televangelists are able to fleece their flock simply because members of that flock outsource their brains to them. There is perhaps no other endeavour where it is so easy to make money than hanging up a shingle and calling it a church. Many have become wealthy by virtue of their ability to manipulate the emotions of people to do their ungodly bidding. The greater you are at showmanship and your ability to make noise or dish out religious psycho-babble which are supposed to be sermons, the greater will be your audience and the more respectable-looking will be your balance sheet. It never ceases to amaze me as a minister that it is often those who are more adept at twisting and manipulating the gospel message that tend to have the largest followings. In my mind this says more about those who follow than those who lead.

The fact is that there is hardly any accountability that is demanded of those who lead in the church. Even where there are mechanisms to discipline those who err, there is a mindset that often lets the errant person off the hook. The paedophile scandal in the Roman Catholic Church persisted as it did because leaders in high echelons of the church turned a blind eye to reports of the bad behaviour of priests or rapped them on the knuckles when they were forced to bring them to book. In too many churches a minister has sex with multiple women or boys in his congregation; he is found out, does the cry of repentance and goes on one month of counselling, after which he returns, fully forgiven, to represent the flock. And people will continue giving money to that minister or church under the guise that the church is expected to forgive sins, even though there may be no noticeable change in the errant’s behaviour. I do not believe that grace is that cheap, or that it should so easily be taken for granted. Gullibility will continue to persist in the religious sphere as long as the led do not demand accountability of their leaders.

stead6655@aol.com