If believing in your god didn’t offer any benefits, would you go on believing?

In the course of approximately nine months my uncle has gone from one religion to another, alternately cursing and throwing out the gods who have apparently been unable to give him his needs. My aunt, also, falters at times, Job-like in her subtly-veiled rants against Buddha. My mom swears by St. Jude because apparently he’s unfailingly fulfilled her wishes. Every first Friday, Quiapo swells into a sweltering mass of flesh, offering whatever passes for repentance for a shot at a better life.

Not that there’s anything inherently wrong with seeking divine intervention.

Nietzsche pointed out that religions — Christianity, in particular — made people weak. People of faith accept their weaknesses and find solace in the thought that there is a divine being who would be able to make up for all their deficiencies. The concept of imperfection, after all, is ingrained in every religion. Instead of working to improve himself, man settles for believing in the presence of a “Perfect One”, one who would pick up the slack and keep man from falling apart.

Faith, after all, is reliance.

You believe because it’s more difficult not to. Even the most hard-core of atheists will have to believe in something, divine or otherwise. Life is too difficult to comprehend as it is and not everyone is gifted with Lichauco’s delusions to be able to achieve a credible understanding of the universe. The concept of “Someone” other than us has always been necessary as some sort of explanation for what appears to be randoms events. Be your god six-armed or a leaf, it’s always representative of “someone” who keeps your universe afloat.

But if believing didn’t offer any benefits — none at all — would you go on believing?

Probably not.

To us, divine beings are convenient totems we can look to for pseudo-guidance. We think of them when we’re in trouble, or when hoping for a miracle, or even when just looking for missing things. We think of them when we need something, or when something in our perfect universe goes awry. Having a god to believe in is a convenience we all carry around somehow, whether we think about it or not.

In our so-called “only Catholic country in Asia”, piety is a badge people carry with pride. We think of ourselves as blessed and holier than the rest of the universe, receiving blessings from the Pope himself. We have more pastors, priests, brothers, nuns, sisters and prayer groups than necessary. We like to think we’re God’s people because we’re pious, we flog ourselves on Holy Week and crawl on bloodied knees in Baclaran.

Somehow I don’t think God agrees.

I have this neighbor who threatens people from other religions with hellfire and eternal damnation while unabashedly duping unsuspecting old women into paying for overcharged goods. There’s this other neighbor who begs God for forgiveness (seriously) while running through a red light. The list is endless. Active churchgoers who turn out to be sexual predators, supposedly pious prayer group leaders who spread nothing but chismis , church (or temple) matrons who use their own supposed holiness to look down on everyone else.

Pharisees all.

In a store in glorietta — altar of commercialism — the fat buddha shares table space with grinning phalluses with blue eyes.

The goddamn banality is unbelievable.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 27th, 2006 at 9:14 pm and is filed under rant, religion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.