One of my daily rituals is to open my mail box and browse the contents the postman deposited there this morning. Sometimes there's nothing new there of course, I'm not that popular. With all my job searching I get a lot of letters from employers, typically telling me the shortlist is complete and I'm not on it. So be it. With every bundle of interesting, useful, or expecnsive communications from the outside world comes junk mail. Offers of products and services are largely wasted on me I have to say. But what's this?

A newspaper? One of those community publications? A party political pamphlet highlighting local issues and requesting my support? Nope. It's a Christian rag, full of articles describing the woes of people 'locked in negative cycles' and facing self-destruction by one means or another. It isn't that I'm blind to the suffering of those whose lives have turned sour, but then I notice a few things about these stories. The range of them is diverse. There's a sense of pity evoked by them, or perhaps more pertinently, a sense of fellowship with the unfortunate souls described within as you recognise the familiarity of their trials?

Then I notice other things. It seems Jesus is no longer solely concerned with your spiritual destination. He now offers financial advice, and a statement in the text of one tale of woe suggests confidently that "People are turning to prayer more than debt advisors". Oh? I wasn't aware of any offical statistics along those lines. It does worry me a little about what sort of advice people get.

The important point of course is 'The Message'. Christians bleat on about Jesus's message quite a lot but never actually tell you what it is. I can see it written in black and white all over this publication. It is, effectively, 'Lean on me'. You too can be happy well adjusted fulfilled individuals if you just let Jesus in. What an insidious message. It is, for all intents and purposes, an advertisement for psychological dependence on an omnipotent diety. Just pray to Jesus, and your life will be better?

How To Find God

In the last few days we've had a television program devoted to the Alpha Course, a religious self-help programme. I watched most of it with no suprise at all. Many individuals on the course were discovering God right left and center. Well power to them I guess. I do notice though that there was some blatant manipulation of the customers emotional state. After two thousand years, it seems these God-merchants have become very slick at persuading others to see the light. They're looking for people who are weakened by the hardship of modern life, the loneliness of society, the emptiness of materialism. For all the group therapy and charity, there is still something very exploitative about this process.

My Shock Revelation

Have I found God? No, of course not. For me, God is a human concept, not an absolute truth. He's no more than another diety imagined by someone and presented to others as the answer to their wordly fears and spiritual longing. Do I believe in any supreme being at all? It seems many do, subliminally, though I suspect this is merely something locked deep inside our psychology than any description of the infinite. After all, for all these people who claim to have heard the voice of God, how many have done so at their leisure, as opposed to having the guidance of a priesthood?

The important point about all this Christian recruitment is that it relies upon unhappy souls seeking something better. Why would a content man need religious conviction? Since the word of God is so dependent on the negative cycles that spawn the mindset required to accept membership of his select club, is it not a simple step to seed the market? To influence peoples lives for the worst in the hope they see the light?

Now that idea might be dismissed as paranoia. In fact, it would never have ocurred to me had someone not said to me once, for no apparent reason, "You're always welcome to return". They meant of course that they wanted me to recant my spiritualism and sign up for God. Except... It isn't God they're talking about. It's Jesus. God is too remote, too large a concept. Jesus on the other hand is more real, a personality, something more tangible and undertandable. So instead, Christianity becomes a personality cult.

The claims of divine origin have no basis in fact, unfortunately. That means that worship of Jesus has no more credibility than Elvis Presley, Marylin Monroe, or Adolf Hitler, or any other larger than life character. We worship the image of these people, and suprisingly often, look to their lives for inspiration for our own. There is no difference between a dead celebrity and Jesus Christ. As the pavements of Los Angeles demonstrate in the wake of Michael Jacksons demise.

Oh, you might argue, but that's nonsense. Jesus is the son of God, not some guy in Gary, Indiana. I prefer something a little less gorounded in propaganda. Jesus was the son of human parents, born in very worldly circumstances, with all the character faults of a charismatic individual, and died for political reasons. If you want to believe there's more to it, that's your choice, but why would I listen to the teachings of a man who railed against the wealthy two thousand years ago? I can hear people saying the same things today.