Everyone wants to be cared for.
Everyone wants order.
Everyone wants a reward.
Everyone wants a path.
Everyone wants a purpose.
Everyone wants eternal life.
Religion/church generally provides a stage or at least the hope for these things.
Go to school.
Determine what you want to do.
Go to college.
Between parties you discover yourself.
Stop attending church.
Earn your degree.
Begin your career………even if it has nothing to do with your degree.
Go back to church having repented of your time in the world………this is your “testimony”.
Become involved in the church.
Marry your sweetheart.
Start a family.
Go to revival.
Acknowledge a “calling” (preaching, deacon, teacher, worship leader or something that gets you some attention.)
Buy a home with a thirty-year, fixed rate mortgage and praise God for it……….even though the bible speaks against borrowing.
Change churches because the pastor no longer “feeds” you when in reality, you are simply bored.
Have some children.
Go to church.
Go to work.
Get a promotion.
Pay your tithes.
Enjoy your friends.
Enjoy your family at Christmas.
Take a vacation.
Go to bible study.
Become involved, even if very marginally in the community………through some program………..at the church.
Put your children through college so they can have the kind of life that you enjoy.
Retire.
Die.
Die, believing that God is somehow pleased with the fact that your life has been strictly YOUR plan and almost completely devoid of anything original and the fulfillment of your own desires and passions……….
Die, believing that your “blessings” were God’s plan, when it was really YOUR plan all along.
Die, believing that he “favors” you above others because you bring the tithe and of course, go to church.
Die, believing that simply achieving the American Dream was your reasonable service in this life.
Die, believing that you are off the hook of helping the sick, shut in, destitute, homeless or disenfranchised because you are a “giver” (at church) which allows your conscience to rest easy when pretending to ignore those who have an immediate need outside of church.
Die, with the same shortcomings you’ve had all of your life because you convinced yourself that simply by saying you had to work on not being lazy, selfish, etc that you were actually working on not being that way…when you clearly aren’t.
This is the model of a modern, “prosperous”, Christian life. Though there are many who don’t get it in that order, there are very few who don’t at least desire some variation of this life…………..here in America. Why am I saying all of this? Because it is what I’ve always wanted. It is what I’ve always believed. It is also what the church advertises for the most part.
……but what does God have to do with any of that?
Catharsis 