More on "You Are What You Eat" Theology

Yesterday, I discussed the book, How God Becomes Real. The author, an anthropologist, makes the good case believers perceive the unseen divine differently than they see other realities. The chair you are sitting on is seen differently than the being one prays to. Both are believed to "exist," but they are different. The result is that religions, which depend on people believing in the unseen, must have regularly repeated rituals and instructions reminding the believer the unseen is real. The author then explores how these rituals and instructions (sermons) affect people and the society in which they reside. 

If one asks, "What is the worst thing that could happen to a believing group which would weaken its grip on its society?" I think we now know the answer. It would be some new development which crowded out the rituals and instruction required to maintain the presence of the unseen. This new development would have a constant presence reenforcing something different that the orthodoxy that preceded it. The new development is the life online, the computer/phone. A young preacher and online participant discussed recently how the subgroups, followed by subgroups of subgroups, develop deviations from orthodoxy and reinforce them with others who are like-minded. The barn door was left open. 

While I'm not a historian, I have my amateur views of what is happening. We are returning to a world that existed 2,000, maybe 5,000, years ago. It was a time when ever group splintered off into a subgroup. The unseen being changed from one to another are different needs arose. Every town had a different god. I'm referring, of course, to Paganism. 

Paganism worked fine until human leaders began tinkering with things to help themselves and realized governing people works better when one human leader is paired with one god. Jews did it. Maybe others in prehistory did it as well. Along came one one-god Greek named Paul. He came to realize the old one god needed to be updated. He could not, of course, see that his method of holding people to the fire could be used by billions of others when his letters were replaced by the internet. Now we have millions of Pauls. Paul was self-appointed. Why can't everyone else appoint themselves?

An interesting form of entertainment is to watch videos and writing of church officials and pundits suggesting how the decline can be reversed. Really, they need to raise the white flag and just enjoy what they have as long as it exists. The clock is running out.