The God Virus: How Religion Infects Our Lives and Culture (12 page)

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The 12th canon of the First Council of Carthage (345) and the 36th canon of the Council of Aix (789) have declared it to be reprehensible even for laymen to make money by lending at interest. As for the Jews, for a long time they could act with impunity in such matters. The Fourth Council of the Lateran (1215), c. 27, only forbids them to exact excessive interest.
The Catholic Encyclopedia,
1912 Volume XV.

When I was in college, my church had a beautiful modern gymnasium with room for two basketball courts. It was rarely used. I noticed this and proposed to the church board an after-school recreation program for the neighborhood children. The immediate response was, “This is an older neighborhood, the children that come will be lower class and may tear up our beautiful facility.”

After months of talk, writing and rewriting proposals, I finally got my church to pay me minimum wage for two hours each afternoon so I could open the facility to the neighborhood. The program was a success. We averaged 25 or more kids per day with no more wear and tear on the facility than would be expected from regular use. The program lasted until I could no longer manage it. I could find no one to take my place so it closed and the gym saw no other community use for the next 30 years.

How much was my church paying for these beautiful facilities? How much value did anyone receive from them? Only a tiny fraction of my church’s money went to anything that could be defined as functional. This beautiful resource was largely wasted. The religion was clearly not interested in serving the larger community.

An article in the summer 2000
Church Leadership Journal
discussed how churches should budget.
²⁴
Here are its recommendations.

Church Budgets

• Staff compensation - 40-60% (60-65% must be strongly communicated as “Staffed to Grow”)

• Facilities - 20%

• Debt retirement - 8%

• Utilities - 5%

• Maintenance - 5%

• Insurance - 6%

• Missions - 16% (50/50 between foreign & domestic)

• Programs - 10% (no salaries here)

• Administration - 6%

• Denominational fees - 5%

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“Church Budgets & Pastor's Salary Packages,?
Church Leadership Journal
XXI, no. 3 (Summer 2000): 88.

The numbers add up to more than 121% – these are their figures, not mine. A quick look at this budget recommendation shows a lot of money going to things that do not directly help anyone. Assuming my church and others like it follow a similar budget, let’s look at how much “good” my church was doing. Subtracting all monies used in viral propagation, staff compensation is largely dedicated to religious instruction. Facilities and debt retirement are mostly related to religious work as are administration and denominational fees. My church had a Boy Scout troop that met in the building, but only Protestant Christian boys were allowed. Maybe the boys learned some functional skills, but as a member of that particular troop, I saw a lot of “God and country” type of instruction, including prayer and blatant Protestant propaganda.

Considering the tough time I had getting the board to let a few neighborhood kids use the gym, we can see that non-religious use of the facilities were uncommon. From these examples we can conclude that virtually all costs associated with facilities, utilities, maintenance and insurance were religious in nature. No one was using the facilities to teach children reading or to help elderly people find a cool place to go in the summer heat when they had no air conditioning.

That leaves programs and missions. Most of the programs involved teaching children religious ideas: Christmas and Easter programs, summer Bible school programs, church camps, adult and children’s choir, etc., all were primarily viral focused. Were people better able to deal with real life, finances, disease, childcare or a host of other daily problems as a result? While my church claimed to teach these things, most of what passed for religious instruction in childcare, finances, disease control or prevention was heavily steeped in non-functional religious ideas and downright superstition. Things like prayer vigils for cancer victims, abstinence classes for teens, Christian financial management, among a host of other activities, all focused on the virus. These activities healed no one from cancer. I saw no evidence of unwanted pregnancy prevention. Church
members would have been better off taking a secular financial management class, where they would not have been pressured to give 10% to the church.

How about missions? Most mission money goes to those who are preaching a religion’s specific message. My parents became missionaries after they retired, so I was able to get an inside picture of what other missionaries were doing with the money given them. By far the greatest amount of money went to paying missionary preachers and building churches. I saw very little of that money going to teach children to read, how to manage a small farm more effectively or how to build local infrastructure and conserve resources. Instead, thousands of Bibles and religious tracts were purchased and distributed, religious services were conducted, hundreds of people were baptized, hundreds of children memorized scripture verses, but at the end of the day, there was little done to bring people out of their poverty or provide them with the skills needed to live in a fast-moving modern world.

I heard returning missionaries give talks on the good they were doing. They did not talk about teaching people to run their own business or raising more educated children. They did not tell of higher-quality produce from farms and gardens or less disease and death. Instead, they proclaimed the glory of god in new churches built, numbers of people baptized, numbers of Bibles distributed, as well as men and women who graduated from the missionary Bible college.

Of the money given to a religious organization, something less (probably far less) than 5% provides something of functional value. Most money is directed to ensuring propagation of the religion. How does that compare to a non-religious charitable organization? The Better Business Bureau Wise Giving Alliance recommends that charitable organizations spend 65% of their budgets on program activities and 35% on fundraising and administration. In general, a dollar given to a religious organization will result in 5 cents going to some functional activity. A dollar given to the Red Cross, United Way, Habitat for Humanity, or many other non-religious organizations will result in a 65 cent functional benefit if they follow the Better Business Bureau guidelines. By comparison, church giving is a 95% investment in the virus and 5% in people.

Taking this analysis to other religious organizations like the 700 Club, the Moral Majority or Focus on the Family, hundreds of millions of dollars are given to these organizations with little or no accountability. The money
offers almost no functional good. It is channeled into activities that include a good deal of political activity in the service of the new civil religion. James Dobson’s Focus on the Family spends vast amounts getting a thinly veiled political message out to legislators and politicians. Dobson sent out an email to his entire flock in August 2008 asking them to pray for rain over Invesco Field to force Barack Obama to cancel his Democratic Party acceptance speech. His prayers were not answered, but it was a clear use of his organization as a political entity in promotion of the virus. Ironically, the next week hurricane Gustav disrupted the Republican Convention. Dobson did not seem to see his god’s hand in that.

Church financial scandals over the years have also shown how easily money can be misused. Headlines like these seem to populate the news media on a regular basis:

• Money Scandal in Florida Diocese Adds to Church Woes

• Church Corruption, Questionable Gifts Live On, Long After Bakker Scandal

• Raising Financial Integrity Amid Money Scandals
²⁵

With no financial accountability or oversight, many churches and ministries are free of any real constraints unlike non-religious charitable organizations.

The civil religion has developed very successful ways to fund its propagation through these organizations. Most have loose or no affiliation with long-established denominations. Neither Dobson’s Focus on the Family Falwell’s Moral Majority, Pat Robertson’s 700 Club or the Christian Coalition have effective financial oversight and seem exempt to tax law that disallows religious organizations to engage in political activity. These groups are the treasury of the new civil religion.

Uncoupling from tribal religion allows religion the ability to infect any culture. Once the culture is infected, the viral religion seeks to bind the religion to it. The American civil religion has been taken over by a more virulent god virus and used to gain influence and control over the political system and, ultimately, to bind with the culture. The political immune system is greatly weakened by the high viral load it bears, to the degree that religion is now a test for public office. The tactics of this virulent virus are designed to freeze rational discussion and weaken immune responses, thus paving the way for permanent infection of both the political structure and culture. The god virus infects a culture like it infects individuals. While not an economic entity or a political entity, it can and will use economic or political avenues for propagation. The god virus is not interested in economics. Politics and economics are merely tools for the virus.

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“Raising Financial Integrity Amid Money Scandals,”
NY Times,
9 October 2000 and “Raising Financial Integrity Amid Money Scandals,”
Christian Post Reporter,
3 January 2008 and Associated Baptist Press,
Church corruption, questionable gifts live on, long after Bakker scandal
[article online] (24 July 2007, accessed 22 November 2008); available from
http://www.abpnews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2789&Itemid=120
; Internet.

“You are digging for the answers, Until your fingers bleed, To satisfy the hunger, To satiate the need. They feed you on the guilt, To keep you humble and low, Some man and myth they made up, A thousand years ago.”

-Melissa Etheridge, “Silent Legacy” song on the Yes, I Am album

Now that we have looked at the social and political aspects of the god virus, we can examine the more personal and psychological components. We will start with the role guilt plays in propagation of many religions. How does it drive behavior? How is it used to bind people to the god virus?

When I was in private clinical practice, a 48-year-old Catholic priest came to me for counseling (I’ll call him Father Joseph although that was not his real name). He was very concerned that things be kept quiet and confidential. He was concerned that he masturbated and used pornography. He had enormous guilt over this but could not stop himself. He showed signs of depression. After several sessions, he admitted that he had self-destructive thoughts.
“I think it would be better if I were dead than to have these terrible thoughts and urges. I have them even as I am saying Mass or counseling a couple.”

He felt there was no one in the Church to talk to, so he sought me out. As I listened to him, he sounded like a normal human male. A male with no approved sexual outlet. All his training and education had taught him that masturbation and pornography were deadly sins. It pained me to listen to his anxiety and guilt. The best I could do was let him know that all he told me sounded quite normal, that the human male sex drive is extremely powerful and that it is not natural to suppress it in this manner.

Through many tough therapy sessions, we worked on the huge conflict between his training and his natural drives. I am not sure he resolved the issue but about six months later, another priest called for counseling, having been referred by Father Joseph. A similar scenario unfolded.

Both of these very dedicated and caring men were distraught over something that is perfectly normal. Their conflicts, guilt and anxiety led them to depression – and worse. The religious virus had so taken over their minds and programmed them sexually that both of these men could see no way out. I don’t know what happened to either of them once our sessions were finished. Despite a life of dedication, they could never be good enough. Acting on normal drives was enough to condemn them in their own eyes as well as the eyes of their god.

Guilt has become one of the greatest tools of western religions. Of course, guilt existed long before Judaism, Christianity or Islam, but these religions have developed highly effective, guilt-inducing techniques. Individual guilt development harnesses energy for the god virus. That is, the more guilt you feel, the more you look to your religion to salve the guilt. When the priest or minister helps you through some of your guilt, the relief is huge. It binds you even closer to the religion, ready for the next time you feel guilt.

Guilt is a never-ending, circular road that maintains viral control and prevents you from expending energy in positive ways. The only way to truly eliminate religious guilt is to surrender to the virus. After you have surrendered, if you still feel guilty, that is proof that you have not truly surrendered. It is a self-reinforcing and imprisoning viral method. You are never good enough. Father Joseph was as dedicated as or more than most people in any religion, yet he still was not good enough.