Divine Intervention and Social Dependency

About ten years ago, I remember the encounter between a man in his late thirties and his friend and coworker in a parochial school where we all taught. Our co-worker, who was an evangelical Christian, asked him when he and his wife were going to have children. When he replied that they could not have children, the co-worker replied "Oh, you don't know my God. You should get to know him. With him, all things are possible."

What the woman did not know is that his wife had just had a complete hysterectomy. And all the prayer in the world was obviously not going to help much in making her fertile.

Observing this conversation was a sort of turning point in my life. I reflected, and reflect today, on the futility of divine intervention in such circumstances. I reflect on how the power of a surgeon's knife is far more powerful than the imaginary god of my evangelical friend. Of course, the true believer will still say that their almighty god can even overcome a hysterectomy. I'm not holding my breath--neither did the man in my true story.

Yet much of the Judaeo-Christian tradition teaches reliance upon such an intervening imaginary being, and how we are "filthy rags" incapable of doing any good ourselves. Jesus himself based his world view on charitable giving, and with his passing, his chosen twelve followers set themselves up as re-distributors of the wealth of the early Christian communities, which "shared all in common."

How easily this religion was manipulated by crafty clerics--Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant--to form governments where the people were dependent upon the clerics and the divine right of kings instead of upon themselves. Medieval Hinduism had a similar development, with the brahmin and kshatriya castes dominating the society. We see Islam today in this same despicable phase of evolution, giving rise to violence against the "infidel" who largely outgrew their medieval phase of development.

Yet the next phase of societal evolution is little better. We have seen the twentieth-century transition from divine intervention to governmental intervention. From Russia to England to Canada, the transition from czars and kings and queens to socialist governments of many varieties was made complete during the last century. Today, we are witnessing this in the United States at the dawn of a new century.

The Acts of the Apostles accounts that those early Christians who sold property to donate to their socialistic leaders, but withheld some of the money for themselves, were struck dead by their god. Superstition, fear, and false hope are powerful tools in controlling the masses. First, convince people that they must depend upon an imaginary being for their worth and their survival, and place fear of divine retribution in their hearts. Transfer this dependency to the god's chosen leaders. Then when the god never shows up to help, the leaders remain. After a while, the god disappears from the dogma, but the tyranny remains.

No matter how much people pray to their imaginary god and wait for divine intervention, the poor and the ill continue to starve and die, the barren remain so, the wealthy still find themselves unhappy or suffering inwardly or facing the problems of illness and death which no money nor prayer can prevent, and nothing really changes. Hope upon an afterlife or coming new world rings empty when the imagined being in charge is impotent in alleviating the suffering of the present moment.

The transition from reliance upon an almighty and intervening god, to reliance upon his divinely-ordained clerics with very human means of inflicting suffering and maintaining control, to reliance upon the government are mere phases in a continuum of teaching that the individuals cannot make responsible choices on their own, and that a higher power must intervene to provide for them and protect them from themselves. Inevitably this means a bigger government with many laws restricting the rights of individuals. The government replaces the god.

The major exception to this trend was the government formed over two hundred years ago in America.