When I was a wee girl, I used to go to a Roman Catholic church in Oak Ridge, Tennesee. I remember being bored by it and always causing a scene, even pushing my mom to fucking leave the church prematurely one time. Later on, I became a New Atheist after watching youtube channels about the topic (for example, DarkMatter2525). I rejected philosophy and faith-based reasoning because I thought they were illogical, seemingly unaware that I was taking on a philosophical position, the position of empiricism, its modern form started with British philosophers like Thomas Hobbes.
I frequented atheist and agnostic boards and tried to debate with theists, even though sometimes they didn’t want to. Debating was a modern fixture in my life, because I wanted to prove to people that I am smart, and I am intelligent, even though I really wasn’t. However, as I grew up, I researched religion more, and read the bible, the Quran, works on catholic mysticism, theistic satanist and paganist literature, etc, and I realized that my arguments against theism could be easily disproven. Then I started to think about it some more, and eventually, I stopped being a New Atheist and became the theological clusterfuck I am today.
Then I understood the reason why I was bored of the church that I went to when I was a kid: It wasn’t a Catholic church at all, but a Prosperity Gospel one. A pseudo-Catholic church that preached being financially affluent because of the misguided belief that it brings one closer to God. The Demiurge’s strongest soldiers are the Christian-rich, and the spreaders of the American theology of Prosperity Gospel, and we must ignore the honeyed words of that camp.
Prosperity Gospel is the belief that capitalistic financial blessing is what God (the Monad) wants for us. It’s the enabling of monopoly based on a misunderstanding of the Bible, which makes it a spiritual outlook in poverty. It’s a dangerous outlook because it leads people to believe that being rich means that you are faithful and loyal to God, when, in reality, you are being faithful to the Demiurge. It is no mistake that the Healing Rituals and the popularity of Joel Osteen, as well as the Satanic Panic of the 80s, were the worst thing to happen to Christianity, among other things. It made Christianity into a laughing stock in the west, cementing in people the stereotypical outlook of the Fanatical Evangelical Christian, who preaches on street corners with anti-LGBT narratives and thinks all atheists are actually misotheists, who believe that we came from monkeys.
It’s a really sad thing to see, the declining faith in Christianity inside itself because many Christians (who are cishet, white, and have an age range of 30 to 50) are foolishly gravitating to Prosperity Gospel and adjacent worldviews in theology. The theology in American Christianity, is Prosperity Gospel, in this sense.
Prosperity Gospel is also inherently linked to “Self-Help” literature, as it assumes the concept of “your full potential”, and tries to cement people into capitalistic thought masquerading as life advice. This Self-Help genre of literature has reached a resurgence in the videos of Dhar Mann, which I talked about previously in this blog. We must combat this Self-Help genre because the real Christianity, the real Christ Jesus is anti-capitalistic, and pro-mutual aid. We cannot betray God by participating in, and with Prosperity Gospel, no matter how much their lies are tempting to us.
My point is: There is, ironically, poverty in the Prosperity Gospel of the 21st century, and we must put an end to it as soon as possible, because we are unknowingly serving the Demiurge, instead of the True God, the Monad.
This maps over my experience as well. So much of what I was rebelling against as a teenager was the base and petty nature of many US churches. They were so obviously rooted in materialist desires and were the projects of unimpressive individuals. It took me a while to realize that there was a lot of wisdom in religious traditions.