by Wayland Blue

Created on: October 05, 2008

The demonstration of sincerity to God seams to be the objective of organized religion. Not just during the sacred times and in the sacred spaces of the various great religions is this attempt to show God something evident, but throughout the lives of the faithful there are rituals by which one shows sincerity to the divine being or higher power or whatever one may call it. Normally this all takes the form of trying to live cleanly and perfectly as well as fallowing the rites and traditions of whatever religion one fallows. For some this is a vary real concern. Indeed, for some it is a matter of salvation or damnation. Such great power do they put in their own ability to convince the divine being of their true commitment that a failure on their part can not be pardoned as they see it. At least, not by them. The real problem comes when they start applying their own logic to God. For them, salvation becomes wrapped up entirely in human effort and striving, and for what?

What is the real purpose of showing God you are serious? If we start from the assumption that it is to guaranty God's favor on us and to influence him to grant us salvation, than what kind of God do we worship? To approach it from a logical perspective and fallow the train of reasoning, we must ultimately come to the conclusion that the God we worship is, in fact extremely selfish and self centered, even more so that most humans. Even in a human relationship, both parties normally try to contribute and show sincerity to each other. In the relationship that is cast by those who adhere to the idea that we must strive to win God's favor by showing him how sincere we are, it is, in a way, rather one sided. It puts the ability to obtain salvation by way of influencing God through our works and thus the responsibility to do so firmly in our human hands. Do more and God will accept you. Try harder and He will receive you. Put on a better show of you sincerity and he will bless you. When looking upon this conceptual frame work, I can not help but notice how similar it is to another religious tradition that is much older and much more historically wide spread that the modern "great" religions. Animism and Spirit worship. Witch craft and attempts to please the spirits so that they won't hurt you. Fear and the striving to serve it. Is that not what this whole concept of doing more and trying harder to please God really is? It is truly nothing more than a glorified form of building a spirit house or sacrificing

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