Religious Zen

What are they?

I love infomercials. I’m also a night owl. As a consequence once the daily programming of my favorite channels has come to an end, I view a lot of as-seen-on-TV-paid-programming ads at night. I’ve seen everything from the Gin sou knife to the magic bullet. I never, ever buy anything but I take great pleasure from simply watching them. I don’t quite know why that is. Perhaps it is sort of like a car crash; you don’t want to stare, but you can’t possibly look away from it. It’s a curse, I suppose.

Over the course of my late night viewings I’ve come across a disturbing trend: televangelists. Well, it may be assumed that televangelists have always been a disturbing trend, and you’d be right. I’ve noticed something that isn’t new, but nonetheless is increasing in frequency: spiritual placebos. I stayed up for most of one night until 5:00am (I rarely watch this much tv, if ever, so it was quite a jump for me) just to channel surf and see how many late night televangelists were giving away these items. What did I see?

Call now for your free miracle spring water!

Get your free holy land sand straight from Jerusalem!

Dial the number for a free case of miracle olive oil soap! (I am not making these up)

Before I finally called it a night I counted seven different televangelists who were touting one kind of miracle object or another. Almost entire broadcasts were devoted to the object and what it could do for you!

“I got your miracle spring water and sprinkled it on my wallet. The next day I received a check for $389!”

“Your soap was just the thing I needed. I used it and now my house is paid off and my husband has a better job!”

I got so interested that I called the number for one of these items. I chose to get the miracle spring water. All I had to do to get it was give them my home address (of course), my phone number, an email, and I had to agree to be sent other forms of publications.

Other forms of publications? Oh, so the water wasn’t quite free. I was going to get sent brochures just like I had been sent when I was on other Christian mailing lists (I’m thankful I’m off them now!) asking to send in my ‘love gift’ of $100 or more. You see, these televangelists also teach something else: the prosperity gospel. Is that so bad?

Well, it’s not. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be prosperous. I know that life rewards many people, and I believe there is a kind of karma in the universe today. It becomes wrong when in order to get a ‘blessing’ you need to send somebody $1,000 or more and then a certain god will rain down love and prosperity in your life. This is tantamount to the snake-oil salesmen of the past.

“I was in debt over $130,000. I finally broke down and got some of your miracle spring water and gave you $75 like you told me to. Since then, my debt is being paid off and I have money left over in the bank!”

The motivations of the individual preachers and ministers peddling these items is wrong, even if their motivations are true and they really believe what they are saying. Preying on the faith of others will never be right, and this is the subject for many articles later on.

What do we say when these items actually work, though? Even though the testimonials on TV may be biased, there are definitely instances where somebody uses such and such miracle item or donates such and such amount of money and all of a sudden their life is turned around, seemingly over night.

Can we attribute these successes to a particular god or a particular preacher’s ‘anointing’ as it is called? No. Even though these spiritual placebos work for some, they do not work for everybody. If there really was a god honoring everything behind these items and donations, then there would be a consistency behind it. Everybody would be blessed by them. Again, they are not, and these preachers have to rationalize this and condemn others. “You just aren’t in god’s will,” they say. It puts the falsifiable blame that should be on the preacher onto the faithful and sincere believer. This is wrong.

There is something to be learned from the people on whom it does work though. At least, the ones who are effected by more than luck. The placebo effect is well known in the world of medicine. If you do not know what this is, it is when somebody is given a pill and told that it will help them with a certain problem that is effecting them. It could be called a headache reliever, an energy booster, it doesn’t matter. Really, it is a sugar pill. The person then takes it and because of the power of the mind, it ends up doing exactly what the person thinks it will do.

This is where the concept behind spiritual placebo comes into play. Instead of taking a preacher’s miracle olive oil soap and rubbing it all over, why not just make a conscious decision to be more successful? Why not set quantifiable goals for yourself and achieve something concrete rather than diving off a cliff and hoping for the best? Skip the process of believing in soap, and believe for what it is you want!

When you put yourself into something, and I mean really pour yourself into change, things will happen. For instance, it could begin by a prayer, or meditating on a specific subject. Let’s take this blog for example. For a long time I had a passion in my heart to create a blog just like this. I wanted to help people out with their spiritual issues as well as personal development. At the time, though, I had no money I could spare nor the technical expertise as to how to go about it. So I prayed, and meditated, as well as simply being conscious and aware that I was going to start a blog. Not only that, but that it would be a successful blog over time. You see, I put positive intention out into the universe.

This alone can sometimes bring change, but not always by itself. You have to act on that intention. I stuck with believing that I would be able to start a blog. Eventually more money came in (which was a meditation of mine because of other financial needs as well!) and I could afford it. I updated my knowledge of CSS, MySQL, and PHP that allowed me to put it together on a technical level. And I have had a lifetime of spiritual growth and experience behind me to write about (of course I have more than enough life left to grow and experience all it has to offer!). And there you have it, my positive intention brought about change. Although I am still waiting on the successful blog part!

I encourage you to drop the spiritual placebos and get a step closer to the true source. The universe has an abundance of everything we could possibly dream of. Why do we need a religious middleman with their less than admirable intentions to stand in our way? The power of positive thinking and actions following, as well as goal setting, are a powerful force to bring about change in one’s life. What are you waiting for? Use the miracle spring water on your plants or something useful rather than on your wallet. Start making positive intentions today!

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