I was in a Sunday school class last Sunday, a class with mostly middle-class

[raccoon]

people, most of them kids about college age. The class was talking about God being in control, and "everything will be all right."

I was thinking, "Would they still believe this if they lost their well-paying jobs with good benefits and all they could find was a McJob, making minimum wage and definitely falling out of the middle class? Would they still believe God loved them and everything would be all right?"

Somebody said that many middle class people view falling out of the middle class as "falling from grace." I can see why; I went through something similar myself.

Your thoughts?

[midnight]

1. It is encouraging to hear that the middle class has some well-

paying jobs still.

[Common Sense Party]

2. God's love has little to do with socioeconomic status. n/t

[Jim__]

3. If you believe in god - the god that most Sunday school classes

believe in - you almost have to believe that god is in control and everything will be alright, don't you? If you don't believe that god is in control, then you don't really believe he's god. Maybe that's why some people believe that religion is the opiate of the people.

[greendog]

4. Kind of reminds me of this old song...

...by Richard Thompson. He turns the middle class concept of God upside down.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p43idNrhvxE

[Withywindle]

25. Holy shit, can that man testify!

(Isn't he a Sufi?)

Originally, the message that "God will provide" was aimed at people who were dirt poor and starving, who knew they were going to die young regardless.

The whole idea that God loves the upper and middle classes most of all is the ultimate corruption of the New Testament message, IMO. What little respect I have for Christianity is based on the idea of a healer and teacher who reached out to lepers and prostitutes and orphans and the penniless and put them at the front of the line to get into the Kingdom of Heaven.

[cosmik debris]

5. If the prosperity gospel held water,

Jesus would have been the riches man in the world.

[SheilaT]

6. I'm only sorry you didn't ask them that question.

It's possible the universal response would have been that God then wants them to be poor, but you could keep on probing, bring up Enron-types of situations.

That's another example of why I so dislike organized religion, because it actively keeps people from thinking for themselves.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

7. "Everything will be all right" goes beyond maintaining the status quo

Even if people suffer economic misfortune, they may learn important lessons from that and come through it stronger and even happier in the end. For example, if their self-image is dependent on their material status, economic hardship may make them appreciate their relationships with friends and family and their own untapped inner strengths and talents.

I was devastated when I lost my last teaching job in 1993, but in retrospect, it was one of the best things that ever happened to me. My friends who remained in college teaching are all miserable (between the increased application of business-like productivity models to education and the increasing anti-intellectualism of the students) and just marking time till retirement. Meanwhile, I'm in a career that combines my two greatest strengths (languages and writing) and affords a lot of freedom to pursue my other interests, like music and volunteer work.

"Everything will be all right" does not mean that you will have a trouble-free existence. Nobody, religious or non-religious, has that, and it is a disservice to let anyone think that. The "prosperity gospel" is especially damaging, and it's not even Biblical. Jesus is actually pretty tough on the rich, and consistently so. The Jewish Scriptures, such as the Book of Job, are equally unimpressed with the idea of riches as a sign of God's favor, and the prophets condemn those who ignore or oppress the poor.

However, the prosperity gospel is useful to the right wing: riches are the sign of God's approval, and poverty is the sign of God's disapproval. Whoa! Could there ever be a more useful and psychologically damaging tool for the right wing?

[raccoon]

9. Thanks for your post. nt

[Silent3]

10. How come God didn't provide your friends...

...with the same "lucky" break, and only spared you, but not your friends, the apparent misery of remaining involved in college teaching?

[Lydia Leftcoast]

11. I don't know, and neither do you

:-)

They may have had opportunities to leave and decided to stay. But in the end, I don't know each individual story.

[Silent3]

12. My point is that you can easily find "the silver lining"...

...in many experiences, and, when you can't, ascribe what misery remains to a mystery of the will of God. What you end up with is exactly the same result as if no deity had intervened at all.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

13. Whatever makes sense to you

:shrug:

[Silent3]

15. The point is to try to get you to think...

...about what makes sense to you, whether the positive spin you put on God's alleged help is sensible, not just and easy and comforting way of dealing with adversity that requires you to avoid thinking too deeply about when God helps out, when He doesn't, and when to call it "help that I don't understand yet".

I remember a guy saying, "Between me and my brother Dave, we know everything." The lame joke was that he'd then either answer himself when knew the answer to a question, or he'd say "You'd have to ask Dave about that." when he didn't have an answer. Dave was, of course, conveniently absent and unavailable for comment.

Forget about what makes sense to me. Does it really make sense to you to treat an explanation of divine intervention as a good explanation, one worthy of your belief, when it works no better than the "me and my brother Dave" gambit?

[Evoman]

16. I wanna know why god will help someone with their job, while people

get their limbs amputated, family members raped, and their loved one macheted to death somewhere else.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

18. As I said, I don't know

I just answered raccoon's question.

[RaleighNCDUer]

8. Prosperity theology = God hates the poor.

Sick fucking twisted Calvinism.

[heidler1]

14. Yes, and the whole process of promoting patriotic behavior among the poor so they

will be willing to put their own lives on the line, in war, so the rich can make their lives even better. Think OIL.

[bdf]

17. Of course they'd still believe in God

Look at Falwell and Robertson after 9-11. Gawd was punishing good, Gawd-fearing Merkins for the sins of Gawd-hating Libruls.

Or look at the Inquisition, which got its initial impetus because people suffering natural disasters (such as crop failures caused by what were then termed "Acts of Gawd") reasoned that a loving Gawd wouldn't punish them unless they were harbouring a very evil person in their midst. So lots of lonely widows were tortured to death for the sin of keeping a cat.

It is inconceivable that Gawd would punish them for their sins, so the punishment is for the sins of others (transferrable sin is the fundamental doctrine of Christianity).

It is also inconceivable that Gawd is a figment of their imagination. Because life is really shitty (especially after Gawd punishes them for the sins of others) and the only thing that makes it tolerable is the promise of "Pie in the sky, when you die."

[SidneyCarton]

19. A question of perspective.

Things can suck now and yet be all right in the long run. There is also the assumption of an afterlife and the idea that while things that happen in one's life suck, life is short, eternity is long. I know, its an argument without any basis of proof, but it keeps a lot of us from throwing ourselves in front of freight trains.

[cosmik debris]

20. Surely you have better motivation than that?

At least I hope so.

[SidneyCarton]

21. Depends on the day to day.

[cosmik debris]

22. That just seems sad to me

As an atheist I have thousands of reasons not to throw myself in front of a freight train.

I can't even imagine your point of view.

[JerseygirlCT]

23. I always think of the Bosstones "The Impression that I Get"

and wonder.

I've lived a pretty darned charmed life, really. How might I react otherwise? Honestly, I don't know. I know what I HOPE, but I don't know what I could or would do if I were so severely tested.

And I really don't want to find out, you know?

I doubt we can extrapolate to every person a sort of blanket inability to know how they'd act in extremity or how strong their faith might be in that situation. But for myself... I can hope, but I don't know.

[kwassa]

24. sometime trials create faith in the first place

this was certainly true in my case.

The difficulties can be most instructional.

[knitter4democracy]

26. I've known Christians who lost all that but never lost their faith.

Their faith kept them going through bad health, job losses, losing homes, etc.

God being in charge and everything will be all right is like the Gospel reading we heard today of Jesus walking on the water. Peter has the initial faith to get out of the boat and start walking with Christ, but then he sees the storm and freaks out, starting to sink. That's when Jesus reaches down, grabs his hand, chides him a bit, and helps him walk back to the boat.

Storms come in life. Nothing changes that. Shit happens. Having faith that everything will be all right in the end, though, means that we have the faith to get through the storms.

Prosperity theology is a real problem in the Church. God doesn't bless with money, no matter how much you pray for it. If God's blessings came in money form, Jesus would've been the richest guy on the planet, and the early Church would've had all kinds of properties and money.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

27. Given the popularity of that sort of religion among the poor, probably.

Remember, these are real people, not cardboard cutouts from a film intended to demonstrate the stupidity of religion.

I suspect most of them would become more overtly religious in adversity, not less so.

[Beer Snob-50]

28. this happened to me 12-13 years ago

and i still believed in god and everything has turned out okay. i do not consider myself a robotic fundementalist or anything like that.