How Religious People Act Like Gods

Individuals who are religious fanatics and orthodox Christians are by far the biggest bigots.  Jamaican Christians that exude the holier -than -thou attitude make secular individuals cringe beneath their glares.  They are excoriating and caustic in their views of modern society and non Christians are treated with contempt. The competitions between denominations to proselytize non believers are very fierce.  I frequently wonder if they are serving the same god due to the lengths that a Church of God Pentecostal will go to bash a Jehovah witness so as to convince me to go their church.  Religious people in Jamaica appear to be having a grave competition between the Christian denominations.  The Catholics are reserved for the upper crust and the lower socio-economical class is mainly Protestants which is Christianity syncretized with African religious practices.

Clergy men regard the rest of the society as sinful beings, who fall at the bottom of the human continuum on the spiritual hierarchy that determines those that are closer to heaven and other s that are doomed for hell. Religious leaders (in Jamaica) behave as if they are god’s secretary. Pastors and priest conduct themselves as if they are infallible and without flaw often leaving the rest of us to question whether or not we want to achieve salvation and that we are worthless in our quest to attain eternal life. We begin to measure our theological status by the apparent impeccability of religious leaders.

We fear the pastor or priest of discovering our infractions because of the verbal backlash and derision which the Pastor may subject one to. We value the clergy man’s spiritual validation as if he was god’s secretary or better yet manager.   The sinner is fearful of entering the congregation after his transgression has been promulgated. I heard a Rastafarian once said that King David, Solomon and Paul (Saul) would not have been fit to be called saints in today’s churches.  The yardstick that is used to measure the saint from the demon would have labeled the martyr and pioneers of Christianity as outcast and sinners.

                No doubt, King David and Solomon would have been shunned from the modern churches (Jamaica) for their fornicating, philandering and promiscuous ways. The church would have been reluctant to accept a murderer as Paul as the new religious leader or better yet a connoisseur of Christianity.  The pastors would have objurgated David; he would have been stared upon with contempt.  Paul would have been murdered by the congregation in the form of vigilante justice for the demise of other Christians by his hands.

                The punishments meted out by religious leaders for sin far contradict the penance that the gods would have marshal. It may appear that a man who is avidly religious conducts himself as if he is above human flaw, rapport and imperfections. For many Christians baptism represents transcendence from mortality to divinity.  They behave as if they have passed through a portal that makes them higher than humanity. They are above the weakling nature of humanity.

                It is posited that religious women are very religious in their marriages. Most women do not want to have sex for fear that it may desecrate their bodies. Human desires are relegated as a demerit of lesser beings. It is as if, through religion, human beings can be deified. We seek religion to gain favor from the gods, so as to defy our mortality. This is evident in the splendid afterlife that most religions advocate; therefore giving humans a reason to live because religion purports that man will become immortal when he dies.  The staunch Christian becomes a template of the almighty that he edaciously worshiped during his tenure on this sinful earth when he dies.  This may be the impetus behind the behavior that religious Jamaican individuals exude, it as if (as Konshens puts it) “practice for it for the day soon comes”