Someone asked a question one time about why Black people believe in God so much, it’s simple, because God represents “hope”. Hope that things can be better than they are today, hope that things will get better in the future, hope that maybe not in this life, but in the next life things will get better. Black people also hold onto God because for a long time in this country, it was the only thing we were allowed to own. We couldn’t control our fate in this country, so God and “hope” was all we had to get us through, one day things would get better, if not in this life, then the next.
It doesn’t surprise me that Steve Jobs wasn’t a Christian, Warren Buffet and Bill Gates are agnostic, or Tom Cruise is a member of the Church of Scientology, but when I found out that Will and Jada were contemplating joining the Church of Scientology… My first response was, “Wait a minute, Jesus!” Is it now that Jay-Z is raking in billions that now he feels comfortable lacing a track with the lines, “Jesus can’t save you, life starts when the church ends”? I’m not here to debate about whether Jay-Z meant that line for how it was interpreted by the majority, but at what point in history did we get so colloquial with our relationship with God?
The numbers don’t lie, they suggest that the more money and education we obtain, the more our relationship with God suffers. I attest this to two things, the more educated you are the more your sense of logic becomes more structured and developed. You use logic to explain everything, and while you can’t prove there is no God, you can’t prove there is one either. As it pertains to money, when the ends start to meet in a way that things could not possibly get any better, you lose sight of that need for “hope.”
When you think about Christianity and all of its symbols, everlasting life wouldn’t have done it alone without the villain. People aren’t as scared to die as they are afraid of spending their lives in hell. But for some when they think about how heaven is described in the Church, I’m sure that Jay-Z might sit around thinking, “Maybe that’s not really what I want to do when I die.” Many of them are willing to spend almost all of their resources trying to remain, Forever Young.
I think there are a few things worth examining a bit more here too; because this isn’t a new phenomenon, but you may have to do a little thinking to connect the dots. And by that, I mean just that connecting the dots. Many of the people in our history books regarded as the wisest men in all of the land; astrologers, philosophers, World leaders, and even inventors have all been traced back to the Church of Scientology, Free Masonery or the “Illuminati.” This isn’t a new phenomenon. It seems that the wealthy or the leaders of society have always questioned their relationship with a higher power and if one really exists. Is there something that comes with knowledge that can only be obtained once you reach a certain level of wealth and status?
When your life doesn’t suck and it seems like everything is going to be great going forward, I’m pretty sure you start to wonder about the “religion” thing and how it all fits in with all you’ve accomplished. For myself, I tend to ask most people who claim to be Christians some very key questions all the time:
Do you accept Christ as your savior because through him you have everlasting life, or do you really believe that to live like Christ is the right way?
If we were to remove everlasting life from the picture would you still be a Christian?
If all your prayers were answered, what would you talk to God about?
If it turned out that there was no God and no eternal life, would you regret the way you lived your life?
I get very interesting answers to those questions when I get honest answers to those questions. I think it wasn’t until I answered those questions honestly, that I found out what I really believed in.
Going back to my original point, I think there are reasons why we need God. But do the wealthy have those same reasons? They can’t take anything with them, so do they spend their time thinking about the afterlife, or thinking about how to stay in this life? If you are wealthy now, do you want to have a hard reset on everything and go back to being a mere equal to the general population? What about all that you have spent your life earning? Or did all these people sell their souls for the money? Should we not take time to critically think about the phenomenon? To extremely wealthy, does the concept of a God even make sense? I don’t have the answers to this questions, I still cash my paycheck and pay bills on Saturday morning. Perhaps, we needed a Steve Jobs app so he could talk to us now and tell everybody the answers. And maybe it’s supposed to be like this, it’s truly the unknown.