Valson Thampu

My attention has been drawn, in particular, to two recent videos. The first pertains to an innovative and entrepreneurial religious arrangement under the auspices of ‘Spirit in Jesus’. It is christened Yom Kippur prayer, showcased as offering relief to a special category of sorely distressed individuals, who are burdened with ‘weeping money’. This unique asset-cum-affliction is defined as wealth inherited from ancestors who led particularly vicious and immoral lives. Yom Kippur prayer is the Christian Ganga jal that can wash away the stains on such dirty notes and make them conducive to the inner ease of their present beneficiaries. The bargain on offer is attractive. Only a small portion of such ill-gotten wealth needs to be spent on this spiritual deep-cleaning, starting with the registration fee only of a paltry Rs. 1000. You never imagined, I bet, your conscience could be washed snow-white so cheap!
The second is even more dramatic and tempting. The Bermuda-clad heir-apparent of a Good News magnate makes his debut appearance. The odds are stacked against him. It is not easy to match the sleights of hand of his rags-to-riches papa, who has amassed mountainous wealth by solving people’s problems and caressing their financial aspirations. But he dares to outdo his dad. Unveils a spiritual technique by which he ‘prays money into people’s accounts’. Not peanuts. His prayers are addressed to the ambition you harbour to be a micro Ambani or Adani. He calls up an ‘uncle’ –uncles still remain useful and obliging- to elicit his testimony that Rs. 1.5 crores fell into his account due to the power of his prayer. He then works up the covetousness of his prosperity-drooling audience. ‘Want money?’, ‘Want money?’ he coaxes and cajoles them. Their astronomical desires aroused, he switches with effortless ease into speaking in ‘other tongues’. What this ‘tongue’ has to do with banks and money, nobody wonders. At once the session climaxes: a state best described in Nietzsche’s phrase in The Antichrist, as ‘violent gymnastics of ghastly ugliness’. You are left in no doubt at all: the son will soon eclipse the father.
Everyone who drew my attention to these two Siamese-twin sorts of episodes sounded indignant and surprised. I simply could not share their sentiments. To me, there was no surprise element in these and a host of other similar enterprises in the name of Christianity. Let me say why?
How can you or I blame the ‘Spirit in Jesus’ speculators or the financial-bonanza-prayer-expert, without reckoning the gullibility of Christians? If you and I are happy to stay foolish, attractive preys to religious predators, what right do we have to complain? Surely, it is not anyone’s case that fraud and deception are practised in our community only by these two outfits. Fraudulence has a million shades. The outfits mentioned here are different from the rest in that they are more shameless than their rivals.
It won’t be inappropriate to name this the Monson Mavunkal Syndrome (MMS, hereafter). The cultural-historical significance of MMS is that it unveils deception as the point of confluence for the forces and factors in our society. Politicians, top-ranking police officers of the state, religious leaders, bureaucrats, cine artists, businessmen, society ladies… for everyone, all roads led to Monson’s house, which is also, appropriately, a museum, whose heart beats in a beauty clinic manned by girls armed with unspecified expertise. But let us not mistake the trees for the forest. The forest –or, the reality that stays behind the front row of trees- is the eager willingness rife among us to be taken for a right royal ride by anyone who can pander to our covetousness. At the core of this social reality is the coalescence of appearance and reality. In Monson’s genius, appearance became reality; not for ordinary folks like you and me, but for those who matter. It just didn’t happen, somehow. Not even because of Monson’s genius. It happened because of the easy willingness to accept appearance as the reality, even against compelling evidence.
Christian god-men have been around long enough. This pseudo-religious manifestation has not caused any unease in us or in our community for all the deceit and deception it spews. Jesus is the truth. We are happy about it. All the same, we are not unhappy that cults of falsehood mushroom in our midst. Though thousands end up cheated, we choose to stay indifferent. The glitter and gloss of the ill-gotten wealth of our religious frauds makes us respect them, instead.
All these highlight a basic reality that merits attention. We do not care for our faith or for Jesus Christ. We are only mindful of what we can get via the religious route. If it comes from authentic routes, it is fine. It is also fine if it comes via devious and fraudulent routes.
Every society, every religious community is, at any given point in time, a precarious balance of diverse forces: positive and negative. As Jesus said, the distance between prophets and false prophets is perilously little. Spirituality, unlike religiosity, involves the duty to be mindful of the health and wholeness of one’s society and community. In times of spiritual decay, a people lose the discernment to distinguish truth from falsehood. Such an age is characterised also by the ascendancy of mediocrity and allergy to ideals. Individual uprightness is perceived as impertinence. Passions are cheapened, and those who struggle to harbour and hold on to noble sentiments are perceived as naive. Conscience is prostituted for gains of every kind. Sense of justice is diluted. Fervour for the religious externals peaks as a substitute for spiritual authenticity.
The minimum spiritual responsibility that needs to be maintained in times such as ours is the willingness to realize and confess that the roots of the many agendas of holy deceit and extortion lie deep in our own religiosity. Nobody can cheat us, unless we are willing and eager to be. Between the cheated and their deceivers, there exists the umbilical cord of covetous religiosity that worships Mammon, while pretending to be serving God.