Will God come to save us, or must we save ourselves without religion?

Will God come to save us, or must we save ourselves without religion?

There is a list circulating that, read coldly, looks like the inventory of a cult: television, social media, a political party, a football team, alcohol, tobacco, organized religion and even the courtship ritual for picking people up. All of that, its author claims, are the channels through which human beings hand over their energy to entities that prey on us from another dimension. The conclusion is uncomfortable: to harm them, one would have to become an ascetic. And it is not the only thesis on the matter. The underlying question — whether salvation comes from outside or has to be worked for here — has peine a front with irreconcilable positions.

The suspicion of religion as an instrument

The starting point is a reasonable doubt: if God or Jesus are going to come and fix the world, whoever sits waiting does nothing while those in charge have a field day. Religion, in that reading, works as indoctrination and division. And prayers and ceremonies as a kind of energy harvest from those present. Hence the practical proposal: simple living, no vices, no Mass.

The objection comes quickly and from the empirical flank. Lumping religion in with trash TV or drugs is, it is argued, a prejudice: there are people who live a life of prayer and contemplation and are at peace, which is not the case with the addict to nightlife. The comparison does not hold up.

Who created religions and what are they for?

The theological counterattack does not stop there. James 1:27 is quoted — to visit orphans and widows and to keep oneself unstained from the world — to recall that "pure" religion is not about rituals but about conduct. And it warns that the Second Coming comes not to save everyone but to judge, with a rod of iron. The gentle version would be a product of the church of Rome.

Against that, distrust of the text: a book written millennia ago in the Middle East. The reply is internal coherence and logic: something created, a creator who wants to know who is trustworthy, and a test consisting of leaving people alone to see what they do. The world, in that reading, is not there to be saved: it is a filter that separates the chaff from the grain.

Salvation as disappearance and as an individual decision

Another current scales the matter down to the personal level. The Second Coming would be one's own disappearance from here, enlightenment, and the physical advent yet another forgery. Time, they say, only exists in this world. And the Last Judgment, in an interpretation that is shared, would be the final judgment each of us passes on our brother: a curse instead of a blessing.

The minimal consensus, if there is one, is that nobody is going to do the work for us. God does his part; the person, theirs. Telling good from evil is already the start of the path, and the wickedness of the will is what drives us away. Prayer and worship, for some, are the only way. For others, the key is not to surrender one's own power to any idol, not even to a concept, and to govern one's own mind.

The pessimism of the tilted scale

There remains the less flattering diagnosis. The bad guys have accumulated power and are organized; the good are atomized. Social engineering inverts values and there are fewer and fewer good people. With those two variables, the pattern falls into place by itself. However hard one tries, the scale stays on the other side.

With that outlook, the question is not rhetorical: if salvation is individual and the world is a fleeting phase, what is left to do here? For some, the answer is to rise above. For others, to wait. And for others still, to distrust anyone promising a rescue.