The Marketing of Religions
Every religion has to deal with the issue of Sin (upper-case letter intentional) and Repentance, the recovery, if you will, from Sin to a State of Grace. How each religion deals with it effects how that religion will be received and the degree to which it will be accepted. To me, that is marketing.
Every religion has it's "Do's and Don't's." Do go to church on Friday/Saturday/Sunday. Don't kill your neighbor (at least not if he happens to be of the same religion as you, anyway.) If you fail to conform to these Laws or Commandments, you have committed a Sin. The Catholic Encyclopedia defines sin as "Sin is nothing else than a morally bad act (St. Thomas, "De malo", 8:3), an act not in accord with reason informed by the Divine law." See http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14004b.htm Further "When the intelligent creature, knowing God and His law, deliberately refuses to obey, moral evil results."
So there are certain conditions to Sin. You must know that you are doing a "bad thing" and then go ahead and do it anyway. Thats a pretty good definition and is consistent with the thinking of the Sanhedrin in ancient Israel. It lets me avoid any discussion of "accidental sin." No Oedipus Rex "But I didn't know she was my mother" excuses here. There is both intention and action.
Just as an aside, and I will discuss this further in future blogs, a lot of morality boils down to the ability to delay gratification. Rape versus courtship, work versus theft, etc. But back to the topic.
Now sooner or later, everyone sins. We have the Seven Deadly Sins (http://deadlysins.com/sins/index.htm) and Gandhi's version of them. See http://deadlysins.com/features/gandhi.htm and this is really worth reading. We have Sins of Commission and Sins of Omission. Judaism lists 613 Mitzvot, see http://www.jewfaq.org/613.htm. Have you failed to write a scroll of the Torah yourself as commanded in Deuteronomy 31:19? Uh oh!
When thinking about Sin, remember the words of Mae West, who said "Remember that there are no withholding taxes on the wages of sin."
Okay, so sooner or later we all Sin. No what? If religions throughout all the sinners, there would be no one left. I think that we can all agree with that. Jesus is quoted as saying “He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone at her.” And no one qualified. So if we all Sin, then there must be a process of redemption. Again turning to the Catholic Encyclopedia, we find "The word redemption is the Latin Vulgate rendering of Hebrew kopher and Greek lytron which, in the Old Testament means generally a ransom-price." So a price must be paid.
Typically the process of Redemption went something like this: You must recognize (at least privately, but sometime publicly) that you did wrong, you must ask forgiveness of the wronged party (or their next of kin, depending on the sin) and then you must pay a price. Ah, paying the price! Now theres the rub!
In early religions, you had to pay a price to the one that you wronged or their family. If you refused, you risked not only having them angry at you, but the religious community as well. Stoning, exile, holy war...you name it could happen to you. If your Sin was bad enough...well, you don't hear much about Sodom and Gomorrah these days. We talking pillars of fire, plagues of frogs, you know all that Old Testament stuff.
But lets face it, this isn't easy and it doesn't sell well. Particularly if the Sinner is rich and powerful. I mean the Catholic Church started objecting to Henry the Eighth's murdering ways and pretty soon he started his own church. That is not good for business....I mean religion.
Besides that, who knows if the Sinner actually paid the penance price? What if it was far away, like in the next village or something? The easiest thing would be to have the Sinner give the money to the Church, who could then keep records. Of course, there would be a small "use fee" but this is Sin and Redemption that we are talking about! Souls are at stake here!
So we have the concept of Indulgences coming up in the Middle Ages. For a good discussion, see http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~dee/GLOSSARY/INDULGE.HTM "he whole concept of an indulgence is based on the medieval Catholic doctrine that sinners must not only repent of sins that they've committed, they must also confess these sins and pay some sort of retribution." "Here's the logic: since the expiation of sin involves temporal punishment and this temporal punishment involves the doing of good works, why not substitute someone else's good works for the good works you're required to do? Why not pay someone else to do the good works demanded of you as temporal punishment?"
Ahh! Religion meet Capitalism, Capitalism meet Religion. By the 16th Century, you could not only pay for the Sins that you had committed, you could pay for the ones that you were (inevitably) GOING to commit. Pre-paid Sin! If only they had Sin Calling Cards!
It made perfect sense, especially for the Church. After all, the money for the Sistine Chapel had to come from somewhere. (And yes, it did come in part from Indulgences.) But then along came dour Martin Luther to spoil things. In his 95 Theses, Martin Luther said "indulgences are most pernicious because they induce complacency and thereby imperil salvation". Spoilsport. See http://www.pbs.org/empires/martinluther/about_driv.html
After his followers sacked Rome in 1527, an act that may have resulted in as many as 45,000 deaths, Rome was somewhat less conspicuous in selling Indulgences. But how would the Protestants deal with the issue of Sin and Redemption? Lets look at Evangelical Christianity. You can still gain Redemption, in part at least, through donations to the Church. Just ask any TV Evangelist. But there is the added course of "Accepting Jesus Christ into your heart." In which case, all Sins can be redeemed. You haven't actually paid a price (at least not a monetary one) or been commanded to do good (and often onerous) deeds. The bar, as it were, has been lowered.
This is why Secular Humanism will never become mainstream. We don't have Sin with a capital "S." And there is no "Redemption" with a capital "R." If you err, and we all do, you are expected to do something hard. Like fix your mistake. And no one, outside yourself, can grant you forgiveness.
Bad marketing.