Selling solutions to imaginary problems

One of the greatest sales tactics that has been perfected by religion, especially by Evangelical Christianity, is to make up a non-existent problem and then offer a solution that involves giving them your time and money. Everyone knows to laugh at this kind of schtick when we see it on the Shopping Channel. “Right, I need a left-handed grommet remover that can be operated in the dark, for $19.99 plus shipping and handling, of course I do…” But a large percentage of the population doesn’t recognize the technique when they’ve been subjected to it by the same people every Sunday morning since before they were old enough to think critically.

 

Non-existent problem: People are poisoning Halloween candy, and dressing up as evil things will turn your kids evil.

Solution: You can’t trick or treat anymore, but you can have a harvest party at church.

 

Non-existent problem: Rock music is evil and a gateway to demon possession.

Solution: You can’t listen to good music at home anymore, but you can come listen to bad music at church or buy it at the church’s gift store.

 

Non-existent problem: Video games make people violent sociopaths.

Solution: Buy these crappy knock-off Christian™ video games. (Which often just swipe a better game’s code and slightly tweak it to make soldiers into CHRISTIAN soldiers… but it’s not stealing if we do it in Jesus’ name, right?)

 

Non-existent problem: Role-playing games will open a gateway for invisible monsters, from an invisible dimension of fire, to control the bodies and wills of your children.

Solution: If they want to hang out with other teens and talk about stories of people with magical powers of healing, necromancy, superhuman strength, raining unquenchable fire down on enemies, talking to animals, withering living things with a word, calling up floods, and summoning supernatural beings… send your kids to youth group. They can even keep pretending the stories are real for the rest of the week!

 

Non-existent problem: Homosexuality is evil – so much so that even THINKING about sex with the wrong person will send you to our imaginary post-mortem eternal torture dimension. Also it will turn you into a child molester.

Solution: You can come to church more often, and pay for expensive “conversion therapy” that offers neither conversion nor therapy. You won’t stop being gay, and you’ll probably stop being Christian, but by then we’ll have tens of thousands of dollars that your family and church donated to “fix” you so we don’t give a fuck.

 

Non-existent problem: Abortion kills babies.

Solution: Come to church every week to ask our imaginary friend to heal our land of this blight. Also, donate money to religious organizations that attempt to make abortion illegal. But do NOT by any means give any money to non-religious organizations that attempt to make abortion unnecessary by addressing the real problems that cause people to need abortions (shitty wages for single moms in entry-level jobs; unaffordable healthcare and childcare for single moms; insurmountable student debt being the only option for young people to get into careers that would allow them to afford kids; the culture created by our own sermons that tells young women every Sunday that their needs and desires aren’t as important as those of men and they need to do whatever men tell them; our bullshit abstinence-only education that doesn’t prepare kids for safe, responsible, consensual sex and doesn’t even teach them how their own bodies work…)  Do NOT give them money to actually address root causes, because if they get money to address real problems then we can no longer sell you solutions to imaginary ones.