Bargaining with God

 I’m not religious. I never have been, and I expect I never will be. Some of my earliest memories are arguing with classmates about the existence of god, and to be clear, this was in daycare and kindergarten. I may have been a bit of an asshole. In any case, I would say that I don’t really “get” the idea of religion. But I will also admit, I sometimes entertain the existence of god, and attempt to pray? Communicate? Not honestly sure what the best thing to call it is.

The idea that your relationship with god would be transactional seems ridiculous to me. What could we have that god could possibly want, and why would he want to reward people who beg him for things? And to be fair, I don’t think any serious Christian theologians would argue a proper relationship with Jesus should be transactional. Jesus, to my understanding, wants your faith, wants you to believe in him - which, to be fair, is something you can do or give that he presumably cannot on his own, or at least cannot without forcing you, which would defeat the purpose, and all he offers in exchange is salvation after death - nothing in this material world and thus no way to actually know whether he is holding up his end of the bargain. Since that still does feel kind of transactional, to be honest, but the transaction occurs entirely in your own mind and in the afterlife, not on the material plane, and I guess thats better? Regardless, my impression is that any Christian worth their salt would tell you its different, and although I don’t really “get” it I’m willing to accept that for them, it isn’t.

But Christianity isn’t the only religion, My understanding is that Judaism traditionally DOES think God rewards you on the material plane - my understanding, which I want to stress is one of a lay person who has Jewish friends and who in college took several Near Eastern and Judaic Studies classes, but is not an expert either religiously or anthropologically and thus would willingly take correction, as well as I am of course by necessity generalizing here - but yes, my understanding is that the deal in Judaism is they have a covenant with God, and in exchange for honoring that covenant - which I believe includes, if I’m not mistaken, an exhortation to be fruitful and productive on this world - God will grant you success here. Not being Jewish, I definitely wouldn’t say I fully understand the implications of that, but it is my understanding that at least traditionally Judaism did not countenance an afterlife and thus the rewards for being one of God’s people were meant to pay off here and now, not in the hereafter.

Regardless of whether I am right about that - and part of me wants to delete that paragraph because its the sort of thing that if I am wrong I feel is likely to leave me open to a lot of criticism - most ancient religions were not only similar, but if anything more explicitly transactional. The gods want sacrifices, they even have preferences for specific types or colors of animals, and specific parts of those animals must be offered to them, and in exchange they will grant appropriate blessings according to their sphere of influence, and if you do not receive those benefits, its because the god did not accept your sacrifice - either it was inadequate for what you asked, or maybe they just hate you. Regardless, the gods were definitely seen as someone you can bargain with - which just feels incredibly odd for me for divine beings, even if, practically, if the cosmos did really work that way, I’d kind of appreciate it, since how to lead a happy life would be plainly apparent - make proper sacrifices to the gods, and ask them for favor. You’d still have the issue of how to get a proper sacrifice, this would not make the world fair, but it would make the world predictable, which has its own merits.

In many ways this is my biggest complaint about actual reality. As a kid I was sold on the idea that America was a meritocracy, and that if I was smart and worked hard, I’d find success. By any standard metric I achieved great things in school, I got through graduate school and law school working the whole time, and then I failed to pass the bar, failed to secure a job, and my body fell apart because I was pushing myself too hard. If there are rewards due to me for my faith in capitalism and the American dream they must be coming in the afterlife. Although unfortunately I’ve lost my faith since, so I guess I will no longer get them. Anyway, though, as this has kind of gotten off track, as where I was going is, I sometimes do think thoughts at “god”. Things like, hey god, if Z happens, I’ll believe in you. If X happens, I’ll find w religion I think seems reasonable and join it. If Y happens, I’ll sacrifice a goat in your honor. These requests vary from mundane and silly, like Mother 3 getting localized, to serious, like having another baby, or absurd, like giving me magical powers. If any of these have ever been granted, even remotely, I forgot about the prayer before it was granted. And like, if what god really wants is faith, thats understandable. I don’t have faith. I don’t understand faith. But living in an unjust world with little control over anything, even my own life, engaging in magical thinking is often a comfort, so I toss out some prayers? demands? requests? into the void, just to see what happens, in hopes that if there is something out there looking over us, they’ll take pity on me and actually communicate back and tell me what they want, what the secret is to their favor, what I can do to fix my back or at least shoot some lasers out of my eyes.