I'm Loving Angels Instead

Faith is the positive result of good marketing. I can have faith in my organization, in a product or service, even in my religion. As with all marketing endeavors, the marketing of faith rests on the concept of benefit. My organization can make me feel wanted, needed, and accepted. A product can make my life easier. Religion will make me happier. And so on and so forth.

A moment of need or crisis is faith’s best promotional period. This particular juncture in time is an opportunity to sell the benefit and, thus, strengthen faith. Marketers always think that there are three groups of people: the gullible, the hypocrite, and the shrewd. And with all these three categories, the generic word ‘good’ can very well apply.

As with all things that thrive on faith of its believers, however, the product is the message. Thus, one can only endow faith on something that is verifiable. Religion, for instance, has been very difficult to verify. No one has seen God. Thus, wars ensue. Ugly phenomena result such as Islamophobia – a modern day quandary as to the limits of marketing efforts targeted at faith.

There’s nothing mystical with faith. It is all humanly possible to explain.

If the product is a lemon, blind faith is what’s needed. The blinder the faith, the better. And with this, henceforth, the emotional tug-of-war ensues. Blind faith is fed by the greatest form of advertising: word of mouth.

Marketing blind faith is a curious thing. The results are quite appalling. Some become suicide bombers, others become evangelists with their own television shows, some become multi-millionaire gurus, a few become madmen that serve cynanide-laced grape-flavored Flavor Aid (often misidentified as Kool Aid), while still others are madder men by willfully drinking what they knew for a fact was poison-spiked drink. In some cases, pilgrims die at stampedes. At some point, we start to believe in superheroes.

It’s all a difference in the level of epiphany.

Over on the other side, the true saint is the one that has led his or her fellowmen to action for the good of the greater many. But look closely, what this saint is doing is merely being a good human. He or she is not endowed with superhuman powers. He or she is endowed only with super humane powers.

The world has gone down the abyss of immorality and inhumanity, that when one person does good, he or she automatically becomes a figure of God. That’s how far overstretched our premium on faith has become.

And we succumb – blindly.

However, if it’s impossible to disprove the tooth fairy, then I can understand why over 70,000 Australians in 2001 officially declared themselves Jedi Knights and their religion the Jedi faith.

Above is the image of an angel that was caught by a camera. It was hovering above the heads of people attending the mass at the Vatican. Some say the photo is digitally-manipulated. The others say it is unretouched. I don’t offer any opinion here. I shall just take it as it is – an image.

Does it offer me a sign of hope? I can’t say, though I come from a place where the prevalent emotions are anger and hope, not happiness or sadness. In my moments of stillness, I drift to life-altering questions such as: have I lost faith because of all the ugliness I’ve seen?

Bear me this indulgence. I take to this chap like an ant does to muscovado sugar. If you’re not into Robbie Williams, however, you can skip this entirely and that won’t hurt me. No matter, I will still have great faith in you.

The marketers of blind faith have been crafty in creating myths. And when there are myths, we start believing in miracles.