TRUE RELIGION

That’s what the sign says above the jeans store. We saw it yesterday at massive air conditioned Yorkdale mall, a mecca of commercial pleasure – retail therapy at its best. The Apple store was packed with eager devotees, competing for the privilege of sitting at the feet of the techno shamans who enable their newest gadgets. The many stalls and money changers in the temple offered to grant our every prayer for relief from the heat and to slake our thirst with cool waters courtesy of the corporate world – for a small fee of course.

The website graphics of the retail chain paint an unmistakable picture of what is meant by “True Religion:” gorgeous hunks, incarnations of the gods, tough and sensitive, enraptured locking eyes with fair divas with pursed lips, wondering – a spiritual haze rising from the mountain stream – a vision of nirvana made possible presumably by the stylish, rugged clothes you can buy at “True Religion”.

The Sociology of Religion, my first university course in that field, underlined one principle above all others: you will never understand how a religion functions for a people until you understand their economy. The point of faith in something beyond just matter is to give you an edge on life. The pie is only so big. You and I – and everyone must divide it between us. So if you can reach beyond the ordinary and gain an advantage, you might claim a superior piece of the pie for you and yours.

Some of the first Europeans who made first contact with the First Nations peoples genuinely did have compassion for the souls of their new friends. They really did believe they could make their lives better both in this world and the next. But make no mistake they received the royal funding for the journey more on the prospects of imperial expansion, colonization and economic gain. It was the 17th century way of the world.

The name “Toronto”, as we shall see did not originally mean gathering place as has been supposed. It means “a great place to fish” – an economic boon to whoever can claim and secure it. The various Carrying Places along the northern coast of Lake Ontario – The Scugog / Oshawa Trail, the dual path of the Toronto Carrying Place, more westerly routes along the Credit River and to Burlington/Hamilton – these long preceded the arrival of either French or English. Rather they were ancient routes for commerce or traveling to summer dwellings to beat the heat or winter ones to draw near to the warmth of the lake! The commercial enterprises flourishing in all the regions embraced by those trails today differ on a matter of scale but still manifest that same ancient longing to live well.

How you live with your things now IS a spiritual issue.

It may seem crass - not like the stuff of True Religion as we learned it in Sunday School. Yet faith is not just about eternal rewards but also much about this life. Jesus spoke much more about how we should then live here and now in the light of who He is and of his revelation to us than He did about the afterlife. His concern was how we relate to the stuff God made, especially other people. "Love one another" means for Jesus not the acquisition of stuff but of friends by personal sacrifice for them.

Wrote his brother,

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. James 1:27

Amen.