rkzenrage

Edit:

I think the biggest weakness/strength of the church is that it prays on the lazy... then creates/encourages lazy people.
Faith takes work, VERY HARD, constant, diligent work... "but it you just listen to me I can cut through all of that and give you the inside line, just help us pay for all this stuff, most of it (less than 10% on average in reality) is going to help others!" is religion's line & it is total BS. (Instead of line I wanted to say schpeal but I don't know how to spell it)

If it were, "we are a group of like-minded/faith(ed) people who want to help each other on our path" that would be fine... "we will only take/use as much as it takes to maintain our infrastructure and no more, there will be no associates that work for the institute, as it will be for all our benefit, we will all volunteer...." you get the idea. (The Mormon Church tries to say that they do this, it is a lie, they are, I think, the fourth richest company in the US, if churches were listed in those rankings. With associates intentionally placed in high ranking political positions, both locally and nationally. As opposite from that ideal as you can get).
Also... if that were true, there would be no dogma, especially stuff like some guy in Europe decides to make-up the rapture and everyone buys it. All the descendants of Calvinism with their Dooms Day shit (Though Watchtower is a blast to read) that never comes to pass and takes the focus off of the word.
It is all smoke and mirrors to INTENTIONALLY take the focus off of your personal relationship with your Savior and God so you are dependent/addicted to the fear/salvation cycle that they get you hooked-on.
The pay off is as much as you will shell out to keep from going to hell. I have never met a preacher in a poor neighborhood that did not live twice as well as his flock, & I have known a lot of them and am related to two.

These snake-oil salesmen prey on the fact that it IS scary that your fate is in your hands alone, that you don't have any talismans or magic yellow brick roads laid-out in front of you..."Don't go astray or you will go to hellllllll!"
It is very easy to fall for that comfort, "perhaps they do know what God wants from me and all I have to do is accept their interpretation of the Bible (even though they do not have a thorough understanding of the historical time period in which it is referring to and they always interpret what it says in today's social framework), that way I don't have to feel like I alone in this."
But, they are not if they truly have faith, God is always with them and their heart really, TRULY, knows what is right, what path to take... that is what meditation and prayer are for. If you believe you know that you have a part of God in you... that will show you the way if you learn how to listen to it, really listen with the Word of Jesus as a guide.
Having a supportive community, there to help you as fellow faithful and one that preys on the insecurity of that relationship in a position of authority and dogma, teaching "Us-&-Them", the farthest thing from anything Christ ever stated, are two different things.... I have yet to find the first.
You just can’t put an individual in a position of power like that, especially one that makes people so vulnerable.
Pride is our one great weakness, that pathway to sin that is greased with our most basic animal urges. All of the Seven Deadlies (though not Biblical) are all sins of Pride, in one form or another.
To place an individual where their ego is between the faithful and God is just so much temptation that one cannot expect that most will succumb to some form of pride…
The solution, there is no one individual that is the interpreter, the authority, the final word on the Word but what you know in your heart to be true and right based on the teachings of Christ (not the OT). If a group forms, it is just that…. A GROUP, all equal in discussion and discourse for the purpose of spiritual kinship and learning, never authority, profit, regulation; or, especially, dogma.