Scientology

Strange post for a hymn blog here at the end of the bright week of Christmas. But what can actually be said about the music? What can be said, in commentary, about such a week of joyful praise?

So I digress. Now the people who keep track of these things are saying that Will Smith has become a Scientologist. I guess he's in Scientology RCIA now, or the equivalent. And I have a theory about this.

My theory says: Scientology is the opposite of theodicy, which is the commonly used term for atheism or anger at God for being unfair in a negative way. If a particularly tragic event seems to show to me that God is mean, or mad, or simply random, then I'm uninclined to believe in His existence or His goodness.

Scientology, on the other hand, solves the theological problem posed by the existence in one's life of fabulous amounts of luck. It is the flip side of the same problem: God is unfair. Think of the worldly situation of Tom Cruise or Will Smith. It's not just that they are handsome, talented and charming from the get-go. It's also that, in their cases, these almost completely unearned qualities have gotten them into wealth and fame that defies the imagination. How many people--across the entire globe!--know who Will Smith is? How many people smile when he smiles?

I don't know about you, but I often have a little trouble dealing with success. I don't despise it, but it takes some getting used to. Well, imagine gobs and gobs of success. Imagine being the envy of billions of people. It makes sense to me that someone in that position would have to invent or adopt a spiritual system in which he or she (Will or Jada) made his or her own luck happened through fidelity to mental discipline. That would be one way of imposing order on a universe that has shown itself to be way too random.

The Christian solution to the problem of fabulous luck, of course, is to relativize its importance and show the dangers of investing one's hopes in such things. "What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul?" Lazarus is no longer poor: he lives forever in the bosom of Abraham and is the envy of the man who once was rich.

"Store up for yourselves treasures in heaven."