God in central America

God is big here. Everywhere you go on the streets you just see signs in Spanish for God. It's actually pretty good practice for me learning and translating Spanish. So basically my theory about why God is so big in Latin America is just because of lack of education so people don't question whether what they are told is correct.

I think the worst abuse of people's ignorance is when the church makes people, who are already poor, give a quarter of their income so they can sit nearer the front of the church, feel more important because they are near the preacher. One evangelical church leader, Cashluna, is building a really tall sky scraper in the middle of Guatemala so people can get closer to God. Then he is going to charge people to go right to the top so they can pray and be the closest to God. It's just so wrong especially because when you look at it you realize that the church is not doing it for the good of the people but for themselves to make themselves richer. It sucks.

Also the church here makes people pay for miracle healing. So when someone is too poor to pay for medical care, and desperate to survive, they can pay the church to perform a miracle on them. Whether or not the church really believes in the power of God, who knows, but what is true is that they pay some people to have fake miracles performed on them... So they are lying to already poor and desperate people that if they give more of the little money they have left then they will be cured. It's terrible really.

I guess though when people have little to hope for, no money, basically a rather shitty life God at least gives them hope that there might be something better for them in heaven. Also in the crazy sometimes violent world of central America perhaps it keeps society from falling completely apart. I just don't like anyone being exploited because of their ignorance.