In many communities, medical care is either absent or beyond the reach of
the majority of people. In such a community, let’s say the rural Philippines,
a mother is struggling with a sick, newly born baby girl who probably has
been infected with dengue fever. She does not have enough money for
proper medical treatment, and turns to the local church for help. She is told
to pray, and maybe she should buy some candles to light for the Blessed
Virgin. She is a single mother, and is not made to feel welcome. Maybe her
sin has resulted in the harm to her baby. It’s her fault. She takes her baby
to the hospital, which accepts it, but doesn’t provide full treatment as she
can’t pay them in advance. When the baby dies, she is not allowed to have
the corpse until she pays the hospital bill. She contacts people trying to raise
the money so she can bury her baby. Three days later, after she pays, the
corpse is given back to her.
Could you tell this mother that the candles are useless? That the money
spent on a funeral is wasted and should be saved to help take care of her
other child? Can you look into the eyes of someone with only one hope
remaining and tell them it’s a fraud? I can’t. I have tried, and I am not that
strong.
Two Types of Fraud
We see these protestations of belief in charlatanry all the time. Whether it’s
at a Thai Theravada Buddhist temple, which has a “game” to produce “lucky
numbers,” or a Hindu temple where wishes can be granted to sufficiently
generous believers, or a Catholic church where you can pay for prayers to be
said for the souls of dead relatives stuck in purgatory. But we also see it,
probably more often, in the guise of co-workers who avidly consults their
horoscopes or fortune tellers, another who wears a lucky charm of some
form (often, but not always religious in nature), another who avoids the
number 13 or 4 (Chinese culture), and another who wears a ridiculously silly
little circle of fabric on their head as some sort of “hat” to make some god
happy.
Narendra recognized that the poor are the most disadvantaged by this
ongoing and systematic deceit. It occurs because the poor are often less
educated and have less access to traditional means of medical cures, job
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