Compassion

I am not sure if any Pastors read Lloveletters, but if you do, listen up! If you are One of those Pastors whose greatest concern  has always been how to raise enough money to keep things getting bigger and bigger so that one can raise more and more money, there is good news. It is an important subject since it seems many people (both inside and outside the Church) believe that the “biggest” Church wins in the end.

Fortunately for you, Pastor, I have news from Current Biology, one of my favorite journals. This may be exactly what you have been waiting for; you can chemically manipulate people into being more “compassionate.”

That’s what a new study, published in the journal Current Biology, suggests. A group led by researchers at University of California Berkeley and University of California San Francisco shows that by manipulating a brain chemical, people can become more compassionate and act in prosocial ways to equalize differences. In the study, 35 men and women visited the labs two times; each time they were randomly given a pill that keeps levels of dopamine, which is involved in reward and satisfaction, or a placebo. Neither the participants nor the scientists knew which pills were given when. The volunteers were then asked to divide money between themselves and a strangers. When the researchers analyzed the results, they found that when the people were given the dopamine drug, they were more likely to share the money equitably compared to when they took the placebo. (TIME)

Just think, no longer will it be necessary to teach folks to llove God and one another. No need to spend time convincing folks that we are responsible for proclaiming the Good News to a lost and dying World. No need to “pray without ceasing” that folks hearts will be turned by the Spirit of God toward the needs of so many around us. Rather we can use all that time to build bigger buildings with an infinite number of programs to attract more and more people who are the source (as opposed to our Infinite God) for the Church’s real need –  more money.

Find a source for dopamine pills. Have lots of Church dinners and suppers and picnics. Pack those pills into everything. Sell them in the foyer, give them away in the Church Bingo games, and make them available to everyone, every where. You can cut your annual sermons on “giving” from 50 to 10 (or maybe less).

You can tear out those verses in your Bible about “giving as one purposes in his heart” (see 2 Corinthians 9:7). Don’t worry that only God can change a heart. Just bypass the heart and get to the brain with drugs.