taken from The Gospel According To The Simpsons by Mark I. Pinsky
"In Homer, we find still another form of Protestant Christianity. He is one of the best examples of what sociologists call folk religion. He is the kind of religious person who goes to church regularly, but is in reality more into a religio-magic belief system than anything that resembles biblical Christianity.
For Homer, God is like a parachute that he hopes he never has to use, but He wants God to be there, just in case. When Homer is in deep trouble he turns to God and begs for miracles, but when miracles do happen, they do not make him into a man of faith or deep moral convictions. Once a crisis has passed, Homer's thinking about God is over. God, for him, is somebody you bargain with in times of trouble, making all kinds of promises to change which are never lived out, if God will just deliver on a needed miracle.
The anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski, in his book Magic, Religion, and Science, explains some key differences between religion and magic. Magic, he says, is an attempt to manipulate spiritual forces so that the supplicant gets what he or she wants, whereas in pure religion the individual surrenders to spiritual forces so that those forces [God] can do through him or her what those forces desire. Given these definitions, Homer is certainly into magic rather than religion.
Do not go too hard on Homer Simpson because more people in our churches are where he is than any of us in the mainline denominations want to acknowledge. If you ask probing questions, you will quickly learn that most church members are into some form of religio-magic Christianity. For instance, I remember my Sunday School teacher telling me that when I was a boy that, if I wanted my prayers to be answered, I had to be sure that I ended them with the right words - "In Jesus' name, Amen." Without that magic formula I was told I would be unlikely to get my desired results. My teacher led me to believe in a petty God who could look down on people begging for help and say, "I really would love to meet your needs but you didn't give the proper ending." God, for Homer, is a great Santa Claus in the sky who gives people what they want if they just remember to state things with the proper incantation.
Prayer, for Homer, is not a time of intimate communication with God. Instead, it is something you do when you can't get what you want on your own.
Church, for Homer, has nothing to do with worship. Its value lies in the fact that it teaches moral lessons to his children. Homer wants his children in church every Sunday, not so much to express gratitude to God for the blessings of life, but to receive lectures on what is right and wrong. He believes, as do most people who are into the folk religion of our society, that those who learn from these moral lectures and do what is right will go to heaven, and that those others who on Judgement Day discover that the bad they have done outweighs the good, will go to hell."
I have 2 thoughts:
1. Homer Simpson is ridiculous
2. I am too much like Homer Simpson
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