Where would you be without me?

Consider the words to this well-known devotional ditty:

Without Him I could do nothing
Without Him I'd surely fail
Without Him I would be drifting
Like a ship without a sail

Without Him I would be dying
Without Him I'd be enslaved
Without Him life would be worthless
But with Jesus thank God I'm saved

Oh Jesus, oh Jesus
Do you know Him today
Please don't turn Him away
Oh Jesus, my Jesus
Without Him how lost I would be
Without Him how lost I would be

How does a miserable excuse for a human being keep another human being from seeking to escape his tyrannical company? One way is to threaten to kill you if you ever try to leave, and there's an analogy there, too, but we'll leave that one for another day. Today we will consider the other way, which is to continually brainwash you into believing you would be far worse off without them.

The truth is, you would be fine. Take a look around. Forget what your preacher tries to tell you every Sunday about how horrible it is outside the four walls of his fiefdom. You know what he's saying, what the song is saying, just isn't true. People outside are happy and doing fine. Any you would do fine too.

Why does your religion have to convince you that you would be worse off than a dung beetle apart from it? Why does your preacher have to make it seem that people outside his flock are miserable and out of control? Because life really isn't so nice inside and he's afraid you'll figure that out and make tracks.

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