It’s the year 2025. We live in an age of artificial intelligence, space exploration, and medical breakthroughs that once seemed impossible. And yet, billions of people are still controlled by invisible promises – paying into the most profitable business in the world: religion.

Religion pays no taxes on the trillions it controls. That wealth alone could solve countless social problems: poverty, hunger, and lack of healthcare. Instead, leaders of these institutions live in luxury while telling their followers to sacrifice more, give more, and wait for their reward after death.

It’s the perfect business model. There is no product to manufacture. No warehouses. No refrigeration. Just a microphone, a stage, and the boldness to convince people that obedience today equals riches tomorrow. But the reward only counts if you believe their version. Identical promises from other religions? Those are labeled cults or terrorism.

The contradictions run deeper. Adults are shamed for playing a video game to relieve stress – yet rewarded for painting their faces with makeup to appear “presentable.” People are mocked for celebrating “made-up” holidays, while religions built on equally invented stories are revered as sacred. And when history doesn’t fit the dominant narrative, other cultures’ spiritual practices are rewritten, repackaged, or erased altogether – often to protect the fragility of white supremacy.

Religion and the Black Community

For the Black community, religion has been used as the ultimate weapon against our civility and self-determination. When we excel at anything, we are told we cannot simply be great – we must give all praises to the Almighty. Our victories belong to the invisible, while our failures are framed as personal defects or a lack of faith. This is how brilliance is muted and responsibility is shifted: when it’s good, it’s God; when it’s bad, it’s you.

And when we are beaten down – or executed – religion tells us to turn the other cheek. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. himself, while fighting for freedom, was used as an example of the “blessed beaten.” When it came time to erase racism, the message wasn’t resistance or justice. It was: put it in your prayers.

Society will pray over a football game, a boxing match, or a national anthem – but never for equality of decency. That selective reverence exposes what religion has always been in America: a tool to keep Black people patient in the face of oppression, forgiving in the face of abuse, and faithful in a system designed to exploit them.

America is the only nation in history that made the history of an entire people illegal. Enslaved Africans/Natives were forbidden from speaking their native languages, and at the same time forbidden from learning the language of their enslavers – except through the “Slave Bible,” a mutilated text designed to erase hope and condition obedience. So are we really supposed to believe that this book was given to benefit the Black community? Or do the receipts show what it truly was: a weapon to control, break, and destroy the Black mind? History makes the answer clear.

Even convicted criminals who can’t get a passport to leave the country can still become wealthy preachers. They may be barred from countless professions, but the pulpit is always open.

History exposes religion’s track record: slavery justified in sermons, minorities exploited while being the most faithful supporters, hypocrisy defended with the familiar rebuke – “ye of little faith.” Leaders demand purity while committing sins in secret. They condemn greed, lust, and pride while embodying all three.

The receipts are undeniable: lynchings carried out by churchgoers, sexual abuse hidden for decades, torture excused in God’s name, fortunes laundered through ministries, and white hoods worn on Sunday mornings. Still, these institutions claim to be the moral compass of society – stamped onto our money, etched above courthouse doors, and echoed in political speeches. All where morality seemed to never exist within.

It’s no wonder CEOs and corporations mimic the same playbook: exploit the people, glorify the boss, and shame anyone who dares to question the system. Religion perfected the hustle centuries ago.

I’ve seen the scam up close in my own family. My very own mother publicly shamed me for refusing to forgive the person she allowed to sexually assault me as a child – simply because I wouldn’t buy a plane ticket and take a vacation to attend his funeral. Her response to my resistance? “I’ll pray for your sin.” That is what religion taught her to say to her own child. Forgiveness, in this twisted economy, is weaponized to protect abusers while silencing the abused.

And yet these are the people we’re expected to emulate?

At its core, religion sells the biggest lie: that morality, justice, and truth flow from institutions that have proven themselves corrupt. The hustle only works as long as people keep buying in. The real question is – are you still a customer?

Do you believe the church is innocent? And do you believe the church should be held to the same standards of laws, if not to a higher standards than everyone else?

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