Everyone Is Religious—Even You

Your spouse cheats on you. You discover it on a Tuesday afternoon—a text message left open, unmistakable. Now what?

Your thirteen-year-old screams “I hate you.” You see a problem, but your spouse sees legitimate emotional expression. You cannot both be right. The child is watching.

You step into a voting booth. The ballot asks whether to abolish capital punishment. You have sixty seconds.

In each case, you must decide. Not eventually. Now. And whatever answer you give will not be neutral.

The responses that seize control before reflection intervenes do not come from nowhere. They have a structure. That structure can be examined.

When I converted from atheism to Christianity, I realized something I couldn’t unsee: everyone is religious, including the people who deny it. The question is never whether you have a religion, but what your religion is—and whether you examined it or merely absorbed it.

By religion, I mean a stable system of ultimate commitment: a god you will not abandon, an enemy you will not tolerate, a way of fighting and sacrificing you will not forsake, and a future that makes the fight worthwhile.

The modern habit of reserving the word “religion” for supernatural worship is not a neutral dictionary choice; it’s a strategic quarantine. It lets some faiths be dismissed as “private” while other faiths—wearing masks like science, therapy, or progress—rule institutions as if they were merely describing reality.

If you reject my definition, you are not rejecting a word. You are defending the camouflage.

By this definition, Christianity is a religion. So is Buddhism. But so is scientific materialism—and so is the gospel of acquisition humming beneath every Black Friday stampede.

All of these religions answer the same questions. They all make demands. And they all produce behavior that is predictable—if you know how to look.

What follows is my framework for learning how to look.

The Framework

I’m a Christian, and I believe Christianity is both good and true. I’m not going to hide that. But I’m also not doing apologetics here—I’m giving you a diagnostic.

The framework describes the anatomy of religion in a way that makes testable predictions—and therefore makes it possible to evaluate religions not only by their claims, but by what they reliably produce in human beings and societies.

One constraint: predictions apply to religions as held, not as professed. The Christian who consistently worships comfort is not a Christian who falsifies framework predictions: he’s a comfort-worshipper with Christian décor. The test is already given and independent of any prediction: watch what wins when commitments collide under real cost.

Eleven elements predict what believers will sacrifice, what they’ll protect, how they’ll fight, and whether their religion will outlast them.

The Theological Core

Four elements define what the religion is fundamentally about: what you serve, what you fight, what you are, and where it leads.

1. God

Every religion has a god—not necessarily a supernatural being, but that which holds ultimate authority and commands final loyalty.

The Triune God of Christianity is a god. So is Nirvana. So is equity—the elimination of group disparities. So is the comfort of the authentic self.

The test is behavioral: when commitments conflict under genuine cost, whichever consistently wins is the god. Trace someone’s sacrifices across years and circumstances, and the god emerges.

Probing Question

What will you never sacrifice? For what will you sacrifice everything else?

Predictions

• Immutable gods produce long-term projects—cathedrals, universities, constitutions; mutable gods produce tear-downs and perpetual revolution
• Goal-gods risk collapsing reasoning into pure consequentialism—no fixed standard means effectiveness becomes the only measure
• Entity-gods sustain commitment across generations; goal-gods can produce revolutionary intensity but burn out
• The god generates the enemy; identify the god, and the enemy follows

2. Enemy

Every religion has an Enemy—that which fundamentally opposes the god and must be fought.

Christianity’s enemy is sin—internal corruption that separates creature from Creator, requiring confession and mortification. Consumerism’s enemy is lack—the product-shaped hole that must be filled, then refilled.

The enemy is logically entailed by the god. A god of holiness has sin as its enemy. A god of equity has oppression. A god of comfort has discomfort. A god of winning has the other side.

Probing Question

What is wrong with the world?

Predictions

• Internal enemies (sin, craving, trauma) produce confession, therapy, and mortification; external enemies (oppressors, the other side) produce denunciation, activism, and warfare
• Defeatable enemies produce hope and the possibility of rest; permanent enemies produce grim, endless vigilance
• ​​Regenerating enemies produce addiction: victories that never compound, mobilization without peace
• Internal enemies tend to imply symmetric guilt; external enemies tend to imply asymmetric guilt
• The enemy generates the god (it’s symmetrical)

3. Human Nature

Human Nature specifies what humans are born as—and what they can become.

Christianity holds humans as image-bearers of God and fallen sinners—dignified and corrupted, equally in need of grace. Buddhism holds humans as beings trapped in samsara, suffering from craving, equally capable of liberation through the path.

By wokeism, I mean the religion that treats group disparities as moral crime, reads the world primarily as power, and assigns moral and epistemic status by identity: the privileged are complicit, the marginalized are epistemically advantaged.

Probing Question

Are people born good, fallen, or blank—and can they change?

Predictions

• Symmetric human nature (all humans share the same default status) enables universal ethics—”love your neighbor” can mean everyone
• Asymmetric human nature (different groups have different moral status) makes universal ethics incoherent
• “Humans are basically good” eliminates accountability for bad behavior—it must be explained by trauma, systems, anything but choice
• Category-dependent human nature produces discrimination in the name of justice—individuals are judged by group membership, not conduct
• Inherent dignity constrains violence—some things you cannot do to a person
• Malleable human nature spreads faster—you can be remade, therefore you can be saved

4. Heaven

Heaven specifies the future state that makes serving the god rational—where the struggle leads, what victory looks like, and what future justifies present cost.

Christianity’s end state is the return of Christ, resurrection, and new creation—final, guaranteed, permanent. Consumerism’s heaven is satisfaction through acquisition—achieved with each purchase, dissolved by the next craving. Progressivism’s heaven is a better world—but “better” keeps being redefined, so the goal recedes as you approach.

Probing Question

What’s your heaven, and can you get there?

Predictions

• Final heaven sustains martyrdom; receding and resetting heaven do not—no one dies for a goal that resets tomorrow or recedes forever
• Receding heaven produces burnout—wins don’t accumulate, so workers cycle through enthusiasm, exhaustion, and exit
• Receding heaven demands permanent vigilance—you are never off-duty when the goal keeps moving and yesterday’s orthodoxy is today’s heresy
• Final heaven contributes to long-term durability

The Institutional Structure

Four elements determine whether the religion can survive its founders, reproduce across generations, and maintain coherence under pressure.

5. Epistemology

Epistemology specifies how truth is grounded—what counts as knowledge and what stable reference, if any, anchors it.

Christianity appeals to Scripture as its stable reference, interpreted through church tradition and ordained clergy. Islam appeals to Quran and Hadith, interpreted through scholarly consensus. Scientific materialism appeals to empirical data and peer review. Therapeutic Individualism—the religion of the authentic self, where comfort is god and feelings settle truth—appeals to “my truth” as whatever feels authentic.

Whether a religion has a fixed canon matters enormously. Christianity’s congregation can appeal to Scripture against a corrupt pastor. Islam’s umma can appeal to Quran against a wayward imam. Scientific materialism can appeal to data against a fraudulent researcher. Therapeutic Individualism has no canon—”my truth” supersedes any text, so authority cannot be checked, only felt.

Self-sealing epistemologies (where disagreement proves the challenger is disqualified) is not the same as heresy: Christianity has heresy, but heresy appeals to an external text—you can argue from Scripture that the charge is wrong. “Problematic” has no external standard; the offense is self-evident to the initiated, and disputing it proves the charge.

Probing Question

What settles what’s true?

Predictions

• Self-sealing epistemologies make course-correction impossible—expect accumulated error and eventual collapse or schism
• Corrigible epistemologies (where external evidence can overturn beliefs) enable institutional survival across centuries—the religion can recover from corruption
• Feeling-based epistemologies produce unstable ethics—what’s right shifts with mood and circumstance
• Fixed canon enables reformation—believers can appeal to text over corrupt leaders
• Absent canon enables rapid mutation—no external standard to identify drift
• Canon constrains authority; without it, authorities define correctness unchecked

6. Authority

Authority specifies the structure of institutional power—who holds interpretive authority and how that authority legitimately transfers.

Christianity locates authority in Scripture, interpreted through tradition and clergy, transferred through ordination and apostolic succession. Scientific materialism locates it in the consensus of credentialed researchers, transferred through academic institutions. Wokeism locates it in whoever commands rhetorical dominance or holds the most marginalized identity, transferred through displacement—each leader vulnerable to someone more radical.

The critical question: is authority accountable to something outside itself? Christianity’s pastors can be corrected by the text. Science’s researchers can be corrected by data. Wokeism’s authorities cannot be corrected—there’s no external standard, only power.

Probing Question

Whose voice ends the argument—and can that voice be overruled?

Predictions

• External checks enable self-correction—the institution can survive corrupt leaders
• Absent external checks produce purity spirals—the only way to establish authority is to be more radical than current leaders
• “No authority” is itself an authority structure—the self as final court means no check on self-deception
• No succession mechanism means dissolution when the founder dies—charismatic movements rarely outlast their charismatics
• Displacement succession produces permanent instability at the top
• Institutional succession (where the office outlasts the occupant) enables millennial persistence

7. Ethics

Ethics specifies what the religion demands—the conduct required, the means forbidden, and the cost to human nature.

Christianity demands repentance, mortification of sin, chastity, generosity—and thick constraints: certain actions are intrinsically forbidden regardless of effectiveness. Consumerism demands only acquisition—and thin constraints: whatever gets you the product.

Thick constraints protect even enemies from certain treatment. Thin constraints do not—if you stand between a thin-constraint believer and their god, there is no principled limit on what they may do to you.

How costly the ethics are matters as much as their content. Christianity demands death to self—”take up your cross” is not what the flesh wants. Therapeutic Individualism tells you exactly what you want to hear: prioritize yourself, set boundaries, cut off people who make you uncomfortable. Wokeism is asymmetric—demanding for the privileged (confess, sacrifice, defer), ratifying for the marginalized (your resentment is righteous, your voice is authoritative).

Probing Question

What must you do, and what does it cost?

Predictions

• Thick constraints correlate with entity-gods; thin constraints correlate with goal-gods—entities have natures that forbid certain means; goals have only outcomes
• Thin constraints make a religion dangerous to dissenters—obstacles get removed by whatever works
• Asymmetric obligation appears where goal-gods meet asymmetric human nature
• Cheap ethics spread fast; costly ethics retain under pressure—when real costs arrive, cheap-ethics believers defect
• Pro-natal ethics confer compound reproductive advantage over generations
• Cheap ethics win the sprint; costly pro-natal ethics win the marathon

8. Membership

Membership specifies how the religion constitutes and perpetuates its community—who belongs, how membership is maintained, and how new members are made.

Entry ranges from default to costly: Therapeutic Individualism is near-default—everyone is already authentic; Mormonism expects a two-year mission and mandates tithing. Exit ranges from restorable to permanent: Christianity offers repentance; wokeism offers cancellation with no return.

How the religion reproduces matters as much as who currently belongs. Christianity has deliberate formation—catechism, Sunday school, Christian schools, seminaries. Therapeutic Individualism transmits through ambient saturation—therapy, self-help media, HR departments. Wokeism transmits through institutional capture—DEI training, K-12 curriculum.

Probing Question

Who belongs, and how does the religion reproduce?

Predictions

• Strong heresy + weak forgiveness produces purity spirals—denounce before you are denounced
• Strong heresy + strong forgiveness produces stable community over time
• High entry cost predicts retention—easy in, easy out
• Default membership loses to chosen membership—when a demanding competitor arrives, passive belonging cannot hold
• Deliberate formation beats ambient saturation—catechism defeats osmosis when they compete
• Whoever controls formation controls the future

Expression and Strategy

Three elements concern how the religion presents itself, shapes its believers, and operates in the world.

9. Narrative

Narrative is the coherent, transmissible self-presentation of the religion as a story, including its exemplars.

Christianity compresses to four words: Creation, Fall, Redemption, Consummation. A five-year-old can grasp it; a theologian can spend a lifetime exploring it. The story compresses further into symbols—the cross encodes the entire arc in two perpendicular lines. And the story has characters: martyrs who chose death over apostasy, from the apostles through contemporary persecution. Children who hear about Perpetua inherit a template for faithfulness.

Consumerism has no transmissible narrative—just endless present-tense wanting. No martyrs. No symbols beyond brand logos, which command loyalty but not sacrifice.

Wokeism has Oppression → Awakening → Resistance → Liberation. It compresses into the Progress Pride flag, the raised fist, the black square. But the story never ends, because new oppressions keep appearing. Its martyrs are victims—killed and made into rallying points, not choosing death over apostasy. Passive martyrs, not active ones.

Probing Question

Can the religion be told as a story, and does it compress?

Predictions

• Compressible narrative enables transmission across generations—stories survive where propositions don’t
• Narrative vacuum invites capture—religions without stories get absorbed by religions that have them
• Symbol stability tracks narrative stability—when symbols keep changing, the story hasn’t settled
• Active martyrs signal the god commands ultimate loyalty; passive martyrs signal the enemy is evil—both mobilize, but differently
• Religions of comfort cannot produce martyrs—no one dies for the right to be comfortable
• Martyrologies function as transmission infrastructure—stories that replicate courage across generations

10. Liturgy

Liturgy consists of the embodied practices that shape believers and structure sacred time.

Christianity has baptism, Eucharist, Lord’s Day worship, the church calendar—communal, costly, and structuring time. Therapeutic Individualism has therapy sessions, journaling, self-care routines—private, optional, and structuring nothing. Wokeism has land acknowledgments, pronoun rituals, diversity trainings—communal and mandatory, but not recognized as liturgy.

Probing Question

What must you practice?

Predictions

• High-intensity liturgy (frequent, costly, communal) produces retention; low-intensity (occasional, private, optional) produces defection
• Liturgy creates transmission opportunities—regular gatherings are where catechesis happens
• Unrecognized liturgy still forms believers—calling it “training” doesn’t make it less religious
• Liturgy without doctrine drifts—the practices get reinterpreted by ambient doctrine

11. Camouflage

Camouflage measures the degree to which a religion conceals its nature as religion—from outsiders, from host institutions, and from its own believers.

Christianity is openly religious. Scientific materialism presents as “just science”—maximum camouflage; even believers don’t recognize it as religion. Wokeism began camouflaged as “just inclusion” but grows increasingly overt as it builds visible institutions.

A high-camouflage religion cannot build its own visible infrastructure without self-contradiction, so it spreads as a parasite—an infection—through host institutions that don’t recognize the colonization. A faith that denies its own existence cannot build churches, so it builds policy instead.

Probing Question

Does this present as a religion, or as something else?

Predictions

• High camouflage requires institutional parasitism—you can’t build visible institutions for a religion you deny having
• Camouflage prevents apostasy—you can’t leave what you don’t know you’ve joined
• Camouflage produces layered identity—the professed religion handles holidays; the camouflaged religion handles daily decisions; when these conflict, the camouflaged religion usually wins
• Camouflage produces heresy detection without doctrine—”that’s problematic” with immediate judgment but no articulable standard
• Declining camouflage triggers resistance—when the mask slips, the host institution’s immune system activates
• High camouflage combined with cheap ethics produces maximum spread—it doesn’t trigger religious-recruitment defenses

Summary

Element	Definition	Probing Question
God	What you sacrifice for but never sacrifice	What will you never sacrifice—and for what will you sacrifice everything else?
Enemy	That which fundamentally opposes the god	What is wrong with the world?
Human Nature	What humans are born as—and what they can become	Are people born good, fallen, or blank—and can they change?
Heaven	The destination that makes present cost rational	What’s your heaven—and can you get there?
Epistemology	How truth is grounded and anchored	What settles what’s true?
Authority	Who governs and how governance persists	Whose voice ends the argument—and can that voice be overruled?
Ethics	What the religion demands and what it costs	What must you do, and what does it cost?
Membership	How the community is constituted and reproduced	Who belongs, and how does the religion reproduce?
Narrative	The story and its exemplars	Can the religion be told as a story, and does it compress?
Liturgy	The embodied practices that shape believers	What must you practice?
Camouflage	The degree to which it hides its nature	Does this present as a religion, or as something else?

Case Study: The Modern University

Abstract frameworks invite abstract dismissal. So let’s make this concrete.

Consider the modern university—an institution that inherited its buildings, its prestige, and its tax exemptions from religions it now despises.

Let’s run the grid.

God: What does the university refuse to sacrifice? Follow what survives austerity and what grows anyway. The god is equity—the elimination of group disparities. It’s a goal-god: what counts as equitable shifts constantly. Expect tear-downs, perpetual revolution, consequentialist ethics.

Enemy: Disparity. Not poverty—poverty can be studied dispassionately. But disparity by race, gender, or sexuality triggers immediate mobilization. The enemy is structural oppression, identified by unequal outcomes—invisible, unfalsifiable, everywhere. An external, regenerating enemy. Expect denunciation rather than confession. Expect permanent mobilization.

Human Nature: Category-dependent. Privileged students arrive complicit and must be re-educated. Marginalized students arrive as knowers. A white student who challenges DEI training is “fragile.” A minority student who challenges it is “not representative.” Expect discrimination in the name of justice.

Heaven: A society without oppression. But new oppressions keep being discovered. The heaven recedes as you approach. There is no arrival. There is no celebration. There is only the next struggle. Expect burnout. Expect inability to sustain martyrdom—no one dies for a goal that recedes forever.

Epistemology: Standpoint—lived experience outweighs data. When research contradicts the narrative, the response is denunciation, not refutation. The paper is “harmful.” The author is “dangerous.” Disagreement proves disqualification. No fixed canon; what was orthodoxy five years ago is heresy today. Expect self-sealing. Expect rapid mutation.

Authority: Whoever can most credibly speak for the marginalized, or mobilize the most pressure. When students occupied the president’s office at Evergreen State, there was no text he could appeal to that would override their moral authority. Transferred through displacement—each leader vulnerable to someone more radical. Expect purity spirals. Expect permanent instability at the top.

Ethics: Thin constraints—whatever serves equity is justified. Cheap for most: say the right things, attend the trainings. But asymmetric—demanding for the privileged, ratifying for the marginalized. Expect danger for dissenters. Expect rapid spread. Expect defection when real costs arrive.

Membership: Entry by demonstrated commitment: pronouns, land acknowledgments, bias training attendance. Expulsion by public denunciation. Restoration nearly impossible—the cancelled remain cancelled. Reproduction through mandatory formation: orientation, coursework, DEI training. Expect purity spirals. Whoever controls formation controls the future.

Narrative: Oppression → Awakening → Resistance → Liberation. It compresses. It transmits. Symbols: the Progress Pride flag, the raised fist, the black square—desecration punished socially. Martyrs are victims: George Floyd, Emmett Till, Matthew Shepard. But passive martyrs—killed and made into rallying points, not choosing death over apostasy. Expect transmission. Expect inability to produce active martyrs.

Liturgy: Land acknowledgments. Pronoun rituals. Bias trainings. Awareness months. Mandatory, repeated, communal. Expect retention. Expect friction with surrounding culture.

Camouflage: Declining but substantial. Ask a DEI administrator if they’re practicing a religion. They will say no. They believe they’re pursuing justice, science, basic decency. Expect self-misidentification. Expect heresy detection without doctrine—”that’s problematic” with no articulable standard. Expect resistance as the mask slips.

Prognosis: Instability. Self-sealing epistemology prevents course-correction. Purity spirals continue until external force stops them. Receding heaven means no rest. Cheap ethics mean defection when real costs arrive.

But also: transmission. The narrative compresses. Formation is mandatory. The religion persists as long as it controls formation—as long as parents outsource their children’s education.

Strategic implication: it’s vulnerable to competition from religions with costly ethics, strong forgiveness, and final heaven. It cannot sustain sacrifice. It cannot offer rest. It cannot produce active martyrs. A religion that can will outlast it.

If you send your children there, you are not sending them to a neutral institution. You are sending them to a cathedral—one whose god arrived recently, and whose priests still pretend they’re just administrators.

Conclusion

Your spouse cheats. Your teenager screams. The ballot waits.

The answers that surface in those moments are not random. They have a structure. That structure is your religion.

Everyone has one. Even you. Especially you.

Now take the black pill. Not nihilism, but irreversible recognition: the world you were told was neutral is catechizing you, and once you see it, you can’t go back to sleep.

Every institution you were told was secular—the school, the HR department, the newsroom, the university—is a cathedral.

Anyone who tells you religion doesn’t belong there is a priest of a masked religion, clearing the field for his own god.

Turn the grid on yourself first to learn your religion. Then vet your future spouse by religion. Choose your closest friends by religion. Examine political candidates by religion.

If it’s unclear, start with what they hate. The god will follow.

My ultimate goal with this framework isn’t self-awareness. It’s goodness and truth, and truth is not plural. Future posts will take up which religions are good (by some metric), and which are true.

But those questions cannot be asked until you recognize you already have one—the only question is whether you chose it, or it chose you.

“Choose this day whom you will serve.” — Joshua 24:15

“No one can serve two masters.” — Matthew 6:24

“You shall have no other gods before me.” — Exodus 20:3

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