When healing is sold as a product, who gets left behind?

Faith Without a Price Tag, Spirituality With an Invoice

Faith feeds the poor, but spirituality markets to the rich

Photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash

Walk into a church on Sunday morning and no one asks for your credit card. The doors are open, the pews are free, the prayer is yours, whether you tithe or not. Faith is sustained by voluntary giving, not a paywall.

But step into the world of New Age spirituality, and the path to enlightenment often begins with a checkout link. From $333 “portals” to $999 “activations” to $5000 “mastery containers,” belief has been rebranded as a product line. What was once devotion is now a deposit.

The mystics of old gave up wealth to seek the sacred. The mystics of today ask for upfront payment before the transformation begins.

The Old Way of Seeking

For centuries, true seekers were not entrepreneurs. They were monks, prophets, ascetics, poets. Their journey was not sold in packages or stacked into funnels.

The Buddha wandered with an empty bowl, sustained by alms. St. Francis renounced family wealth and lived in radical simplicity. Sufi mystics shared their wisdom in poetry and song, not in seven-week…