The Vending Machine God

American individualism, the prosperity gospel and other filthy lies

We love the certainty of a formula. If you do x then y will happen. If you exercise, you will be healthy. If you save money you will have a financially secure retirement. If you work on your own issues you will attract the partner of your dreams.

Because sometimes the formula works. And when it works the people for whom it works become that much more fervent about the efficacy of the formula. Think of the person, let’s call her Alice, who starts a program of moderate exercise, eats more vegetables and loses weight.

Because the formula worked for Alice, she may find it inconceivable that it would not also work for her friends or family members. If said friends or family members follow the same formula and do not lose weight, Alice will most likely assume they did not try, rather than get curious about the ways different bodies metabolize food.

Rarely do we question the formula itself. We just assume it has been applied badly, by us or others.

Formulas undergird much of our modern existence. Highly effective algorithms spit out tailored recommendations of what we want to watch, shop for, or read. Whether AI is touted as savior or demon, it is considered to be very powerful, an almost mythic presence, a technological titan.

Frameworks can be useful, but expecting the complexity of human behavior to be altered by a simple formula, as if we are all governed by algorithms rather than the messy reality of brain, history, heart and sinew, is a fairy tale, and a dark one at that. When people extend love of formulas into a predictive market for Fate, the Divine or Chance, it has destructive implications for us as individuals and societies.

Lots of people are told, in a very American take on spirituality, that if you are good/pure/faithful then God will shower very specific blessing upon you, often connected to financial security, personal comfort and family and relational happiness.

This is so pervasive a concept it extends to people who don’t believe in God. They are seduced by the idea that if you master mindfulness your chronic pain will disappear. If you understand yourself you will find the partner of your dreams and live happily ever after. Some formula proscribed by some expert or guru will fix whatever ails you. You just have to find it, buy it, do it.

The first part of the equation is usually innocuous. Pray, meditate, breathe deeply, journal, set intentions, whatever it is you are called to do. But don’t expect that will result in things turning out the way you want.

God is not a vending machine. Here’s my devotion, now bring me health. Here’s my service, now protect my loved ones. Here’s my discipline, now bring me security. But so many people stand in front of whatever their understanding is of the Divine shoveling in coins, pressing buttons and waiting for the whirring sound as the machine starts into life, nudging the desired treat forward to fall into the pocket at the bottom of the machine, yours for the taking.

When, as often happens, the preferred treat is not forthcoming, people blame themselves, or their spiritual practice, or whatever they believe the Divine to be.

The God as vending machine concept is rooted in the very American notion of the prosperity gospel which says that God blesses believers with financial security, comfort and safety.

That is not my experience. Nor is that what Jesus says in the Gospels, for the Christians following along at home.

And before you think this doesn’t apply to you because you jettisoned a belief in God with stories about Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, God as Vending Machine has transmuted into Fate as Vending Machine in a way that is playing out in our culture and politics like poison leeching into a well.

Our health care system is in a shambles, and it is so expensive to get health insurance coverage that many people are taking their chances without insurance. Many of them stand in front of the Fate Vending Machine shoveling in avoidance of seed oils, red light therapy, carnivore diets and a barrel full of supplements, as if those individual efforts will keep them safe from ill health.

Almost everyone in America is one health care crisis away from bankruptcy. Everyone except billionaires. I know that from bitter experience. But we don’t want to name that reality. The magical thinking inherent in the MAHA movement is Fate as Vending Machine all over. Don’t fight for access to healthcare, support leaders who espouse the formula as you see it; avoid vaccines, drink raw milk, and so forth. If this fails, if the once vanquished measles flares up like wildfire, endangering and even killing children, say it is not the fault of the formula. Never question the formula. Just amp up your offerings to Fate or God.

It’s an insane ouroboros. We still want to believe that obesity is a personal failing even though GLP1s – drugs – can address it. But GLP1s cost thousands of dollars a year for many of the people who need them because their insurance companies won’t cover it. Because obesity is a personal failing.

Poverty is also treated as a personal failing, a lack of initiative and drive, the inability of individuals to complete their portion of the formula. The formula says if you work hard, you will succeed. If they are not succeeding, they must not have worked hard.

No matter that many people living in poverty work full time, sometimes with more than one job, and stay poor because of systemic issues. Poverty is a result of complex interconnecting factors, including racism, the lack of affordable housing, health care, and childcare; the lack of affordable food, energy and gas; the lack of livable wages and a basic income for those unable to work.

We look at the aged who are struggling to pay their bills or going into debt and blame them for not saving enough for a comfortable retirement, rather than considering the privilege connected with making enough money to save for retirement.

As a country, we are so attached to the Fate as Vending Machine fable we have lost touch with reality. This predates the current administration. We are one of the few developed nations without parental leave, single payer health care, basic income, affordable childcare, advanced education tuition that doesn’t require staggering debt – the list goes on. And we’re ok with it.

We have bought the story of a formula where each of us, as individuals, is so full of power and agency that we can dictate our health, financial security, and happiness.

Why should our taxes go to making sure other people have their basic needs met? After all, everyone is free to line up in front of the Fate Vending Machine and ply it with coins, waiting for the whirr of the machine to start up.

America has thought this way, and spent our money accordingly, for most of my adult life, starting in the Reagan years. But at some point since the first Trump administration, God as Vending Machine morphed into God as Slot Machine.

Some of you, the Slot Machine myth says, are going to win big, and get really really rich. When you do, you aren’t going to want to pay taxes or have your riches restricted in any way. You, too, could be a billionaire, so let’s not tax the billionaires, so when you get here you’ll be able to fly to the moon or buy your own island or do whatever you want.

You might use bitcoin, or AI or YouTube but you, too, can be really really rich. If you follow the formula. Of course, plenty of people are getting rich on selling you the formula. It is a genius way for rich people get richer because so many of us have swallowed the bullshit line that any of us can get crazy rich and join the rarefied atmosphere where Bezos and Musk and others live.

The rise of apps that facilitate gambling on just about anything taps into this, an unlimited stream of dopamine hits as we predict, we gamble, we pretend for a brief, heady moment, that the machine is going to start to whirr and pop out a treat. Until it becomes less about the treat itself and more about the anticipation of reward, our faces pressed up against the machine, waiting for it to come to life.

At the very least, as a start, I can divest myself of the bald faces lies around God/Fate/Destiny as a vending machine over which I have control. We have very little control. But we can become aware of the ways in which we are being controlled, by false narratives about individualism and worth. We can see and name the ways in which we are pressured or intimidated or tricked into supporting and participating in systems which make the rich richer and the poor poorer.

If you can’t think of the welfare of others as a good thing, then consider your own. For almost all of us, Fate will deal a bad hand at some point. We will lose. It may be cancer, or a disabled child, or a parent with dementia, or an extended undeserved period of unemployment, but each of us will, most likely, need help. The chances are exponentially higher that you or someone you love will need affordable health care and basic social services than that you will become a billionaire and be able to pay for it all yourself.

What would happen if we acted like we are all going to need help at some point? If we make sure that help is available to all? If we really believed that and lived like it, voted like it? God is not a vending machine. But we as community, neighborhood, city, state and country can take action to make sure that we all have our basics needs covered so that we can live with dignity and security.

We need to see and name the false binary, the zero sum thinking. Let me get this straight - we can afford to attack multiple countries with advanced weapons but can’t afford to pay for free pre-school or check-ups for American children? That is a bald-faced lie. And the sooner we all name it, say it, and embrace our responsibility for one another, the better. Step away from the fairy tales of vending machine, slot machines, the lottery of potential wealth and the worship of formulas and embrace the messy, challenging, glorious rewards of reality.