I have a deep, insatiable desire for the placebo effect.  I have given up on seeking hope, just hope’s trappings.  I once had the only church I really loved praying for me in 2005 and the placebo response from it resulted in me looking for a lot of jobs.  Of course that ended with me being hounded and discriminated against on the basis of disability.  Since then I haven’t had enough faith in anything to elicit the placebo response.

It’s sad.  Last fall I was with friends in Wisconsin and we played the lottery.  I didn’t win.  But how I really lost was how I looked at that losing ticket in despair.  To keep playing the lotto you need hope despite the impossible odds.  And the placebo response is what does the legwork in this whole process.  It’s what actually sustains you.

The fact that my placebo response was shot playing the lotto bodes poorly for my chances at religion.  This is because the same mechanisms at play in aspiring to hit the powerball are also at play in religious discipline.  The obvious thing being the jackpot happening after you die but there are more nuanced things at play as well like my example with prayer.

Faith itself is a delicate dance that requires a fortuitous relationship with the placebo response to really make work.  If you expect or don’t believe at all you’ll fall into despair.  But staying in between those two things requires hope.  And when your placebo response is shot you might still have “hope” but you won’t feel it so it won’t matter to you.