This is one of the craziest stories I’ve seen in awhile.
Attending religious services may enrich the soul, but it also fattens the wallet, according to research released on Tuesday.
“Doubling the frequency of attendance leads to a 9.1 percent increase in household income, or a rise of 5.5 percent as a fraction of the poverty scale,” Jonathan Gruber of the economics department at Massachusetts Institute of Technology wrote in his study.
“Those with more faith may be less ‘stressed out’ about daily problems that impede success in the labor market and the marriage market, and therefore are more successful,” Gruber wrote in the study, which was released by the National Bureau of Economic Research.
I can assure you that your income will not magically increase by attending church twice as often, although there are a ton of popular ministries that subscribe to a false gospel claiming this is all it takes. This type of skewed information creates an irrational hope in the minds of those seeking out the truth found in the genuine Gospel. Messages like this ensure that Christianity in America remains a 100 mile wide expanse that’s only a half an inch deep.
Unfortunately, now that this study has become public, you can bet that its findings will become illustrative fodder for sermons delivered throughout the country this Sunday.