英語検定ライティング準１級（第262回）

変な宗教「教祖もサタンに呪われてそうな話」

熱心に布教活動をする人が幸せそうだと思ったことがない。ヘビースモーカーの父親の副流煙のせいで母親が肺がんになった知人が宗教活動をしていたが幸せそうには見えなかったから。
There used to be several devotees around him about three decades ago, who worked on their missionary activities energetically and enthusiastically, but they didn’t look fortunate without any persuasive reasons.
He had an acquaintance whose mother was killed by the lung cancer, the cause of which was said to be the notorious secondhand smoke released from his father’s cigarettes, which his acquaintance believed firmly.
At the same time, he naturally didn’t look fortunate.

別の知人に頼まれて半年だけ宗教新聞を取ったことがあった。同僚から勘違いされていたようだが陰で変人扱いされていたようだ。しがらみがあって仕方なくと言ったら納得してくれた。
Another acquaintance of his asked him to purchase a notorious religious paper, and he reluctantly buy it only for six months, which forced him to be spoken ill of by his colleagues behind his back, while he wasn’t a devotee of the notorious religion and had nothing to do with such non-scientific and unpersuasive monster, he assumes.
His confession that his reluctant buying something trivial resulted from his sympathy toward a certain pious pupil enabled one of his coworkers to understand his behavior.

そう考えると宗教とは偏見との闘いだ。だから信者なら幸せそうでないといけない。幸せになれるかもしれない宗教を信じてる者が不幸そうに見えたら非課税であっても黒字化できない。
Considering that, someone religious must fight with the prejudices someone without any believes has in his or her brain, which is why the former must have satisfactory expressions on his or her face, an online article says.
The former believes the religion, where he or she is likely to be the God or the Goddess after death, but we cannot find these possibilities on his or her appearances at all.
Such an unpersuasive missionary activity fails to become profitable even when they enjoy tax exemption, he says.

恐怖感で信者を支配して献金させるのは宗教ではなくてカルトだと経済学者が言ってた。日本は借金だらけだから消費税が必要だと洗脳する財務省をカルト扱いしていた。実に納得した。
A religion won’t control someone pious with sense of terror or horror, on the other hand, a cult leader tend to control someone religious with sense of scary or fear in order to become profitable, which is called donation or contribution, an famous economist explains.
Japan has suffered from a tremendous amount of debt, which is fake but believable utterances by the Ministry of Finance, and they has had obtained an extreme amount of consumer taxes from ordinary citizens in our society.
Their action is similar to the cult leader’s crime, he says.