Which religions differ, when you get down to it, from cargo cults and how?

Question

A cargo cult is any of a group of religious movements that occurred in Melanesia, in the Southwestern Pacific. The Cargo Cults believe that manufactured western goods ('cargo') have been created by ancestral spirits and intended for Melanesian people. White people, however, have unfairly gained control of these objects. Cargo cults thus focus on overcoming what they perceive as undue 'white' influences by conducting rituals similar to the white behavior they have observed, presuming that the ancestors will at last recognize their own and this activity will make cargo come. Thus a characteristic feature of Cargo Cults is the belief that spiritual agents will at some future time give much valuable cargo and desirable manufactured products to the cult members.

Thats from Wiki, and i'm just curious about other's thoughts.

Answer 1

You know this is a complex question. Misunderstandings by the Melanesian people who were faced with technology beyond their understanding, tried to make sense of it through their spirituality, their only resource for explaining the mysteries of their world. We look at their misunderstanding with smugness and devalue it, unfairly. Still to be fair to you, you are asking, I think: are all religions simply practiced to get goods from God.

I think at a popular level there is a lot of truth in your suggestion. People work to get money, people contact relationships, we give in order to gain. At a deeper level though, Christianity presents self-sacrifice as the ultimat challenge and the ultimate good. No doubt you will counter this by saying the sacrifice is made in order to gain eternal life. But I contend that we are being challenged to give ourselves to God because he is everything and we are simply 'of him'. Love of God then is an acceptance of the truth that we are not self generated. Self sacrifice in order to do God's will, is an acceptance of this higher understanding of the nature of life.

So Christianity does not rest on the hope of a exchange between God and man, as much as an acceptance by us that living (or dying) according to God's will is the best choice we can make.

Answer 2

Cargo cult ...Any religious movement based on the observation by local residents of the delivery of supplies by ship and aircraft to colonial officials. Cargo cults were observed chiefly in Melanesia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. They were characterized by the expectation of a new age of blessing and prosperity to be initiated by the arrival of a special “cargo” of goods from supernatural sources. Such beliefs may have expressed traditional millennial ideas, often revived by the teaching of Christian missions.