Hi, Neko. I know you're being tongue-in-cheek, but I'm never loath to comment, so....The church has followed two main paths for a very long time. One, as I pointed out above, was that of temple Judaism. The other was that of paganism, which was (and is) based on the notion that the gods exist to be appeased and religion consists in appeasing them as much as possible. More incense, please....

The Greek and Roman gods could only mess with you in this world, but in Christian paganism, those who don't appease the gods enough in this world get to pay for it in the next. So Christian pagans believe they have to do stuff to make their favorite gods happy, and avoid stuff they've been told makes the gods sad. Religion helps us sort out which stuff to do and which stuff to avoid, because we're too dumb to figure it out for ourselves.
It is, in essence, an infantile understanding of God and an infantile religion, but it is still with us. (How's that for angst?)