Understanding Good and Evil

Jesus taught that we should care about and be good to each other.  Here is how to tell if your actions are good or evil.

Good: When you do something that helps or supports others because you care, and what you get out of it is irrelevant.

Evil: When you do something that harms or takes advantage of others, but you don't care, because you get what you want by doing it.

Pretty simple explanations that don't need to be complicated by exceptions. 

Spiritual Action Plan:  Do good.

On Being Spiritual

Being spiritual is not a secret, nor something one must acquire through religious rituals or rigorous training. Spirituality is that inner awareness that there is meaning and truth beyond what can be physically seen, felt, heard, and measured. You can track your own spiritual experiences by being aware of those moments in which you understand and appreciate something, anything.

When a flower looks beautiful, that is a spiritual moment. Beauty is a personal spiritual experience. In the moment of beauty, the features of a flower, a sunset, or the caring interactions among people you are observing, have more meaning than could ever be described by objective measurements. There are limitless physical details that could be collected to describe any event in the universe, but as soon as an event has meaning that moves your heart, it is no longer merely an observable event. It has entered the realm of the spiritual.

Most everything that is important to the human mind is spiritual. We know this is true because everything the human mind believes is real must be accepted on faith. You might use scientific measurements to describe objects and events, but at the end of all the analyses, you must still consider and decide what you are going to accept as truth and what must be set aside as speculation or error. Then, whatever you hold to as truth, will guide how you experience the universe. Yes, a life filled with meaning is a highly spiritual experience.

You cannot choose whether or not to be spiritual, because you always are. The real question is what kind of spiritual life have you chosen to experience and to share with those who cross your path? Do you make love or rejection the foundation of your life? Do you build or tear down? 

        Even trying to reject a spiritual life is a spiritual act with power to negatively affect oneself and others.  Instead, follow your most positive spiritual instincts, embrace an unconditional loving attitude, and bring into your experience of self the freedom, security, and outright joy that result from the highest spiritual expressions of human life. 

Religion, Science, And God

        Are not the practical human outcomes of a belief more important than any religious doctrine used to create or support a belief?  If not, then your god is religion, itself, and not ultimate truth or God.

              Religion cannot refute scientific fact and science cannot explain what is not knowable. We humans seem to do a poor job trying to discuss that which lies beyond our understanding. Both religion and science are efforts to understand the unknown.  Bottom line, we realize there is ultimate truth, but we steadfastly refuse to accept the fact that we don’t know it and will probably never grasp it through either science or religion. 

     Religions are constructed around human ideas meant to help us explain the meaning of life and the destiny of humanity.   There is no reason religious beliefs cannot progress in synchrony with scientific knowledge. They are both anchored to the same realities.  Trying to separate the two leads to religious apologetics that stretch far beyond the most distant limits of plausibility.

             Myth, symbols, and allegory appear to be the primary tools of religion, which, of course, do not have to be literally true to be divinely inspired or spiritually meaningful. Religious hierarchies (human beings) can decide church doctrine and dogma, but they cannot dictate ultimate truth.  Religious leaders and congregants can gather together in meetings or councils all they want to vote on doctrine and dogma, but their votes or the divine pronouncements of their highest ranking leaders' have no impact on what truth is and has always been. Both religion and science should be used to support the development of spiritual awareness within individuals and never used to bury the developing human spirit under sanctified tenets of human intolerance.

        Science is a procedure for gradually discovering truth, objectively, but the truths we understand at this moment based on scientific findings are very primitive when compared to what ultimate truth must be. As with religion, it is not at all clear that humans are capable of scientifically determining ultimate truth and we may have to rely on spiritual awareness and inspiration to stretch our minds towards its highest understandings.

        Science is heavily dependent upon what we know from the past and on the rational examination of new concepts, now.  Despite what is known, any idea about what is yet to be discovered is pure conjecture.  Anyone who is interested and wants to learn research methods can participate in scientific investigations and many do. However, no one, no committee, no profession, no organization controls the advances or direction of scientific discoveries. They progress one proof at a time, worldwide.

        Since ultimate knowledge is beyond our cognitive abilities, it is futile to pit religion and science against one another.  Neither can lead us beyond our limits of understanding.  However, as we approach our own limits, if we maintain integrity between our scientific knowledge and our religious beliefs, then our spiritual senses at that moment would serve as the most accurate compass pointing toward the threshold of God, the source of all being, life, and consciousness.

       Both religion and science are different approaches to the same reality, so any conflict between the two can only arise from human error.