Religious Ponderings and Queries

Surround yourself with rituals which you choose, make meaningful, and bring you closer to the you that you truely desire to be.

Another theme which all religion shares is a definition of evil. Most religions will tell you where evil springs from, and then goes on to explain all of the different faces of evil. But all religions agree on one point, which is that we humans know evil when we see it. We do not need to be told what is evil, one thing that we can never claim innocence from is failing to notice evil. I believe that evil is a verb. It is something that is done, even if that something is the action of doing nothing when you SHOULD have stopped what was clearly evil. If you fail to act against evil, you are therefore committing an evil action yourself. Yes I do realize that by that definition I am suggesting that it is impossible to be free from evil. But the mark of a person is not their purity, it is their commitment to recognizing evil and opposing it where ever they see it. You do not have to stop evil all by yourself, you will not be able to go out and stop global warming, nor will you be able to single-handedly prevent starvation around the world. What you can do is lessen the evil that exists, you can avoid purchasing products that hurt the environment, you can donate to your local food bank. Should you yourself be in dire straights and starving, you can turn to the person next to you and put a smile on their face, lifting their spirits may not put food in their stomach but at least it is not denying that they exists and adding to their burden. You are never powerless to oppose evil. Some people would even argue that the smile you put on that persons face is more valuable than a can of food would have been. For myself, I believe that a man needs to have the will to survive first and then the resources second, should that smile give him the will to live then I would agree it is more valuable, should the smile be but one more smile in a long string of smiles then perhaps the can of food would have been a better gift.

Oppose all evil as soon as you recognize it. You will note that my principal is not to defeat all evil, but rather to commit to fighting it.

There is a subject upon which I believe that most religions fail to touch. That subject is awareness. I do not mean selective awareness of the few ideals and doctrine of a specific religion, but rather of a holistic awareness of the world around you. I believe that listening to new ideas is never a bad idea. In fact while many religions will tell you “listen not to the tongue of the devil” I encourage you to do exactly that. How can you say that someone is wrong to believe a certain way if you don’t even know what they  believe? And if they persuade you away from your current beliefs then perhaps your old beliefs were wrong. I am not espousing a life of belief jumping, I do believe that if you are going to embrace a new belief that is a core part of your current world view that you should take some time to reflect on why you are doing so. A person should never be afraid to change, in fact, a person should fear NOT changing. were you to define what life is, you would most certainly have to include in some form or another a factor of change, be it growth or any of the other myriad forms of change. It has been said, and I believe correctly so, that if you are not changing you are not living. So embrace life, learn to change, learn to become better than you were yesterday. Too often people avoid change simply because it is more comfortable to continue on as they have been doing. It means they don’t need to learn anything new, they don’t have to rethink their behaviors, they just keep cruising along in autopilot.

Never avoid change simply because it is uncomfortable or inconvenient