The Buzz

God is not here for us. We do not do religion or spirituality to get something. These ideas came up in a discussion I had with Steve and they kind of hit me, set my mind on fire. To even make these statements one must make a huge assumption. That we, humans, are the center of the universe. Really. They are very egotistical statements. And I do not think that they are benign at all. People really think this stuff. Just look at the gospels. Everything Jesus taught about doing good, loving others, loving God, etc. was put into context. If you follow me, if you love the Lord your God, if you love your neighbor as yourself then you will have eternal life in paradise. Then you will go to heaven. Why do we need that then? I can see a few possibilities. The first is that as humans we are too juvenile to act good without some sort of reward. I guess that does not say much about us. The second is that there really is a God, sitting in His throne, judging us as we do right and wrong. In that case, the only way to get to heaven would be to do what is right. Jesus was just letting us know. The third is kind of similar but a little more subtle. We must still act right, whatever that is, but the rules and laws that we have learned are not up to some sort of judgment in itself. Jesus is not going to come on the last day and judge us all, sending some of us to hell and some of us to heaven. The laws and rules are simply built into existence. Some things are naturally going to send us in bad directions (lying, cheating, stealing) and others things are going to send us in good directions (helping your elderly neighbor take out the trash). I suppose some people would call this natural law. I don't know. And I am not sure what one of these ideas is true. Maybe none of them maybe all of them. What I do think is interesting is that I am still here talking about these actions as they pertain to myself (and ourselves) and some sort of juddment or some sort of coming about because of the actions. Why am I not talking about the actions in themselves? Would they mean anything? Do they mean anything? I think that the problem here is the ego creeping up again. We have this way of anthropomorphizing everything we come in contact with. Why do we feel the need to be the center of the universe? Maybe it could be an evolutionary quality stemming from the need to compete with everything around us. In that case a me me me attitude is usually successful. But of course that is an imcomplete and fairly naive idea. We are surely more complicated than that. I like to think that what Jesus has taught us and what we should do should be done in of of itself. Doing good is good because it is good. It is it's own beginning and end (I suppose middle too). I have no proof of this and no argument to give anyone. It would be nice though.