Reward and Punishment

Does God reward us when we are very good and punish us when we are bad? I suspect that most people around the world would say: Yes! Isn't that the way the world works? You get rewarded when you do the right thing and punished when you don't. No, actually it isn't how the world works most of the time and that is what creates the great tension between what we are taught as children in church, temple, shul, or mosque, and what we see and experience in the world around us. Our life experience just doesn't square with our religious training in so many instances.

If that is so, then our religion quickly becomes less and less relevant to our daily lives and soon becomes a set of rituals that give us some comfort and a sense of belonging but have little real impact in our daily lives. For our spiritual practice to really be the center of our lives, it has to reflect how life really works and how things can really be if we follow the teaching. When we see a person judged by most in our community as bad but living a lavish and prosperous life, while the hard working, honest and good person barely scrapes by and encounters all manner of obstacles and hardships, we have to wonder why bad things happen to good people and the converse.

Jesus told us how it really works but we did not listen or understand because what He told us ran counter to what we were taught as children and how we thought it OUGHT to be. The Universe does NOT operate as we think it OUGHT to operate - it operates according to immutable laws laid down before the foundation of the Universe.

When Jesus told us that "To those who have much, even more shall be added unto them and to those who have little, even the little they have shall be taken from them" we recoiled from this seemingly unloving and unfair statement. It is often seen as one of Jesus' most controversial statements and causes a crisis of faith among many Christians. He was saying that those who think, speak and live poverty will receive even more. Those who think, speak and live wealth will receive more wealth. What you focus on, you create in your life!

Jesus told us the truth, often the cold hard unvarnished truth, but always the truth. Let's review what He said and what WE often believe.

Jesus said that it is done unto us as we BELIEVE. We are taught that it is done unto us as we DO.

Jesus said that the Kingdom of God was within each of us. We are taught that the Kingdom of God must be earned through good works and that it is located in a place called Heaven.

Jesus said that each of us gets in our life just what we believe in and expect to receive. We are taught that we get in our life what our Good Father wishes to give us and not one thing more.

Jesus said that we can heal anything in our lives, including our bodies with our faith and our belief. (It is your faith that does the work, not I). We have been taught that healing and life transformation comes from the Father by way of miracles and does not come from within each of us.

Jesus told us that no one can enter the Kingdom of Heaven unless he or she develops the Christ Mind, that mind that KNOWS THE LAWS of God and how to operate them. (No one comes to the Father except through me). We take that central statement of Christianity as the ultimate ego trip, if you don't worship me, you will never get to Heaven or be one with God.

Jesus was incapable of the human flaw of egotism - he had learned to literally develop the absolute unity with God that we call the Christ Mind, which is why he was called Jesus The Christ in His own time. He knew how to think as God thinks; He knew how to create as God creates.

He was telling us that until we learn what He had learned, we will never see the Father and we will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven (which is the peace that passes all understanding) The entrance to this Kingdom is within our own hearts and minds.

Then to make sure we understood that this was not just HIS gift but the gift of every human who will seek it; He told us that everything that HE did, we can do also -if we become students of Divine Law and learn to use it as HE did. It really is our good Father's pleasure to give us the Kingdom of God. In fact he has hard wired it in each one of us. All we need do is learn God's simple instructions for Living in the Law and we can do what the Christ did so long ago.

Now, I know that many readers may say, "Why Rev. that's blasphemy, only Jesus could do those things". I say to you that you could not be more mistaken. He told us repeatedly that He did only what each of us could do if we were willing to devote the time, the practice and the study of God's Laws, both spiritual and physical. Most of us are not willing to devote this much time, energy and focus so few ever achieve proficiency as Master's of Law and so only a very few possess this "gift".

Start today to understand this. There is no outside force that rewards and punishes. The Law instituted by God at the beginning of time creates our life experience in this life and in succeeding lives in response to just what we believe, think, speak and do. Nothing more, nothing less. We sow seeds with every thought we think that hardens into a belief. We sow seeds with every word we speak to ourselves or others, for good or ill. We sow seeds with every deed we do or every deed we omit doing.

Our greatest errors are in what we do not do, even though we are prodded to do it by the voice of God within. We allow fear, sloth and ignorance to keep us from the Kingdom time and time again. We know that we have done this the moment we decide that it is inconvenient or dangerous or scary to do the right thing. We always know!

What we sow, we surely do reap. If we plant corn we shall harvest corn. If we plant weeds, we shall harvest weeds! So many of us seem to believe that God will play favorites just this once and give us a bountiful harvest of luscious fruit from a lifetime of sowing weeds. Never has happened and never will. God is not and never has been in the punishment or reward business. We do it to ourselves! Hear this now!

We sow the seeds of our own joy and delight or the seeds of our own barren life of despair and disappointment. We are the directors and producers of our lives and the results of that life. God has cast us in the part and offers advice and direction but the outcome is ours to determine.

What if we have spent most of our life sowing weeds and poison? Are we then condemned by our own foolishness and ignorance to experience nothing but illness, poverty, despair? Oh, we shall experience some of what we have sown surely; but we may change the outcome on the very moment that we change our MIND.

On the day that we change our speaking, thinking and doing, on that day shall we be transformed and it is NEVER too late. God is not interested in how we begin our life's journey or in "keeping score" -that's what humans love to do and God is not human.

God is very interested in how we FINISH this life experience. God's favorite award is the Most Improved Player Award. Ours is the Most Valuable Player award. Can you see the difference? God is not about Champions. God is all about those who, through the renewing of their minds and hearts, rise from the ashes of their previous life of error and sorrow into the bright dawn of transformation and joy. God has no interest in our suffering, only we think that suffering is noble.

Transformation may be the hardest thing you ever do in this life. It takes tremendous will, great focus and discipline and the constant monitoring of what you are thinking, saying and choosing. You cannot any longer live unconsciously, just drifting along until the end comes. Now you live each moment awake and aware of everything you think, say and do and you know that you are totally accountable for all of it. The rewards of conscious living are beyond human comprehension. Are you strong enough? Do you want it enough?

It's very simple but it is certainly not easy! Tune in next week and we'll talk more about it.

God loves you so much and so do I!

Rev. Dore' Jacques Patlian