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

It's Simple But It's Not Easy!!

I believe that many of us have the idea that the Laws of the Universe (Divine Law) are almost impossible to understand by the average person and that they are best left to theologians and professors of philosophy.

We may have gotten this deep seated belief from being told that "God Works In Mysterious Ways" by a priest, minister or rabbi. They use this bromide as a way of answering the 3 toughest questions that any clergyman faces in his or her daily work.

These are: Why does God allow such suffering in the world, if He loves us unconditionally? Why did God kill thousands of little children in the Tsunami ? (earthquake, hurricane, war - you fill in the blank) or Why did God take my little child? And the big one: Does God hear my prayers and how do I know if He will grant my request?

Did you notice as you read these questions that they are all asking the same thing? "Why doesn't God protect us from all the bad things that can happen in this life? Isn't He here to be our Parent and wouldn't any good parent take care of his children?" Your clergyman may know the true answer to these questions but may not share it for fear of destroying your faith in the Parent God of your childhood teaching. Your minister, priest or rabbi knows all too well that it is faith that does the work. Faith is the greatest power in the Universe, it empowers us to do that which might well be impossible "in the natural", logical world.

The day that you put the Parent God away in the same way you put away the toys of childhood, that is the day that you will finally understand how God operates the Universe and how Divine Law works. On that day, you will move from a little God of spite, anger, caprice, reward and punishment to the Most High God who is the Mind behind all Creation. The real God is so much more, so vast as to beggar human understanding.

Our minds understand boundaries, limits and things that begin and end. Understanding that the true nature of God is an Intelligence without a beginning, without an end and that is everywhere present all at the same time takes a lot of spiritual maturity. There is nothing wrong with God, the fault lies in your "little concept of God". God is so much bigger than you can imagine!

God is mysterious to us only because God and his Law are so magnificent that we have a very hard time comprehending a Mind totally unlimited by time or space. God's Mind moves with a thought; it creates with a Word and it loves in such a pure, unconditional manner that there is no human equivalent. God was never born and will never die - God just is! God is the eternal life force that existed before the beginning of time and before all that is - and will exist beyond forever. You and I and everything in this Universe are to God as the cells of your body are to you. We are part and parcel of God, one and the same - different only in scale but not in substance or nature.

God, before the beginning of time, instituted with a thought a series of Laws, both physical and spiritual that are immutable (unchangeable), predictable, constant, and can be depended upon. The operation of these laws can be observed and predicted with absolute certainty. This is the essence of science, thus our philosophy is called Science of Mind or Religious Science.

There is no chance or randomness, no parent God to please, no reward or punishment. God is not in the reward, punishment or protection business. You might ask, why have a God at all? God is in the Law and Creation business. He provides the plans and the materials but it is our job to build the house! If the house falls down due to shoddy construction (lack of trust or faith), that is not the architect's fault or the building material supplier's fault - it is the contractor's responsibility and that contractor is us.

God has given us the intelligence, the mind which is His Mind in microcosm, in order that we may build the life that we desire and that we expect. It is not God's business to question our choice; that is the whole purpose of Free Will, that we may choose no matter how wise or how foolish the choice. We are not punished for our choices but we must live with the consequences for good or ill. The Law of Cause and Effect is the mother of all Universal Laws. It is totally predictable, never fails and can be absolutely depended upon. This Law demands our obedience and will return just what we put out.

So if we understand that God is anything but mysterious we can begin to see how we might transform our lives by using the great power we have been given as our birthright. We can imagine things that never existed. We can conceive of things that have never before been made. We can travel by thought long before we finally buy the ticket and send our body on the trip. We can love before we meet the beloved. We can dream of a world that never was and create it with our thoughts, our beliefs and our expectations of Good or Evil (remember we are always at choice).

We are the inheritors of a Great Promise and that promise is that God will never change the rules, never play games with us and will always give us what we truly believe in our heart of hearts. We will never get what we wish for until that wish hardens into a belief and an expectation.

What will you imagine? Will you imagine danger, disaster and poverty? You will receive it right on schedule. You can make book on it! Will you imagine adventure, abundance, joy, love beyond measure, health, strength and lifelong happiness? That too will be delivered right on schedule. The stronger your belief, the firmer your faith, the faster your expectation will appear in your life.

If you blow hot and cold, if your faith is a sometimes thing, if you have constant doubt and often succumb to fear - you will create what I call a "roller coaster" life. So many of us experience this - up one day, all is well and in the dumps the next. A two minded person is incapable of creating anything permanent except chaos. Fear is the mind killer. Trust will set you free!

More next week, until then be well happy and keep your thoughts on what you truly want!

AND SO IT IS!