On our journey of spiritual happiness, there is a bit of cleaning up work for each of us to do. We've been given all kinds of blatant and subtle teachings throughout our lives - by our culture, by friends and families, in educational programs, and through the media. Some of these teachings may be true, some may be partially true, and some may not be true at all. Part of our job is to do a bit of weeding whenever possible, pulling out whatever weeds of wrong understanding may be keeping our beautiful blossoms from thriving.

One particularly questionable concept we need to look at is the fairly common image of a punishing God, who is waiting to shower wrath upon our lives, if we dare to displease "Him."

Perhaps such a concept is helpful in keeping those with animalistic desires from expressing harmful actions into the world. Without the threat of a punishing God, who knows what some people would do? But you're not like that, are you? You can be good just for the sake of your own inner satisfaction, and not because you're afraid of being punished from above, right?


...more of this chapter is available in the book, "Secrets of Spiritual Happiness," by Sharon Janis.

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