No justification for treating others as having no value.

September 6, 2018

The Spirit Center, the God that you pray to, is very much a part of your lives now as always. Your guides know the agony, the concerns you have, the confusion you feel, the questions that gnaw at you from within. We who work with you devote our spiritual energy to responding with peace to the outcries that you feel and that come from a place of no peace. You come to us for guidance, but not because you wish to hear what you already know. 

Your experiences in human life are part of that life. As we so often have affirmed, you are given human life to experience what it means to be human, because it is in part because of or through those experiences that you ultimately become the Light itself. We, as a collection of all of your guides, approach the reality of God’s light from a very different perspective, a different understanding, a different place along the path of spiritual vision. 

We know the intensity of your concerns. We know them not because of what you say, but because of the light you emit. Words in themselves are only a representation. The substance of life is not the substance of words, and yet it is the words that you use to communicate the substance of your feelings. 

We understand the difficulty that you have in bringing into human life the truths that were shared with you most recently. We said that the subject was complex, and it is complex because there are as many interpretations of the truths that were shared as there are those who meet those truths. There are no wrong decisions. What does that mean? It does not mean that there is no behavior that is abhorrent, that is destructive, and that is against God’s love. The fact that there are no bad decisions refers to the truth that was also expressed that no decisions are all bad or all good. 

There are decisions and actions that are deeply destructive and painful. We do not need to outline or list examples. You are aware of them, but even in the face of great suffering, there is some light that can be found. In acknowledging that there is some light in everything, we’re not asserting that bad decisions are somehow good or that good decisions are somehow bad. 

You know of the inappropriateness of labeling life around you in purely binary terms: something is good, something is bad; something is right, something is wrong; someone is a good person, someone else is a bad person. Such an approach may serve a purpose of affirming a kind of self-righteousness, but it does not speak to the heart of why life, why growth, why faith, why prayer, why hope, why patience, why love. Each of those qualities that are reflective of the love of God exists because of the very fact that human life requires an acknowledgment that there is more to life than all good or all bad. 

There are good behaviors, behaviors that reflect a respect for all life. There are bad behaviors that serve to reject what is good, that serve to reject the value of all life, all creation. There are individuals who are most giving. There are individuals who seem to take and take again and take again. There are individuals whose lives are devoted to an affirmation of others. There are those who reject that affirmation, but no individual at either extreme exists only in that extreme, and therefore no action that you observe reflects only one extreme. 

You may respond to the actions of another with terror, with judgment, with indignant words in a reaction to what you feel is thoroughly inappropriate. Judging the actions of others and responding accordingly based on your understanding of God can be appropriate, for you are judging behavior. The difficulty for all human beings is to separate the behavior from its source. It is hard enough to walk in your own shoes, not to mention the shoes of another. 

You may be convinced of the terrible nature of someone’s actions and be rightly upset, but you have no grounds to judge the reality that that individual was created by the same God that created you. You are equal in spirit. You are not equal in behavior. You are equal in real worth, value. You are not equal in the way you respond to life around you. No two people are equal. They may have the same value, but they are not the same in all ways. 

The decisions you make you hope to be the right decisions, but what does that mean? What seems to be right now may be to all appearances wrong in the future. What is done today may seem wrong now and right later. 

There is no human justification for treating another as having no value. There is no justification for taking the life of another or denying quality of life to another. You may feel that there is justification in denying quality of life based on behavior, but the quality of life we refer to is a quality that recognizes that all human beings share a common existence under the light of God. You can affirm the quality, the value, of someone’s life while denying how they express that quality when such expression is clearly a matter of inhumane treatment of another. 

The criminal who kills is restrained because of the actions, and yet that criminal should be treated in a way that affirms that there is some goodness in that individual. You can punish a child, and yet the child can feel there is still love. The punishment is for the behavior. The punishment is not a denial of the quality, the sacredness, the value of that child’s life. 

We often affirm the rightness to stand for what you believe to be true when that belief is grounded in the light of respect for another. You can oppose the behavior that you know deep within you to be wrong, but you can also pull back from your response to acknowledge that the actions that you oppose are brought about by issues that you know nothing of. Someone may create a heinous crime and be appropriately punished and restrained, but that person may be suffering deep psychological issues that took them to the point at which such actions were followed. When you realize someone who makes a decision that you feel is clearly bad, is clearly a wrong decision, and you understand that such an individual is going through a level of turmoil far beyond your awareness, you can begin to accept that there are grounds for reaching out and acknowledging there is a quality, there is a grace, there is a presence in that life despite the decisions that were made. 

No human being is alive today who is all good. No human being despite their position, despite their authority, represents in all things everything that is good and godly, and therefore no human being will make a decision that is all good. When you pray for guidance you are praying for insight, to be open, but that prayer is nevertheless from your own path, your own set of circumstances, your own values, your own understanding of God, your own awareness of spirit within. 

Human life is filled with filters, and those filters color how you experience your life. Given those filters, your only understanding of what is right will be through your own perceptions, and those perceptions are always through a set of filters. These filters are life experiences. They are education. They are religious belief or disbelief. They are economical, political. There are countless filters that serve to give you meaning in life, and it is through those filters that you generate your own responses, and it is through those filters that you interpret and understand the responses of others. Some actions penetrate all filters. 

There is no justification to end a human being’s life—no justification. Life is a gift, a gift provided in the environment of God’s love, and a life is completed within that same light of love. It is not for one person to decide to end the life of another. There are ways of responding to behaviors that are appropriate, but never to end a human being’s life. You respond to one another with an understanding that you share in that light. You are part of that love. You respond to another with a belief that you will never walk in the shoes of another. You can never be another. You can never fully judge another. You cannot judge yourself, for you see yourself through all of those filters. You can judge your own behavior. You can acknowledge when you have made poor decisions. You can acknowledge the inappropriateness of behaviors, and yet you can still affirm your own sacredness. 

The approach we urge you to take towards others is the same approach we urge you to follow on your own. Life is sacred, your life and the life of others. Decisions have many layers. Be open to an acknowledgment that life has levels beyond the binary good and bad. Acknowledge that decisions have layers beyond the binary good and bad. In so doing, you extend your acceptance of others, and you do your best to acknowledge, even without evidence, that all is sacred.

We acknowledge your sacredness. We do not judge in any way. You are a creation of God’s love, and because of that your sacredness is affirmed, it is permanent, and it is unshakable. You are loved for who you are, not what you do, not what you think, not based on decisions that you make, not for the actions that you exercise along your pathway. 

Be comforted in God’s peace. Seek it, acknowledge it whenever you experience it, and it will continue to guide you in your decisions, your actions, and your thoughts. 

Be at peace. 

Amen.