The School called Good Is...Period

Just for the fun of it I’d like to present my readers with some theological arguments today. If this doesn’t interest you, simply don’t read on, but I myself find it a fascinating subject because it relates closely to happiness. 

Now, let’s write the word God on a piece of paper. Leave a space to add another o and keep the upper case G. Now you have the word as God is understood in several other languages. Let’s call God Good today. 

Here are some questions I’ve often pondered:

1. Does Good exist alone or is it only a word that gets its meaning from something opposite Itself called evil?
2. Can a strict interpretation of Good include exceptions or minor discrepancies?
3. If we accept Good as God must we be obliged to accept evil as a god too?
4. Why do we insist on believing both good and evil?

Here are answers I’ve come up with, not entirely on my own, but with the help of those I consider most wise in the past and present:

1. God, Good, exists alone and needs no opposite to define itself.
2. Good cannot include or allow even the slightest discrepancy to itself for if it could it would self-destruct. (And that explains what all the “bad stuff” in the world is doing when we attempt to validate evil along with good. Not pretty.) What Good does with evil is what truth does to a lie, it obliterates even the suggestion of evil, but only when understood.
3. No more than by accepting the principle of mathematics requires us to say that 2+2=5 or 4+4=6. If we were obliged to validate mistakes in mathematics we’d have relativity and that’s something other than what we’re talking about here, a no-man's-land. 
4. We insist on believing in both good and evil because of the overwhelming testimony of the material senses. By cultivating spiritual sense we can begin to see and prove that good is all and evil is nothing but a negation of good, not worthy to claim our attention, much less our belief. 

Our discussion could be enlarged but let’s keep it simple. I’m a believer that Good and evil are opposites and cannot both be true. The science of mathematics does not allow it, so why do theologians preach the first Commandment requiring us to have no other than Good and then immediately argue for a devil or the power and presence of evil?

Obviously, the answer in mathematics is that only ignorance accepts mathematical mistakes as true. You can write a wrong equation on the blackboard a hundred times and in a hundred different ways but only one way is true. Not discerning the right answer, or accepting the wrong answers, theologians accept the overwhelming existence of lies about one correct equation, that Good is real and evil is not. We battle with evil’s manifestations such as theft and hatred as if they were just as true as honesty and love while we could easily destroy the evidences of these by knowing the truth, namely, that those evidences are mere lies. A lie requires a truth or it could not exist even as a lie, (can anyone declare a lie about nothing?), but a truth can stand on its own and does not require or even permit a lie to validate it.   

Most religions refute absolute conclusions such as these because they find them hard to prove. They excuse themselves for lack of demonstration in the doctrine that only a few were so privileged. The absolute statement that, Good is and evil is not, is too narrow a path to go down, so they think. Thus we’ll live with wars, thievery, murders, adulteries, and all other deviations of good or God so long as we wrestle with them as facts and not as lies that can be corrected in ourselves once we get the facts. 

Which is the easier way? You figure. I think you can guess my answer. Even though I’m a babe in the pre-kindergarten class of the Good Is, Period School, and cannot demonstrate fully the truths I believe in as well as the upperclassmen, I’m not giving up. This school is easy when you learn day by day, hour by hour, and minute by minute. It permits those who wish progress to go as fast and far as they can. By the same token it permits diddlers and dabblers to go as slowly as they choose until they’re disciplined or disappointed in themselves and decide to get with it. 

Even when I’m at my best the going is often slow but I get much pleasure from every little thing I learn both in work and play. When I merit a grade A on some project, - well, that spells 

Happiness!

And that's why each day I start with the prayer that God will help me to do the right thing at the right time. I can carry with me the song and drumbeat of GOOD IS ALL; EVIL IS NAUGHT. That is the easy way. It starts with the desired end. I'm not a tiny something trying to grow into a larger something. I'm at one with the Good is everything and I am a living, practicing individual expression of Good.

All I can say is, it works for me as it's worked and is working for others. See you in School!