If-then Revisited

In the past, I’ve written suggesting that the “if-then” proposition limits us, requiring some pre-condition to get another condition. For example, “I’ll be happy when the house is paid off.” In other words, if the house is paid off, then I’ll be happy. My point was and remains, be happy first, it’s your birthright as a spiritual being, whether the house is paid off or not.

Here’s another way of perceiving the “if-then.” If God is true [and It is] and we remain as It created us [true and good and sinless as Itself], then light and joy and peace abide in us. The practical application of this is: If I am as God created me, rich with goodness and power, as It is, then darkness cannot obscure the glory of God’s Son – me, you and the Oneness of all humanity and all of creation. It means, darkness, evil and everything the ego has taught and the world represents is false if, and this is a biggy, if we seek spirit first, last and always and turn away from the idea of separation and the ego’s thought system. If we go within and connect with our inner wisdom, peace and power first - our reality as spiritual beings, we will not be bound by the ego’s illusions of the world, nor bound by pre-conditions, and can exercise our birthright to be happy right now, mortgage or mortgage, deficit or no deficit, cancer or no cancer, if we so choose. This is what Victor Frankel meant by the “final freedom.”

Leonard Pitts Jr.’s column today also deals this inverted “if-then” proposition, but from a slightly different perspective. Writing about how recent polls show a slight majority of Americans now favor gay marriage, he says while, “the will of the people matters a great deal” in a democracy, “the idea that human rights [such as marriage] are subject to a popularity contest,” is not reasonable nor correct. Now here comes the “if-then”: If, Pitts says, as Thomas Jefferson wrote, human rights are ‘unalienable’ and that we are endowed with them from birth, then you and I cannot ‘give’ rights. We can only acknowledge, respect and defend the rights human beings are born with. If human rights are inalienable, given at birth, then we can not accept the notion that such rights are doled out to a minority on a timetable of the majority’s choosing. “You don’t do the right thing because it’s popular. You do it because it’s right.” In other words, if all of us are created equal, then all of us must be treated equally – race, religion, political party and sexual preferences not withstanding.