 God and Pot - defining Evil & Sin
The question was asked, "Does God consider it a sin to smoke pot?"
Unless you're speaking within a circle of like-believing religionists,
you're apt to have some problems with jargon here.. like, what do you
mean by "sin"? or "think"? or of course "God"?
The complexities of evil, sin, and forgiveness can be profound, yet
can be simple enough for any child past the approximate age of the
integrated self-willed self-aware personality's first moral choosing
(three to six, generally). Presuming monotheism, one person at the
center of the universe and of every individual, our One Parent, here's
some definitions for enlightened discussion's sake:
"Evil".. that which is cosmically wrong, wrong in God's plan, the
ultimate view. You might do evil, probably do frequently and daily,
and don't even know it because you're ignorant and partially evolved
spiritually. Evil in and of itself is utterly forgivable. Someone
confused enough to disbelieve in gravity may pay the ultimate mortal
price but any understanding Father would without doubt forgive such
mere mental confusion.
"Sin".. on the other hand, is knowingly doing wrong. Here you get
into a problem of subjectivity. You might be really doing right but
believe you're doing wrong because of doctrinal confusion -- Huck Finn
helping a runaway slave, but feeling guilty about it because he comes
from a slaveholding culture. But generally, if you have any sense of
real right and wrong, like you clearly know you're stealing and it's
wrong and do it anyway, that's real sin. Sin is forgivable, too, most
especially once you quit sinning. 
When sin becomes a habit, when one is so fouled up as to consistently
choose to do that which is really understood to be wrong, then that
person could eventually reach the point of utter "iniquity," at some
point becoming dead in the sense of irredeemable personality
breakdown. "The wages of sin is death."
But too much emphasis is paid to evil, sin, and iniquity in most
religion. Preachers spend more time on the Devil than they do on God
when they should know that the universe is Unity, not polarity. From
our perspective, shadow, cold, hunger, and evil can seem "real," but
they are only relativities. What we quantify is light. Heat is what's
real and what we miss when "cold" is the absence of heat. Real hunger
is the absence of what is supposed to be normal, a regular meal. Evil
is likewise a measure of emptiness rather than the reality, being the
absence or usually only partial realization of the Good in the
evolving universe, fear but the absence of faith.
FYC
::Radd Dadd Upanishad
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08-04-04 01:15 AM
