What can religious organizations do intentionally, as major contributors to the centuries-long sustainability of all nations, to support and develop evolved socially sustainable societies? Whether your religion or your overall philosophy and motivation of living is based on being a God-believer, a humanist philosopher, or if your god is money, power, positions of authority, control, and/or ego, the question still applies.
Religion, as one of the major social institutions of most nations, is not exempt from its own intentional contribution to the sustainability of each and all nations. Although religions are man made and fallible to the foibles of the human ego, members of enlivened religions have always espoused and demonstrated in action some of the most sublime attributes of human character. What distinguishes God-centered religions from material religions is in their having a set of values that have been innate to humanity from our earliest beginnings. 17
Seven Values, Morality And Ethics, and Religious Contributions to the Sustainability of Societies
God-centered religions all recognize some form of an “after life” that in one form or another relates to a “nirvana,” “heaven,” or other form of existence after life on strife-filled planet Earth with its dysfunctional families and nations. They also have in common the distinct notion that moral decision-making during a mortal’s lifetime will lead to this wonderful state of existence in the afterlife. They key, then, is to teach mortals how to make “good” decisions that give them a safe passage to that wonderful afterlife. The first step is to accept and use the values that always underlie all good decisions, with “good” being defined by the morality and ethics of those values.
In the genre of this book, the responsibility of religions is to teach “their following” what to believe, but also HOW TO make good decisions that will give them entrance to their form of heavenly existence; and WHAT TO DO after those decisions have been made to assure their entrance to the “pearly gates.” Avoiding duplication, the HOW TO and WHAT TO DO were discussed in chapters 3, 4, and 5.
Making it simple. Without telling religions of what to do with their time, resources, and religious following, it seems rational that religions might just discover that teaching their following the HOW TO and WHAT TO DO of moral and ethical option-development, choice-making, decision-making, and action-implementation are both essential to the individual’s afterlife, to serve that religion, and their society. Doing so would complete the triad of the family, education, and religion to create far more rational and peaceful families, communities, societies, politics, finance and economies.
The pieces that the Creator brought into existence seem to fit seamlessly: the creation of mortals with a personal plan for personal spiritual ascendancy, and the innate value all of which give morals the liberty and responsibility to make good decisions.
17 Raphael, Daniel
2018 The Values God Gave Us
2017 God for All Children, and Grandchildren
2017 God for All Religion — Re-Inventing Christianity and the Christian Church
2017 A Theology for New Thought Spirituality
2002 What Was God Thinking?! ISBN 0-99712663-0-1