Wednesday, March 20, 2013

False Faith

Corporations are, by their very natures corrupt entities. The purpose of a corporation is to create an entity that is free from any personal accountability. This is antithetical to the basis of a moral society. Morality (my definition being responsible compassion) is dependent on personal conscience and accountability.

Our society began to collapse as soon as we stopped dealing with individuals and started dealing with corporate entities through lawyers. The goal of civil law is not justice, it is competition for who can best another with the most clever argument or the most political or financial pull. Might makes right in our legal system, but it does not lead to peace on earth.

The same goes for our criminal justice system; it is about who can best use fear to its advantage. It honors token amounts of money and an eye-for-an-eye in the form of years of one's life, as restitution for wrongdoing. this is decided by juries of strangers, rather than by the victims and the perpetrators. There is no reconciliation in that, only revenge, which leaves those wronged and their perpetrators less than whole.

Every time those claiming sacred authority hide behind the courts, they are denying their own profession of faith. Every time a religion is threatened by not becoming the law of the land, the religion is weakening the basis for belief. The true test of faith, in my opinion, is the ability to hold to one's beliefs without the protection of the legal system or consensus by one's neighbors.

Each family unit is a legal entity, a domestic corporation, if you will. It matters not how the family is constituted. Those living in a halfway house are, for that period of time, functionally a family. They share certain rules and responsibilities. Marriage has been robbed of the sacred by confusing it with domestic partnerships and allowing clergy to perform the legally binding contracts as if they were sacred bonds.

My marriage is a corporation of two adult entities, responsible individually and jointly for all decisions that are made by either of us. There are some things that were exempted before our legal contract of marriage by a legal pre-nuptial agreement, as Louisiana is a community property state. I insisted on this document to protect my husband's assets from members of my family.

We were married by a member of the clergy who knew nothing of either of us personally. This was allowed in both the state and the church. Most of the attendees were professed Christians, many of whom took some responsibility for helping us in our marriage journey. This time, I was blessed that the man I married was a truly moral man. This was not luck, or Divine intervention in the usually accepted sense. I had exposed our relationship to those with whom we had each shared The Sacred Spirit throughout our lives. This community embraced us as a couple, as they had embraced each of us individually. The commitment he made to me and to my community was a commitment of The Sacred Spirit that had been passed down from his parents, friends, and his religious upbringing.

We did marry each other for better and for worse, and both ends of the spectrum create their own sets of challenges to our commitment. Too many people don't realize that responsible compassion requires that we attempt always to offer our best, while knowing that we will often fall short. Too many people honor the letter of the law of marriage without ever having committed to The Sacred Spirit of a true marriage, not simply a domestic corporation.

Whoever said, "Love means never having to say you're sorry," was clearly not in a Sacred union. Forgiveness begins where willingness to ask for forgiveness begins. In corporations, and other areas of the legal system, admission of guilt and offering of restitution in the form of changed behavior is anathema. Long before the legal contracts, we had committed to each other, bodies and souls. Our joined souls are our sanctuary, and our home is our tabernacle for service to others, which the synergy of our marriage creates.

All of this in spite of sickness and health, in-laws, and stinky feet. We often have to say we're sorry to each other and to others. I am happy when given the opportunity to do so, as it means that the other continues to want a relationship with me.

Any religion that is married to a legal corporation is not acting in good faith; therefore, I believe it to be a false faith.  Religions, are you listening?

Matthew 6:2: "Therefore when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men."

Matthew 6:5: "And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men."

Matthew 6:16: "Moreover when ye fast, be not, as the hypocrites, of a sad countenance ..."

Matthew 7:5: "Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye. "