Living a Good Life

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Marcus Aurelius says: “Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.”

There is literally no downside to being a good person, or at least trying your best to be a good person. You do not lose anything. In fact, you gain a great deal, including Serenity and Enlightenment. When you know you do your best to be kind, to be benevolent, to be a good friend but an enemy to none, you feel a sort of peace that somebody who carries anger and resentment in their heart will not know. This is where Patience comes in. We must remember that everyone we meet or interact with may be dealing with pain we know nothing about.

This also turns Pascal’s Wager on its head. Why worship a god who would condemn you to burn for all eternity if you don’t? Sounds like a protection racket to me. There is no justice in condemning a soul because they did what you knew what they would do, in fact planned ahead of time. I do not think even Hitler would deserve damnation if there really were an all-powerful and all-knowing god. I personally want nothing to do with such a god. Hell sounds better, anyway. In heaven, you get to tell your god how great he is forever. It would get old for me after about twenty minutes. Besides, angels are kind of jerks. In the old testament, there is an awful lot of them flying about and doing their god’s dirty work. (By the way, isn’t it interesting that nobody saw angels after cameras became popular?)

Anyway, the point here is that you should always be striving to live a benevolent life and do more good than harm, no matter what you believe happens to you after you die. We will all find out eventually, anyway; like Jim Morrison said: “No-one here gets out alive.”

Do you try your best to be a good person? Do you do it because you believe you will go to heaven, or because you want to live a more positive, serene, and Enlightened life?

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