The Realization of Spiritual Goodness
Greetings and good morning brothers and sisters. This is Dr. James Perry continuing with our series
where we seek to explore the deeper meanings of our relationship with Jesus Christ. Over the years,
the heavenly Father has revealed many revelations of spiritual truth to me, and I want to share them
with you. This morning we seek to understand the realization of spiritual goodness.
And now, sit back and listen to today's message.
The Realization of Spiritual Goodness
"O, taste and see that the Lord is good: Blessed is the man that trusteth in him." Psalms,
Chapter 34, Verse 8.
Good morning brothers and sisters, spiritual goodness is a perception of the soul. And though there
are the intellectual components that allow us to communicate the concepts of spiritual goodness, we
know that it is an experience of the soul. And we would like to further see if it is possible to use the
stimulus of evil that we are surrounded by to enhance our realization of spiritual goodness.
We know that we cannot get away from dealing with evil. It is always present. Indeed it is the
contrasting partial value that allows us to choose goodness. But sometimes the evil can become
overwhelming, especially when we are confronted with the same evil over and over again. One might
think that an evil that is constantly bombarding us would soon succumb to the living power of faith
and goodness. And such is the case, but still the emotional and physical aspects of such encounters
linger in the mind causing disharmony of the spirit. We would like to see if it is possible to gain
additional insight into eradicating this disharmony when it first appears so that its devastating impact
upon the emotions will not generate new evil by causing decisions that are not divinely coordinated.
Evil is the unconscious, unthinking violation of spiritual goodness. We know that by its very
definition that the evildoer had no conscious desire to violate the laws of spiritual goodness, for if
he had that would raise the bar of the level of misadaptation and maladjustment to the level of sin--
the conscious violation of the laws of spiritual goodness. What we are desirous of doing here is to
gain further insight for the purpose of eliminating the feeling of depression and guilt that is often
accompanied by the realization that we did not live up to our highest ideals, nor did we respond
according to our highest ideals. In either cases, whether we are guilty of initiating the evil or guilty
of responding to the evil with an emotional response that is devastating to the self as well as to the
evil doer, we would like to gain this insight made possible by the very experience of evil.
"The sense of guilt [not the consciousness of sin] comes either from interrupted spiritual communion
or from the lowering of one's moral ideals. Deliverance from such a predicament can only come
through the realization that one's highest moral ideals are not necessarily synonymous with the will
of God. Man cannot hope to live up to his highest ideals, but he can be true to his purpose of finding
God and becoming more and more like him." We can seek to know the Father's will.
Why can't we live up to our highest ideals and why is our highest moral ideals not necessarily
synonymous with the will of God? We are experiencing and incomplete creatures. This is not sinful:
this state is valuable because it can become complete. We must abandon the teaching that relegates
us to the junk pile of unworthy children just because we are imperfect. We must rather assert that
we are not what we were yesterday, nor are we what we will be tomorrow. And even though our
growth is slow and imperceptible from day to day, we are growing.
This incomplete growth creates all sorts of paradoxes in the human mind, for we can see the
perfection long before we can attain it. It seems only right that we should be able to grasp it as a
present reality, and we can. But the grasp does not excuse us from acquiring (realizing) all of those
values and meanings of the existential perfection in an experiential manner. This may sound
discouraging to our newly committed efforts to acquire divine perfection, but it should not. This is
the way of perfection: Acquiring divine values and meanings from and through our experiences.
It is this hunger and thirst for righteousness that creates the paradox in our souls and minds: "When
primitive man felt that his communion with God had been interrupted, he resorted to sacrifice of
some kind in an effort to make atonement, to restore friendly relationship. The hunger and thirst for
righteousness leads to the discovery of truth, and truth augments ideals, and this creates new
problems for the individual religionists, for our ideals tend to grow by geometrical progression, while
our ability to live up to them is enhanced only by arithmetical progression."
From our human understanding we are in a sense like our forebears who felt that when their sense
of righteousness was derailed, they had to find some way of restoring it. And though the primitive
mode of acquiring solace for the soul has become outdated, some mechanism is still needed because
the needs persist and cannot be excised until that awesome and much sought after state of divine
perfection is reached. By realizing that sin is the conscious knowing violation of the laws of
goodness, and by repenting and seeking forgiveness when we do violate the laws of spiritual
goodness, we restore our sense of tranquility of spirit and restore our relationship with the heavenly
Father.
We must incorporate all this into our thinking and emerge with a value that will allows us to pursue
the divine will without being devastated when we feel that we have failed. We are in the process of
becoming Godlike--becoming perfect-- doing the divine will. Children of earthly parents do not feel
broken up and torn down because they are unable to fulfill their parents' ultimate expectations. They
are joyous in the love of their parents; they go right on living and playing and being happy until one
morning they realize that they have become adults, have indeed met their parents' expectations.
We must be like children learning to ride a bicycle. The child continues to balance himself, no matter
how many times he falls. Each time he falls, he automatically makes an adjustment in his balance.
His only focus is on learning how to ride. In fact ignoring the times he falls seems to give impetus
to his efforts to learn. And like the child learning how to ride the bicycle, we must likewise be in our
efforts to learn how to do the Father's will in perfection. We must only concern ourselves with the
desire and the will to learn that will. And as times goes on the paradox of the evil that we would not
do, we do, and the good that we would do, we do not, will cease to be a paradox as our outward acts
will perfectly reflect our inward desires. The comprehension and experience of all this truth is the
realization of spiritual goodness. Let us worship and experience the spiritual goodness in our souls.
This concludes today's message on understanding the realization of spiritual goodness. We hope you
find something in this message to ponder and pray about as you go about your day.
Until next time, this is Dr. James Perry.
Inspirational Messages
By Dr. James Perry
The Realization of Spiritual Goodness
Your Kingdom Come, Your Will Be Done!
