Is original sin the Catholic Church's way of talking about karma? My Jewish friend who is a pediatrician has an awfully hard time with the concept of original sin. How can these beautiful babies coming into the world so pure and perfect need to have their sins forgiven after a few weeks of innocent life at a Baptism ceremony?
I had my kids baptized when my youngest was two months old. I felt the need for some kind of ceremony and probably had some lingering superstitions from my Catholic childhood. And blessings and ceremonies infused with love can't ever hurt anyone, right? It felt lovely, like a putting a etheric wrap around our little family constellation. (Unitarian minister, school chapel, hippie friends...so not quite mainstream. Heaven forbid!)
I know that each of us brings our karmic assets and debts into each incarnation. For me, there can be no other explanation for the root causes of how each life unfolds. I believe firmly that we choose the parents we are born to because we know ahead what we need to clean out old karma. So, the karmic load we bring could be called 'original sin'. I am not very convinced that any baptismal ceremony erases this.
But if we could start from birth and obey all the moral rules from all religions from the "Thou shall nots" to the "Right Livelihood, Right intention", and the "Love your neighbor as yourself," kind of guidelines, we would be putting some mighty good future karma into action.
I am thinking about this in regard to the question from an anonymous reader about who should pay for the medical care and support of the baby boomers. And he/she wonders whether or not the very wealthy should be collecting from the same pot as the very poor and thinks rightly that this is not a sustainable plan. Let me be clear, I know shit about economics. But I do read this and that and I do observe what is going on around me and I do form opinions.
From my side, I have a hard time rejoicing in my good fortune when it is built on the suffering or slavery of others. As I have previously stated, I am not a fan of any of the systems that have been tried in the past and failed miserably, colossally. That would be stupid. I have this hope that we could make a new system. I think it will be incumbent on the young, the people who are not trying to fiddle with failed ways of doing things. As Jesse Jackson said at a United Farm Workers strike against Monsanto in the strawberry fields of Watsonville, CA, "What is wrong with the idea that we pay the workers well, make a safe and healthy product, care for the earth, and still make the stock holders a shit load of money?" There must be a way we can have it all.
The karma of greed, the karma of oppression, the karma of violating others, will come back at us. The good karma that some of us were born with to get good genes, good education, healthy bodies, plenty of food, will be squandered if we can't feed the people who feed us. There is no religion in the world that preaches "me first", "winner takes all", 'get what you can" and the losers can fuck off and die. It wouldn't make sense.
I am interested in any thoughts my readers have about how we can do thing better. I can't make myself think that putting the money under the mattress and having a gun in bed with me would make me feel any happier or more secure. I can't think that bombing or threatening to bomb any peoples who don't tow my line makes me any safer. I hope we are soon coming to a situation which will stimulate some genius, (Not Karl Marx or Mao) to make some sense of this.
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