The Importance of The Physical
In “The Importance of Spirituality” I posted why I believe spirituality to be important to human life. The gist of that article is that spirituality is what makes us human rather than merely another animal.
However, there are always at least two sides to a story. Focusing too much on one thing is unhealthy regardless of its importance. On inevitably loses their grasp on other important parts of their life when they do so. It’s human nature.
This article is to balance The Importance of Spirituality with examples of why focusing too much on the spiritual (or religion) is an unhealthy - if not destructive - practice.
There are many examples today of why focusing too much on spirituality is an unhealthy practice. At the very least one will become “an air head”, at worse, their lives and families may suffer. Religions, for example, teach that “God should come first”. Some members of those religions take this practice so far as to leave their jobs because they couldn’t otherwise attend a religious meeting. Would those few days with their congregation really have made a positive difference in their lives? In the lives of their families? Probably not by much, but losing their job certainly has far reaching consequences.
To their mind, “God will provide”. Since they done something “for God”, then they are certain in their belief that everything will miraculously be made okay. Bills will be paid. Food will be brought to the family. A roof will be provided over their heads.
What happens to these individuals when these things do not manifest? What of their families? How many people through out history have perished because they believed that neglecting their physical needs would some how be okay because “God will provide”?
Another example is not continuing one’s education or discouraging their children to do so. I have personally heard people say that it made no sense to attend college because “the end is coming soon”. To these people, it makes no sense for a person to prepare for their future because “a new world is coming”, or “the end is coming”. Several years later, being wrong in their belief, what situation does that leave them in? Worse, what situation are their children in since they were discouraged from continuing their education?
The same could be said about not accepting a job promotion. On one hand, a person should have the time needed to spend with their family and to live their spiritual life. Working too much is just another unhealthy life style. However, not taking a promotion (or avoiding a better job in general) because it would prevent one from carrying out religious activities as often as they would like will hold back not only themselves, but their entire family.
Then there are examples of how too much of a focus on the spiritual not only affects the individual and their immediate families, but can also affect the lives of many others.
Religious based morals in politics is one representation of this. Some religions today believe that it is wrong to pursue stem cell research. Their belief is that this is immoral, generally because they perceive it as interfering with life. This belief is taken to the extremes when these religious individuals refuse to accept even harmless forms of stem cell research, and large ammounts of money is spent and political weight is pushed to prevent it. No lives are harmed by such research, no lives are altered for the worse due to it. Simply, their blind focus on their religion prevents them from accepting this science.
On the flip side, stem cell research could cure some forms of paralyzation, produce means to increase human youthfulness, provide leaping progress in the area of disease prevention, and even recreate lost body parts. See this Google search for more examples.
Lastly, an article such as this would not be complete without mentioning radical Islam. I will limit this example to the Mohamed cartoons. As we know, radical Islamics all over the world murdered, rioted, and sent death threats over nothing more than drawings. Truly, that’s an example of losing rational thought due to focusing too heavily on spiritual beliefs if ever there was such an example
So as important as spirituality is to the human race, and as much as I believe that we need to refocuse on the spiritual in our lives, I would caution against focusing on it too much. Doing so is what allows others to manipulate us spiritually and to control us through religious dogma.
Balance is vital, in everything.
Credit: The inspiration for this article was prompted by The Seed: The American War on Science, which I originally found here on digg.com.
~Steph
Topics: Spirituality |
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