We may be familiar with a negative feedback loop, like feedback from putting a microphone too close to it's PA's speakers. Of course guitarists have learned to use this sort of feedback to their advantage. There are positive feedback loops too, present in many of the crucial life cycles in nature, like the carbon cycle or the nitrogen cycle, it works properly, it is self sustaining.
There is a positive feedback loop in spirituality. The role of a village spiritual center (ie church, mosque, temple) is spiritual care. There are two major types of spiritual care (maybe more), that of the individual and that of the community as a whole (the community can be broken into sub groups like families and meta groups like nations, but they are essentially the same sort of thing). By engaging in individual spiritual care, the individual goes into the community to provide care to the community. When the community is cared for, more individuals seek personal self care.
In our modern Christian church, community care is often defined as Mission or evangelizing, and personal self care is sometimes termed salvation. We are sometimes led to believe that evangelizing is strictly going out to spread the word of God, to talk about Jesus, to turn people into believers, to get them to gain salvation. Salvation is often described as going to heaven.
Jesus often talked about the Kingdom of Heaven as being here on earth, we hear it in the Lord's prayer, "thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven". Salvation is recognizing that and caring for earth here, salvation comes in service to others, and its not necessarily about going to heaven, but in making heaven here. If we work to make our communities healthier, with better schools, better hospitals, better public safety, we are doing the work of God, we are in fact saving souls, saving them not only from poverty and the cycles that exist there, but we are saving the rich from the cycles of greed and corruption that can easily occur. The more people are comfortable in their communities, the more likely they are to have better personal spiritual health, it is a positive feedback loop. We get "saved" and help others, and others get "saved" and they help others and your return is a community that furthers your personal spiritual health. We may become "saved" by having someone help us, we may become "saved" through the act of helping others, we may become "saved" through putting in the work, or the necessary suffering that often needs to occur.
This is not a perfect explanation, but it gets at a central theme.
We have allowed our definitions of salvation and heaven to become things that are so unearthly that we can't relate to them any more -- except through disconnected models that close off the rest of the world. So many ask why our churches are shrinking, its because so many can see the detachment from anything real.
If one is on the right handed path, get out into your community and serve! If one is on the left handed path, get out and serve where ever you are. Its so easy for a community to become disconnected, but through the basic act of helping someone, you may offer that needed "salvation". It is not about what you say, it doesn't matter what you say, it matters what you do. Christ wasn't calling us to be "Christians". Christ was calling us to Love.
This is at its center a Christian understanding, using Christian words and theology, but it resonates at some level through all religions. There is a central message that Religions form around, they each make up there words for it, their terms their definitions, their rituals, but the central message is still there, somewhere, but it is so easy to lose track, to lose the central message, what it is God is telling us. If you are not christian, fill in the terms that make sense to you, if you are atheist, you can't deny that at some level this still makes sense, love the community and individuals benefit, love individuals and the community can benefit.
Lets get over the religious rhetoric about salvation and heaven, lets just get out there and do what we know is in our hearts, to spread love, whether that love is food or books or medicine or a listening ear or whatever it is, we have to spread Love, it is what we are called to do.
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