Guilt

Judgement, guilt, regret are all related. It's about feeling bad because of how we view ourselves. The feeling of guilt underlies so much of our behavior and the personal cause of guilt begins with a presumption of debt.

If I owe my life to someone even if they are my loving parents, the concept of debt is already present. Yet no matter your wealth, status, intelligence, the process of life is a mystery. Whether a couple is fertile or not, no human can claim to give another life.

For life is a gift. It is free. It is a culmination of a balance of natural forces in the Universe that produced our earth in spite of the violent destructive power that inhabit a mostly emptiness we call space. The fact we survive the violence that surround our tiny earth in the space whose expanse seems to approach infinity, is on the order of winning the lottery.

We can either believe we owe the mercy of Universal forces sparing our blue planet, or embrace the opportunity life affords us and celebrate the miracle. Guilt is that we don't deserve this life and drives us to prove our worthiness to live.

Those who believe in God are faced with the same choice.

1. To live because he exists and explore the relationship, thankful for the gift of life.
2. Or to appease him in order to live and avoid doing something against his will.

The starting point to make the choice is that he is there. But a far sadder and senseless choice of many is to live to prove God is there because we are not sure he exists. In this case, we are chasing someone/something who could well not be there. It seems better just to give up.

If life begins and ends with nothing, the living itself can be free of debt and guilt. Of course like life itself, this is a mystery and must be discovered. The journey itself is the point for both the theist and atheist.