SIN, SALVATION, AND GOOD & EVIL

There is no such thing as original sin in the Novum Carta. We are humans being humans in a divinely created world in part for our existence so we cannot have sin for merely being as we are.

Sin in Novum Carta is called transgression. These transgressions are categorized as either human or spiritual and come in varying levels of subjective severity.

Transgression that causes bodily harm to humans where in that human life could have been extinguished is called Transgressing the Right of Life. This means taking a human life is a transgression, assault is a transgression, and stealing that causes harm is a transgression. There is no concept of accidental or political exclusions from the Right of Life: abortion is transgressing. Soldiers and the state who kill in their duty still transgress; they knowingly accept that burden.

If you are on a mountain top and you trip and push someone off the top of the mountain and that person dies, you transgressed, though an accident weighs less than a deliberate act, just as inaction weighs less than action. If you are in a riot and your actions caused a fire where someone was greatly burned, you transgressed. If you kill a person who killed other people, you have transgressed.

Transgressing can also extend to the spiritual. Spiritual transgression comes in the form of not following the Will of the gods. This Will is commanded through voice, appearances, or synchronicities. Synchronicities are two seemingly unrelated events that are subjectively correlated, meaningful, and significant to the observer. These events are entirely dependent on you to both determine and experience and can be as unique as any random experience can be. They are a hint at destiny if you choose to follow the path before you.

There is no concept of being saved in the Novum Carta. Even if you accidentally kill another person and transgress the Right of Life there is no spiritual repentance for that. That is your experience to bear and what happens to you as a consequence is between men and their laws.

However, that is not to say that people are irredeemable. We should treat all people with the utmost of respect regardless of their unique attributes unless proven otherwise at an individual level. In using The Middle Way, we cannot allow ourselves to be overly tolerant or overly intolerant.

If you are transgressed and a person makes amends that can be considered salvation, but there is no spiritual salvation in Novum Carta because we are neither born with sin nor without. Some people are born bad and others good, however what makes a person good and one bad is not as rigid as you might expect.

In fact, it is probably more likely that evil and doing bad things are easier than not. Doing good takes work, self-reflection, planning, and moral judgment. Doing good is a balancing act in times of peace and prosperity and when those times go away doing good takes even more work.

Human life will do as human life does and there is little that can be done. Humans try to control other humans or use others to get what they do not have. That will always exist, as you cannot change the human animal and be wary of those that try. We must have acceptance of this of the nature of good and evil.

Good and evil events are more often human-created than not and so we must turn to the sources of our suffering or accept that suffering. Because of our nature we will never live in pure harmony amongst other humans. Politics will not fix this. Resources will not fix this. Nor will the gods intervene.

To live without good and evil is to exist without duality. To exist in pleasure alone is to live without contrast and in so doing you wouldn’t know what good is. Without contrasting colors, you wouldn’t even know what colors were.

To remove the ability for humans to balance the good with the bad makes us a new species. Not better than what we are. Not as the gods. But be made as an animal lower than a dog who has knowledge of good and evil and is capable of doing either.