The logic of good and bad deeds in religion is inherently flawed.

2026 Day 194. #PersonalDays.

The ideas of doing good and sin to gain or lose favour with the gods is a big part of every religion. Doing good earns you brownie points which help you ascend to heaven, and possibly prevent reincarnation. Doing bad deeds makes you a terrible person and you to go hell or reincarnate as something other than a human.

I believe that the entirety of the concept of religions revolved around getting people in line with the fear of a power that man did not control. With no laws or enforcers, every man stood for himself. To give away control to someone else was accepting that they were stronger or better. No one would have been happy with that.

But, if a power, more than any man could have, decreed your behaviour, then it felt easier giving up control. The idea of good and evil helped established the differentiator between trouble makers and abiders.

How do we define good or bad?

Are there degrees of good or bad?

Who keeps count?

Do our thoughts count or is it only our actions?

Do all actions matter or just the ones I do consciously?

Is being self serving good or bad?

Imagine a situation where you are currently in debt.

You owe X $1000.

You ask your friends, family, and strangers to help you out.

A lends you $100, with no expectation of you paying them back.

B lends you $200, with an expectation of you paying them back.

C and D lend you $200 each, as family, no repayment is expected.

10 strangers lend you $10 each, no repayment expected.

E owed you $100, you transfer the debt to X.

X forgives the last $100.

In this entire situation does every person you gave you money get the same brownie points?

It should not be so because people lent you different amounts of money, and with different expectations and reasoning.

C lent you money because they did not want to see you in debt. D lent you money because they were the guarantor so it was better for them to pay up only $200 instead of the entire amount.

Some strangers lent you money because they felt pity. Some wanted to do a good deed and felt you were in need. Others were simply handing out $10 to anyone who asked and you just happened to be one of them. Others found a $10 on the street and decided to give it you since you need more.

So on and so forth.

Now that we have established various reasons of why someone helped you, do you feel they should get the same rewards? Has your expectation of who gets how many points changed with this new context?

Let’s add another layer of context.

A is a millionaire and could have given you all of the $1000 but gave you $100 because that was all they were comfortable parting with.

B only has $400 to their name and gave you half because you had an immediate need. They will soon need it more than you.

X forgave the last $100 because it was just interest accrued. They are happy they got their money back and no gain is better than a loss.

After adding this to the context of the situation, would you hand out equal rewards? If not, how would you plan things out?

Because of the contextual layers, one finds it difficult to form an answer. We have not played god before, so there is no baseline metric. There is no measure of good or bad on a definite scale. In fact, a lot of the good or bad is perception which can be affected by biases.

Assuming that god is all-knowing and all-seeing, has no biases, how would they go about rewarding the people?

If lending money and helping an injured animal, both earn you brownie points, how do these two compeltely unrelated activities compare?

Good or bad is defined by your personal morals and ideas. You may think you are doing someone a favour when in fact you are causing them trouble. You worked hard to get the first seat, but pushed someone to second for this. Thus, the same action can be good and bad at the same time.

It is important to not do things for fear of being judged by a higher power or self.

Do things with the right ideas and use your internal moral compass to guide you. This compass requires empathy, compassion, and observation to work, be ready to have an open heart and mind.

There is no absolute way to decide if something is good or bad. What is justified to you may not be so to someone else. What you know may be unkown to the person judging you. So no one can judge you truly, except yourself.

Do good deeds so that you have inner peace and happiness. The only all knowing and seeing person in your life is you. This is not to deny the existence of god, but the reality and accountability that you need to have to do better and be better.

See you tomorrow.