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    %LEGALIST MORALIST ADDICT CODEPENDENT GOOD EVIL 891010

     Often  people  who are into offering  legalistic  and
moralistic  injunctions regarding what people  should  and
should not do to be good people, are themselves addicts or
codependents who are trying to be in control of that which
they cannot control.

     It  is the nature of an addict or codependent to  try
to control the behaviors of other people,  behaviors which
are  in  essence  beyond the range of the  possibility  of
their control. Trying to manipulate people into being good
people  according  to  some  system  of  prescriptions  is
addictive behavior, and it will fail, as do other forms of
addictive  behavior.  Such coercive manipulations  do  not
merit   respect.   Showing  respect  for   such   coercive
manipulations  is  itself  part of a  communal  system  of
addictive and codependent behaviors which are invisible to
the participants in the system.

     Often  people  who  try  to  control  others  through
injunctions  regarding  what  is good  and  what  is  evil
behavior,   presume  to  speak in the name  and  with  the
authority  of  God.  They directly or indirectly  indicate
that  they  have superior knowledge  and  authority  which
justifies their efforts to control people's behavior. They
thus  seek to compensate for their weak self  respect  and
self  esteem.   They do not know God as Love and  seek  to
represent God as Law,  with themselves playing the role of
God's  agent  in  giving laws and passing  judgments  upon
those who fail to keep the law.

     Such people often include themselves among those  who
fail  to  keep  the  law.   Their  judgments  passed  upon
themselves  further  undermines  their  self  esteem   and
intensifies  their need to be presumptuous.  The cycle  of
disintegrative  behavior  intensifies  in  this  way.   It
intensifies  until  they become able to know Love  on  the
terms  which  Love  offers,  or until they  die  of  their
rejection of Love.

     Love  is not interested in grounds for justification,
no  matter how good those grounds may be.  Love  does  not
accept  people in terms of grounds which they have  chosen
to  be their grounds for self-justification.   People  who
seek  to  be accepted by Love in terms of any grounds  for
justification  are unable to know Love on the terms  which
Love offers.

                                                                                                                               
                         (c) 2005 by Paul A. Smith in      
                    (On Being Yourself, Whole and Healthy)  
                                                                                                                               
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