The Way of Life

 The Way of Life

There is a way that leads to life and another that leads to death. Life on Earth involves a conflict between these two ways. Death itself, what we think of when we hear that term, is actually two very different things. Death is a part of the way of life. Creatures are born, they grow, then they die and fall to the Earth, their bodies decay and decompose and the nutrients return to the soil to be resurrected in new life, this is the cycle of life, and it brings forth even more life, it brings life abundant. This death is not the same as the death that is part of the way of death.

The death that is a part of the way of death is a death that is final. A death that ends life forever, from which there is no rebirth, no resurrection. It is a death of extraction, the end result of exploitation. We can compare a forest to a wheat field farmed with modern industrial agriculture. In the forest death exists, but that death leads to new life, The forest floor is covered with the remains of organisms that were once alive and thriving in the forest, not they are breaking down, their nutrients becoming free to become new life. In the wheat field there is life in the wheat, for a time until it is harvested and removed, but the soil is dead, having been destroyed by pesticides and other chemicals, to produce a crop it has to be fertilized with chemicals that have been stripped from other places, without the constant input of fertilizers and pesticides the field produces nothing. The death of the field is final, it does not lead to life, and the only way to keep the wheat alive is through the “life support” of external inputs.

The whole of Western society is built upon an exploitative death-based approach. Those who promote it tell us it is the only way, but it isn't. It is wrong and there is an alternative. There is a way that leads to life and life abundant. A way of peace and love and healing. This way will win out in the end, the way of death is self-destructive, it is unsustainable, it is doomed to fail. Those who care about doing what is right, need to learn to embrace it, learn to recognize the lies and deceptions that those who profit from the way of death have told them, and begin to live in ways that bring life and not death.