Spiritual vs. Material

     I wanted to elaborate on the spiritual vs. material topic that was brought up a while back during our reading of Everyman.  I was on the side of “material” and I want to say, first of all, that I actually don’t think that either one of these aspects are very important in the grand scheme of life but I had to take a side and since I am not spiritual at all, by default I had to defend the material.  In my opinion they are both trivial.  Material things are great; I LOVE shopping and spending money when I have it.  I mean who doesn’t?  But I’m pretty sure everyone realizes that these things don’t go with you when you die. I also understand that having an excessive love for material things can also render greed and self-indulgence, among other undesirable traits.  But it is just as possible to have an extreme feeling of spirituality that leads to corruption as well.  One person’s spirituality may simply mean having a relationship with and a love for Christ and wanting to share that with other people.  Well that’s just splendid and seemingly harmless but spirituality is not confined to Christianity.  What about the person that has that same feeling of love for a different “holy” entity and their passion leads them to blow up hundreds of people?  This stems from an individual’s spirituality as well.  All I’m saying is a pair of shoes never went out and killed a bunch of people in the name of a god.  I know that I’m using an extreme example and blowing up people isn’t usually associated with Christianity, but it’s the same concept.  People become passionate about what they believe or love and spirituality, especially in the religious sense, almost always leads to one person judging another.  Say what you want, but telling a person that they are incomplete, immoral and/or on their way to an eternal hell just because they don’t accept your god and what you believe, is judgmental.  My point here isn’t to ridicule any religion, I actually think there are good aspects to religion as well but that’s not what the argument was.  I just want everyone to realize that their opinion is one in a vast sea of billions.  No matter how strongly you feel about something, it doesn’t mean you’re right…it’s just your opinion.  You believe what you believe because of faith not fact.  So I simply think that people should acknowledge that and respect people who don’t have that same faith.