Is God unkind? Are friends unfaithful? Do your prayers go unheard? Have you ever considered that your endurings now are but exactions of your yesterdays? "Whatsoever a man soweth" holds true in all careers. You are the builder! You did not inherit your parents. You inherited yourself, and you willingly reincarnated for continued individualization and to "balance your accounts." For some one else to pay your bills would be manifestly unfair and unjust.

You are now preparing for another life that may be a continuation of this one in wretchedness and sorrow, due to what you imposed on others in this and preceding lives. Pay your debts and liquidate your difficulties. Nothing merely happens. The laws of rebirth and consequence can account for all misfortunes and losses, sickness and injuries, ugliness and beauty, genius and stupidity, misery and happiness. We reap what we have sown! How else account for the vagaries of fate, fortune, accident? Every event, good or vicious, has its precursor and inspirer.

Some earth lives are far too short to wipe out evil deeds, and that accounts for rebirths that seemingly carry a fate of misfortune. Every account must be balanced, but it is our own prerogative to choose the manner in which we will make the necessary adjustments. We progress faster by facing life and destiny cheerfully.

Christian teachings prior to the fifth century taught the doctrine of rebirth and the inevitable reaping of consequences from causes generated from prior lives. Consider the history of certain nations and look at their present calamities. Are they not reaping sowings from previous lives? The sufferers today in those nations were the vicious actors in former days. They reap as they sowed for others. Is that not just?

"Why did this evil happen to me?" you ask. Can you explain it otherwise than is indicated? No! Then pay up! Consider your fellow men. Do good somewhere, anywhere. Every kind act will help to wipe away some part of your debt. Pile up merit. Be generous in motive. It won't hurt any even if you do good simply for good's sake!

Mere belief in some theological dogma won't excuse you nor relieve you of paying moral debts. Such thinking is hardly consistent with common sense. What of the victim you imposed upon? How is he repaid for suffering your meanness? Belief alone won't change fate. but you can, by paying today the indebtedness of yesterday's folly. You have made your fate, and only you can change it.

It is much better to make good here and now than to take chances in a mythic paradise. Wouldn't you, as you now you are, cut a pretty figure there? With whom could you associate there, if peradventure you could slip through by fatuous "believing" of some vicarious excusing? Do not delude yourself. Justice obtains throughout God's universe. Whatever you do, you must go on living with yourself throughout life, and life is continuous — unending. You can progress or retrogress. The choice is up to you. You are today making fate. The beauty, harmony, happiness, and peace of today are fruits of righteousness demonstrated in previous lives. How build ye today?
— Ernest Crutcher, M.D., 32°
— Rays from the Rose Cross Magazine, September/October, 1995