Contrary to popular secular opinion, you do not need more education, money, prestige or luck to live a more radically generative life. In fact, the only requirement is free of charge and readily available, despite being often overlooked. Every man, woman and child on earth could live a more radically generative life today, tomorrow and evermore if one, basic injunction were acceded to: let not your heart be troubled.

To live a more radically generative life, you must stop trying to bring about peace, root out comfort or make something of yourself.  To live a more radically generative life, you must give up the “good fight,” abandon worry, resist the temptation to struggle with or sort out evil and stop wallowing in injustice.

Contrary to popular Christian thought, you do not need to pray to be granted more serenity, courage or wisdom. God is not some genie in a bottle, only granting wishes when there is sufficient begging. God is always giving. God does not withhold things from humanity or any other aspect of creation if they are naughty, as some would have you believe; He is not Santa’s omnipotent cousin. God is always giving. Serenity, courage and wisdom are always at hand and available in abundance.

The question each must ask himself is: “Am I willing to let go of my judgments about myself and the world around me long enough that my heart actually, factually stops being troubled?” A troubled heart is the only thing which stands between you and everlasting serenity, courage and wisdom.

Another misconception worth clearing up is the fact that you cannot as the popular saying goes “let go and let God.” You are here for a reason. Humankind is here for a reason. We are a critical component of the mechanism of creation – a missing link most of the time – but a critical link nonetheless! God cannot act on earth arbitrarily. He needs eyes, ears, hands and minds, but He accesses all of these through the heart.

Judgment is a compensatory strategy for those fraught with a troubled heart. It gives the illusion of control and power, a euphoric state akin to a crack cocaine high. Unfortunately its effects are not long lasting, so judgment after judgment must be made to maintain the false sense of security it brings. Judgment is the greatest human addiction.

Just bringing up the topic, that is, making the matter conscious, causes the average person who hears the message feel worse about himself. Most during this discomfort dive for cover, start judging themselves even more harshly than before (“I am a terrible, lowly person!) or binge judge others and the world around them (“I would be fine if this, that and the other thing weren’t so screwed up, if it wasn’t so full of evil!”) in order to assuage the sense of shame. The Christian concept of origin sin doesn’t help, as most then excuse themselves from true, deep and permanent repentance on this point with the palliative belief that “nobody’s perfect.”

My message to you this morning, dear readers, is that you can live a radically generative life. You can escape the death grip of judgment. You can live “in” the world but not be “of” it. Best of all, you need not wait for others to lead the way. That work is done. You can live smack dab in the heart of a troubling world without having a troubled heart.

You can, and for the sake of your fulfillment, you must. So take this glorious day and this promising year to let not your heart be troubled. Stop judging long enough to see clear of the narcotic influences of judgment. Stop resisting evil for long enough to see that evil contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction. Evil is sustained more by the constant energy poured into it by the self-ordained “good” people of the world who rally zealously against it than it is of its own merits.

Resist not evil. Let not your hearts be troubled. Repent – rethink, reorient your deepest feeling concerns and use the most powerful tool you’ll ever have, forgiveness, liberally – for the Kingdom of heaven, that is, the control we lost when man started judging, is at hand. These are not impossible requirements given to us by an impractical, high-minded and unrealistic deity. They are imminently doable and far easier than we’ve conditioned ourselves to think.

You can assent to these injunctions without ascribing to the obsession with sacrifice and death preached unwittingly  by frocked undertakers of human potential, who despite their best intentions do more to entomb God in heaven than the devil they resist could in his wildest imaginations. You can begin to live a radically generative life here and now by simply letting your heart come to a state of active, alert rest…don’t put off serenity, courage or wisdom for another moment!