Reader Question:
Hi Neale...I've heard you speak in your talks, and I think you've written in one of your books, about a society in which there is no "punishment" for breaking the law. How can society ever forgo the use of punishment as a means to prevent damaging behavior, when all of its people are not yet living by CWG's triangular code of awareness, honesty and responsibility? How can the police force effectively do its work when there is not the tool of punishment to do it with? Most of what the police do 'works' to a certain extent, because they can resort to punishment in the form of fines and sentences. Without it they are powerless.
RN, Plymouth, Mass
Neale Responds
Dear RN…Conversations with God says there is a vast difference between "punishment" and "consequences." The answer to your question is to put in place consequences that are not purely and simply punitive. Throwing a person in jail for five years for possessing marijuana, for instance, is insane, and solves nothing. Fines and sentences that are remedial, repairative and restorative, and not simply punitive, make sense. Brutal and simple revenge ("an eye for an eye") is neither repairative nor restorative, but is the mark of a primitive society.
Sending Pure Love,
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