The view that spirituality is some sort of reward and punishment system belongs, quite honestly, to an earlier time in human development. In essence, it is good to do good – but it does not hold a prophylactic reward, a kind of protection against bad things happening. The truth is that bad things happen to everybody. That means that it isn’t appropriate to see those things is some kind of punishment or to see the good things that happened to us as a reward for good behavior. All of us experience different events, both good and bad, and those events are simply part of being human. To understand them as a barometer of our spiritual progress is a mistake. More often, it can lead to a convenient way to beat ourselves up or see ourselves as less than lovable. That is always an error.