It really seems honesty and kindness get you nowhere.
I’ve spent hundreds of hours volunteering. I donated money to good causes when I had it. I spoke up for others.
But I have nothing for it. No one will wish me happy birthday this year. No one will ever do any of the things that I did for others for me.
While evil people succeed. Narcissists can charm others into playing along with their world, people who do their jobs poorly will keep them.
Hard work, honesty, really any of those “positive” values seem to get you nowhere in life.
One source I’ve personally found that tries to tackle this subject is Psalm 73 from the Bible. Definitely a difficult topic.
Frankly, and all due respect to people who find solace in religion, expecting a god to reward you for ethical behavior is how you get into this warped frame of mind in the first place. It’s a lot easier to understand ethical behavior being a neutral, not-correlated thing to wellbeing without bringing a deity into it at all.
Which then frees a surprising amount of mental and emotional bandwidth to wrap your head around all the very good reasons ethical behavior is still the better option, frankly.
Even if there was a god, and even if it was the god of the bible this would hold up. Surely you’re in a better position by Christianity’s values if your ethics are unrelated to worldly rewards of any kind. Being rewarded postmortem sure sounds like a bit of a scam to me, but it seems to necessitate the exact same ethical framework as a world with no god. Which I don’t think is accidental, but has the advantage that we don’t need to agree on the existence of a god to agree on what ethical behavior looks like and why it’s… well, ethical.
I wish god would speak to me. I’ve sought him before, and the people who pretend to follow his words. I would love my shepherd to comfor me.