[WhiteWarrior]

Hm. Good thread premise.

Let's start by looking at your regular priest. He works a full week, and gets a normal paycheck which he taxes from. (If there's clergy anywhere that gets to avoid taxes I have never heard of such a thing.) So, he benefits economically from his spiritual work. And all he speaks is derived from a specific holy book, so he might not need to be all that spiritual, just knowledgeable of his source library. Does he write all his speeches himself? Maybe. Does he turn the stack of speeches when he's gone through them and repeat? Possibly. My point is, he gets major money benefits from his spirituality. We do not seem to have ethical issues with this.

I do a little spiritual work. I have no name, no congregation, no church, no money income from it, but also no obligations to anyone but myself. But I do have ethics, they just aren't about money. I will not lie. I will not gild a message. I will do the best I can with what I have, every time.

Also I will not take any speech, writer, or book to heart blindly. I will question, I will try to make sense, I want answers. I WILL take inspiration where I can find it, I WILL see beauty in words and images, I WILL see kindness where I find it. I KNOW my judgement will never be perfect and I WILL accept that anyone and anything else will never be perfect. Call it ethics if you like.