Q54. What makes people engage in sinful activities?

Ignorance of spiritual knowledge is the mother of all sins. Ignorance of spiritual knowledge leads to increase in personal ego, envy, lust, materialistic life style, and greed. The result is sinful acts like hatred, animal killing, drugs, alcohol, violence, gambling, adultery, lying, deceit, stealing, and so on. Following man-made ideologies also leads to ignorance of true spiritual knowledge. You should not associate with those who are spiritually ignorant. The Vedic scriptures like the Bhagavad-Gita has the highest level of spiritual knowledge, and thus one should study and follow the Bhagavad-Gita. This will enable you to slowly give up all sinful activities. Just one moment of bad association can result in ruination, so always be on guard and become spiritually strong by studying the Bhagavad-Gita and other Vedic scriptures daily. Only with Vedic knowledge, one will become spiritually strong and know God as a person. The fundamental teaching of the Bhagavad-Gita is that we are the eternal soul and not the temporary body. This is spiritual knowledge. To think that we are the body is material knowledge. The aim of Sanatan-Dharma is to become soul conscious (we are the soul), the aim of other religions is to become body conscious (they believe we are the body). Th conditioned soul in a body has two options. He can act to lord it over the material creation (materialistic life), or he can act to go back to Godhead (devotional service). The choice is yours and God does not force anyone.