PAPER 196
THE FAITH OF JESUS
196:0.1 JESUS enjoyed a sublime and wholehearted
faith in God. He experienced the ordinary ups and downs of mortal existence,
but he never religiously doubted the certainty of God's watchcare and
guidance. His faith was the outgrowth of the insight born of the activity of
the divine presence, his indwelling Adjuster. His faith was neither
traditional nor merely intellectual; it was wholly personal and purely
spiritual.
196:0.2 The human Jesus saw God as being holy, just,
and great, as well as being true, beautiful, and good. All these attributes of
divinity he focused in his mind as the "will of the Father in heaven." Jesus'
God was at one and the same time "The Holy One of Israel" and "The living and
loving Father in heaven." The concept of God as a Father was not original with
Jesus, but he exalted and elevated the idea into a sublime experience by
achieving a new revelation of God and by proclaiming that every mortal
creature is a child of this Father of love, a son of God.
196:0.3 Jesus did not cling to faith in God as would
a struggling soul at war with the universe and at death grips with a hostile
and sinful world; he did not resort to faith merely as a consolation in the
midst of difficulties or as a comfort in threatened despair; faith was not
just an illusory compensation for the unpleasant realities and the sorrows of
living. In the very face of all the natural difficulties and the temporal
contradictions of mortal existence, he experienced the tranquillity of supreme
and unquestioned trust in God and felt the tremendous thrill of living, by
faith, in the very presence of the heavenly Father. And this triumphant faith
was a living experience of actual spirit attainment. Jesus' great contribution
to the values of human experience was not that he revealed so many new ideas
about the Father in heaven, but rather that he so magnificently and humanly
demonstrated a new and higher type of living faith in God. Never on all
the worlds of this universe, in the life of any one mortal, did God ever
become such a living reality as in the human experience of Jesus of
Nazareth.
196:0.4 In the Master's life on Urantia, this and
all other worlds of the local creation discover a new and higher type of
religion, religion based on personal spiritual relations with the Universal
Father and wholly validated by the supreme authority of genuine personal
experience. This living faith of Jesus was more than an intellectual
reflection, and it was not a mystic meditation.
196:0.5 Theology may fix, formulate, define, and
dogmatize faith, but in the human life of Jesus faith was personal, living,
original, spontaneous, and purely spiritual. This faith was not reverence for
tradition nor a mere intellectual belief which he held as a sacred creed, but
rather a sublime experience and a profound conviction which securely held
him. His faith was so real and all-encompassing that it absolutely swept
away any spiritual doubts and effectively destroyed every conflicting desire.
Nothing was able to tear him away from the spiritual anchorage of this
fervent, sublime, and undaunted faith. Even in the face of apparent defeat or
in the throes of disappointment and threatening despair, he calmly stood in
the divine presence free from fear and fully conscious of spiritual
invincibility. Jesus enjoyed the invigorating assurance of the possession of
unflinching faith, and in each of life's trying situations he unfailingly
exhibited an unquestioning loyalty to the Father's will. And this superb faith
was undaunted even by the cruel and crushing threat of an ignominious
death.
196:0.6 In a religious genius, strong spiritual
faith so many times leads directly to disastrous fanaticism, to exaggeration
of the religious ego, but it was not so with Jesus. He was not unfavorably
affected in his practical life by his extraordinary faith and spirit
attainment because this spiritual exaltation was a wholly unconscious and
spontaneous soul expression of his personal experience with God.
196:0.7 The all-consuming and indomitable spiritual
faith of Jesus never became fanatical, for it never attempted to run away with
his well-balanced intellectual judgments concerning the proportional values of
practical and commonplace social, economic, and moral life situations. The Son
of Man was a splendidly unified human personality; he was a perfectly endowed
divine being; he was also magnificently co-ordinated as a combined human and
divine being functioning on earth as a single personality. Always did the
Master co-ordinate the faith of the soul with the wisdom-appraisals of
seasoned experience. Personal faith, spiritual hope, and moral devotion were
always correlated in a matchless religious unity of harmonious association
with the keen realization of the reality and sacredness of all human loyalties
-- personal honor, family love, religious obligation, social duty, and
economic necessity.
196:0.8 The faith of Jesus visualized all spirit
values as being found in the kingdom of God; therefore he said, "Seek first
the kingdom of heaven." Jesus saw in the advanced and ideal fellowship of the
kingdom the achievement and fulfillment of the "will of God." The very heart
of the prayer which he taught his disciples was, "Your kingdom come; your will
be done." Having thus conceived of the kingdom as comprising the will of God,
he devoted himself to the cause of its realization with amazing
self-forgetfulness and unbounded enthusiasm. But in all his intense mission
and throughout his extraordinary life there never appeared the fury of the
fanatic nor the superficial frothiness of the religious egotist.
196:0.9 The Master's entire life was consistently
conditioned by this living faith, this sublime religious experience. This
spiritual attitude wholly dominated his thinking and feeling, his believing
and praying, his teaching and preaching. This personal faith of a son in the
certainty and security of the guidance and protection of the heavenly Father
imparted to his unique life a profound endowment of spiritual reality. And
yet, despite this very deep consciousness of close relationship with divinity,
this Galilean, God's Galilean, when addressed as Good Teacher, instantly
replied, "Why do you call me good?" When we stand confronted by such splendid
self-forgetfulness, we begin to understand how the Universal Father found it
possible so fully to manifest himself to him and reveal himself through him to
the mortals of the realms.
196:0.10 Jesus brought to God, as a man of the
realm, the greatest of all offerings: the consecration and dedication of his
own will to the majestic service of doing the divine will. Jesus always and
consistently interpreted religion wholly in terms of the Father's will. When
you study the career of the Master, as concerns prayer or any other feature of
the religious life, look not so much for what he taught as for what he did.
Jesus never prayed as a religious duty. To him prayer was a sincere expression
of spiritual attitude, a declaration of soul loyalty, a recital of personal
devotion, an expression of thanksgiving, an avoidance of emotional tension, a
prevention of conflict, an exaltation of intellection, an ennoblement of
desire, a vindication of moral decision, an enrichment of thought, an
invigoration of higher inclinations, a consecration of impulse, a
clarification of viewpoint, a declaration of faith, a transcendental surrender
of will, a sublime assertion of confidence, a revelation of courage, the
proclamation of discovery, a confession of supreme devotion, the validation of
consecration, a technique for the adjustment of difficulties, and the mighty
mobilization of the combined soul powers to withstand all human tendencies
toward selfishness, evil, and sin. He lived just such a life of prayerful
consecration to the doing of his Father's will and ended his life triumphantly
with just such a prayer. The secret of his unparalleled religious life was
this consciousness of the presence of God; and he attained it by intelligent
prayer and sincere worship -- unbroken communion with God -- and not by
leadings, voices, visions, or extraordinary religious practices.
196:0.11 In the earthly life of Jesus, religion was
a living experience, a direct and personal movement from spiritual reverence
to practical righteousness. The faith of Jesus bore the transcendent fruits of
the divine spirit. His faith was not immature and credulous like that of a
child, but in many ways it did resemble the unsuspecting trust of the child
mind. Jesus trusted God much as the child trusts a parent. He had a profound
confidence in the universe -- just such a trust as the child has in its
parental environment. Jesus' wholehearted faith in the fundamental goodness of
the universe very much resembled the child's trust in the security of its
earthly surroundings. He depended on the heavenly Father as a child leans upon
its earthly parent, and his fervent faith never for one moment doubted the
certainty of the heavenly Father's overcare. He was not disturbed seriously by
fears, doubts, and skepticism. Unbelief did not inhibit the free and original
expression of his life. He combined the stalwart and intelligent courage of a
full-grown man with the sincere and trusting optimism of a believing child.
His faith grew to such heights of trust that it was devoid of fear.
196:0.12 The faith of Jesus attained the purity of a
child's trust. His faith was so absolute and undoubting that it responded to
the charm of the contact of fellow beings and to the wonders of the universe.
His sense of dependence on the divine was so complete and so confident that it
yielded the joy and the assurance of absolute personal security. There was no
hesitating pretense in his religious experience. In this giant intellect of
the full-grown man the faith of the child reigned supreme in all matters
relating to the religious consciousness. It is not strange that he once said,
"Except you become as a little child, you shall not enter the kingdom."
Notwithstanding that Jesus' faith was childlike, it was in no sense
childish.
196:0.13 Jesus does not require his disciples to
believe in him but rather to believe with him, believe in the reality of the
love of God and in full confidence accept the security of the assurance of
sonship with the heavenly Father. The Master desires that all his followers
should fully share his transcendent faith. Jesus most touchingly challenged
his followers, not only to believe what he believed, but also to
believe as he believed. This is the full significance of his one
supreme requirement, "Follow me."
196:0.14 Jesus' earthly life was devoted to one
great purpose -- doing the Father's will, living the human life religiously
and by faith. The faith of Jesus was trusting, like that of a child, but it
was wholly free from presumption. He made robust and manly decisions,
courageously faced manifold disappointments, resolutely surmounted
extraordinary difficulties, and unflinchingly confronted the stern
requirements of duty. It required a strong will and an unfailing confidence to
believe what Jesus believed and as he believed.
1. JESUS -- THE MAN
196:1.1 Jesus' devotion to the Father's will and the
service of man was even more than mortal decision and human determination; it
was a wholehearted consecration of himself to such an unreserved bestowal of
love. No matter how great the fact of the sovereignty of Michael, you must not
take the human Jesus away from men. The Master has ascended on high as a man,
as well as God; he belongs to men; men belong to him. How unfortunate that
religion itself should be so misinterpreted as to take the human Jesus away
from struggling mortals! Let not the discussions of the humanity or the
divinity of the Christ obscure the saving truth that Jesus of Nazareth was a
religious man who, by faith, achieved the knowing and the doing of the will of
God; he was the most truly religious man who has ever lived on
Urantia.
196:1.2 The time is ripe to witness the figurative
resurrection of the human Jesus from his burial tomb amidst the theological
traditions and the religious dogmas of nineteen centuries. Jesus of Nazareth
must not be longer sacrificed to even the splendid concept of the glorified
Christ. What a transcendent service if, through this revelation, the Son of
Man should be recovered from the tomb of traditional theology and be presented
as the living Jesus to the church that bears his name, and to all other
religions! Surely the Christian fellowship of believers will not hesitate to
make such adjustments of faith and of practices of living as will enable it to
"follow after" the Master in the demonstration of his real life of religious
devotion to the doing of his Father's will and of consecration to the
unselfish service of man. Do professed Christians fear the exposure of a
self-sufficient and unconsecrated fellowship of social respectability and
selfish economic maladjustment? Does institutional Christianity fear the
possible jeopardy, or even the overthrow, of traditional ecclesiastical
authority if the Jesus of Galilee is reinstated in the minds and souls of
mortal men as the ideal of personal religious living? Indeed, the social
readjustments, the economic transformations, the moral rejuvenations, and the
religious revisions of Christian civilization would be drastic and
revolutionary if the living religion of Jesus should suddenly supplant the
theologic religion about Jesus.
196:1.3 To "follow Jesus" means to personally share
his religious faith and to enter into the spirit of the Master's life of
unselfish service for man. One of the most important things in human living is
to find out what Jesus believed, to discover his ideals, and to strive for the
achievement of his exalted life purpose. Of all human knowledge, that which is
of greatest value is to know the religious life of Jesus and how he lived
it.
196:1.4 The common people heard Jesus gladly, and
they will again respond to the presentation of his sincere human life of
consecrated religious motivation if such truths shall again be proclaimed to
the world. The people heard him gladly because he was one of them, an
unpretentious layman; the world's greatest religious teacher was indeed a
layman.
196:1.5 It should not be the aim of kingdom
believers literally to imitate the outward life of Jesus in the flesh but
rather to share his faith; to trust God as he trusted God and to believe in
men as he believed in men. Jesus never argued about either the fatherhood of
God or the brotherhood of men; he was a living illustration of the one and a
profound demonstration of the other.
196:1.6 Just as men must progress from the
consciousness of the human to the realization of the divine, so did Jesus
ascend from the nature of man to the consciousness of the nature of God. And
the Master made this great ascent from the human to the divine by the conjoint
achievement of the faith of his mortal intellect and the acts of his
indwelling Adjuster. The fact-realization of the attainment of totality of
divinity (all the while fully conscious of the reality of humanity) was
attended by seven stages of faith consciousness of progressive divinization.
These stages of progressive self-realization were marked off by the following
extraordinary events in the Master's bestowal experience:
1. The arrival of the Thought Adjuster.
2. The messenger of Immanuel who appeared to him
at Jerusalem when he was about twelve years old.
3. The manifestations attendant upon his baptism.
4. The experiences on the Mount of
Transfiguration.
5. The morontia resurrection.
6. The spirit ascension.
7. The final embrace of the Paradise Father,
conferring unlimited sovereignty of his universe.
2. THE RELIGION OF JESUS
196:2.1 Some day a reformation in the Christian
church may strike deep enough to get back to the unadulterated religious
teachings of Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. You may
preach a religion about Jesus, but, perforce, you must live the
religion of Jesus. In the enthusiasm of Pentecost, Peter
unintentionally inaugurated a new religion, the religion of the risen and
glorified Christ. The Apostle Paul later on transformed this new gospel into
Christianity, a religion embodying his own theologic views and portraying his
own personal experience with the Jesus of the Damascus road. The gospel
of the kingdom is founded on the personal religious experience of the Jesus of
Galilee; Christianity is founded almost exclusively on the personal religious
experience of the Apostle Paul. Almost the whole of the New Testament is
devoted, not to the portrayal of the significant and inspiring religious life
of Jesus, but to a discussion of Paul's religious experience and to a
portrayal of his personal religious convictions. The only notable exceptions
to this statement, aside from certain parts of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, are
the Book of Hebrews and the Epistle of James. Even Peter, in his writing, only
once reverted to the personal religious life of his Master. The New Testament
is a superb Christian document, but it is only meagerly Jesusonian.
196:2.2 Jesus' life in the flesh portrays a
transcendent religious growth from the early ideas of primitive awe and human
reverence up through years of personal spiritual communion until he finally
arrived at that advanced and exalted status of the consciousness of his
oneness with the Father. And thus, in one short life, did Jesus traverse that
experience of religious spiritual progression which man begins on earth and
ordinarily achieves only at the conclusion of his long sojourn in the spirit
training schools of the successive levels of the pre-Paradise career. Jesus
progressed from a purely human consciousness of the faith certainties of
personal religious experience to the sublime spiritual heights of the positive
realization of his divine nature and to the consciousness of his close
association with the Universal Father in the management of a universe. He
progressed from the humble status of mortal dependence which prompted him
spontaneously to say to the one who called him Good Teacher, "Why do you call
me good? None is good but God," to that sublime consciousness of achieved
divinity which led him to exclaim, "Which one of you convicts me of sin?" And
this progressing ascent from the human to the divine was an exclusively mortal
achievement. And when he had thus attained divinity, he was still the same
human Jesus, the Son of Man as well as the Son of God.
196:2.3 Mark, Matthew, and Luke retain something of
the picture of the human Jesus as he engaged in the superb struggle to
ascertain the divine will and to do that will. John presents a picture of the
triumphant Jesus as he walked on earth in the full consciousness of divinity.
The great mistake that has been made by those who have studied the Master's
life is that some have conceived of him as entirely human, while others have
thought of him as only divine. Throughout his entire experience he was truly
both human and divine, even as he yet is.
196:2.4 But the greatest mistake was made in that,
while the human Jesus was recognized as having a religion, the divine
Jesus (Christ) almost overnight became a religion. Paul's Christianity made
sure of the adoration of the divine Christ, but it almost wholly lost sight of
the struggling and valiant human Jesus of Galilee, who, by the valor of his
personal religious faith and the heroism of his indwelling Adjuster, ascended
from the lowly levels of humanity to become one with divinity, thus becoming
the new and living way whereby all mortals may so ascend from humanity to
divinity. Mortals in all stages of spirituality and on all worlds may find in
the personal life of Jesus that which will strengthen and inspire them as they
progress from the lowest spirit levels up to the highest divine values, from
the beginning to the end of all personal religious experience.
196:2.5 At the time of the writing of the New
Testament, the authors not only most profoundly believed in the divinity of
the risen Christ, but they also devotedly and sincerely believed in his
immediate return to earth to consummate the heavenly kingdom. This strong
faith in the Lord's immediate return had much to do with the tendency to omit
from the record those references which portrayed the purely human experiences
and attributes of the Master. The whole Christian movement tended away from
the human picture of Jesus of Nazareth toward the exaltation of the risen
Christ, the glorified and soon-returning Lord Jesus Christ.
196:2.6 Jesus founded the religion of personal
experience in doing the will of God and serving the human brotherhood; Paul
founded a religion in which the glorified Jesus became the object of worship
and the brotherhood consisted of fellow believers in the divine Christ. In the
bestowal of Jesus these two concepts were potential in his divine-human life,
and it is indeed a pity that his followers failed to create a unified religion
which might have given proper recognition to both the human and the divine
natures of the Master as they were inseparably bound up in his earth life and
so gloriously set forth in the original gospel of the kingdom.
196:2.7 You would be neither shocked nor disturbed
by some of Jesus' strong pronouncements if you would only remember that he was
the world's most wholehearted and devoted religionist. He was a wholly
consecrated mortal, unreservedly dedicated to doing his Father's will. Many of
his apparently hard sayings were more of a personal confession of faith and a
pledge of devotion than commands to his followers. And it was this very
singleness of purpose and unselfish devotion that enabled him to effect such
extraordinary progress in the conquest of the human mind in one short life.
Many of his declarations should be considered as a confession of what he
demanded of himself rather than what he required of all his followers. In his
devotion to the cause of the kingdom, Jesus burned all bridges behind him; he
sacrificed all hindrances to the doing of his Father's will.
196:2.8 Jesus blessed the poor because they were
usually sincere and pious; he condemned the rich because they were usually
wanton and irreligious. He would equally condemn the irreligious pauper and
commend the consecrated and worshipful man of wealth.
196:2.9 Jesus led men to feel at home in the world;
he delivered them from the slavery of taboo and taught them that the world was
not fundamentally evil. He did not long to escape from his earthly life; he
mastered a technique of acceptably doing the Father's will while in the flesh.
He attained an idealistic religious life in the very midst of a realistic
world. Jesus did not share Paul's pessimistic view of humankind. The Master
looked upon men as the sons of God and foresaw a magnificent and eternal
future for those who chose survival. He was not a moral skeptic; he viewed man
positively, not negatively. He saw most men as weak rather than wicked, more
distraught than depraved. But no matter what their status, they were all God's
children and his brethren.
196:2.10 He taught men to place a high value upon
themselves in time and in eternity. Because of this high estimate which Jesus
placed upon men, he was willing to spend himself in the unremitting service of
humankind. And it was this infinite worth of the finite that made the golden
rule a vital factor in his religion. What mortal can fail to be uplifted by
the extraordinary faith Jesus has in him?
196:2.11 Jesus offered no rules for social
advancement; his was a religious mission, and religion is an exclusively
individual experience. The ultimate goal of society's most advanced
achievement can never hope to transcend Jesus' brotherhood of men based on the
recognition of the fatherhood of God. The ideal of all social attainment can
be realized only in the coming of this divine kingdom.
3. THE SUPREMACY OF RELIGION
196:3.1 Personal, spiritual religious experience is
an efficient solvent for most mortal difficulties; it is an effective sorter,
evaluator, and adjuster of all human problems. Religion does not remove or
destroy human troubles, but it does dissolve, absorb, illuminate, and
transcend them. True religion unifies the personality for effective adjustment
to all mortal requirements. Religious faith -- the positive leading of the
indwelling divine presence -- unfailingly enables the God-knowing man to
bridge that gulf existing between the intellectual logic which recognizes the
Universal First Cause as It and those positive affirmations of the soul
which aver this First Cause is He, the heavenly Father of Jesus'
gospel, the personal God of human salvation.
196:3.2 There are just three elements in universal
reality: fact, idea, and relation. The religious consciousness identifies
these realities as science, philosophy, and truth. Philosophy would be
inclined to view these activities as reason, wisdom, and faith -- physical
reality, intellectual reality, and spiritual reality. We are in the habit of
designating these realities as thing, meaning, and value.
196:3.3 The progressive comprehension of reality is
the equivalent of approaching God. The finding of God, the consciousness of
identity with reality, is the equivalent of the experiencing of
self-completion -- self-entirety, self-totality. The experiencing of total
reality is the full realization of God, the finality of the God-knowing
experience.
196:3.4 The full summation of human life is the
knowledge that man is educated by fact, ennobled by wisdom, and saved --
justified -- by religious faith.
196:3.5 Physical certainty consists in the logic of
science; moral certainty, in the wisdom of philosophy; spiritual certainty, in
the truth of genuine religious experience.
196:3.6 The mind of man can attain high levels of
spiritual insight and corresponding spheres of divinity of values because it
is not wholly material. There is a spirit nucleus in the mind of man -- the
Adjuster of the divine presence. There are three separate evidences of this
spirit indwelling of the human mind:
196:3.7 1. Humanitarian fellowship -- love. The
purely animal mind may be gregarious for self-protection, but only the
spirit-indwelt intellect is unselfishly altruistic and unconditionally loving.
196:3.8 2. Interpretation of the universe -- wisdom.
Only the spirit-indwelt mind can comprehend that the universe is friendly to
the individual.
196:3.9 3. Spiritual evaluation of life -- worship.
Only the spirit-indwelt man can realize the divine presence and seek to attain
a fuller experience in and with this foretaste of divinity.
196:3.10 The human mind does not create real values;
human experience does not yield universe insight. Concerning insight, the
recognition of moral values and the discernment of spiritual meanings, all
that the human mind can do is to discover, recognize, interpret, and
choose.
196:3.11 The moral values of the universe become
intellectual possessions by the exercise of the three basic judgments, or
choices, of the mortal mind:
1. Self-judgment -- moral choice.
2. Social-judgment -- ethical choice.
3. God-judgment -- religious choice.
196:3.12 Thus it appears that all human progress is
effected by a technique of conjoint revelational evolution.
196:3.13 Unless a divine lover lived in man, he
could not unselfishly and spiritually love. Unless an interpreter lived in the
mind, man could not truly realize the unity of the universe. Unless an
evaluator dwelt with man, he could not possibly appraise moral values and
recognize spiritual meanings. And this lover hails from the very source of
infinite love; this interpreter is a part of Universal Unity; this evaluator
is the child of the Center and Source of all absolute values of divine and
eternal reality.
196:3.14 Moral evaluation with a religious meaning
-- spiritual insight -- connotes the individual's choice between good and
evil, truth and error, material and spiritual, human and divine, time and
eternity. Human survival is in great measure dependent on consecrating the
human will to the choosing of those values selected by this spirit-value
sorter -- the indwelling interpreter and unifier. Personal religious
experience consists in two phases: discovery in the human mind and revelation
by the indwelling divine spirit. Through oversophistication or as a result of
the irreligious conduct of professed religionists, a man, or even a generation
of men, may elect to suspend their efforts to discover the God who indwells
them; they may fail to progress in and attain the divine revelation. But such
attitudes of spiritual nonprogression cannot long persist because of the
presence and influence of the indwelling Thought Adjusters.
196:3.15 This profound experience of the reality of
the divine indwelling forever transcends the crude materialistic technique of
the physical sciences. You cannot put spiritual joy under a microscope; you
cannot weigh love in a balance; you cannot measure moral values; neither can
you estimate the quality of spiritual worship.
196:3.16 The Hebrews had a religion of moral
sublimity; the Greeks evolved a religion of beauty; Paul and his conferees
founded a religion of faith, hope, and charity. Jesus revealed and exemplified
a religion of love: security in the Father's love, with joy and satisfaction
consequent upon sharing this love in the service of the human
brotherhood.
196:3.17 Every time man makes a reflective moral
choice, he immediately experiences a new divine invasion of his soul. Moral
choosing constitutes religion as the motive of inner response to outer
conditions. But such a real religion is not a purely subjective experience. It
signifies the whole of the subjectivity of the individual engaged in a
meaningful and intelligent response to total objectivity -- the universe and
its Maker.
196:3.18 The exquisite and transcendent experience
of loving and being loved is not just a psychic illusion because it is so
purely subjective. The one truly divine and objective reality that is
associated with mortal beings, the Thought Adjuster, functions to human
observation apparently as an exclusively subjective phenomenon. Man's contact
with the highest objective reality, God, is only through the purely subjective
experience of knowing him, of worshiping him, of realizing sonship with
him.
196:3.19 True religious worship is not a futile
monologue of self-deception. Worship is a personal communion with that which
is divinely real, with that which is the very source of reality. Man aspires
by worship to be better and thereby eventually attains the best.
196:3.20 The idealization and attempted service of
truth, beauty, and goodness is not a substitute for genuine religious
experience -- spiritual reality. Psychology and idealism are not the
equivalent of religious reality. The projections of the human intellect may
indeed originate false gods -- gods in man's image -- but the true
God-consciousness does not have such an origin. The God-consciousness is
resident in the indwelling spirit. Many of the religious systems of man come
from the formulations of the human intellect, but the God-consciousness is not
necessarily a part of these grotesque systems of religious slavery.
196:3.21 God is not the mere invention of man's
idealism; he is the very source of all such superanimal insights and values.
God is not a hypothesis formulated to unify the human concepts of truth,
beauty, and goodness; he is the personality of love from whom all of these
universe manifestations are derived. The truth, beauty, and goodness of man's
world are unified by the increasing spirituality of the experience of mortals
ascending toward Paradise realities. The unity of truth, beauty, and goodness
can only be realized in the spiritual experience of the God-knowing
personality.
196:3.22 Morality is the essential pre-existent soil
of personal God-consciousness, the personal realization of the Adjuster's
inner presence, but such morality is not the source of religious experience
and the resultant spiritual insight. The moral nature is superanimal but
subspiritual. Morality is equivalent to the recognition of duty, the
realization of the existence of right and wrong. The moral zone intervenes
between the animal and the human types of mind as morontia functions between
the material and the spiritual spheres of personality attainment.
196:3.23 The evolutionary mind is able to discover
law, morals, and ethics; but the bestowed spirit, the indwelling Adjuster,
reveals to the evolving human mind the lawgiver, the Father-source of all that
is true, beautiful, and good; and such an illuminated man has a religion and
is spiritually equipped to begin the long and adventurous search for
God.
196:3.24 Morality is not necessarily spiritual; it
may be wholly and purely human, albeit real religion enhances all moral
values, makes them more meaningful. Morality without religion fails to reveal
ultimate goodness, and it also fails to provide for the survival of even its
own moral values. Religion provides for the enhancement, glorification, and
assured survival of everything morality recognizes and approves.
196:3.25 Religion stands above science, art,
philosophy, ethics, and morals, but not independent of them. They are all
indissolubly interrelated in human experience, personal and social. Religion
is man's supreme experience in the mortal nature, but finite language makes it
forever impossible for theology ever adequately to depict real religious
experience.
196:3.26 Religious insight possesses the power of
turning defeat into higher desires and new determinations. Love is the highest
motivation which man may utilize in his universe ascent. But love, divested of
truth, beauty, and goodness, is only a sentiment, a philosophic distortion, a
psychic illusion, a spiritual deception. Love must always be redefined on
successive levels of morontia and spirit progression.
196:3.27 Art results from man's attempt to escape
from the lack of beauty in his material environment; it is a gesture toward
the morontia level. Science is man's effort to solve the apparent riddles of
the material universe. Philosophy is man's attempt at the unification of human
experience. Religion is man's supreme gesture, his magnificent reach for final
reality, his determination to find God and to be like him.
196:3.28 In the realm of religious experience,
spiritual possibility is potential reality. Man's forward spiritual urge is
not a psychic illusion. All of man's universe romancing may not be fact, but
much, very much, is truth.
196:3.29 Some men's lives are too great and noble to
descend to the low level of being merely successful. The animal must adapt
itself to the environment, but the religious man transcends his environment
and in this way escapes the limitations of the present material world through
this insight of divine love. This concept of love generates in the soul of man
that superanimal effort to find truth, beauty, and goodness; and when he does
find them, he is glorified in their embrace; he is consumed with the desire to
live them, to do righteousness.
196:3.30 Be not discouraged; human evolution is
still in progress, and the revelation of God to the world, in and through
Jesus, shall not fail.
196:3.31 The great challenge to modern man is to
achieve better communication with the divine Monitor that dwells within the
human mind. Man's greatest adventure in the flesh consists in the
well-balanced and sane effort to advance the borders of self-consciousness out
through the dim realms of embryonic soul-consciousness in a wholehearted
effort to reach the borderland of spirit-consciousness -- contact with the
divine presence. Such an experience constitutes God-consciousness, an
experience mightily confirmative of the pre-existent truth of the religious
experience of knowing God. Such spirit-consciousness is the equivalent of the
knowledge of the actuality of sonship with God. Otherwise, the assurance of
sonship is the experience of faith.
196:3.32 And God-consciousness is equivalent to the
integration of the self with the universe, and on its highest levels of
spiritual reality. Only the spirit content of any value is imperishable. Even
that which is true, beautiful, and good may not perish in human experience. If
man does not choose to survive, then does the surviving Adjuster conserve
those realities born of love and nurtured in service. And all these things are
a part of the Universal Father. The Father is living love, and this life of
the Father is in his Sons. And the spirit of the Father is in his Son's sons
-- mortal men. When all is said and done, the Father idea is still the highest
human concept of God.
