The Urantia Book
PAPER 102
THE FOUNDATIONS OF RELIGIOUS FAITH
Presented by a Melchizedek of Nebadon.
102:0.1 TO THE unbelieving materialist, man is
simply an evolutionary accident. His hopes of survival are
strung on a figment of mortal imagination; his fears, loves,
longings, and beliefs are but the reaction of the incidental
juxtaposition of certain lifeless atoms of matter. No display of
energy nor expression of trust can carry him beyond the grave.
The devotional labors and inspirational genius of the best of
men are doomed to be extinguished by death, the long and lonely
night of eternal oblivion and soul extinction. Nameless despair
is man's only reward for living and toiling under the temporal
sun of mortal existence. Each day of life slowly and surely
tightens the grasp of a pitiless doom which a hostile and
relentless universe of matter has decreed shall be the crowning
insult to everything in human desire which is beautiful, noble,
lofty, and good.
102:0.2 But such is not man's end and eternal
destiny; such a vision is but the cry of despair uttered by some
wandering soul who has become lost in spiritual darkness, and
who bravely struggles on in the face of the mechanistic
sophistries of a material philosophy, blinded by the confusion
and distortion of a complex learning. And all this doom of
darkness and all this destiny of despair are forever dispelled
by one brave stretch of faith on the part of the most humble and
unlearned of God's children on earth.
102:0.3 This saving faith has its birth in the
human heart when the moral consciousness of man realizes that
human values may be translated in mortal experience from the
material to the spiritual, from the human to the divine, from
time to eternity.
1. ASSURANCES OF FAITH
102:1.1 The work of the Thought Adjuster
constitutes the explanation of the translation of man's
primitive and evolutionary sense of duty into that higher and
more certain faith in the eternal realities of revelation. There
must be perfection hunger in man's heart to insure capacity for
comprehending the faith paths to supreme attainment. If any man
chooses to do the divine will, he shall know the way of truth.
It is literally true, "Human things must be known in order to be
loved, but divine things must be loved in order to be known."
But honest doubts and sincere questionings are not sin; such
attitudes merely spell delay in the progressive journey toward
perfection attainment. Childlike trust secures man's entrance
into the kingdom of heavenly ascent, but progress is wholly
dependent on the vigorous exercise of the robust and confident
faith of the full-grown man.
102:1.2 The reason of science is based on the
observable facts of time; the faith of religion argues from the
spirit program of eternity. What knowledge and reason cannot do
for us, true wisdom admonishes us to allow faith to accomplish
through religious insight and spiritual transformation.
102:1.3 Owing to the isolation of rebellion,
the revelation of truth on Urantia has all too often been mixed
up with the statements of partial and transient cosmologies.
Truth remains unchanged from generation to generation, but the
associated teachings about the physical world vary from day to
day and from year to year. Eternal truth should not be slighted
because it chances to be found in company with obsolete ideas
regarding the material world. The more of science you know, the
less sure you can be; the more of religion you have, the
more certain you are.
102:1.4 The certainties of science proceed
entirely from the intellect; the certitudes of religion spring
from the very foundations of the entire personality.
Science appeals to the understanding of the mind; religion
appeals to the loyalty and devotion of the body, mind, and
spirit, even to the whole personality.
102:1.5 God is so all real and absolute that
no material sign of proof or no demonstration of so-called
miracle may be offered in testimony of his reality. Always will
we know him because we trust him, and our belief in him is
wholly based on our personal participation in the divine
manifestations of his infinite reality.
102:1.6 The indwelling Thought Adjuster
unfailingly arouses in man's soul a true and searching hunger
for perfection together with a far-reaching curiosity which can
be adequately satisfied only by communion with God, the divine
source of that Adjuster. The hungry soul of man refuses to be
satisfied with anything less than the personal realization of
the living God. Whatever more God may be than a high and perfect
moral personality, he cannot, in our hungry and finite concept,
be anything less.
2. RELIGION AND REALITY
102:2.1 Observing minds and discriminating
souls know religion when they find it in the lives of their
fellows. Religion requires no definition; we all know its
social, intellectual, moral, and spiritual fruits. And this all
grows out of the fact that religion is the property of the human
race; it is not a child of culture. True, one's perception of
religion is still human and therefore subject to the bondage of
ignorance, the slavery of superstition, the deceptions of
sophistication, and the delusions of false philosophy.
102:2.2 One of the characteristic
peculiarities of genuine religious assurance is that,
notwithstanding the absoluteness of its affirmations and the
stanchness of its attitude, the spirit of its expression is so
poised and tempered that it never conveys the slightest
impression of self-assertion or egoistic exaltation. The wisdom
of religious experience is something of a paradox in that it is
both humanly original and Adjuster derivative. Religious force
is not the product of the individual's personal prerogatives but
rather the outworking of that sublime partnership of man and the
everlasting source of all wisdom. Thus do the words and acts of
true and undefiled religion become compellingly authoritative
for all enlightened mortals.
102:2.3 It is difficult to identify and
analyze the factors of a religious experience, but it is not
difficult to observe that such religious practitioners live and
carry on as if already in the presence of the Eternal. Believers
react to this temporal life as if immortality already were
within their grasp. In the lives of such mortals there is a
valid originality and a spontaneity of expression that forever
segregate them from those of their fellows who have imbibed only
the wisdom of the world. Religionists seem to live in effective
emancipation from harrying haste and the painful stress of the
vicissitudes inherent in the temporal currents of time; they
exhibit a stabilization of personality and a tranquillity of
character not explained by the laws of physiology, psychology,
and sociology.
102:2.4 Time is an invariable element in the
attainment of knowledge; religion makes its endowments
immediately available, albeit there is the important factor of
growth in grace, definite advancement in all phases of religious
experience. Knowledge is an eternal quest; always are you
learning, but never are you able to arrive at the full knowledge
of absolute truth. In knowledge alone there can never be
absolute certainty, only increasing probability of
approximation; but the religious soul of spiritual illumination
knows, and knows now. And yet this profound and
positive certitude does not lead such a sound-minded religionist
to take any less interest in the ups and downs of the progress
of human wisdom, which is bound up on its material end with the
developments of slow-moving science.
102:2.5 Even the discoveries of science are
not truly real in the consciousness of human experience
until they are unraveled and correlated, until their relevant
facts actually become meaning through encircuitment in
the thought streams of mind. Mortal man views even his physical
environment from the mind level, from the perspective of its
psychological registry. It is not, therefore, strange that man
should place a highly unified interpretation upon the universe
and then seek to identify this energy unity of his science with
the spirit unity of his religious experience. Mind is unity;
mortal consciousness lives on the mind level and perceives the
universal realities through the eyes of the mind endowment. The
mind perspective will not yield the existential unity of the
source of reality, the First Source and Center, but it can and
sometime will portray to man the experiential synthesis of
energy, mind, and spirit in and as the Supreme Being. But mind
can never succeed in this unification of the diversity of
reality unless such mind is firmly aware of material things,
intellectual meanings, and spiritual values; only in the harmony
of the triunity of functional reality is there unity, and only
in unity is there the personality satisfaction of the
realization of cosmic constancy and consistency.
102:2.6 Unity is best found in human
experience through philosophy. And while the body of philosophic
thought must ever be founded on material facts, the soul and
energy of true philosophic dynamics is mortal spiritual insight.
102:2.7 Evolutionary man does not naturally
relish hard work. To keep pace in his life experience with the
impelling demands and the compelling urges of a growing
religious experience means incessant activity in spiritual
growth, intellectual expansion, factual enlargement, and social
service. There is no real religion apart from a highly active
personality. Therefore do the more indolent of men often seek to
escape the rigors of truly religious activities by a species of
ingenious self-deception through resorting to a retreat to the
false shelter of stereotyped religious doctrines and dogmas. But
true religion is alive. Intellectual crystallization of
religious concepts is the equivalent of spiritual death. You
cannot conceive of religion without ideas, but when religion
once becomes reduced only to an idea, it is no longer
religion; it has become merely a species of human philosophy.
102:2.8 Again, there are other types of
unstable and poorly disciplined souls who would use the
sentimental ideas of religion as an avenue of escape from the
irritating demands of living. When certain vacillating and timid
mortals attempt to escape from the incessant pressure of
evolutionary life, religion, as they conceive it, seems to
present the nearest refuge, the best avenue of escape. But it is
the mission of religion to prepare man for bravely, even
heroically, facing the vicissitudes of life. Religion is
evolutionary man's supreme endowment, the one thing which
enables him to carry on and "endure as seeing Him who is
invisible." Mysticism, however, is often something of a retreat
from life which is embraced by those humans who do not relish
the more robust activities of living a religious life in the
open arenas of human society and commerce. True religion must
act. Conduct will be the result of religion when man
actually has it, or rather when religion is permitted truly to
possess the man. Never will religion be content with mere
thinking or unacting feeling.
102:2.9 We are not blind to the fact that
religion often acts unwisely, even irreligiously, but it acts.
Aberrations of religious conviction have led to bloody
persecutions, but always and ever religion does something; it is
dynamic!
3. KNOWLEDGE, WISDOM, AND INSIGHT
102:3.1
Intellectual deficiency or educational
poverty unavoidably handicaps higher religious attainment
because such an impoverished environment of the spiritual nature
robs religion of its chief channel of philosophic contact with
the world of scientific knowledge. The intellectual factors of
religion are important, but their overdevelopment is likewise
sometimes very handicapping and embarrassing. Religion must
continually labor under a paradoxical necessity: the necessity
of making effective use of thought while at the same time
discounting the spiritual serviceableness of all thinking.
102:3.2 Religious speculation is inevitable
but always detrimental; speculation invariably falsifies its
object. Speculation tends to translate religion into something
material or humanistic, and thus, while directly interfering
with the clarity of logical thought, it indirectly causes
religion to appear as a function of the temporal world, the very
world with which it should everlastingly stand in contrast.
Therefore will religion always be characterized by paradoxes,
the paradoxes resulting from the absence of the experiential
connection between the material and the spiritual levels of the
universe -- morontia mota, the superphilosophic sensitivity for
truth discernment and unity perception.
102:3.3 Material feelings, human emotions,
lead directly to material actions, selfish acts. Religious
insights, spiritual motivations, lead directly to religious
actions, unselfish acts of social service and altruistic
benevolence.
102:3.4 Religious desire is the hunger quest
for divine reality. Religious experience is the realization of
the consciousness of having found God. And when a human being
does find God, there is experienced within the soul of that
being such an indescribable restlessness of triumph in discovery
that he is impelled to seek loving service-contact with his less
illuminated fellows, not to disclose that he has found God, but
rather to allow the overflow of the welling-up of eternal
goodness within his own soul to refresh and ennoble his fellows.
Real religion leads to increased social service.
102:3.5 Science, knowledge, leads to fact
consciousness; religion, experience, leads to value
consciousness; philosophy, wisdom, leads to co-ordinate
consciousness; revelation (the substitute for morontia mota)
leads to the consciousness of true reality; while the
co-ordination of the consciousness of fact, value, and true
reality constitutes awareness of personality reality, maximum of
being, together with the belief in the possibility of the
survival of that very personality.
102:3.6 Knowledge leads to placing men, to
originating social strata and castes. Religion leads to serving
men, thus creating ethics and altruism. Wisdom leads to the
higher and better fellowship of both ideas and one's fellows.
Revelation liberates men and starts them out on the eternal
adventure.
102:3.7 Science sorts men; religion loves men,
even as yourself; wisdom does justice to differing men; but
revelation glorifies man and discloses his capacity for
partnership with God.
102:3.8 Science vainly strives to create the
brotherhood of culture; religion brings into being the
brotherhood of the spirit. Philosophy strives for the
brotherhood of wisdom; revelation portrays the eternal
brotherhood, the Paradise Corps of the Finality.
102:3.9 Knowledge yields pride in the fact of
personality; wisdom is the consciousness of the meaning of
personality; religion is the experience of cognizance of the
value of personality; revelation is the assurance of personality
survival.
102:3.10 Science seeks to identify, analyze,
and classify the segmented parts of the limitless cosmos.
Religion grasps the idea-of-the-whole, the entire cosmos.
Philosophy attempts the identification of the material segments
of science with the spiritual-insight concept of the whole.
Wherein philosophy fails in this attempt, revelation succeeds,
affirming that the cosmic circle is universal, eternal,
absolute, and infinite. This cosmos of the Infinite I AM is
therefore endless, limitless, and all-inclusive -- timeless,
spaceless, and unqualified. And we bear testimony that the
Infinite I AM is also the Father of Michael of Nebadon and the
God of human salvation.
102:3.11 Science indicates Deity as a fact;
philosophy presents the idea of an Absolute; religion
envisions God as a loving spiritual personality.
Revelation affirms the unity of the fact of Deity, the
idea of the Absolute, and the spiritual personality of God and,
further, presents this concept as our Father -- the universal
fact of existence, the eternal idea of mind, and the infinite
spirit of life.
102:3.12 The pursuit of knowledge constitutes
science; the search for wisdom is philosophy; the love for God
is religion; the hunger for truth is a revelation. But it
is the indwelling Thought Adjuster that attaches the feeling of
reality to man's spiritual insight into the cosmos.
102:3.13 In science, the idea precedes the
expression of its realization; in religion, the experience of
realization precedes the expression of the idea. There is a vast
difference between the evolutionary will-to-believe and the
product of enlightened reason, religious insight, and revelation
-- the will that believes.
102:3.14 In evolution, religion often leads to
man's creating his concepts of God; revelation exhibits the
phenomenon of God's evolving man himself, while in the earth
life of Christ Michael we behold the phenomenon of God's
revealing himself to man. Evolution tends to make God manlike;
revelation tends to make man Godlike.
102:3.15 Science is only satisfied with first
causes, religion with supreme personality, and philosophy with
unity. Revelation affirms that these three are one, and that all
are good. The eternal real is the good of the universe
and not the time illusions of space evil. In the spiritual
experience of all personalities, always is it true that the real
is the good and the good is the real.
4. THE FACT OF EXPERIENCE
102:4.1 Because of the presence in your minds
of the Thought Adjuster, it is no more of a mystery for you to
know the mind of God than for you to be sure of the
consciousness of knowing any other mind, human or superhuman.
Religion and social consciousness have this in common: They are
predicated on the consciousness of other-mindness. The technique
whereby you can accept another's idea as yours is the same
whereby you may "let the mind which was in Christ be also in
you."
102:4.2 What is human experience? It is simply
any interplay between an active and questioning self and any
other active and external reality. The mass of experience is
determined by depth of concept plus totality of recognition of
the reality of the external. The motion of experience equals the
force of expectant imagination plus the keenness of the sensory
discovery of the external qualities of contacted reality. The
fact of experience is found in self-consciousness plus
other-existences -- other-thingness, other-mindness, and
other-spiritness.
102:4.3 Man very early becomes conscious that
he is not alone in the world or the universe. There develops a
natural spontaneous self-consciousness of other-mindness in the
environment of selfhood. Faith translates this natural
experience into religion, the recognition of God as the reality
-- source, nature, and destiny -- of other-mindness. But
such a knowledge of God is ever and always a reality of personal
experience. If God were not a personality, he could not become a
living part of the real religious experience of a human
personality.
102:4.4 The element of error present in human
religious experience is directly proportional to the content of
materialism which contaminates the spiritual concept of the
Universal Father. Man's prespirit progression in the universe
consists in the experience of divesting himself of these
erroneous ideas of the nature of God and of the reality of pure
and true spirit. Deity is more than spirit, but the spiritual
approach is the only one possible to ascending man.
102:4.5 Prayer is indeed a part of religious
experience, but it has been wrongly emphasized by modern
religions, much to the neglect of the more essential communion
of worship. The reflective powers of the mind are deepened and
broadened by worship. Prayer may enrich the life, but worship
illuminates destiny.
102:4.6 Revealed religion is the unifying
element of human existence. Revelation unifies history,
co-ordinates geology, astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology,
sociology, and psychology. Spiritual experience is the real soul
of man's cosmos.
5. THE SUPREMACY OF PURPOSIVE POTENTIAL
102:5.1 Although the establishment of the fact
of belief is not equivalent to establishing the fact of that
which is believed, nevertheless, the evolutionary progression of
simple life to the status of personality does demonstrate the
fact of the existence of the potential of personality to start
with. And in the time universes, potential is always supreme
over the actual. In the evolving cosmos the potential is what is
to be, and what is to be is the unfolding of the purposive
mandates of Deity.
102:5.2 This same purposive supremacy is shown
in the evolution of mind ideation when primitive animal fear is
transmuted into the constantly deepening reverence for God and
into increasing awe of the universe. Primitive man had more
religious fear than faith, and the supremacy of spirit
potentials over mind actuals is demonstrated when this craven
fear is translated into living faith in spiritual realities.
102:5.3 You can psychologize evolutionary
religion but not the personal-experience religion of spiritual
origin. Human morality may recognize values, but only religion
can conserve, exalt, and spiritualize such values. But
notwithstanding such actions, religion is something more than
emotionalized morality. Religion is to morality as love is to
duty, as sonship is to servitude, as essence is to substance.
Morality discloses an almighty Controller, a Deity to be served;
religion discloses an all-loving Father, a God to be worshiped
and loved. And again this is because the spiritual potentiality
of religion is dominant over the duty actuality of the morality
of evolution.
6. THE CERTAINTY OF RELIGIOUS FAITH
102:6.1 The philosophic elimination of
religious fear and the steady progress of science add greatly to
the mortality of false gods; and even though these casualties of
man-made deities may momentarily befog the spiritual vision,
they eventually destroy that ignorance and superstition which so
long obscured the living God of eternal love. The relation
between the creature and the Creator is a living experience, a
dynamic religious faith, which is not subject to precise
definition. To isolate part of life and call it religion is to
disintegrate life and to distort religion. And this is just why
the God of worship claims all allegiance or none.
102:6.2 The gods of primitive men may have
been no more than shadows of themselves; the living God is the
divine light whose interruptions constitute the creation shadows
of all space.
102:6.3 The religionist of philosophic
attainment has faith in a personal God of personal salvation,
something more than a reality, a value, a level of achievement,
an exalted process, a transmutation, the ultimate of time-space,
an idealization, the personalization of energy, the entity of
gravity, a human projection, the idealization of self, nature's
upthrust, the inclination to goodness, the forward impulse of
evolution, or a sublime hypothesis. The religionist has faith in
a God of love. Love is the essence of religion and the
wellspring of superior civilization.
102:6.4 Faith transforms the philosophic God
of probability into the saving God of certainty in the personal
religious experience. Skepticism may challenge the theories of
theology, but confidence in the dependability of personal
experience affirms the truth of that belief which has grown into
faith.
102:6.5
Convictions about God may be arrived at through wise reasoning,
but the individual becomes God-knowing only by faith, through
personal experience. In much that pertains to life, probability
must be reckoned with, but when contacting with cosmic reality,
certainty may be experienced when such meanings and values are
approached by living faith. The God-knowing soul dares to say,
"I know," even when this knowledge of God is questioned by the
unbeliever who denies such certitude because it is not wholly
supported by intellectual logic. To every such doubter the
believer only replies, "How do you know that I do not know?"
102:6.6 Though reason can always question
faith, faith can always supplement both reason and logic. Reason
creates the probability which faith can transform into a moral
certainty, even a spiritual experience. God is the first truth
and the last fact; therefore does all truth take origin in him,
while all facts exist relative to him. God is absolute truth. As
truth one may know God, but to understand -- to explain -- God,
one must explore the fact of the universe of universes. The vast
gulf between the experience of the truth of God and ignorance as
to the fact of God can be bridged only by living faith. Reason
alone cannot achieve harmony between infinite truth and
universal fact.
102:6.7 Belief may not be able to resist doubt
and withstand fear, but faith is always triumphant over
doubting, for faith is both positive and living. The positive
always has the advantage over the negative, truth over error,
experience over theory, spiritual realities over the isolated
facts of time and space. The convincing evidence of this
spiritual certainty consists in the social fruits of the spirit
which such believers, faithers, yield as a result of this
genuine spiritual experience. Said Jesus: "If you love your
fellows as I have loved you, then shall all men know that you
are my disciples."
102:6.8 To science God is a possibility, to
psychology a desirability, to philosophy a probability, to
religion a certainty, an actuality of religious experience.
Reason demands that a philosophy which cannot find the God of
probability should be very respectful of that religious faith
which can and does find the God of certitude. Neither should
science discount religious experience on grounds of credulity,
not so long as it persists in the assumption that man's
intellectual and philosophic endowments emerged from
increasingly lesser intelligences the further back they go,
finally taking origin in primitive life which was utterly devoid
of all thinking and feeling.
102:6.9 The facts of evolution must not be
arrayed against the truth of the reality of the certainty of the
spiritual experience of the religious living of the God-knowing
mortal. Intelligent men should cease to reason like children and
should attempt to use the consistent logic of adulthood, logic
which tolerates the concept of truth alongside the observation
of fact. Scientific materialism has gone bankrupt when it
persists, in the face of each recurring universe phenomenon, in
refunding its current objections by referring what is admittedly
higher back into that which is admittedly lower. Consistency
demands the recognition of the activities of a purposive
Creator.
102:6.10 Organic evolution is a fact;
purposive or progressive evolution is a truth which makes
consistent the otherwise contradictory phenomena of the
ever-ascending achievements of evolution. The higher any
scientist progresses in his chosen science, the more will he
abandon the theories of materialistic fact in favor of the
cosmic truth of the dominance of the Supreme Mind. Materialism
cheapens human life; the gospel of Jesus tremendously enhances
and supernally exalts every mortal. Mortal existence must be
visualized as consisting in the intriguing and fascinating
experience of the realization of the reality of the meeting of
the human upreach and the divine and saving downreach.
7. THE CERTITUDE OF THE DIVINE
102:7.1 The Universal Father, being
self-existent, is also self-explanatory; he actually lives in
every rational mortal. But you cannot be sure about God unless
you know him; sonship is the only experience which makes
fatherhood certain. The universe is everywhere undergoing
change. A changing universe is a dependent universe; such a
creation cannot be either final or absolute. A finite universe
is wholly dependent on the Ultimate and the Absolute. The
universe and God are not identical; one is cause, the other
effect. The cause is absolute, infinite, eternal, and
changeless; the effect, time-space and transcendental but ever
changing, always growing.
102:7.2 God is the one and only self-caused
fact in the universe. He is the secret of the order, plan, and
purpose of the whole creation of things and beings. The
everywhere-changing universe is regulated and stabilized by
absolutely unchanging laws, the habits of an unchanging God. The
fact of God, the divine law, is changeless; the truth of God,
his relation to the universe, is a relative revelation which is
ever adaptable to the constantly evolving universe.
102:7.3 Those who would invent a religion
without God are like those who would gather fruit without trees,
have children without parents. You cannot have effects without
causes; only the I AM is causeless. The fact of religious
experience implies God, and such a God of personal experience
must be a personal Deity. You cannot pray to a chemical formula,
supplicate a mathematical equation, worship a hypothesis,
confide in a postulate, commune with a process, serve an
abstraction, or hold loving fellowship with a law.
102:7.4 True, many apparently religious traits
can grow out of nonreligious roots. Man can, intellectually,
deny God and yet be morally good, loyal, filial, honest, and
even idealistic. Man may graft many purely humanistic branches
onto his basic spiritual nature and thus apparently prove his
contentions in behalf of a godless religion, but such an
experience is devoid of survival values, God-knowingness and
God-ascension. In such a mortal experience only social fruits
are forthcoming, not spiritual. The graft determines the nature
of the fruit, notwithstanding that the living sustenance is
drawn from the roots of original divine endowment of both mind
and spirit.
102:7.5 The intellectual earmark of religion
is certainty; the philosophical characteristic is consistency;
the social fruits are love and service.
102:7.6 The God-knowing individual is not one
who is blind to the difficulties or unmindful of the obstacles
which stand in the way of finding God in the maze of
superstition, tradition, and materialistic tendencies of modern
times. He has encountered all these deterrents and triumphed
over them, surmounted them by living faith, and attained the
highlands of spiritual experience in spite of them. But it is
true that many who are inwardly sure about God fear to assert
such feelings of certainty because of the multiplicity and
cleverness of those who assemble objections and magnify
difficulties about believing in God. It requires no great depth
of intellect to pick flaws, ask questions, or raise objections.
But it does require brilliance of mind to answer these questions
and solve these difficulties; faith certainty is the greatest
technique for dealing with all such superficial contentions.
102:7.7 If science, philosophy, or sociology
dares to become dogmatic in contending with the prophets of true
religion, then should God-knowing men reply to such unwarranted
dogmatism with that more farseeing dogmatism of the certainty of
personal spiritual experience, "I know what I have experienced
because I am a son of I AM." If the personal experience of a
faither is to be challenged by dogma, then this faith-born son
of the experiencible Father may reply with that unchallengeable
dogma, the statement of his actual sonship with the Universal
Father.
102:7.8 Only an unqualified reality, an
absolute, could dare consistently to be dogmatic. Those who
assume to be dogmatic must, if consistent, sooner or later be
driven into the arms of the Absolute of energy, the Universal of
truth, and the Infinite of love.
102:7.9 If the nonreligious approaches to
cosmic reality presume to challenge the certainty of faith on
the grounds of its unproved status, then the spirit experiencer
can likewise resort to the dogmatic challenge of the facts of
science and the beliefs of philosophy on the grounds that they
are likewise unproved; they are likewise experiences in the
consciousness of the scientist or the philosopher.
102:7.10 Of God, the most inescapable of all
presences, the most real of all facts, the most living of all
truths, the most loving of all friends, and the most divine of
all values, we have the right to be the most certain of all
universe experiences.
8. THE EVIDENCES OF RELIGION
102:8.1 The highest evidence of the reality
and efficacy of religion consists in the fact of human
experience; namely, that man, naturally fearful and
suspicious, innately endowed with a strong instinct of
self-preservation and craving survival after death, is willing
fully to trust the deepest interests of his present and future
to the keeping and direction of that power and person designated
by his faith as God. That is the one central truth of all
religion. As to what that power or person requires of man in
return for this watchcare and final salvation, no two religions
agree; in fact, they all more or less disagree.
102:8.2 Regarding the status of any religion
in the evolutionary scale, it may best be judged by its moral
judgments and its ethical standards. The higher the type of any
religion, the more it encourages and is encouraged by a
constantly improving social morality and ethical culture. We
cannot judge religion by the status of its accompanying
civilization; we had better estimate the real nature of a
civilization by the purity and nobility of its religion. Many of
the world's most notable religious teachers have been virtually
unlettered. The wisdom of the world is not necessary to an
exercise of saving faith in eternal realities.
102:8.3 The difference in the religions of
various ages is wholly dependent on the difference in man's
comprehension of reality and on his differing recognition of
moral values, ethical relationships, and spirit realities.
102:8.4 Ethics is the eternal social or racial
mirror which faithfully reflects the otherwise unobservable
progress of internal spiritual and religious developments. Man
has always thought of God in the terms of the best he knew, his
deepest ideas and highest ideals. Even historic religion has
always created its God conceptions out of its highest recognized
values. Every intelligent creature gives the name of God to the
best and highest thing he knows.
102:8.5 Religion, when reduced to terms of
reason and intellectual expression, has always dared to
criticize civilization and evolutionary progress as judged by
its own standards of ethical culture and moral progress.
102:8.6
While personal religion precedes the
evolution of human morals, it is regretfully recorded that
institutional religion has invariably lagged behind the slowly
changing mores of the human races. Organized religion has proved
to be conservatively tardy. The prophets have usually led the
people in religious development; the theologians have usually
held them back. Religion, being a matter of inner or personal
experience, can never develop very far in advance of the
intellectual evolution of the races.
102:8.7 But religion is never enhanced by an
appeal to the so-called miraculous. The quest for miracles is a
harking back to the primitive religions of magic. True religion
has nothing to do with alleged miracles, and never does revealed
religion point to miracles as proof of authority. Religion is
ever and always rooted and grounded in personal experience. And
your highest religion, the life of Jesus, was just such a
personal experience: man, mortal man, seeking God and finding
him to the fullness during one short life in the flesh, while in
the same human experience there appeared God seeking man and
finding him to the full satisfaction of the perfect soul of
infinite supremacy. And that is religion, even the highest yet
revealed in the universe of Nebadon -- the earth life of Jesus
of Nazareth.
102:8.8
Presented by a Melchizedek of Nebadon.
