What Is The True Christian Religion?/Chapter 18
THE TRUE CHRISTIAN RELIGION
The true Christian religion is made up of Three Things,—God, Ourselves and Others, In the past it has been made up chiefly of Two Things, God and Ourselves, Leaving out "Others" it has lost its true objective—left out the Divine objective, the Divine nature and purpose.
God created the universe out of love, out of selfless love. Because of the nature of His love, being incapable of self-centered love, He had to have others outside of Himself to love. Therefore it was that He created the universe to be a theater of action in which He might express His love. In this way it is that man was created as God's beloved, to be the objective of the Divine love, upon whom God might bestow His love in boundless measure.
With this idea in mind it is quickly seen how completely different are the viewpoints of God and man, based upon what God is and what man through his fallen nature has become. Man has become as to his human inheritance thoroughly self-centered in all that he feels, thinks and does, whereas God is infinitely and forever boundless love for others, with a nature so different from man's that man cannot easily comprehend it.
In attempting to bring man back to a realization of his true nature, at first undeveloped, which is without form and order, it became necessary for God to be infinitely patient. This is pictured in the first chapter of Genesis. That chapter is dedicated to a description of the six steps necessary to bring man into a state of self-realization. There we read: "And the earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep". The whole chapter might be called the story of Man's Awakening to the consciousness and life of himself as primarily a child of God.
Men in their so-called "natural" state are very much like the Prodigal Son when he first went into the riotous life of the "far country". They have no true idea at all of the true values of life. Therefore the need of the Divine to adapt Himself to the understanding of fallen men. This is why the Bible is written in its natural sense to men as they are and why they misunderstand God. Their idea of God is based largely upon what they are. They cannot understand a God who is selfless love.
That is why man created a religion of atonement, or expiation. He knew what he would wish on the part of anyone who offended him.
And in the religions of the past man has thought only of placating a God whom he feared. Religion became for him a method of propitiation. Finally theologians made the Christian religion to be an explanation of how as in a fairy story God had managed to relieve man of all obligation to consider seriously his own conduct. He was forgiven by the acceptance of a dogma and he was saved by "grace". All he had to do was to believe it. Certain systems of religion definitely stated that nothing that man could do in the way of changed conduct could possibly have anything whatever to do with his salvation.
But the true Christian religion is the changed life. The changed life means a changed attitude toward God as our Heavenly Father, and our relationship to others. Religion begins with the realization of what we are in our attitudes and conduct towards God. This results in repentance. This is carried forward into reformation. It eventually becomes entire surrender to Him. But it sometimes stops here. It becomes engrossed with man's own intimate relationship with God, and forgets the Divine objective of service to others. And in that way it has completely failed to change civilization. Man engrossed in his own happy state forgets why he was delivered from bondage,—forgets the supreme purpose of life,—the sharing with all others of the good things of life which God has bestowed on him. And without that his religion becomes self-love.
The trouble is that religion has been made to be a matter of God's forgiveness instead of the changed life whose supreme happiness should be service and sharing. It has lost the Divine spirit.
It is true that religious people strive to share with others their perverted story of God's forgiveness, based on a legalistic fiction instead of a changed life—of being saved by grace, and with nothing else to do except to smile and be happy. They speak of brotherhood, but their brotherhood is largely made up of good feeling towards others who share their religious beliefs.
We live in a world whose motto is, "Each man for himself; let the devil take the hindmost." This is its animating motive. This is the animating motive of millions of people who believe that they are "saved by grace". It is a do-nothing religion so far as dedication to the principle of securing justice to all others concerned.
Jesus taught that every man must be born again in order to enter the kingdom of heaven. That meant to achieve a new motivation in life, namely, "Each for all, and all for each". That is the motto of heaven. And the life of heaven on earth can result only from the adoption of such a motto. By the love of others alone do we become Christians in the truest sense. Jesus said, "A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another; even as I have loved you, that ye also love one another; By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have Love one to another".
This is the true Christian religion, a sincere brotherhood.
This is a New Age; overwhelmingly and unmistakably new, shown in ten thousand ways. World changes have occurred of such a nature that no one can successfully question the advances of the last century and a half. We are not living in the kind of world that existed before the American Revolution. Among other things old tyrannies have been overthrown, in the religious world as well as in the realm of political life. Men have been set free. This is all in keeping with the advances made In industry and agriculture and transportation and in communication by wire and wireless and radio. It would seem fitting that there should be a new understanding of religion when a new understanding in all other branches of human thought and activity has taken place.
Immediately that it is suggested that there could possibly be a change in the understanding of religion a bitter antagonism is aroused in the breasts of warm adherents of the old beliefs. They say, "Is not religion eternal, as eternal as the Bible itself? God does not change. This man would change the religion established by the Saviour two thousand years ago. The old-time religion is good enough for me." They do not consider that the Christian religion has been variously understood by hundreds of different sects during the centuries. The Jews of the time of Jesus did not think it possible that their religion, as they understood and practiced it, could be relatively forgotten. Who of them could foresee the effect of the mission of Jesus in the world? Each religionist believes that his idea of religion is the only true one and when the suggestion is made that he can possibly be mistaken he feels that the wisdom of God is being attacked. Without the use of spiritual dynamite civilization would have been, hopelessly crystallized ages ago.
The men of this world must learn that the self-centered, self-loving, self-serving life means the life of hell on earth and hell hereafter. And that the life of service to all others from love to God and the neighbor is the only life that brings enduring happiness.
Thus men must come to seek the welfare and happiness of all others rather than their own by service to them from the love of God in their hearts. This joy in service must become the delight of lives. It is the love of sharing, which makes the joy of heaven.
The neighbor who we are to love is not necessarily the person of another but his eternal good, that which brings lasting happiness to him, the life of orderly and useful living which is the life of Jesus in his soul. We cannot love the disagreeable and evil qualities in another, but we can love his reform, the giving up of his evil. Thus we can love that which is truly and sincerely and permanently good for all men. And we should seek that good at all times and everywhere.
Oneness with all others should be a goal in life, be they white or black, red, brown, or yellow, whether they be of our own nationality or race or creed. We are to think of them as children of God and strive for the eternally good in them as we strive for our own. This does not mean to identify ourselves with their falsities or evils of character or life, but to seek the life of God in their souls. It means to seek social justice, that all men may share in the bounties which our loving Heavenly Father has provided for all His children.
I can fancy our great industrial leaders of today, instead of seeking by every method feasible to exploit mankind, seeking to serve universal mankind by working to provide everyone everywhere with decent homes, with abundant means for living as they themselves live, with appropriate clothing, with medical skill, with opportunity for useful self-expression.
The world starves, suffers, endures.
Shall we ask in bitterness if the great aim of Christians the world over is—or has been—to feed them, or give them ample opportunity to provide themselves with food, to see that they are clothed and given abundant opportunity for useful self-expression? Myriads of Christians do have such a desire, but profit is the great end of life for most people—even nominal Christians—profit too often at the expense of others. We produce goods for scarcity in order to make prices high. We seek to extend our markets all over the world for the sake of private profit. Why do nominal Christians seek to continue conditions which mean universal misery? It would seem that anyone with any degree of the spirit of Jesus would seek to make a better world and live only to serve mankind. Have ecclesiasticism and ritualism and piety been emphasized rather than the universal welfare of the nations? What would Jesus do in this situation?
Let us have ecclesiasticism, but realize that in itself it is not Christianity, merely a form. Let us have piety, but such as leads to unto selfish sharing with others. Let us read the Bible for the sake of learning the will of God in order that we may better serve and love. Brotherhood is what this old world needs, and will have in spite of man's hardness of heart and cruelty. True religion is the casting out of the selfish spirit and the development under God of the unselfish spirit. Swedenborg puts it in this way: "Heaven and heavenly joy first begin in man when regard for self dies in the uses we perform," The unselfish life of service to all others from the love of God in our hearts is the true Christian religion. It is the religion of Jesus for this New Age.
THE END