[Unlike the other documents in this group, this one was written many years ago, and was only slightly touched up during a quick review on 3.3.18. In particular, you will notice that the page references do not include paper, section, and paragraph numbers. ]
What’s the gospel for today? Each generation the Spirit of Truth restates the gospel, responding to current spiritual difficulties (2060.6). If we know what those difficulties are, and if we know the many sides of the gospel, we can better discern what the spirit is saying.
So what are today’s spiritual difficulties? What ways can we use to discern them? Some difficulties are evident in people’s religious habits or lack thereof, while others are concealed in social, economic, political issues. The Urantia Book points out a vast array of problems, giving breadth of perspective and a sense of proportion. We can also get answers by taking the many sides of the gospel as presented in the book and then note the obstacles to their realization in the contemporary world. Another way is to get to know individuals of many different types. Another way is to ask what needs are presently being met by various religions. Ultimately, we can ask the Spirit of Truth. Pursuing all these ways at once lets each thread of inquiry be illumined by the others.
Should we take all the book’s observations as the last word? Of course we must be alert to see new things, to adapt and revise, specify and apply, as the world scene changes. After our study, we may still be uncertain of the particular configuration of spiritual difficulties that the Spirit of Truth has in mind for an entire generation on the planet. But most of us do not address an entire generation, and if we manage to address the spiritual needs of those with whom we interact, we are working with the Spirit of Truth.
Let’s begin with religion, since the spiritual renaissance holds the key to the social, economic, and political reorganization of the world (2083.0). The overall picture is that the revived religion of Jesus will eventually win out against secularism on the one hand and institutionalized religion on the other hand, despite great uncertainty and danger in the short term. Here are the major details.
The persistence of the primitive
Today’s religion is hobbled by remnants of primitive times, as we learn from the papers on the early evolution of religion. Most religions are now in the phase of shamanism—when it is common to look to an intermediary (or to want to play the role of intermediary) between the people and the spirit world (986.2-3). Modern forms of worship are ritualizations of ancient sacrificial techniques of positive propitiation (978.4; 1005.4). We need new understandings of sin and forgiveness (984#10). “The dangers attendant upon the distortion and perversion of prayer consist in ignorance, superstition, crystallization, devitalization, materialism, and fanaticism” (995.5). In an age where religion is thought out rather than danced out or lived out, many priests have become theologians (1091.8; 993). The teachings of Jesus open up a dynamic, direct, and personal relationship between the individual and the Father, free of dogma and ritual, a religion in which mercy pours forth abundantly to the contrite and merciful soul.
We are all on the march from barbarism to advanced civilization, roughly half-way there, and we best view the present in the light of what we know of primitive times and of light and life, as we mobilize our faith to help slow declines and lead advances.
Whose heart is not touched by the following scene?
During the psychologically unsettled times of the twentieth century, amid the economic upheavals, the moral crosscurrents, and the sociologic rip tides of the cyclonic transitions of a scientific era, thousands upon thousands of men and women have become humanly dislocated; they are anxious, restless, fearful, uncertain, and unsettled; as never before in the world’s history they need the consolation and stabilization of sound religion. In the face of unprecedented scientific achievement and mechanical development there is spiritual stagnation and philosophic chaos. (1090.2)
The pace of social change is so great that religion has to move quickly to keep pace. This obviously poses a major challenge to teachers of truth: you have to work to keep up to date in order to be relevant:
Religion must not become organically involved in the secular work of social reconstruction and economic reorganization. But it must actively keep pace with all these advances in civilization by making clear-cut and vigorous restatements of its moral mandates and spiritual precepts, its progressive philosophy of human living and transcendent survival. The spirit of religion is eternal, but the form of its expression must be restated every time the dictionary of human language is revised. (1087.3)
Moral mandates? Jesus did not only proclaim love in the abstract. In his first sermon of his public career, he challenged the prevailing expectations of a material, political, and military messiah. To deflect the violent and suicidal tendency to clash with Rome, Jesus taught love of enemies and a kingdom not of this world. Addressing the sick and lame at the pool of Bethesda, he began, “Many of you are here, sick and afflicted, because of your many years of wrong living” (1649.3)! His parable of the good Samaritan challenged his hearers’ pride. Except for such sustained critiques as the epochal sermon and the last temple discourse, Jesus’ typical challenges are so brief we hardly notice them as we read. Their insightful frankness, though, combined with his good-hearted way of speaking, opened the mind of the listeners to his positive remedy. We fail to notice and fear to imitate the Master’s ministry in this matter.
Why is the current transition of civilization so dangerous? Why do we face potential cultural disaster? There is a law of cultural balance.
When culture advances overfast, when material achievement outruns the evolution of worship-wisdom, then does civilization contain within itself the seeds of retrogression; and unless buttressed by the swift augmentation of experiential wisdom, such human societies will recede from high but premature levels of attainment, and the “dark ages” of the interregnum of wisdom will bear witness to the inexorable restoration of the imbalance between self-liberty and self-control. (1302.3)
In other words, chaos may deepen precipitously if the spiritual renaissance is delayed too long.
Problems of institutional religion
What is the condition of religion today? The tendency to institutionalized conformity and theologic authority is strong. Institutional religion has become so much a part of the society that needs to change that it can hardly do the job of facilitating the necessary changes, a job that takes the real religion of personal spiritual experience (1087.4). Institutional religion must cease glorifying the status quo if it is to survive (1088.0).
The dangers of formalized religion are: fixation of beliefs and crystallization of sentiments; accumulation of vested interests with increase of secularization; tendency to standardize and fossilize truth; diversion of religion from the service of God to the service of the church; inclination of leaders to become administrators instead of ministers; tendency to form sects and competitive divisions; establishment of oppressive ecclesiastical authority; creation of the aristocratic “chosen-people” attitude; fostering of false and exaggerated ideas of sacredness; the routinizing of religion and the petrification of worship; tendency to venerate the past while ignoring present demands; failure to make up-to-date interpretations of religion; entanglement with functions of secular institutions; it creates the evil discrimination of religious castes; it becomes an intolerant judge of orthodoxy; it fails to hold the interest of adventurous youth and gradually loses the saving message of the gospel of eternal salvation. (1092.3)
We thus see the need for a new cult, though we cannot manufacture it (965#7; 1092#6).
The worst of the materialistic age is over, but its effects will blight people’s spiritual experience for a long time (1081.1). Secularism holds sway, and this “godless philosophy of human society will lead only to unrest, animosity, unhappiness, war, and world-wide disaster” (2081.5). “Only when man has become sufficiently disillusioned by the sorrowful disappointments attendant upon the foolish and deceptive pursuits of selfishness, and subsequent to the discovery of the barrenness of formalized religion, will he be disposed to turn wholeheartedly to the gospel of the kingdom, the religion of Jesus of Nazareth” (2083.3).
An odd spiritual difficulty is social ease. Jesus warned his followers of times when the gospel would be nominally socially acceptable. Accustomed to living our religion in a way that never calls for courage, we fall into spiritual laziness.
There is also a lack of religious leadership, since many religious leaders divert their energies into social and material problems, into administration and theology, rather than into their main task.
Theological attacks on the gospel
The gospel of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man was associated in the early twentieth century with the culture of liberal Protestantism. As world war disillusioned western civilization, Neo-Orthodox theology effectively challenged liberalism as naïve about the sinfulness of man and our need to seek salvation in Christ alone. Thus the teaching of all men and women as the children of God was seriously restricted.
The critique of the fatherhood of God as unfair to women has taken hold in American universities and in liberal seminaries and churches. In this movement, the legitimate drive for equality and the sincere desire of women to experience the love of God mix with antagonism toward Christianity and rebellion against God. Most college students who take classes in religion are clearly taught about patriarchy and religious language. The attack abets several discouraging trends: paganism is on the rise, goddess cults fascinate scholars, the realization of the unity and personality of God are in decline, and Jesus’ teachings are becoming a stumbling block. If it was true in the mid-twentieth century that Christianity “stands face to face with a struggle for existence which is even more ominous than those eventful crises which have characterized its past battles for dominance” (2075.2), it is even more true now. The gospel response is not to become dogmatic about language, but to reveal the Father in love, a love which pours forth infinitely to daughters as well as to sons, a love that supports the equality of women with men, and a love which is not afraid to participate in the stream of revelation and proclaim living and saving truth. For students of The Urantia Book, it is tempting to violate the wisdom of the book by showing the beauties of the temple (the book’s complex presentations of the fatherhood and motherhood of God) to those who are not yet in the temple and to unreceptive religionists.
The twentieth century closes with the gospel in retreat, as problems intensify between Jews, Muslims, Christians, and other religionists.
Now is a time of philosophic chaos (1090.2; 1098.4). People who seek wisdom in the literature of philosophy are surrounded by radically conflicting views. Philosophy “struggles for emancipation from dogma and tradition” (141.6) and philosophers blunder by taking part of the story for the whole story (42.6). Speculative metaphysics leads to confusion, which encourages skepticism, which disheartens the soul. We urgently need revealed concepts to integrate material, intellectual, and spiritual reality (1135#6).
Transition is always accompanied by confusion, and there will be little tranquility in the religious world until the great struggle between the three contending philosophies of religion is ended:
1. The spiritistic belief (in a providential Deity) of many religions.
2. The humanistic and idealistic belief of many philosophies.
3. The mechanistic and naturalistic conceptions of many sciences. (1090.5-8)
The most thrilling promise of philosophy is, according to a Divine Counselor, for farseeing and forward-looking men and women of spiritual insight to respond to “the religious challenge of this age” (43.3; 2075.6-10; 2096.4): to construct a new philosophy of living. The new philosophy will heal the one-sided moralism of modern religion and appeal to some types of people who have turned away from religion. The Divine Counselor diagnoses the need for this new philosophy:
The great mistake of the Hebrew religion was its failure to associate the goodness of God with the factual truths of science and the appealing beauty of art. As civilization progressed, and since religion continued to pursue the same unwise course of overemphasizing the goodness of God to the relative exclusion of truth and neglect of beauty, there developed an increasing tendency for certain types of men to turn away from the abstract and dissociated concept of isolated goodness. The overstressed and isolated morality of modern religion, which fails to hold the devotion and loyalty of many twentieth-century men, would rehabilitate itself if, in addition to its moral mandates, it would give equal consideration to the truths of science, philosophy, and spiritual experience, and to the beauties of the physical creation, the charm of intellectual art, and the grandeur of genuine character achievement. (43.2)
How will this philosophy function? It will help teachers of religion lead the integrated lives that attract others. It will give supportive themes for their teaching and preaching. And in society it will promote a quality of thinking to bridge between religion and social, economic, and political things.
The new philosophy of living will illumine the typical spiritual difficulties of daily life. If we forgot that the evils we see are but patches on a background of good, if we forgot that thinking men and women who look at Jesus on the cross cannot complain of even the severest hardships, if we forget how blessed we are in so many ways, we could indulge our discouragement over the this life, our “short and intense test” (158.4), fighting “the battle of existence” (68.4) with its “dark and uncertain mazes” (1203.4) and the commonplace prose of daily routine (557.6), “the monotonous grind of material existence” (1621.4) on our “confused and distorted planet” (597.3; 1189.2), this “sin-stricken, evil-dominated, self-seeking, isolated world” (629.10).
Everyone in every age faces it: “The great problem of life is the adjustment of the ancestral tendencies of living to the demands of the spiritual urges initiated by the divine presence of the Mystery Monitor. . . On Urantia every man must perforce serve two masters. He must become adept in the art of a continuous human temporal compromise while he yields spiritual allegiance to but one master; and this is why so many falter and fail, grow weary and succumb to the stress of the evolutionary struggle”(1199.5). What happens to them? They “grow weary in progression, entertain spiritual doubts, stumble into confusion, and thus isolate themselves from the progressive spiritual aims of their time and universe” (361.1).
As part of the divine plan we face “anxieties and sorrows, . . . trials and disappointments (258.11). “The universe of your origin is being forged out between the anvil of justice and the hammer of suffering (100.2). We develop progressive attitudes only by learning to face uncertainty, disappointment, apparent defeat, difficulties, immensity, and the inexplicable (291.3).
We have to deal with “an environment which necessitates grappling with hardships and reacting to disappointments . . . situations of social inequality . . . insecurities and recurrent uncertainties . . . that troublesome predicament where [the mind] ever knows less than it can believe . . . a world where error is present and falsehood always possible . . . an environment of relative goodness and beauty, surroundings stimulative of the irrepressible reach for better things . . . possibilities of betrayal and desertion . . . the incessant clamoring of an inescapable self for recognition and honor . . . a world where the alternative of pain and the likelihood of suffering are ever-present experiential possibilities” (51) In order for us to bring forth the twelve spiritlike performances we must confront “inherent and adverse animalistic tendencies . . . bitter disappointment and crushing defeat . . . natural adversity and physical calamity . . . baffling diseases and even acute physical suffering . . . maltreatment and the rankest injustice . . . the cruelties of seemingly blind fate and the apparent utter indifference of natural forces to human welfare . . . intellectual sophistries . . . the deceptive teachings of false science and the persuasive delusions of unsound philosophy . . . the crushing overload of the complex and partial civilizations of modern times . . . human selfishness, social antagonisms, industrial greeds, and political maladjustments . . . the perplexing presence of evil and sin . . . “ (1108.4-11).
As we learn to respond to problems with a positive attitude, we will be able to help others do the same.
Science may occasion spiritual difficulties for the scientist, for those who absorb the materialistic philosophy sometimes associated with science, and for a society in the pace of technological change bewilders countless men and women. Science, like religion, is on trial before the bar of human need (1457.3). Teachers of science, like teachers of religion, are too self-confident and dogmatic (1138.5). From Jesus’ Discourse on Reality comes the warning: “There always exists the danger that the purely physical scientist may become afflicted with mathematical pride and statistical egotism, not to mention spiritual blindness” (1476.6). “Your science is engaged in the agelong contest between truth and error while it fights for deliverance from the bondage of abstraction, the slavery of mathematics, and the relative blindness of mechanistic materialism”(141.6).
We are warned of complacent accommodation to “a society which staggers under the guilt of tolerating science without idealism, politics without principles, wealth without work, pleasure without restraint, knowledge without character, power without conscience, and industry without morality” (2086.6). The religion of Jesus will quicken our sensitivity to such problems and the life of Jesus will teach us how to be broadly tolerant of people and also, in timely and constructive ways, intolerant of what is intolerable.
Sandwiched between affirmations that the greatest leverage for progress is spiritual, the section on Urantia’s Postbestowal Age gives pointers on social, intellectual, and ethical matters. I add emphasis to highlight where the leverage of the gospel is most immediate.
While Jesus has shown the way to the immediate attainment of spiritual brotherhood, the realization of social brotherhood on your world depends much on the achievement of the following personal transformations and planetary adjustments:
1. Social fraternity. Multiplication of international and interracial social contacts and fraternal associations through travel, commerce, and competitive play. Development of a common language and the multiplication of multilinguists. The racial and national interchange of students, teachers, industrialists, and religious philosophers.
2. Intellectual cross-fertilization. Brotherhood is impossible on a world whose inhabitants are so primitive that they fail to recognize the folly of unmitigated selfishness. There must occur an exchange of national and racial literature. Each race must become familiar with the thought of all races; each nation must know the feelings of all nations. Ignorance breeds suspicion, and suspicion is incompatible with the essential attitude of sympathy and love.
3. Ethical awakening. Only ethical consciousness can unmask the immorality of human intolerance and the sinfulness of fratricidal strife. Only a moral conscience can condemn the evils of national envy and racial jealousy. Only moral beings will ever seek for that spiritual insight which is essential to living the golden rule.
4. Political wisdom. Emotional maturity is essential to self-control. Only emotional maturity will insure the substitution of international techniques of civilized adjudication for the barbarous arbitrament of war. Wise statesmen will sometime work for the welfare of humanity even while they strive to promote the interest of their national or racial groups. Selfish political sagacity is ultimately suicidal–destructive of all those enduring qualities which insure planetary group survival. (597.3-598.1)
What are the lessons here? First, antagonistic reactions to social, economic, and political problems are spiritual difficulties to which the gospel ministers directly by promoting personal transformations. But, second, religion is no substitute for broad engagement in life’s many dimensions. The gospel of brotherhood goes flat unless truth realization embraces goodness activation, loving service. For example, you can be committed to sympathy and love, but if you’re ignorant of another person’s culture, it’s much easier to slip into unbeautiful attitudes. In addition to spiritual realization the transformations take moral growth, educational development, and practical effort.
The gospel leads to the moral regeneration needed to handle what is for many people a spiritual difficulty as well as a socio-economic one. “Today society is top-heavy with the overgrowth of supposed human needs. Occidental civilization of the twentieth century groans wearily under the tremendous overload of luxury and the inordinate multiplication of human desires and longings” (765.2). “The devious strivings of a vainglorious generation threaten to swamp . . . civilization. Pleasure-want has long since superseded hunger-want; the legitimate social aims of self-maintenance are rapidly translating themselves into base and threatening forms of self-gratification. Self-maintenance builds society; unbridled self-gratification unfailingly destroys civilization” (766.1). Since the pleasure of sex becomes so prominent once civilization has solved basic problems of survival and security, the family is especially threatened in the age of comfort. It’s harder to raise children because of “the large degree of race mixture, artificial and superficial education, and inability of the child to gain culture by imitating parents–the parents are absent from the family picture so much of the time. (941.3-5). Is there any more serious social source of spiritual difficulties than poor family life?
The spiritual renaissance will unlock the power of science to take up eugenics. So long as human dignity has no more secure footing than confused, humanistic sympathy, idealistic scientists and politicians will use their courage to defend dignity rather than to address certain problems realistically. We have problems of population quantity and quality that depress the standard of living. For the best ideas to be put into practice takes leadership and teamwork, and neither flourish when material impulses and selfish urges hold sway.
We can extend these ideas to the problems of disease and insanity. If “health, sanity, and happiness are integrations of truth, beauty, and goodness as they are blended in human experience” (43.4), then, insofar as disease and insanity have hereditary causes, the desired integration awaits advances in science (truth) and progress in social and political (goodness) realms. Insofar as they have behavioral causes, for example, drug use, we can propose a new motto: “ Just say YES to health, sanity, and happiness.”
Spiritual difficulties arise from being inundated in commercial and sensationalistic visual art, barbaric music, and crude humor. The gospel introduces us to the Spirit of Truth who is also the spirit of (idealistic) beauty. Religion evaluates art for its spiritual and moral dimensions.
What is the relevance of religion to social problems? Whether we consider institutions of self-maintenance, self-perpetuation, or self-gratification, “spiritual idealism is the energy which really uplifts and advances human culture from one level of attainment to another” (910.0).
To practice spiritual diagnosis of a material problem, consider the spiritual difficulties surrounding the AIDS epidemic. Although “the joy of this outpoured spirit, when it is consciously experienced in human life, is a tonic for health” (2065.7), the epidemic is properly classed as a medical and social problem, with economic and political repercussions. Nevertheless, in varying degrees of relevance, there are associated spiritual difficulties. Here are just a few.
First, many of those who are sick suffer from isolation: they do not experience the love of God or the religious fellowship of brothers and sisters. Second, a lack of brotherly concern and respect underlies the unwillingness of individuals and institutions to do what they should. Third, education, especially among males, does not affect behavior as it should. Where self-mastery is lacking, where shall we turn? “By the old way you seek to suppress, obey, and conform to the rules of living; by the new way you are first transformed by the Spirit of Truth and thereby strengthened in your inner soul by the constant spiritual renewing of your mind, and so are you endowed with the power of the certain and joyous performance of the gracious, acceptable, and perfect will of God” (1609.5). Fourth, although the specter of the mass of victims of AIDS is the most pitiable sight on the planet, there may still be a possibility of false sympathy and pity, which sidetracks intelligent and vigorous response and which fails to invigorate, in whatever measure is possible, those who suffer. “Teach all believers to avoid leaning upon the insecure props of false sympathy. You cannot develop strong characters out of the indulgence of self-pity; honestly endeavor to avoid the deceptive influence of mere fellowship in misery.” (1766.7).
It would be foolish for a gospel preacher to proclaim such teachings as “the religious response” to the AIDS epidemic. The cosmically proper response is coordinated on all relevant levels, and it takes much more than religion to design the right combination of remedies. Nevertheless, if you bring the joy of the outpoured Spirit of Truth to others, if you effectively proclaim brotherhood, if you teach and exemplify the key to self-mastery, and if you supplant pity with constructive responses, you will bring relevant help, and your recipients will know it, even if you say nothing about disease.
5. Economic problems
A sample of economic problems comes from the list of the perils of budding industry:
1. The strong drift toward materialism, spiritual blindness.
2. The worship of wealth-power, value distortion.
3. The vices of luxury, cultural immaturity.
4. The increasing dangers of indolence, service insensitivity.
5. The growth of undesirable racial softness, biologic deterioration.
6. The threat of standardized industrial slavery, personality stagnation. Labor is ennobling but drudgery is benumbing. (786.2-6)
Half of these perils are spiritual difficulties directly addressed by the gospel. Two are spiritual difficulties indirectly addressed by the gospel. One of them, biologic deterioration, was classed with the social problems just mentioned.
In an age of gross inequalities, when those on top turn a deaf ear to the sufferings of others, and when “those who have no capital still expect those who have to feed them” (780.8), the invigorating and socializing gospel of the universal family will help a lot.
How can you proclaim the brotherhood of man in times of war or international tension? The mental poisons, “fear, anger, envy, jealousy, suspicion, and intolerance” (1204.2) make your work harder. Nationalism is “like a stone hurled into a hornet’s nest” (557.4). Shall we abandon the core of our teaching whenever it becomes unpopular? Jesus encourages us: “The persistent preaching of this gospel of the kingdom will some day bring to all nations a new and unbelieveable liberation, intellectual freedom, and religious liberty” (1930.6).
Understanding the many phases of the gospel, we can present truth to make more sense to the mind. Though it opposes violence “as a technique of social evolution” (1086.2), religion is not in the business of promoting pacifism (804.16-17). A mature philosophy can distinguish the necessary use of force from violence. Notice, moreover, that the brotherhood of man, like the concept of the kingdom, has several meanings, and some of them do not simply say that every person on earth is your sibling: there are multiple phases or epochs of the kingdom, including “the enlarging brotherhood of gospel believers, the social aspects of the enhanced morals and quickened ethics resulting from the reign of God’s spirit in the hearts of individual believers” (1863.1). In that sense we can invite people to join the brotherhood of man. Sometimes I express the gospel in this way: “Come on in—the water’s fine!” The principle of neighbor love, however, is risky, since the neighbor may be the enemy, and Jesus has clearly told us to love our enemy. This is of course a personal teaching, not public policy. There is nevertheless no refuge from the truth of the universal family. If remote attackers and victims were not brothers, there would be no point in compassion, no occasion for mercy, no brotherly vigor in our response to aggression, no idealism to restrain our aggression from our own side. At a time when Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are all in crisis, there is a great opportunity for the real gospel of Jesus.
What are today’s most prominent spiritual difficulties? Here’s my list at the moment. Many of the professed followers of Jesus are asleep or stuck in merely institutional religion, failing to experience the truths they formally accept; and Christianity is divided, with many resisting the fatherhood of God and many resisting the brotherhood of man. As world religions clash, the unifying gospel of Jesus is hardly heard. A high proportion of readers of The Urantia Book are segregated from other religionists and split among themselves; many readers devote little time to bringing the gospel to those who sit in darkness; for many, the book is their gospel, what they proclaim to the world. In society, there are simultaneous increases both in religious fanaticism and in secular ignorance of religion, each trend reinforcing the other. Truth seekers are hampered by mediocre religious literature and by the lack of religious leaders who present a good understanding of religion in beautifully integrated lives. The pleasure-craze has reached unprecedented extremes; aggressiveness is rising. Science appears to undermine the hope for eternal life. In the face of the staggering array of such obvious problems as overpopulation, poverty, environmental pollution, and war (actual and threatened), many people have lost hope in the planet’s future.
How is the Spirit of Truth restating the gospel today? I honestly don’t know. I’m still asking, and the main answer has “simply” been a revelation of love. I have been given a realization of the many planetary and cosmic levels of the brotherhood of man that the book discloses. I have started to use the key family terms with differing meanings as Jesus did with the term “kingdom” (1863.5). The infinite, divine, and eternal gospel transcends what we can put into words. But I persist in seeking the best statement for the present generation. It may be a mistake to look for something too particular, a magic phrase or slogan, or a single theme rather than a cluster of concepts. I have heard so many wonderful statements from different people that I see why Jesus harmonized the varying expressions of his apostles and why Dr. Sadler wrote of the need for a chorus of voices to proclaim the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of men.
The gospel for the early twentieth century addressed our need for a personal relationship with God and our need to heal divisions between different groups of humans. These needs are even greater today, and I still find the traditional language acceptable, though I have had many occasions to add that the individual is free to choose a name for God that fits his or her realization and relationship. In my preaching I think I find people hungry to hear “our Father” and “brotherhood,” and they seem to appreciate getting a better understanding of these teachings. I often use the term “the universal family” because of the openness of its connotations. Sometimes it’s easier simply to encourage someone in the faith that “you are a son (daughter) of God.” I refer very often to the indwelling divine spirit, though in my classes I point out varying psychological and religious interpretations. I teach that “the meek will inherit the earth” means the good guys win, and that things are going to get better (even if they get worse before they get better). Sometimes I challenge the scientific cosmology that tells the origin, history, and destiny of the universe so as to subvert the meaningfulness of mind, spirit, and eternal life.
9. Jesus’ attitude to spiritual difficulties
How easy it is, when studying spiritual difficulties, to develop attitudes of superiority and frustration. Let us cultivate the knowledge of our fellows and the attitudes of compassion and pray for such illumination as came to the Master.
On the day before the Passover Sabbath, flood tides of spiritual illumination swept through the mortal mind of Jesus and filled his human heart to overflowing with affectionate pity for the spiritually blind and morally ignorant multitudesassembled for the celebration of the ancient Passover commemoration. (1376.1).
The overarching response to difficulties is love. “Love is the outworking of the divine and inner urge of life. It is founded on understanding, nurtured by unselfish service, and perfected in wisdom” (1898.5). Love is the experience-relation-reality to which the truths of the gospel point, the feeling that governs the domain of beauty, and the motive of goodness. Mature love, however, is not a simple or one-sided sentiment; it embraces a range of responses. Jesus love for truth and goodness led him to be indignant at the hypocrisy of the false religious leaders who put the riverbed above the river, institutional tradition above the liquid liberties of enlightened sonship. Though positive and patient and non-confrontational during the first half of his public career, in the epochal sermon he did finally pre-empt the offensive when surrounded by his enemies united for attack.
Jesus filled his mind with the solution, not the problem. “Being thus motivated by a wholehearted singleness of purpose, [Jesus] was not anxiously bothered by the evil in the world. (1594.5). Jesus was a “calm and happy laborer” (1509.1). And he adjusted his gospel expression to the individual’s needs whenever he was in personal conversation.
In sum, the gospel is a spiritual reality, and proclaiming the gospel is a participation in divine love. The more deeply we unite with each phase of gospel truth and the more we understand others’ spiritual difficulties, the more accurate will be our ministry. Join the quest to discern what the Spirit of Truth is saying. And go forth! You are the light of the world!
