The Real Nature of Religion

101:3.1Re­li­gion is so vi­tal that it per­sists in the ab­sence of learn­ing. It lives in spite of its con­tam­i­na­tion with er­ro­neous cos­molo­gies and false philoso­phies; it sur­vives even the con­fu­sion of meta­physics. In and through all the his­toric vi­cis­si­tudes of re­li­gion there ever per­sists that which is in­dis­pens­able to hu­man prog­ress and sur­vival: the eth­i­cal con­science and the moral con­scious­ness.

101:3.2Faith-in­sight, or spir­i­tual in­tu­ition, is the en­dow­ment of the cos­mic mind in as­so­ci­a­tion with the Thought Ad­juster, which is the Fa­ther’s gift to man. Spir­i­tual rea­son, soul in­tel­li­gence, is the en­dow­ment of the Holy Spirit, the Cre­ative Spirit’s gift to man. Spir­i­tual phi­los­o­phy, the wis­dom of spirit re­al­i­ties, is the en­dow­ment of the Spirit of Truth, the com­bined gift of the be­stowal Sons to the chil­dren of men. And the co-or­di­na­tion and in­teras­so­ci­a­tion of these spirit en­dow­ments con­sti­tute man a spirit per­son­al­ity in po­ten­tial des­tiny.

101:3.3It is this same spirit per­son­al­ity, in prim­i­tive and em­bry­onic form, the Ad­juster pos­ses­sion of which sur­vives the nat­u­ral death in the flesh. This com­pos­ite en­tity of spirit ori­gin in as­so­ci­a­tion with hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence is en­abled, by means of the liv­ing way pro­vided by the di­vine Sons, to sur­vive (in Ad­juster cus­tody) the dis­so­lu­tion of the ma­te­rial self of mind and mat­ter when such a tran­sient part­ner­ship of the ma­te­rial and the spir­i­tual is di­vorced by the ces­sa­tion of vi­tal mo­tion.

101:3.4Through re­li­gious faith the soul of man re­veals it­self and demon­strates the po­ten­tial di­vin­ity of its emerg­ing na­ture by the char­ac­ter­is­tic man­ner in which it in­duces the mor­tal per­son­al­ity to re­act to cer­tain try­ing in­tel­lec­tual and test­ing so­cial sit­u­a­tions. Gen­uine spir­i­tual faith (true moral con­scious­ness) is re­vealed in that it:

101:3.51. Causes ethics and morals to pro­gress de­spite in­her­ent and ad­verse an­i­mal­is­tic ten­den­cies.

101:3.62. Pro­duces a sub­lime trust in the good­ness of God even in the face of bit­ter dis­ap­point­ment and crush­ing de­feat.

101:3.73. Gen­er­ates pro­found cour­age and con­fi­dence de­spite nat­u­ral ad­ver­sity and phys­i­cal calamity.

101:3.84. Ex­hibits in­ex­pli­ca­ble poise and sus­tain­ing tran­quil­lity not­with­stand­ing baf­fling dis­eases and even acute phys­i­cal suf­fer­ing.

101:3.95. Main­tains a mys­te­ri­ous poise and com­po­sure of per­son­al­ity in the face of mal­treat­ment and the rank­est in­jus­tice.

101:3.106. Main­tains a di­vine trust in ul­ti­mate vic­tory in spite of the cru­el­ties of seem­ingly blind fate and the ap­par­ent ut­ter in­dif­fer­ence of nat­u­ral forces to hu­man wel­fare.

101:3.117. Per­sists in the unswerv­ing be­lief in God de­spite all con­trary demon­stra­tions of logic and suc­cess­fully with­stands all other in­tel­lec­tual soph­ist­ries.

101:3.128. Con­tin­ues to ex­hibit un­daunted faith in the soul’s sur­vival re­gard­less of the de­cep­tive teach­ings of false sci­ence and the per­sua­sive delu­sions of un­sound phi­los­o­phy.

101:3.139. Lives and tri­umphs ir­re­spec­tive of the crush­ing over­load of the com­plex and par­tial civ­i­liza­tions of mod­ern times.

101:3.1410. Con­tributes to the con­tin­ued sur­vival of al­tru­ism in spite of hu­man self­ish­ness, so­cial an­tag­o­nisms, in­dus­trial greeds, and po­lit­i­cal mal­ad­just­ments.

101:3.1511. Stead­fastly ad­heres to a sub­lime be­lief in uni­verse unity and di­vine guid­ance re­gard­less of the per­plex­ing pres­ence of evil and sin.

101:3.1612. Goes right on wor­ship­ing God in spite of any­thing and ev­ery­thing. Dares to de­clare, “Even though he slay me, yet will I serve him.”

101:3.17We know, then, by three phe­nom­ena, that man has a di­vine spirit or spir­its dwell­ing within him: first, by per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence—re­li­gious faith; sec­ond, by rev­e­la­tion—per­sonal and racial; and third, by the amaz­ing ex­hi­bi­tion of such ex­tra­or­di­nary and un­nat­u­ral re­ac­tions to his ma­te­rial en­vi­ron­ment as are il­lus­trated by the fore­go­ing recital of twelve spir­it­like per­for­mances in the pres­ence of the ac­tual and try­ing sit­u­a­tions of real hu­man ex­is­tence. And there are still oth­ers.

101:3.18And it is just such a vi­tal and vig­or­ous per­for­mance of faith in the do­main of re­li­gion that en­ti­tles mor­tal man to af­firm the per­sonal pos­ses­sion and spir­i­tual re­al­ity of that crown­ing en­dow­ment of hu­man na­ture, re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence.