The Foundations of Religious Faith

102:8.1The 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.

102:8.2Re­gard­ing 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.

102:8.3The 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.

102:8.4Ethics is the ex­ter­nal 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.

102:8.5Re­li­gion, 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.

102:8.6While 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.

102:8.7But 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.]