After Pentecost

195:10.1Chris­tian­ity has in­deed done a great ser­vice for this world, but what is now most needed is Je­sus. The world needs to see Je­sus liv­ing again on earth in the ex­pe­ri­ence of spirit-born mor­tals who ef­fec­tively re­veal the Mas­ter to all men. It is fu­tile to talk about a re­vival of prim­i­tive Chris­tian­ity; you must go for­ward from where you find your­selves. Mod­ern cul­ture must be­come spir­i­tu­ally bap­tized with a new rev­e­la­tion of Je­sus’ life and il­lu­mi­nated with a new un­der­stand­ing of his gospel of eter­nal sal­va­tion. And when Je­sus be­comes thus lifted up, he will draw all men to him­self. Je­sus’ dis­ci­ples should be more than con­querors, even over­flow­ing sources of in­spi­ra­tion and en­hanced liv­ing to all men. Re­li­gion is only an ex­alted hu­man­ism un­til it is made di­vine by the dis­cov­ery of the re­al­ity of the pres­ence of God in per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence.

195:10.2The beauty and sub­lim­ity, the hu­man­ity and di­vin­ity, the sim­plic­ity and unique­ness, of Je­sus’ life on earth pre­sent such a strik­ing and ap­peal­ing pic­ture of man-sav­ing and God-re­veal­ing that the the­olo­gians and philoso­phers of all time should be ef­fec­tively re­strained from dar­ing to form creeds or cre­ate the­o­log­i­cal sys­tems of spir­i­tual bond­age out of such a tran­scen­den­tal be­stowal of God in the form of man. In Je­sus the uni­verse pro­duced a mor­tal man in whom the spirit of love tri­umphed over the ma­te­rial hand­i­caps of time and over­came the fact of phys­i­cal ori­gin.

195:10.3Ever bear in mind—God and men need each other. They are mu­tu­ally nec­es­sary to the full and fi­nal at­tain­ment of eter­nal per­son­al­ity ex­pe­ri­ence in the di­vine des­tiny of uni­verse fi­nal­ity.

195:10.4“The king­dom of God is within you” was prob­a­bly the great­est pro­nounce­ment Je­sus ever made, next to the dec­la­ra­tion that his Fa­ther is a liv­ing and lov­ing spirit.

195:10.5In win­ning souls for the Mas­ter, it is not the first mile of com­pul­sion, duty, or con­ven­tion that will trans­form man and his world, but rather the sec­ond mile of free ser­vice and lib­erty-lov­ing de­vo­tion that be­to­kens the Je­su­so­nian reach­ing forth to grasp his brother in love and sweep him on un­der spir­i­tual guid­ance to­ward the higher and di­vine goal of mor­tal ex­is­tence. Chris­tian­ity even now will­ingly goes the first mile, but man­kind lan­guishes and stum­bles along in moral dark­ness be­cause there are so few gen­uine sec­ond-mil­ers—so few pro­fessed fol­low­ers of Je­sus who re­ally live and love as he taught his dis­ci­ples to live and love and serve.

195:10.6The call to the ad­ven­ture of build­ing a new and trans­formed hu­man so­ci­ety by means of the spir­i­tual re­birth of Je­sus’ broth­er­hood of the king­dom should thrill all who be­lieve in him as men have not been stirred since the days when they walked about on earth as his com­pan­ions in the flesh.

195:10.7No so­cial sys­tem or po­lit­i­cal regime which de­nies the re­al­ity of God can con­tribute in any con­struc­tive and last­ing man­ner to the ad­vance­ment of hu­man civ­i­liza­tion. But Chris­tian­ity, as it is sub­di­vided and sec­u­lar­ized to­day, pre­sents the great­est sin­gle ob­sta­cle to its fur­ther ad­vance­ment; es­pe­cially is this true con­cern­ing the Ori­ent.

195:10.8Ec­cle­si­as­ti­cism is at once and for­ever in­com­pat­i­ble with that liv­ing faith, grow­ing spirit, and first­hand ex­pe­ri­ence of the faith-com­rades of Je­sus in the broth­er­hood of man in the spir­i­tual as­so­ci­a­tion of the king­dom of heaven. The praise­wor­thy de­sire to pre­serve tra­di­tions of past achieve­ment of­ten leads to the de­fense of out­grown sys­tems of wor­ship. The well-meant de­sire to fos­ter an­cient thought sys­tems ef­fec­tu­ally pre­vents the spon­sor­ing of new and ad­e­quate means and meth­ods de­signed to sat­isfy the spir­i­tual long­ings of the ex­pand­ing and ad­vanc­ing minds of mod­ern men. Like­wise, the Chris­tian churches of the twen­ti­eth cen­tury stand as great, but wholly un­con­scious, ob­sta­cles to the im­me­di­ate ad­vance of the real gospel—the teach­ings of Je­sus of Naz­a­reth.

195:10.9Many earnest per­sons who would gladly yield loy­alty to the Christ of the gospel find it very dif­fi­cult en­thu­si­as­ti­cally to sup­port a church which ex­hibits so lit­tle of the spirit of his life and teach­ings, and which they have been er­ro­neously taught he founded. Je­sus did not found the so-called Chris­tian church, but he has, in ev­ery man­ner con­sis­tent with his na­ture, fos­tered it as the best ex­is­tent ex­po­nent of his life­work on earth.

195:10.10If the Chris­tian church would only dare to es­pouse the Mas­ter’s pro­gram, thou­sands of ap­par­ently in­dif­fer­ent youths would rush for­ward to en­list in such a spir­i­tual un­der­tak­ing, and they would not hes­i­tate to go all the way through with this great ad­ven­ture.

195:10.11Chris­tian­ity is se­ri­ously con­fronted with the doom em­bod­ied in one of its own slo­gans: “A house di­vided against it­self can­not stand.” The non-Chris­tian world will hardly ca­pit­u­late to a sect-di­vided Chris­ten­dom. The liv­ing Je­sus is the only hope of a pos­si­ble uni­fi­ca­tion of Chris­tian­ity. The true church—the Je­sus broth­er­hood—is in­vis­i­ble, spir­i­tual, and is char­ac­ter­ized by unity, not nec­es­sar­ily by uni­for­mity. Uni­for­mity is the ear­mark of the phys­i­cal world of mech­a­nis­tic na­ture. Spir­i­tual unity is the fruit of faith union with the liv­ing Je­sus. The vis­i­ble church should refuse longer to hand­i­cap the prog­ress of the in­vis­i­ble and spir­i­tual broth­er­hood of the king­dom of God. And this broth­er­hood is des­tined to be­come a liv­ing or­gan­ism in con­trast to an in­sti­tu­tion­al­ized so­cial or­ga­ni­za­tion. It may well uti­lize such so­cial or­ga­ni­za­tions, but it must not be sup­planted by them.

195:10.12But the Chris­tian­ity of even the twen­ti­eth cen­tury must not be de­spised. It is the prod­uct of the com­bined moral ge­nius of the God-know­ing men of many races dur­ing many ages, and it has truly been one of the great­est pow­ers for good on earth, and there­fore no man should lightly re­gard it, not­with­stand­ing its in­her­ent and ac­quired de­fects. Chris­tian­ity still con­trives to move the minds of re­flec­tive men with mighty moral emo­tions.

195:10.13But there is no ex­cuse for the in­volve­ment of the church in com­merce and pol­i­tics; such un­holy al­liances are a fla­grant be­trayal of the Mas­ter. And the gen­uine lovers of truth will be slow to for­get that this pow­er­ful in­sti­tu­tion­al­ized church has of­ten dared to smother new­born faith and per­se­cute truth bear­ers who chanced to ap­pear in un­ortho­dox rai­ment.

195:10.14It is all too true that such a church would not have sur­vived un­less there had been men in the world who pre­ferred such a style of wor­ship. Many spir­i­tu­ally in­do­lent souls crave an an­cient and au­thor­i­ta­tive re­li­gion of rit­ual and sa­cred tra­di­tions. Hu­man evo­lu­tion and spir­i­tual prog­ress are hardly suf­fi­cient to en­able all men to dis­pense with re­li­gious au­thor­ity. And the in­vis­i­ble broth­er­hood of the king­dom may well in­clude these fam­ily groups of var­i­ous so­cial and tem­per­a­men­tal classes if they are only will­ing to be­come truly spirit-led sons of God. But in this broth­er­hood of Je­sus there is no place for sec­tar­ian ri­valry, group bit­ter­ness, nor as­ser­tions of moral su­pe­ri­or­ity and spir­i­tual in­fal­li­bil­ity.

195:10.15These var­i­ous group­ings of Chris­tians may serve to ac­com­mo­date nu­mer­ous dif­fer­ent types of would-be be­liev­ers among the var­i­ous peo­ples of West­ern civ­i­liza­tion, but such di­vi­sion of Chris­ten­dom pre­sents a grave weak­ness when it at­tempts to carry the gospel of Je­sus to Ori­en­tal peo­ples. These races do not yet un­der­stand that there is a re­li­gion of Je­sus sep­a­rate, and some­what apart, from Chris­tian­ity, which has more and more be­come a re­li­gion about Je­sus.

195:10.16The great hope of Uran­tia lies in the pos­si­bil­ity of a new rev­e­la­tion of Je­sus with a new and en­larged pre­sen­ta­tion of his sav­ing mes­sage which would spir­i­tu­ally unite in lov­ing ser­vice the nu­mer­ous fam­i­lies of his pres­ent-day pro­fessed fol­low­ers.

195:10.17Even sec­u­lar ed­u­ca­tion could help in this great spir­i­tual re­nais­sance if it would pay more at­ten­tion to the work of teach­ing youth how to en­gage in life plan­ning and char­ac­ter pro­gres­sion. The pur­pose of all ed­u­ca­tion should be to fos­ter and fur­ther the su­preme pur­pose of life, the de­vel­op­ment of a ma­jes­tic and well-bal­anced per­son­al­ity. There is great need for the teach­ing of moral dis­ci­pline in the place of so much self-grat­i­fi­ca­tion. Upon such a foun­da­tion re­li­gion may con­tribute its spir­i­tual in­cen­tive to the en­large­ment and en­rich­ment of mor­tal life, even to the se­cu­rity and en­hance­ment of life eter­nal.

195:10.18Chris­tian­ity is an ex­tem­po­rized re­li­gion, and there­fore must it op­er­ate in low gear. High-gear spir­i­tual per­for­mances must await the new rev­e­la­tion and the more gen­eral ac­cep­tance of the real re­li­gion of Je­sus. But Chris­tian­ity is a mighty re­li­gion, see­ing that the com­mon­place dis­ci­ples of a cru­ci­fied car­pen­ter set in mo­tion those teach­ings which con­quered the Ro­man world in three hun­dred years and then went on to tri­umph over the bar­bar­ians who over­threw Rome. This same Chris­tian­ity con­quered—ab­sorbed and ex­alted—the whole stream of He­brew the­ol­ogy and Greek phi­los­o­phy. And then, when this Chris­tian re­li­gion be­came co­matose for more than a thou­sand years as a re­sult of an over­dose of mys­ter­ies and pa­gan­ism, it res­ur­rected it­self and vir­tu­ally re­con­quered the whole West­ern world. Chris­tian­ity con­tains enough of Je­sus’ teach­ings to im­mor­tal­ize it.

195:10.19If Chris­tian­ity could only grasp more of Je­sus’ teach­ings, it could do so much more in help­ing mod­ern man to solve his new and in­creas­ingly com­plex prob­lems.

195:10.20Chris­tian­ity suf­fers un­der a great hand­i­cap be­cause it has be­come iden­ti­fied in the minds of all the world as a part of the so­cial sys­tem, the in­dus­trial life, and the moral stan­dards of West­ern civ­i­liza­tion; and thus has Chris­tian­ity un­wit­tingly seemed to spon­sor 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.

195:10.21The hope of mod­ern Chris­tian­ity is that it should cease to spon­sor the so­cial sys­tems and in­dus­trial poli­cies of West­ern civ­i­liza­tion while it humbly bows it­self be­fore the cross it so valiantly ex­tols, there to learn anew from Je­sus of Naz­a­reth the great­est truths mor­tal man can ever hear—the liv­ing gospel of the fa­ther­hood of God and the broth­er­hood of man.