The Faith of Jesus

196:3.1Per­sonal, spir­i­tual re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence is an ef­fi­cient sol­vent for most mor­tal dif­fi­cul­ties; it is an ef­fec­tive sorter, eval­u­a­tor, and ad­juster of all hu­man prob­lems. Re­li­gion does not re­move or de­stroy hu­man trou­bles, but it does dis­solve, ab­sorb, il­lu­mi­nate, and tran­scend them. True re­li­gion uni­fies the per­son­al­ity for ef­fec­tive ad­just­ment to all mor­tal re­quire­ments. Re­li­gious faith—the pos­i­tive lead­ing of the in­dwelling di­vine pres­ence—un­fail­ingly en­ables the God-know­ing man to bridge that gulf ex­ist­ing be­tween the in­tel­lec­tual logic which rec­og­nizes the Uni­ver­sal First Cause as It and those pos­i­tive af­fir­ma­tions of the soul which aver this First Cause is He, the heav­enly Fa­ther of Je­sus’ gospel, the per­sonal God of hu­man sal­va­tion.

196:3.2There are just three el­e­ments in uni­ver­sal re­al­ity: fact, idea, and re­la­tion. The re­li­gious con­scious­ness iden­ti­fies these re­al­i­ties as sci­ence, phi­los­o­phy, and truth. Phi­los­o­phy would be in­clined to view these ac­tiv­i­ties as rea­son, wis­dom, and faith—phys­i­cal re­al­ity, in­tel­lec­tual re­al­ity, and spir­i­tual re­al­ity. We are in the habit of des­ig­nat­ing these re­al­i­ties as thing, mean­ing, and value.

196:3.3The pro­gres­sive com­pre­hen­sion of re­al­ity is the equiv­a­lent of ap­proach­ing God. The find­ing of God, the con­scious­ness of iden­tity with re­al­ity, is the equiv­a­lent of the ex­pe­ri­enc­ing of self-com­ple­tion—self-en­tirety, self-to­tal­ity. The ex­pe­ri­enc­ing of to­tal re­al­ity is the full re­al­iza­tion of God, the fi­nal­ity of the God-know­ing ex­pe­ri­ence.

196:3.4The full sum­ma­tion of hu­man life is the knowl­edge that man is ed­u­cated by fact, en­no­bled by wis­dom, and saved—jus­ti­fied—by re­li­gious faith.

196:3.5Phys­i­cal cer­tainty con­sists in the logic of sci­ence; moral cer­tainty, in the wis­dom of phi­los­o­phy; spir­i­tual cer­tainty, in the truth of gen­uine re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence.

196:3.6The mind of man can at­tain high lev­els of spir­i­tual in­sight and cor­re­spond­ing spheres of di­vin­ity of val­ues be­cause it is not wholly ma­te­rial. There is a spirit nu­cleus in the mind of man—the Ad­juster of the di­vine pres­ence. There are three sep­a­rate ev­i­dences of this spirit in­dwelling of the hu­man mind:

196:3.71. Hu­man­i­tar­ian fel­low­ship—love. The purely an­i­mal mind may be gre­gar­i­ous for self-pro­tec­tion, but only the spirit-in­dwelt in­tel­lect is un­selfishly al­tru­is­tic and un­con­di­tion­ally lov­ing.

196:3.82. In­ter­pre­ta­tion of the uni­verse—wis­dom. Only the spirit-in­dwelt mind can com­pre­hend that the uni­verse is friendly to the in­di­vid­ual.

196:3.93. Spir­i­tual eval­u­a­tion of life—wor­ship. Only the spirit-in­dwelt man can re­al­ize the di­vine pres­ence and seek to at­tain a fuller ex­pe­ri­ence in and with this fore­taste of di­vin­ity.

196:3.10The hu­man mind does not cre­ate real val­ues; hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence does not yield uni­verse in­sight. Con­cern­ing in­sight, the rec­og­ni­tion of moral val­ues and the dis­cern­ment of spir­i­tual mean­ings, all that the hu­man mind can do is to dis­cover, rec­og­nize, in­ter­pret, and choose.

196:3.11The moral val­ues of the uni­verse be­come in­tel­lec­tual pos­ses­sions by the ex­er­cise of the three ba­sic judg­ments, or choices, of the mor­tal mind:

196:3.121. Self-judg­ment—moral choice.

196:3.132. So­cial-judg­ment—eth­i­cal choice.

196:3.143. God-judg­ment—re­li­gious choice.

196:3.15Thus it ap­pears that all hu­man prog­ress is ef­fected by a tech­nique of con­joint rev­e­la­tional evo­lu­tion.

196:3.16Un­less a di­vine lover lived in man, he could not un­selfishly and spir­i­tu­ally love. Un­less an in­ter­preter lived in the mind, man could not truly re­al­ize the unity of the uni­verse. Un­less an eval­u­a­tor dwelt with man, he could not pos­si­bly ap­praise moral val­ues and rec­og­nize spir­i­tual mean­ings. And this lover hails from the very source of in­fi­nite love; this in­ter­preter is a part of Uni­ver­sal Unity; this eval­u­a­tor is the child of the Cen­ter and Source of all ab­so­lute val­ues of di­vine and eter­nal re­al­ity.

196:3.17Moral eval­u­a­tion with a re­li­gious mean­ing—spir­i­tual in­sight—con­notes the in­di­vid­ual’s choice be­tween good and evil, truth and er­ror, ma­te­rial and spir­i­tual, hu­man and di­vine, time and eter­nity. Hu­man sur­vival is in great mea­sure de­pen­dent on con­se­crat­ing the hu­man will to the choos­ing of those val­ues se­lected by this spirit-value sorter—the in­dwelling in­ter­preter and uni­fier. Per­sonal re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence con­sists in two phases: dis­cov­ery in the hu­man mind and rev­e­la­tion by the in­dwelling di­vine spirit. Through over­so­phis­ti­ca­tion or as a re­sult of the ir­re­li­gious con­duct of pro­fessed re­li­gion­ists, a man, or even a gen­er­a­tion of men, may elect to sus­pend their ef­forts to dis­cover the God who in­dwells them; they may fail to pro­gress in and at­tain the di­vine rev­e­la­tion. But such at­ti­tudes of spir­i­tual non­pro­gres­sion can­not long per­sist be­cause of the pres­ence and in­flu­ence of the in­dwelling Thought Ad­justers.

196:3.18This pro­found ex­pe­ri­ence of the re­al­ity of the di­vine in­dwelling for­ever tran­scends the crude ma­te­ri­al­is­tic tech­nique of the phys­i­cal sci­ences. You can­not put spir­i­tual joy un­der a mi­cro­scope; you can­not weigh love in a bal­ance; you can­not mea­sure moral val­ues; nei­ther can you es­ti­mate the qual­ity of spir­i­tual wor­ship.

196:3.19The He­brews had a re­li­gion of moral sub­lim­ity; the Greeks evolved a re­li­gion of beauty; Paul and his con­fer­ees founded a re­li­gion of faith, hope, and char­ity. Je­sus re­vealed and ex­em­pli­fied a re­li­gion of love: se­cu­rity in the Fa­ther’s love, with joy and sat­is­fac­tion con­se­quent upon shar­ing this love in the ser­vice of the hu­man broth­er­hood.

196:3.20Ev­ery time man makes a re­flec­tive moral choice, he im­me­di­ately ex­pe­ri­ences a new di­vine in­va­sion of his soul. Moral choos­ing con­sti­tutes re­li­gion as the mo­tive of in­ner re­sponse to outer con­di­tions. But such a real re­li­gion is not a purely sub­jec­tive ex­pe­ri­ence. It sig­ni­fies the whole of the sub­jec­tiv­ity of the in­di­vid­ual en­gaged in a mean­ing­ful and in­tel­li­gent re­sponse to to­tal ob­jec­tiv­ity—the uni­verse and its Maker.

196:3.21The ex­qui­site and tran­scen­dent ex­pe­ri­ence of lov­ing and be­ing loved is not just a psy­chic il­lu­sion be­cause it is so purely sub­jec­tive. The one truly di­vine and ob­jec­tive re­al­ity that is as­so­ci­ated with mor­tal be­ings, the Thought Ad­juster, func­tions to hu­man ob­ser­va­tion ap­par­ently as an ex­clu­sively sub­jec­tive phe­nom­e­non. Man’s con­tact with the high­est ob­jec­tive re­al­ity, God, is only through the purely sub­jec­tive ex­pe­ri­ence of know­ing him, of wor­ship­ing him, of re­al­iz­ing son­ship with him.

196:3.22True re­li­gious wor­ship is not a fu­tile mono­logue of self-de­cep­tion. Wor­ship is a per­sonal com­mu­nion with that which is di­vinely real, with that which is the very source of re­al­ity. Man as­pires by wor­ship to be bet­ter and thereby even­tu­ally at­tains the best.

196:3.23The ide­al­iza­tion and at­tempted ser­vice of truth, beauty, and good­ness is not a sub­sti­tute for gen­uine re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence—spir­i­tual re­al­ity. Psy­chol­ogy and ide­al­ism are not the equiv­a­lent of re­li­gious re­al­ity. The pro­jec­tions of the hu­man in­tel­lect may in­deed orig­i­nate false gods—gods in man’s im­age—but the true God-con­scious­ness does not have such an ori­gin. The God-con­scious­ness is res­i­dent in the in­dwelling spirit. Many of the re­li­gious sys­tems of man come from the for­mu­la­tions of the hu­man in­tel­lect, but the God-con­scious­ness is not nec­es­sar­ily a part of these grotesque sys­tems of re­li­gious slav­ery.

196:3.24God is not the mere in­ven­tion of man’s ide­al­ism; he is the very source of all such super­an­i­mal in­sights and val­ues. God is not a hy­poth­e­sis for­mu­lated to unify the hu­man con­cepts of truth, beauty, and good­ness; he is the per­son­al­ity of love from whom all of these uni­verse man­i­fes­ta­tions are de­rived. The truth, beauty, and good­ness of man’s world are uni­fied by the in­creas­ing spir­i­tu­al­ity of the ex­pe­ri­ence of mor­tals as­cend­ing to­ward Par­a­dise re­al­i­ties. The unity of truth, beauty, and good­ness can only be re­al­ized in the spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence of the God-know­ing per­son­al­ity.

196:3.25Moral­ity is the es­sen­tial pre-ex­is­tent soil of per­sonal God-con­scious­ness, the per­sonal re­al­iza­tion of the Ad­juster’s in­ner pres­ence, but such moral­ity is not the source of re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence and the re­sul­tant spir­i­tual in­sight. The moral na­ture is super­an­i­mal but sub­spir­i­tual. Moral­ity is equiv­a­lent to the rec­og­ni­tion of duty, the re­al­iza­tion of the ex­is­tence of right and wrong. The moral zone in­ter­venes be­tween the an­i­mal and the hu­man types of mind as mor­ontia func­tions be­tween the ma­te­rial and the spir­i­tual spheres of per­son­al­ity at­tain­ment.

196:3.26The evo­lu­tion­ary mind is able to dis­cover law, morals, and ethics; but the be­stowed spirit, the in­dwelling Ad­juster, re­veals to the evolv­ing hu­man mind the law­giver, the Fa­ther-source of all that is true, beau­ti­ful, and good; and such an il­lu­mi­nated man has a re­li­gion and is spir­i­tu­ally equipped to be­gin the long and ad­ven­tur­ous search for God.

196:3.27Moral­ity is not nec­es­sar­ily spir­i­tual; it may be wholly and purely hu­man, al­beit real re­li­gion en­hances all moral val­ues, makes them more mean­ing­ful. Moral­ity with­out re­li­gion fails to re­veal ul­ti­mate good­ness, and it also fails to pro­vide for the sur­vival of even its own moral val­ues. Re­li­gion pro­vides for the en­hance­ment, glo­ri­fi­ca­tion, and as­sured sur­vival of ev­ery­thing moral­ity rec­og­nizes and ap­proves.

196:3.28Re­li­gion stands above sci­ence, art, phi­los­o­phy, ethics, and morals, but not in­de­pen­dent of them. They are all in­dis­sol­ubly in­ter­re­lated in hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence, per­sonal and so­cial. Re­li­gion is man’s su­preme ex­pe­ri­ence in the mor­tal na­ture, but fi­nite lan­guage makes it for­ever im­pos­si­ble for the­ol­ogy ever ad­e­quately to de­pict real re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence.

196:3.29Re­li­gious in­sight pos­sesses the power of turn­ing de­feat into higher de­sires and new de­ter­mi­na­tions. Love is the high­est mo­ti­va­tion which man may uti­lize in his uni­verse as­cent. But love, di­vested of truth, beauty, and good­ness, is only a sen­ti­ment, a philo­sophic dis­tor­tion, a psy­chic il­lu­sion, a spir­i­tual de­cep­tion. Love must al­ways be re­de­fined on suc­ces­sive lev­els of mor­ontia and spirit pro­gres­sion.

196:3.30Art re­sults from man’s at­tempt to es­cape from the lack of beauty in his ma­te­rial en­vi­ron­ment; it is a ges­ture to­ward the mor­ontia level. Sci­ence is man’s ef­fort to solve the ap­par­ent rid­dles of the ma­te­rial uni­verse. Phi­los­o­phy is man’s at­tempt at the uni­fi­ca­tion of hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence. Re­li­gion is man’s su­preme ges­ture, his mag­nif­i­cent reach for fi­nal re­al­ity, his de­ter­mi­na­tion to find God and to be like him.

196:3.31In the realm of re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence, spir­i­tual pos­si­bil­ity is po­ten­tial re­al­ity. Man’s for­ward spir­i­tual urge is not a psy­chic il­lu­sion. All of man’s uni­verse ro­manc­ing may not be fact, but much, very much, is truth.

196:3.32Some men’s lives are too great and no­ble to de­scend to the low level of be­ing merely suc­cess­ful. The an­i­mal must adapt it­self to the en­vi­ron­ment, but the re­li­gious man tran­scends his en­vi­ron­ment and in this way es­capes the lim­i­ta­tions of the pres­ent ma­te­rial world through this in­sight of di­vine love. This con­cept of love gen­er­ates in the soul of man that super­an­i­mal ef­fort to find truth, beauty, and good­ness; and when he does find them, he is glo­ri­fied in their em­brace; he is con­sumed with the de­sire to live them, to do righ­teous­ness.

196:3.33Be not dis­cour­aged; hu­man evo­lu­tion is still in prog­ress, and the rev­e­la­tion of God to the world, in and through Je­sus, shall not fail.

196:3.34The great chal­lenge to mod­ern man is to achieve bet­ter com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the di­vine Mon­i­tor that dwells within the hu­man mind. Man’s great­est ad­ven­ture in the flesh con­sists in the well-bal­anced and sane ef­fort to ad­vance the bor­ders of self-con­scious­ness out through the dim realms of em­bry­onic soul-con­scious­ness in a whole­hearted ef­fort to reach the bor­der­land of spirit-con­scious­ness—con­tact with the di­vine pres­ence. Such an ex­pe­ri­ence con­sti­tutes God-con­scious­ness, an ex­pe­ri­ence might­ily con­fir­ma­tive of the pre-ex­is­tent truth of the re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence of know­ing God. Such spirit-con­scious­ness is the equiv­a­lent of the knowl­edge of the ac­tu­al­ity of son­ship with God. Oth­er­wise, the as­sur­ance of son­ship is the ex­pe­ri­ence of faith.

196:3.35And God-con­scious­ness is equiv­a­lent to the in­te­gra­tion of the self with the uni­verse, and on its high­est lev­els of spir­i­tual re­al­ity. Only the spirit con­tent of any value is im­per­ish­able. Even that which is true, beau­ti­ful, and good may not per­ish in hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence. If man does not choose to sur­vive, then does the sur­viv­ing Ad­juster con­serve those re­al­i­ties born of love and nur­tured in ser­vice. And all these things are a part of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther. The Fa­ther is liv­ing love, and this life of the Fa­ther is in his Sons. And the spirit of the Fa­ther is in his Sons’ sons—mor­tal men. When all is said and done, the Fa­ther idea is still the high­est hu­man con­cept of God.