God’s Relation to the Individual

5:4.1The moral­ity of the re­li­gions of evo­lu­tion drives men for­ward in the God quest by the mo­tive power of fear. The re­li­gions of rev­e­la­tion al­lure men to seek for a God of love be­cause they crave to be­come like him. But re­li­gion is not merely a pas­sive feel­ing of “ab­so­lute de­pen­dence” and “surety of sur­vival”; it is a liv­ing and dy­namic ex­pe­ri­ence of di­vin­ity at­tain­ment pred­i­cated on hu­man­ity ser­vice.

5:4.2The great and im­me­di­ate ser­vice of true re­li­gion is the es­tab­lish­ment of an en­dur­ing unity in hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence, a last­ing peace and a pro­found as­sur­ance. With prim­i­tive man, even poly­the­ism is a rel­a­tive uni­fi­ca­tion of the evolv­ing con­cept of De­ity; poly­the­ism is mono­the­ism in the mak­ing. Sooner or later, God is des­tined to be com­pre­hended as the re­al­ity of val­ues, the sub­stance of mean­ings, and the life of truth.

5:4.3God is not only the de­ter­miner of des­tiny; he is man’s eter­nal des­ti­na­tion. All non­re­li­gious hu­man ac­tiv­i­ties seek to bend the uni­verse to the dis­tort­ing ser­vice of self; the truly re­li­gious in­di­vid­ual seeks to iden­tify the self with the uni­verse and then to ded­i­cate the ac­tiv­i­ties of this uni­fied self to the ser­vice of the uni­verse fam­ily of fel­low be­ings, hu­man and super­hu­man.

5:4.4The do­mains of phi­los­o­phy and art in­ter­vene be­tween the non­re­li­gious and the re­li­gious ac­tiv­i­ties of the hu­man self. Through art and phi­los­o­phy the ma­te­rial-minded man is in­vei­gled into the con­tem­pla­tion of the spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties and uni­verse val­ues of eter­nal mean­ings.

5:4.5All re­li­gions teach the wor­ship of De­ity and some doc­trine of hu­man sal­va­tion. The Bud­dhist re­li­gion promises sal­va­tion from suf­fer­ing, un­end­ing peace; the Jew­ish re­li­gion promises sal­va­tion from dif­fi­cul­ties, pros­per­ity pred­i­cated on righ­teous­ness; the Greek re­li­gion prom­ised sal­va­tion from dishar­mony, ug­li­ness, by the re­al­iza­tion of beauty; Chris­tian­ity promises sal­va­tion from sin, sanc­tity; Mo­hammedanism pro­vides de­liv­er­ance from the rig­or­ous moral stan­dards of Ju­daism and Chris­tian­ity. The re­li­gion of Je­sus is sal­va­tion from self, de­liv­er­ance from the evils of crea­ture iso­la­tion in time and in eter­nity.

5:4.6The He­brews based their re­li­gion on good­ness; the Greeks on beauty; both re­li­gions sought truth. Je­sus re­vealed a God of love, and love is all-em­brac­ing of truth, beauty, and good­ness.

5:4.7The Zoroas­tri­ans had a re­li­gion of morals; the Hin­dus a re­li­gion of meta­physics; the Con­fu­cian­ists a re­li­gion of ethics. Je­sus lived a re­li­gion of ser­vice. All these re­li­gions are of value in that they are valid ap­proaches to the re­li­gion of Je­sus. Re­li­gion is des­tined to be­come the re­al­ity of the spir­i­tual uni­fi­ca­tion of all that is good, beau­ti­ful, and true in hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence.

5:4.8The Greek re­li­gion had a watch­word “Know your­self”; the He­brews cen­tered their teach­ing on “Know your God”; the Chris­tians preach a gospel aimed at a “knowl­edge of the Lord Je­sus Christ”; Je­sus pro­claimed the good news of “know­ing God, and your­self as a son of God.” These dif­fer­ing con­cepts of the pur­pose of re­li­gion de­ter­mine the in­di­vid­ual’s at­ti­tude in var­i­ous life sit­u­a­tions and fore­shadow the depth of wor­ship and the na­ture of his per­sonal habits of prayer. The spir­i­tual sta­tus of any re­li­gion may be de­ter­mined by the na­ture of its prayers.

5:4.9The con­cept of a semi­hu­man and jeal­ous God is an in­ev­i­ta­ble tran­si­tion be­tween poly­the­ism and sub­lime mono­the­ism. An ex­alted an­thro­po­mor­phism is the high­est at­tain­ment level of purely evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion. Chris­tian­ity has el­e­vated the con­cept of an­thro­po­mor­phism from the ideal of the hu­man to the tran­scen­dent and di­vine con­cept of the per­son of the glo­ri­fied Christ. And this is the high­est an­thro­po­mor­phism that man can ever con­ceive.

5:4.10The Chris­tian con­cept of God is an at­tempt to com­bine three sep­a­rate teach­ings:

5:4.111. The He­brew con­cept—God as a vin­di­ca­tor of moral val­ues, a righ­teous God.

5:4.122. The Greek con­cept—God as a uni­fier, a God of wis­dom.

5:4.133. Je­sus’ con­cept—God as a liv­ing friend, a lov­ing Fa­ther, the di­vine pres­ence.

5:4.14It must there­fore be ev­i­dent that com­pos­ite Chris­tian the­ol­ogy en­coun­ters great dif­fi­culty in at­tain­ing con­sis­tency. This dif­fi­culty is fur­ther ag­gra­vated by the fact that the doc­trines of early Chris­tian­ity were gen­er­ally based on the per­sonal re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence of three dif­fer­ent per­sons: Philo of Alexan­dria, Je­sus of Naz­a­reth, and Paul of Tar­sus.

5:4.15In the study of the re­li­gious life of Je­sus, view him pos­i­tively. Think not so much of his sin­less­ness as of his righ­teous­ness, his lov­ing ser­vice. Je­sus up­stepped the pas­sive love dis­closed in the He­brew con­cept of the heav­enly Fa­ther to the higher ac­tive and crea­ture-lov­ing af­fec­tion of a God who is the Fa­ther of ev­ery in­di­vid­ual, even of the wrong­doer.