Sin, Sacrifice, and Atonement

89:3.1Re­nun­ci­a­tion came as the next step in re­li­gious evo­lu­tion; fast­ing was a com­mon prac­tice. Soon it be­came the cus­tom to forgo many forms of phys­i­cal plea­sure, es­pe­cially of a sex­ual na­ture. The rit­ual of the fast was deeply rooted in many an­cient re­li­gions and has been handed down to prac­ti­cally all mod­ern the­o­logic sys­tems of thought.

89:3.2Just about the time bar­bar­ian man was re­cov­er­ing from the waste­ful prac­tice of burn­ing and bury­ing prop­erty with the dead, just as the eco­nomic struc­ture of the races was be­gin­ning to take shape, this new re­li­gious doc­trine of re­nun­ci­a­tion ap­peared, and tens of thou­sands of earnest souls be­gan to court pov­erty. Prop­erty was re­garded as a spir­i­tual hand­i­cap. These no­tions of the spir­i­tual dan­gers of ma­te­rial pos­ses­sion were widespreadly en­ter­tained in the times of Philo and Paul, and they have markedly in­flu­enced Eu­ro­pean phi­los­o­phy ever since.

89:3.3Pov­erty was just a part of the rit­ual of the mor­ti­fi­ca­tion of the flesh which, un­for­tu­nately, be­came in­cor­po­rated into the writ­ings and teach­ings of many re­li­gions, no­tably Chris­tian­ity. Pen­ance is the neg­a­tive form of this oft­times fool­ish rit­ual of re­nun­ci­a­tion. But all this taught the sav­age self-con­trol, and that was a worth-while ad­vance­ment in so­cial evo­lu­tion. Self-de­nial and self-con­trol were two of the great­est so­cial gains from early evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion. Self-con­trol gave man a new phi­los­o­phy of life; it taught him the art of aug­ment­ing life’s frac­tion by low­er­ing the de­nom­i­na­tor of per­sonal de­mands in­stead of al­ways at­tempt­ing to in­crease the nu­mer­a­tor of self­ish grat­i­fi­ca­tion.

89:3.4These olden ideas of self-dis­ci­pline em­braced flog­ging and all sorts of phys­i­cal tor­ture. The priests of the mother cult were es­pe­cially ac­tive in teach­ing the virtue of phys­i­cal suf­fer­ing, set­ting the ex­am­ple by sub­mit­ting them­selves to cas­tra­tion. The He­brews, Hin­dus, and Bud­dhists were earnest devo­tees of this doc­trine of phys­i­cal hu­mil­i­a­tion.

89:3.5All through the olden times men sought in these ways for ex­tra cred­its on the self-de­nial ledgers of their gods. It was once cus­tom­ary, when un­der some emo­tional stress, to make vows of self-de­nial and self-tor­ture. In time these vows as­sumed the form of con­tracts with the gods and, in that sense, rep­re­sented true evo­lu­tion­ary prog­ress in that the gods were sup­posed to do some­thing def­i­nite in re­turn for this self-tor­ture and mor­ti­fi­ca­tion of the flesh. Vows were both neg­a­tive and pos­i­tive. Pledges of this harm­ful and ex­treme na­ture are best ob­served to­day among cer­tain groups in In­dia.

89:3.6It was only nat­u­ral that the cult of re­nun­ci­a­tion and hu­mil­i­a­tion should have paid at­ten­tion to sex­ual grat­i­fi­ca­tion. The con­ti­nence cult orig­i­nated as a rit­ual among sol­diers prior to en­gag­ing in bat­tle; in later days it be­came the prac­tice of “saints.” This cult tol­er­ated mar­riage only as an evil lesser than for­ni­ca­tion. Many of the world’s great re­li­gions have been ad­versely in­flu­enced by this an­cient cult, but none more markedly than Chris­tian­ity. The Apos­tle Paul was a devo­tee of this cult, and his per­sonal views are re­flected in the teach­ings which he fas­tened onto Chris­tian the­ol­ogy: “It is good for a man not to touch a woman.” “I would that all men were even as I my­self.” “I say, there­fore, to the un­mar­ried and wid­ows, it is good for them to abide even as I.” Paul well knew that such teach­ings were not a part of Je­sus’ gospel, and his ac­knowl­edg­ment of this is il­lus­trated by his state­ment, “I speak this by per­mis­sion and not by com­mand­ment.” But this cult led Paul to look down upon women. And the pity of it all is that his per­sonal opin­ions have long in­flu­enced the teach­ings of a great world re­li­gion. If the ad­vice of the tent­maker-teacher were to be lit­er­ally and uni­ver­sally obeyed, then would the hu­man race come to a sud­den and in­glo­ri­ous end. Fur­ther­more, the in­volve­ment of a re­li­gion with the an­cient con­ti­nence cult leads di­rectly to a war against mar­riage and the home, so­ci­ety’s ver­i­ta­ble foun­da­tion and the ba­sic in­sti­tu­tion of hu­man prog­ress. And it is not to be won­dered at that all such be­liefs fos­tered the for­ma­tion of celi­bate priest­hoods in the many re­li­gions of var­i­ous peo­ples.

89:3.7Some­day man should learn how to en­joy lib­erty with­out li­cense, nour­ish­ment with­out glut­tony, and plea­sure with­out de­bauch­ery. Self-con­trol is a bet­ter hu­man pol­icy of be­hav­ior reg­u­la­tion than is ex­treme self-de­nial. Nor did Je­sus ever teach these un­rea­son­able views to his fol­low­ers.