belief

101:8.1Be­lief has at­tained the level of faith when it mo­ti­vates life and shapes the mode of liv­ing. The ac­cep­tance of a teach­ing as true is not faith; that is mere be­lief. Nei­ther is cer­tainty nor con­vic­tion faith. A state of mind at­tains to faith lev­els only when it ac­tu­ally dom­i­nates the mode of liv­ing. Faith is a liv­ing at­tri­bute of gen­uine per­sonal re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence. One be­lieves truth, ad­mires beauty, and rev­er­ences good­ness, but does not wor­ship them; such an at­ti­tude of sav­ing faith is cen­tered on God alone, who is all of these per­son­i­fied and in­finitely more.

101:8.2Be­lief is al­ways lim­it­ing and bind­ing; faith is ex­pand­ing and re­leas­ing. Be­lief fix­ates, faith lib­er­ates. But liv­ing re­li­gious faith is more than the as­so­ci­a­tion of no­ble be­liefs; it is more than an ex­alted sys­tem of phi­los­o­phy; it is a liv­ing ex­pe­ri­ence con­cerned with spir­i­tual mean­ings, di­vine ide­als, and su­preme val­ues; it is God-know­ing and man-serv­ing. Be­liefs may be­come group pos­ses­sions, but faith must be per­sonal. The­o­logic be­liefs can be sug­gested to a group, but faith can rise up only in the heart of the in­di­vid­ual re­li­gion­ist.

102:6.1The philo­sophic elim­i­na­tion of re­li­gious fear and the steady prog­ress of sci­ence add greatly to the mor­tal­ity of false gods; and even though these ca­su­al­ties of man-made de­i­ties may mo­men­tar­ily be­fog the spir­i­tual vi­sion, they even­tu­ally de­stroy that ig­no­rance and su­per­sti­tion which so long ob­scured the liv­ing God of eter­nal love. The re­la­tion be­tween the crea­ture and the Cre­ator is a liv­ing ex­pe­ri­ence, a dy­namic re­li­gious faith, which is not sub­ject to pre­cise def­i­ni­tion. To iso­late part of life and call it re­li­gion is to dis­in­te­grate life and to dis­tort re­li­gion. And this is just why the God of wor­ship claims all al­le­giance or none.

102:6.2The gods of prim­i­tive men may have been no more than shad­ows of them­selves; the liv­ing God is the di­vine light whose in­ter­rup­tions con­sti­tute the cre­ation shad­ows of all space.

102:6.3The re­li­gion­ist of philo­sophic at­tain­ment has faith in a per­sonal God of per­sonal sal­va­tion, some­thing more than a re­al­ity, a value, a level of achieve­ment, an ex­alted pro­cess, a trans­mu­ta­tion, the ul­ti­mate of time-space, an ide­al­iza­tion, the per­son­al­iza­tion of en­ergy, the en­tity of grav­ity, a hu­man pro­jec­tion, the ide­al­iza­tion of self, na­ture’s up­thrust, the in­cli­na­tion to good­ness, the for­ward im­pulse of evo­lu­tion, or a sub­lime hy­poth­e­sis. The re­li­gion­ist has faith in a God of love. Love is the essence of re­li­gion and the well­spring of su­pe­rior civ­i­liza­tion.

102:6.4Faith trans­forms the philo­sophic God of prob­a­bil­ity into the sav­ing God of cer­tainty in the per­sonal re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence. Skep­ti­cism may chal­lenge the the­o­ries of the­ol­ogy, but con­fi­dence in the de­pend­abil­ity of per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence af­firms the truth of that be­lief which has grown into faith.

102:6.5Con­vic­tions about God may be ar­rived at through wise rea­son­ing, but the in­di­vid­ual be­comes God-know­ing only by faith, through per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence. In much that per­tains to life, prob­a­bil­ity must be reck­oned with, but when con­tact­ing with cos­mic re­al­ity, cer­tainty may be ex­pe­ri­enced when such mean­ings and val­ues are ap­proached by liv­ing faith. The God-know­ing soul dares to say, “I know,” even when this knowl­edge of God is ques­tioned by the un­be­liever who de­nies such cer­ti­tude be­cause it is not wholly sup­ported by in­tel­lec­tual logic. To ev­ery such doubter the be­liever only replies, “How do you know that I do not know?”

102:6.6Though rea­son can al­ways ques­tion faith, faith can al­ways sup­ple­ment both rea­son and logic. Rea­son cre­ates the prob­a­bil­ity which faith can trans­form into a moral cer­tainty, even a spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence. God is the first truth and the last fact; there­fore does all truth take ori­gin in him, while all facts ex­ist rel­a­tive to him. God is ab­so­lute truth. As truth one may know God, but to un­der­stand—to ex­plain—God, one must ex­plore the fact of the uni­verse of uni­verses. The vast gulf be­tween the ex­pe­ri­ence of the truth of God and ig­no­rance as to the fact of God can be bridged only by liv­ing faith. Rea­son alone can­not achieve har­mony be­tween in­fi­nite truth and uni­ver­sal fact.

102:6.7Be­lief may not be able to re­sist doubt and with­stand fear, but faith is al­ways tri­umphant over doubt­ing, for faith is both pos­i­tive and liv­ing. The pos­i­tive al­ways has the ad­van­tage over the neg­a­tive, truth over er­ror, ex­pe­ri­ence over the­ory, spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties over the iso­lated facts of time and space. The con­vinc­ing ev­i­dence of this spir­i­tual cer­tainty con­sists in the so­cial fruits of the spirit which such be­liev­ers, faithers, yield as a re­sult of this gen­uine spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence. Said Je­sus: “If you love your fel­lows as I have loved you, then shall all men know that you are my dis­ci­ples.”

102:6.8To sci­ence God is a pos­si­bil­ity, to psy­chol­ogy a de­sir­abil­ity, to phi­los­o­phy a prob­a­bil­ity, to re­li­gion a cer­tainty, an ac­tu­al­ity of re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence. Rea­son de­mands that a phi­los­o­phy which can­not find the God of prob­a­bil­ity should be very re­spect­ful of that re­li­gious faith which can and does find the God of cer­ti­tude. Nei­ther should sci­ence dis­count re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence on grounds of credulity, not so long as it per­sists in the as­sump­tion that man’s in­tel­lec­tual and philo­sophic en­dow­ments emerged from in­creas­ingly lesser in­tel­li­gences the fur­ther back they go, fi­nally tak­ing ori­gin in prim­i­tive life which was ut­terly de­void of all think­ing and feel­ing.

102:6.9The facts of evo­lu­tion must not be ar­rayed against the truth of the re­al­ity of the cer­tainty of the spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence of the re­li­gious liv­ing of the God-know­ing mor­tal. In­tel­li­gent men should cease to rea­son like chil­dren and should at­tempt to use the con­sis­tent logic of adult­hood, logic which tol­er­ates the con­cept of truth along­side the ob­ser­va­tion of fact. Sci­en­tific ma­te­ri­al­ism has gone bankrupt when it per­sists, in the face of each re­cur­ring uni­verse phe­nom­e­non, in re­fund­ing its cur­rent ob­jec­tions by re­fer­ring what is ad­mit­tedly higher back into that which is ad­mit­tedly lower. Con­sis­tency de­mands the rec­og­ni­tion of the ac­tiv­i­ties of a pur­po­sive Cre­ator.

102:6.10Or­ganic evo­lu­tion is a fact; pur­po­sive or pro­gres­sive evo­lu­tion is a truth which makes con­sis­tent the oth­er­wise con­tra­dic­tory phe­nom­ena of the ever-as­cend­ing achieve­ments of evo­lu­tion. The higher any sci­en­tist pro­gresses in his cho­sen sci­ence, the more will he aban­don the the­o­ries of ma­te­ri­al­is­tic fact in fa­vor of the cos­mic truth of the dom­i­nance of the Su­preme Mind. Ma­te­ri­al­ism cheap­ens hu­man life; the gospel of Je­sus tremen­dously en­hances and su­per­nally ex­alts ev­ery mor­tal. Mor­tal ex­is­tence must be vi­su­al­ized as con­sist­ing in the in­trigu­ing and fas­ci­nat­ing ex­pe­ri­ence of the re­al­iza­tion of the re­al­ity of the meet­ing of the hu­man up­reach and the di­vine and sav­ing down­reach.

99:4.5Af­ter all, it is what one be­lieves rather than what one knows that de­ter­mines con­duct and dom­i­nates per­sonal per­for­mances. Purely fac­tual knowl­edge ex­erts very lit­tle in­flu­ence upon the av­er­age man un­less it be­comes emo­tion­ally ac­ti­vated. But the ac­ti­va­tion of re­li­gion is super­emo­tional, uni­fy­ing the en­tire hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence on tran­scen­dent lev­els through con­tact with, and re­lease of, spir­i­tual en­er­gies in the mor­tal life.

25:3.126. Con­cil­ia­tors to the Super­uni­verse Ma­jor Sec­tors. The char­ac­ter of the work of the com­mis­sion­ers con­tin­ues to change as they ad­vance. There is less and less of mis­un­der­stand­ing to ad­ju­di­cate and more and more of mys­te­ri­ous phe­nom­ena to ex­plain and in­ter­pret. From stage to stage they are evolv­ing from ar­biters of dif­fer­ences to ex­plain­ers of mys­ter­ies—judges evolv­ing into in­ter­pre­ta­tive teach­ers. Ar­biters of those who through ig­no­rance per­mit dif­fi­cul­ties and mis­un­der­stand­ings to arise, they once were; but they are now be­com­ing in­struc­tors of those who are suf­fi­ciently in­tel­li­gent and tol­er­ant to avoid clashes of mind and wars of opin­ions. The higher a crea­ture’s ed­u­ca­tion, the more re­spect he has for the knowl­edge, ex­pe­ri­ence, and opin­ions of oth­ers.

153:3.6The Phar­i­saic com­mis­sion­ers of the Je­ru­sa­lem San­hedrin were now al­most con­vinced that Je­sus must be ap­pre­hended on a charge of blas­phemy or on one of flout­ing the sa­cred law of the Jews; where­fore their ef­forts to in­volve him in the dis­cus­sion of, and pos­si­ble at­tack upon, some of the tra­di­tions of the el­ders, or so-called oral laws of the na­tion. No mat­ter how scarce wa­ter might be, these tra­di­tion­ally en­slaved Jews would never fail to go through with the re­quired cer­e­mo­nial wash­ing of the hands be­fore ev­ery meal. It was their be­lief that “it is bet­ter to die than to transgress the com­mand­ments of the el­ders.” The spies asked this ques­tion be­cause it had been re­ported that Je­sus had said, “Sal­va­tion is a mat­ter of clean hearts rather than of clean hands.” But such be­liefs, when they once be­come a part of one’s re­li­gion, are hard to get away from. Even many years af­ter this day the Apos­tle Pe­ter was still held in the bond­age of fear to many of these tra­di­tions about things clean and un­clean, only be­ing fi­nally de­liv­ered by ex­pe­ri­enc­ing an ex­traor­di­nary and vivid dream. All of this can the bet­ter be un­der­stood when it is re­called that these Jews looked upon eat­ing with un­washed hands in the same light as com­merce with a har­lot, and both were equally pun­ish­able by ex­com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

155:6.9The re­li­gions of au­thor­ity can only di­vide men and set them in con­sci­en­tious ar­ray against each other; the re­li­gion of the spirit will pro­gres­sively draw men to­gether and cause them to be­come un­der­stand­ingly sym­pa­thetic with one an­other. The re­li­gions of au­thor­ity re­quire of men uni­for­mity in be­lief, but this is im­pos­si­ble of re­al­iza­tion in the pres­ent state of the world. The re­li­gion of the spirit re­quires only unity of ex­pe­ri­ence—uni­for­mity of des­tiny—mak­ing full al­lowance for di­ver­sity of be­lief. The re­li­gion of the spirit re­quires only uni­for­mity of in­sight, not uni­for­mity of view­point and out­look. The re­li­gion of the spirit does not de­mand uni­for­mity of in­tel­lec­tual views, only unity of spirit feel­ing. The re­li­gions of au­thor­ity crys­tal­lize into life­less creeds; the re­li­gion of the spirit grows into the in­creas­ing joy and lib­erty of en­nobling deeds of lov­ing ser­vice and mer­ci­ful min­is­tra­tion.

152:6.1While rest­ing at the home of a wealthy be­liever in the Gen­nesaret re­gion, Je­sus held in­for­mal con­fer­ences with the twelve ev­ery af­ter­noon. The am­bas­sadors of the king­dom were a se­ri­ous, sober, and chas­tened group of dis­il­lu­sioned men. But even af­ter all that had hap­pened, and as sub­se­quent events dis­closed, these twelve men were not yet fully de­liv­ered from their in­bred and long-cher­ished no­tions about the com­ing of the Jew­ish Mes­siah. Events of the pre­ced­ing few weeks had moved too swiftly for these as­ton­ished fish­er­men to grasp their full sig­nif­i­cance. It re­quires time for men and women to ef­fect rad­i­cal and ex­ten­sive changes in their ba­sic and fun­da­men­tal con­cepts of so­cial con­duct, philo­sophic at­ti­tudes, and re­li­gious con­vic­tions.