conflict

133:6.6“The sav­ing or los­ing of a soul has to do with whether or not the moral con­scious­ness at­tains sur­vival sta­tus through eter­nal al­liance with its as­so­ci­ated im­mor­tal spirit en­dow­ment. Sal­va­tion is the spir­i­tu­al­iza­tion of the self-re­al­iza­tion of the moral con­scious­ness, which thereby be­comes pos­sessed of sur­vival value. All forms of soul con­flict con­sist in the lack of har­mony be­tween the moral, or spir­i­tual, self-con­scious­ness and the purely in­tel­lec­tual self-con­scious­ness.

130:1.2One day af­ter the evening meal Je­sus and the young Phil­is­tine strolled down by the sea, and Ga­diah, not know­ing that this “scribe of Da­mas­cus” was so well versed in the He­brew tra­di­tions, pointed out to Je­sus the ship land­ing from which it was re­puted that Jonah had em­barked on his ill-fated voy­age to Tarshish. And when he had con­cluded his re­marks, he asked Je­sus this ques­tion: “But do you sup­pose the big fish re­ally did swal­low Jonah?” Je­sus per­ceived that this young man’s life had been tremen­dously in­flu­enced by this tra­di­tion, and that its con­tem­pla­tion had im­pressed upon him the folly of try­ing to run away from duty; Je­sus there­fore said noth­ing that would sud­denly de­stroy the foun­da­tions of Ga­diah’s pres­ent mo­ti­va­tion for prac­ti­cal liv­ing. In an­swer­ing this ques­tion, Je­sus said: “My friend, we are all Jon­ahs with lives to live in ac­cor­dance with the will of God, and at all times when we seek to es­cape the pres­ent duty of liv­ing by run­ning away to far-off en­tice­ments, we thereby put our­selves in the im­me­di­ate con­trol of those in­flu­ences which are not di­rected by the pow­ers of truth and the forces of righ­teous­ness. The flight from duty is the sac­ri­fice of truth. The es­cape from the ser­vice of light and life can only re­sult in those dis­tress­ing con­flicts with the dif­fi­cult whales of self­ish­ness which lead even­tu­ally to dark­ness and death un­less such God-for­sak­ing Jon­ahs shall turn their hearts, even when in the very depths of de­spair, to seek af­ter God and his good­ness. And when such dis­heart­ened souls sin­cerely seek for God—hunger for truth and thirst for righ­teous­ness—there is noth­ing that can hold them in fur­ther cap­tiv­ity. No mat­ter into what great depths they may have fallen, when they seek the light with a whole heart, the spirit of the Lord God of heaven will de­liver them from their cap­tiv­ity; the evil cir­cum­stances of life will spew them out upon the dry land of fresh op­por­tu­ni­ties for re­newed ser­vice and wiser liv­ing.”

159:3.7Fore­warn all be­liev­ers re­gard­ing the fringe of con­flict which must be tra­versed by all who pass from the life as it is lived in the flesh to the higher life as it is lived in the spirit. To those who live quite wholly within ei­ther realm, there is lit­tle con­flict or con­fu­sion, but all are doomed to ex­pe­ri­ence more or less un­cer­tainty dur­ing the times of tran­si­tion be­tween the two lev­els of liv­ing. In en­ter­ing the king­dom, you can­not es­cape its re­spon­si­bil­i­ties or avoid its obli­ga­tions, but re­mem­ber: The gospel yoke is easy and the bur­den of truth is light.

105:6.43. The crea­ture reper­cus­sion to fi­nite-re­al­ity pro­mul­ga­tion re­sulted in the ap­pear­ance of per­fect be­ings on the or­der of the eter­nal in­hab­i­tants of Ha­vona and of per­fected evo­lu­tion­ary as­cend­ers from the seven super­uni­verses. But to at­tain per­fec­tion as an evo­lu­tion­ary (time-cre­ative) ex­pe­ri­ence im­plies some­thing other-than-per­fec­tion as a point of de­par­ture. Thus arises im­per­fec­tion in the evo­lu­tion­ary cre­ations. And this is the ori­gin of po­ten­tial evil. Mis­adap­ta­tion, dishar­mony, and con­flict, all these things are in­her­ent in evo­lu­tion­ary growth, from phys­i­cal uni­verses to per­sonal crea­tures.

111:4.11This is the prob­lem: If free­will man is en­dowed with the pow­ers of cre­ativ­ity in the in­ner man, then must we rec­og­nize that free­will cre­ativ­ity em­braces the po­ten­tial of free­will de­struc­tiv­ity. And when cre­ativ­ity is turned to de­struc­tiv­ity, you are face to face with the dev­as­ta­tion of evil and sin—op­pres­sion, war, and de­struc­tion. Evil is a par­tial­ity of cre­ativ­ity which tends to­ward dis­in­te­gra­tion and even­tual de­struc­tion. All con­flict is evil in that it in­hibits the cre­ative func­tion of the in­ner life—it is a species of civil war in the per­son­al­ity.

100:4.1Re­li­gious liv­ing is de­voted liv­ing, and de­voted liv­ing is cre­ative liv­ing, orig­i­nal and spon­ta­neous. New re­li­gious in­sights arise out of con­flicts which ini­ti­ate the choos­ing of new and bet­ter re­ac­tion habits in the place of older and in­fe­rior re­ac­tion pat­terns. New mean­ings only emerge amid con­flict; and con­flict per­sists only in the face of re­fusal to es­pouse the higher val­ues con­noted in su­pe­rior mean­ings.

160:1.6When men dare to for­sake a life of nat­u­ral crav­ing for one of ad­ven­tur­ous art and un­cer­tain logic, they must ex­pect to suf­fer the con­se­quent haz­ards of emo­tional ca­su­al­ties—con­flicts, un­hap­pi­ness, and un­cer­tain­ties—at least un­til the time of their at­tain­ment of some de­gree of in­tel­lec­tual and emo­tional ma­tu­rity. Dis­cour­age­ment, worry, and in­do­lence are pos­i­tive ev­i­dence of moral im­ma­tu­rity. Hu­man so­ci­ety is con­fronted with two prob­lems: at­tain­ment of the ma­tu­rity of the in­di­vid­ual and at­tain­ment of the ma­tu­rity of the race. The ma­ture hu­man be­ing soon be­gins to look upon all other mor­tals with feel­ings of ten­der­ness and with emo­tions of tol­er­ance. Ma­ture men view im­ma­ture folks with the love and con­sid­er­a­tion that par­ents bear their chil­dren.

100:6.4The self has sur­ren­dered to the in­trigu­ing drive of an all-en­com­pass­ing mo­ti­va­tion which im­poses height­ened self-dis­ci­pline, lessens emo­tional con­flict, and makes mor­tal life truly worth liv­ing. The mor­bid rec­og­ni­tion of hu­man lim­i­ta­tions is changed to the nat­u­ral con­scious­ness of mor­tal short­com­ings, as­so­ci­ated with moral de­ter­mi­na­tion and spir­i­tual as­pi­ra­tion to at­tain the high­est uni­verse and super­uni­verse goals. And this in­tense striv­ing for the at­tain­ment of super­mor­tal ide­als is al­ways char­ac­ter­ized by in­creas­ing pa­tience, for­bear­ance, for­ti­tude, and tol­er­ance.

196:0.10Je­sus brought to God, as a man of the realm, the great­est of all of­fer­ings: the con­se­cra­tion and ded­i­ca­tion of his own will to the ma­jes­tic ser­vice of do­ing the di­vine will. Je­sus al­ways and con­sis­tently in­ter­preted re­li­gion wholly in terms of the Fa­ther’s will. When you study the ca­reer of the Mas­ter, as con­cerns prayer or any other fea­ture of the re­li­gious life, look not so much for what he taught as for what he did. Je­sus never prayed as a re­li­gious duty. To him prayer was a sin­cere ex­pres­sion of spir­i­tual at­ti­tude, a dec­la­ra­tion of soul loy­alty, a recital of per­sonal de­vo­tion, an ex­pres­sion of thanks­giv­ing, an avoid­ance of emo­tional ten­sion, a pre­ven­tion of con­flict, an ex­al­ta­tion of in­tel­lec­tion, an en­no­ble­ment of de­sire, a vin­di­ca­tion of moral de­ci­sion, an en­rich­ment of thought, an in­vig­o­ra­tion of higher in­cli­na­tions, a con­se­cra­tion of im­pulse, a clar­i­fi­ca­tion of view­point, a dec­la­ra­tion of faith, a tran­scen­den­tal sur­ren­der of will, a sub­lime as­ser­tion of con­fi­dence, a rev­e­la­tion of cour­age, the procla­ma­tion of dis­cov­ery, a con­fes­sion of su­preme de­vo­tion, the val­i­da­tion of con­se­cra­tion, a tech­nique for the ad­just­ment of dif­fi­cul­ties, and the mighty mo­bi­liza­tion of the com­bined soul pow­ers to with­stand all hu­man ten­den­cies to­ward self­ish­ness, evil, and sin. He lived just such a life of prayer­ful con­se­cra­tion to the do­ing of his Fa­ther’s will and ended his life tri­umphantly with just such a prayer. The se­cret of his un­par­al­leled re­li­gious life was this con­scious­ness of the pres­ence of God; and he at­tained it by in­tel­li­gent prayer and sin­cere wor­ship—un­bro­ken com­mu­nion with God—and not by lead­ings, voices, vi­sions, or ex­traor­di­nary re­li­gious prac­tices.

133:7.12The hu­man mind does not well stand the con­flict of dou­ble al­le­giance. It is a se­vere strain on the soul to un­dergo the ex­pe­ri­ence of an ef­fort to serve both good and evil. The su­premely happy and ef­fi­ciently uni­fied mind is the one wholly ded­i­cated to the do­ing of the will of the Fa­ther in heaven. Un­re­solved con­flicts de­stroy unity and may ter­mi­nate in mind dis­rup­tion. But the sur­vival char­ac­ter of a soul is not fos­tered by at­tempt­ing to se­cure peace of mind at any price, by the sur­ren­der of no­ble as­pi­ra­tions, and by the com­pro­mise of spir­i­tual ide­als; rather is such peace at­tained by the stal­wart as­ser­tion of the tri­umph of that which is true, and this vic­tory is achieved in the over­com­ing of evil with the po­tent force of good.