criticism

66:8.1In look­ing back over the long ca­reer of Cali­gas­tia, we find only one out­stand­ing fea­ture of his con­duct that might have chal­lenged at­ten­tion; he was ul­train­di­vid­u­al­is­tic. He was in­clined to take sides with al­most ev­ery party of protest, and he was usu­ally sym­pa­thetic with those who gave mild ex­pres­sion to im­plied crit­i­cism. We de­tect the early ap­pear­ance of this ten­dency to be rest­less un­der au­thor­ity, to mildly re­sent all forms of super­vi­sion. While slightly re­sent­ful of se­nior coun­sel and some­what restive un­der su­pe­rior au­thor­ity, nonethe­less, when­ever a test had come, he had al­ways proved loyal to the uni­verse rulers and obe­di­ent to the man­dates of the Con­stel­la­tion Fa­thers. No real fault was ever found in him up to the time of his shame­ful be­trayal of Uran­tia.

100:1.5The soil es­sen­tial for re­li­gious growth pre­sup­poses a pro­gres­sive life of self-re­al­iza­tion, the co-or­di­na­tion of nat­u­ral propen­si­ties, the ex­er­cise of cu­rios­ity and the en­joy­ment of rea­son­able ad­ven­ture, the ex­pe­ri­enc­ing of feel­ings of sat­is­fac­tion, the func­tion­ing of the fear stim­u­lus of at­ten­tion and aware­ness, the won­der-lure, and a nor­mal con­scious­ness of small­ness, hu­mil­ity. Growth is also pred­i­cated on the dis­cov­ery of self­hood ac­com­pa­nied by self-crit­i­cism—con­science, for con­science is re­ally the crit­i­cism of one­self by one’s own value-habits, per­sonal ide­als.

102:7.6The God-know­ing in­di­vid­ual is not one who is blind to the dif­fi­cul­ties or un­mind­ful of the ob­sta­cles which stand in the way of find­ing God in the maze of su­per­sti­tion, tra­di­tion, and ma­te­ri­al­is­tic ten­den­cies of mod­ern times. He has en­coun­tered all these de­ter­rents and tri­umphed over them, sur­mounted them by liv­ing faith, and at­tained the high­lands of spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence in spite of them. But it is true that many who are in­wardly sure about God fear to as­sert such feel­ings of cer­tainty be­cause of the mul­ti­plic­ity and clev­er­ness of those who as­sem­ble ob­jec­tions and mag­nify dif­fi­cul­ties about be­liev­ing in God. It re­quires no great depth of in­tel­lect to pick flaws, ask ques­tions, or raise ob­jec­tions. But it does re­quire bril­liance of mind to an­swer these ques­tions and solve these dif­fi­cul­ties; faith cer­tainty is the great­est tech­nique for deal­ing with all such su­per­fi­cial con­tentions.

157:1.2Now Pe­ter had spo­ken hastily. Ju­das car­ried their funds, and he was across the lake. Nei­ther he, his brother, nor Je­sus had brought along any money. And know­ing that the Phar­isees were look­ing for them, they could not well go to Beth­saida to ob­tain money. When Pe­ter told Je­sus about the col­lec­tor and that he had prom­ised him the money, Je­sus said: “If you have prom­ised, then should you pay. But where­with will you re­deem your prom­ise? Will you again be­come a fish­er­man that you may honor your word? Nev­er­the­less, Pe­ter, it is well in the cir­cum­stances that we pay the tax. Let us give these men no oc­ca­sion for of­fense at our at­ti­tude. We will wait here while you go with the boat and cast for the fish, and when you have sold them at yon­der mar­ket, pay the col­lec­tor for all three of us.”

66:8.2It should be noted that both Lu­cifer and Cali­gas­tia had been pa­tiently in­structed and lov­ingly warned re­spect­ing their crit­i­cal ten­den­cies and the sub­tle de­vel­op­ment of their pride of self and its as­so­ci­ated ex­ag­ger­a­tion of the feel­ing of self-im­por­tance. But all of these at­tempts to help had been mis­con­strued as un­war­ranted crit­i­cism and as un­jus­ti­fied in­ter­fer­ence with per­sonal lib­er­ties. Both Cali­gas­tia and Lu­cifer judged their friendly ad­vis­ers as be­ing ac­tu­ated by the very rep­re­hen­si­ble mo­tives which were be­gin­ning to dom­i­nate their own dis­torted think­ing and mis­guided plan­ning. They judged their un­selfish ad­vis­ers by their own evolv­ing self­ish­ness.

91:5.3If you truly de­sire to over­come the habit of crit­i­ciz­ing some friend, the quick­est and surest way of achiev­ing such a change of at­ti­tude is to es­tab­lish the habit of pray­ing for that per­son ev­ery day of your life. But the so­cial reper­cus­sions of such prayers are de­pen­dent largely on two con­di­tions:

91:5.41. The per­son who is prayed for should know that he is be­ing prayed for.

91:5.52. The per­son who prays should come into in­ti­mate so­cial con­tact with the per­son for whom he is pray­ing.

5:5.12The ex­pe­ri­ence of God-con­scious­ness re­mains the same from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion, but with each ad­vanc­ing epoch in hu­man knowl­edge the philo­sophic con­cept and the the­o­logic def­i­ni­tions of God must change. God-know­ing­ness, re­li­gious con­scious­ness, is a uni­verse re­al­ity, but no mat­ter how valid (real) re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence is, it must be will­ing to sub­ject it­self to in­tel­li­gent crit­i­cism and rea­son­able philo­sophic in­ter­pre­ta­tion; it must not seek to be a thing apart in the to­tal­ity of hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence.

99:3.7The great weak­ness of all this un­rec­og­nized and un­con­scious type of re­li­gious ac­tiv­ity is that it is un­able to profit from open re­li­gious crit­i­cism and thereby at­tain to prof­itable lev­els of self-cor­rec­tion. It is a fact that re­li­gion does not grow un­less it is dis­ci­plined by con­struc­tive crit­i­cism, am­pli­fied by phi­los­o­phy, pu­ri­fied by sci­ence, and nour­ished by loyal fel­low­ship.

146:3.2The apos­tles were a bit dis­con­certed by the open man­ner of Je­sus’ as­sent to many of the Greek’s propo­si­tions, but Je­sus af­ter­ward pri­vately said to them: “My chil­dren, mar­vel not that I was tol­er­ant of the Greek’s phi­los­o­phy. True and gen­uine in­ward cer­tainty does not in the least fear out­ward anal­y­sis, nor does truth re­sent hon­est crit­i­cism. You should never for­get that in­tol­er­ance is the mask cov­er­ing up the en­ter­tain­ment of se­cret doubts as to the true­ness of one’s be­lief. No man is at any time dis­turbed by his neigh­bor’s at­ti­tude when he has per­fect con­fi­dence in the truth of that which he whole­heart­edly be­lieves. Cour­age is the con­fi­dence of thor­ough­go­ing hon­esty about those things which one pro­fesses to be­lieve. Sin­cere men are un­afraid of the crit­i­cal ex­am­i­na­tion of their true con­vic­tions and no­ble ide­als.”