individual, the

145:2.8“No more should you fear that God will pun­ish a na­tion for the sin of an in­di­vid­ual; nei­ther will the Fa­ther in heaven pun­ish one of his be­liev­ing chil­dren for the sins of a na­tion, al­beit the in­di­vid­ual mem­ber of any fam­ily must of­ten suf­fer the ma­te­rial con­se­quences of fam­ily mis­takes and group trans­gres­sions. Do you not re­al­ize that the hope of a bet­ter na­tion—or a bet­ter world—is bound up in the prog­ress and en­light­en­ment of the in­di­vid­ual?”

117:6.22The Fa­ther is no re­specter of per­sons; he treats each of his as­cend­ing sons as cos­mic in­di­vid­u­als. The Su­preme like­wise is no re­specter of per­sons; he treats his ex­pe­ri­en­tial chil­dren as a sin­gle cos­mic to­tal.

4:2.1Na­ture is in a lim­ited sense the phys­i­cal habit of God. The con­duct, or ac­tion, of God is qual­i­fied and pro­vi­sion­ally mod­i­fied by the ex­per­i­men­tal plans and the evo­lu­tion­ary pat­terns of a lo­cal uni­verse, a con­stel­la­tion, a sys­tem, or a planet. God acts in ac­cor­dance with a well-de­fined, un­chang­ing, im­mutable law through­out the wide-spread­ing mas­ter uni­verse; but he mod­i­fies the pat­terns of his ac­tion so as to con­tribute to the co-or­di­nate and bal­anced con­duct of each uni­verse, con­stel­la­tion, sys­tem, planet, and per­son­al­ity in ac­cor­dance with the lo­cal ob­jects, aims, and plans of the fi­nite projects of evo­lu­tion­ary un­fold­ing.

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.

195:1.1The Hel­l­eniza­tion of Chris­tian­ity started in earnest on that event­ful day when the Apos­tle Paul stood be­fore the coun­cil of the Are­opa­gus in Athens and told the Athe­ni­ans about “the Un­known God.” There, un­der the shadow of the Acrop­o­lis, this Ro­man cit­i­zen pro­claimed to these Greeks his ver­sion of the new re­li­gion which had taken ori­gin in the Jew­ish land of Gal­i­lee. And there was some­thing strangely alike in Greek phi­los­o­phy and many of the teach­ings of Je­sus. They had a com­mon goal—both aimed at the emer­gence of the in­di­vid­ual. The Greek, at so­cial and po­lit­i­cal emer­gence; Je­sus, at moral and spir­i­tual emer­gence. The Greek taught in­tel­lec­tual lib­er­al­ism lead­ing to po­lit­i­cal free­dom; Je­sus taught spir­i­tual lib­er­al­ism lead­ing to re­li­gious lib­erty. These two ideas put to­gether con­sti­tuted a new and mighty char­ter for hu­man free­dom; they pre­saged man’s so­cial, po­lit­i­cal, and spir­i­tual lib­erty.

138:8.9The dis­ci­ples early learned that the Mas­ter had a pro­found re­spect and sym­pa­thetic re­gard for ev­ery hu­man be­ing he met, and they were tremen­dously im­pressed by this uni­form and un­vary­ing con­sid­er­a­tion which he so con­sis­tently gave to all sorts of men, women, and chil­dren. He would pause in the midst of a pro­found dis­course that he might go out in the road to speak good cheer to a pass­ing woman laden with her bur­den of body and soul. He would in­ter­rupt a se­ri­ous con­fer­ence with his apos­tles to frat­er­nize with an in­trud­ing child. Noth­ing ever seemed so im­por­tant to Je­sus as the in­di­vid­ual hu­man who chanced to be in his im­me­di­ate pres­ence. He was mas­ter and teacher, but he was more—he was also a friend and neigh­bor, an un­der­stand­ing com­rade.

140:8.113. So­cial at­ti­tude. The Jew­ish rab­bis had long de­bated the ques­tion: Who is my neigh­bor? Je­sus came pre­sent­ing the idea of ac­tive and spon­ta­neous kind­ness, a love of one’s fel­low men so gen­uine that it ex­panded the neigh­bor­hood to in­clude the whole world, thereby mak­ing all men one’s neigh­bors. But with all this, Je­sus was in­ter­ested only in the in­di­vid­ual, not the mass. Je­sus was not a so­ci­ol­o­gist, but he did la­bor to break down all forms of self­ish iso­la­tion. He taught pure sym­pa­thy, com­pas­sion. Mi­chael of Neb­a­don is a mercy-dom­i­nated Son; com­pas­sion is his very na­ture.

140:10.5The one char­ac­ter­is­tic of Je­sus’ teach­ing was that the moral­ity of his phi­los­o­phy orig­i­nated in the per­sonal re­la­tion of the in­di­vid­ual to God—this very child-fa­ther re­la­tion­ship. Je­sus placed em­pha­sis on the in­di­vid­ual, not on the race or na­tion. While eat­ing sup­per, Je­sus had the talk with Mat­thew in which he ex­plained that the moral­ity of any act is de­ter­mined by the in­di­vid­ual’s mo­tive. Je­sus’ moral­ity was al­ways pos­i­tive. The golden rule as re­stated by Je­sus de­mands ac­tive so­cial con­tact; the older neg­a­tive rule could be obeyed in iso­la­tion. Je­sus stripped moral­ity of all rules and cer­e­monies and el­e­vated it to ma­jes­tic lev­els of spir­i­tual think­ing and truly righ­teous liv­ing.

144:6.3An­drew and Ab­ner al­ter­nated in pre­sid­ing over these joint meet­ings of the two apos­tolic groups. These men had many dif­fi­cul­ties to dis­cuss and nu­mer­ous prob­lems to solve. Again and again would they take their trou­bles to Je­sus, only to hear him say: “I am con­cerned only with your per­sonal and purely re­li­gious prob­lems. I am the rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Fa­ther to the in­di­vid­ual, not to the group. If you are in per­sonal dif­fi­culty in your re­la­tions with God, come to me, and I will hear you and coun­sel you in the so­lu­tion of your prob­lem. But when you en­ter upon the co-or­di­na­tion of di­ver­gent hu­man in­ter­pre­ta­tions of re­li­gious ques­tions and upon the so­cial­iza­tion of re­li­gion, you are des­tined to solve all such prob­lems by your own de­ci­sions. Al­beit, I am ever sym­pa­thetic and al­ways in­ter­ested, and when you ar­rive at your con­clu­sions touch­ing these mat­ters of non­spir­i­tual im­port, pro­vided you are all agreed, then I pledge in ad­vance my full ap­proval and hearty co-op­er­a­tion. And now, in or­der to leave you un­ham­pered in your de­lib­er­a­tions, I am leav­ing you for two weeks. Be not anx­ious about me, for I will re­turn to you. I will be about my Fa­ther’s busi­ness, for we have other realms be­sides this one.”

170:3.10The re­li­gion of the king­dom is per­sonal, in­di­vid­ual; the fruits, the re­sults, are fa­mil­ial, so­cial. Je­sus never failed to ex­alt the sa­cred­ness of the in­di­vid­ual as con­trasted with the com­mu­nity. But he also rec­og­nized that man de­vel­ops his char­ac­ter by un­selfish ser­vice; that he un­folds his moral na­ture in lov­ing re­la­tions with his fel­lows.

170:3.11By teach­ing that the king­dom is within, by ex­alt­ing the in­di­vid­ual, Je­sus struck the death­blow of the old so­ci­ety in that he ush­ered in the new dis­pen­sa­tion of true so­cial righ­teous­ness. This new or­der of so­ci­ety the world has lit­tle known be­cause it has re­fused to prac­tice the prin­ci­ples of the gospel of the king­dom of heaven. And when this king­dom of spir­i­tual pre-em­i­nence does come upon the earth, it will not be man­i­fested in mere im­proved so­cial and ma­te­rial con­di­tions, but rather in the glo­ries of those en­hanced and en­riched spir­i­tual val­ues which are char­ac­ter­is­tic of the ap­proach­ing age of im­proved hu­man re­la­tions and ad­vanc­ing spir­i­tual at­tain­ments.

170:4.91. The pre-em­i­nence of the in­di­vid­ual.

171:7.4Je­sus could help men so much be­cause he loved them so sin­cerely. He truly loved each man, each woman, and each child. He could be such a true friend be­cause of his re­mark­able in­sight—he knew so fully what was in the heart and in the mind of man. He was an in­ter­ested and keen ob­server. He was an ex­pert in the com­pre­hen­sion of hu­man need, clever in de­tect­ing hu­man long­ings.

194:3.7The re­li­gion of Je­sus fos­ters the high­est type of hu­man civ­i­liza­tion in that it cre­ates the high­est type of spir­i­tual per­son­al­ity and pro­claims the sa­cred­ness of that per­son.

69:1.1All hu­man in­sti­tu­tions min­is­ter to some so­cial need, past or pres­ent, not­with­stand­ing that their overde­vel­op­ment un­fail­ingly de­tracts from the worth-while­ness of the in­di­vid­ual in that per­son­al­ity is over­shad­owed and ini­tia­tive is di­min­ished. Man should con­trol his in­sti­tu­tions rather than per­mit him­self to be dom­i­nated by these cre­ations of ad­vanc­ing civ­i­liza­tion.

66:6.2Slav­ery to tra­di­tion pro­duces sta­bil­ity and co-op­er­a­tion by sen­ti­men­tally link­ing the past with the pres­ent, but it like­wise sti­fles ini­tia­tive and en­slaves the cre­ative pow­ers of the per­son­al­ity. The whole world was caught in the stale­mate of tra­di­tion-bound mores when the Cali­gas­tia one hun­dred ar­rived and be­gan the procla­ma­tion of the new gospel of in­di­vid­ual ini­tia­tive within the so­cial groups of that day. But this benef­i­cent rule was so soon in­ter­rupted that the races never have been wholly lib­er­ated from the slav­ery of cus­tom; fash­ion still un­duly dom­i­nates Uran­tia.

100:0.1The ex­pe­ri­ence of dy­namic re­li­gious liv­ing trans­forms the mediocre in­di­vid­ual into a per­son­al­ity of ide­al­is­tic power. Re­li­gion min­is­ters to the prog­ress of all through fos­ter­ing the prog­ress of each in­di­vid­ual, and the prog­ress of each is aug­mented through the achieve­ment of all.

112:5.8The gov­ern­ments of Or­von­ton and Neb­a­don do not claim ab­so­lute per­fec­tion for the de­tail work­ing of the uni­ver­sal plan of mor­tal reper­son­al­iza­tion, but they do claim to, and ac­tu­ally do, man­i­fest pa­tience, tol­er­ance, un­der­stand­ing, and mer­ci­ful sym­pa­thy. We had rather as­sume the risk of a sys­tem re­bel­lion than to court the haz­ard of de­priv­ing one strug­gling mor­tal from any evo­lu­tion­ary world of the eter­nal joy of pur­su­ing the as­cend­ing ca­reer.