sacred books

• beliefs altered by mythmaking tendency

4:5.1Re­li­gious tra­di­tion is the im­per­fectly pre­served rec­ord of the ex­pe­ri­ences of the God-know­ing men of past ages, but such rec­ords are un­trust­wor­thy as guides for re­li­gious liv­ing or as the source of true in­for­ma­tion about the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther. Such an­cient be­liefs have been in­vari­ably al­tered by the fact that prim­i­tive man was a myth­maker.

• nature › fail to distinguish Deity from subordinate personalities

4:5.2One of the great­est sources of con­fu­sion on Uran­tia con­cern­ing the na­ture of God grows out of the fail­ure of your sa­cred books clearly to dis­tin­guish be­tween the per­son­al­i­ties of the Par­a­dise Trin­ity and be­tween Par­a­dise De­ity and the lo­cal uni­verse cre­ators and ad­min­is­tra­tors. Dur­ing the past dis­pen­sa­tions of par­tial un­der­stand­ing, your priests and proph­ets failed clearly to dif­fer­en­ti­ate be­tween Plan­e­tary Princes, Sys­tem Sov­er­eigns, Con­stel­la­tion Fa­thers, Cre­ator Sons, Super­uni­verse Rulers, the Su­preme Be­ing, and the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther. Many of the mes­sages of sub­or­di­nate per­son­al­i­ties, such as Life Car­ri­ers and var­i­ous or­ders of an­gels, have been, in your rec­ords, pre­sented as com­ing from God him­self. Uran­tian re­li­gious thought still con­fuses the as­so­ciate per­son­al­i­ties of De­ity with the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther him­self, so that all are in­cluded un­der one ap­pel­la­tion.

• nature › relics of barbarism retained within

70:10.8It is not to be won­dered that the He­brews and other semi­civ­i­lized tribes prac­ticed such prim­i­tive tech­niques of jus­tice ad­min­is­tra­tion three thou­sand years ago, but it is most amaz­ing that think­ing men would sub­se­quently re­tain such a relic of bar­barism within the pages of a col­lec­tion of sa­cred writ­ings. Re­flec­tive think­ing should make it clear that no di­vine be­ing ever gave mor­tal man such un­fair in­struc­tions re­gard­ing the de­tec­tion and ad­ju­di­ca­tion of sus­pected mar­i­tal un­faith­ful­ness.

• nature › fetishistic prisons incarcerating man’s spiritual imagination

88:2.6Words even­tu­ally be­came fe­tishes, more es­pe­cially those which were re­garded as God’s words; in this way the sa­cred books of many re­li­gions have be­come fetishis­tic pris­ons in­car­cer­at­ing the spir­i­tual imag­i­na­tion of man. Moses’ very ef­fort against fe­tishes be­came a su­preme fe­tish; his com­mand­ment was later used to stul­tify art and to re­tard the en­joy­ment and ado­ra­tion of the beau­ti­ful.

• fetish that every truth is contained therein

88:2.7In olden times the fe­tish word of au­thor­ity was a fear-in­spir­ing doc­trine, the most ter­ri­ble of all tyrants which en­slave men. A doc­tri­nal fe­tish will lead mor­tal man to be­tray him­self into the clutches of big­otry, fa­nati­cism, su­per­sti­tion, in­tol­er­ance, and the most atro­cious of bar­barous cru­el­ties. Mod­ern re­spect for wis­dom and truth is but the re­cent es­cape from the fe­tish-mak­ing ten­dency up to the higher lev­els of think­ing and rea­son­ing. Con­cern­ing the ac­cu­mu­lated fe­tish writ­ings which var­i­ous re­li­gion­ists hold as sa­cred books, it is not only be­lieved that what is in the book is true, but also that ev­ery truth is con­tained in the book. If one of these sa­cred books hap­pens to speak of the earth as be­ing flat, then, for long gen­er­a­tions, oth­er­wise sane men and women will refuse to ac­cept pos­i­tive ev­i­dence that the planet is round.

• arrant fetishism to let a chance passage determine one’s decisions

88:2.8The prac­tice of open­ing one of these sa­cred books to let the eye chance upon a pas­sage, the fol­low­ing of which may de­ter­mine im­por­tant life de­ci­sions or projects, is noth­ing more nor less than ar­rant fet­ish­ism. To take an oath on a “holy book” or to swear by some ob­ject of su­preme ven­er­a­tion is a form of re­fined fet­ish­ism.

• nature › winnowed moral wisdom of many centuries

88:2.9But it does rep­re­sent real evo­lu­tion­ary prog­ress to ad­vance from the fe­tish fear of a sav­age chief’s fin­ger­nail trim­mings to the ado­ra­tion of a su­perb col­lec­tion of let­ters, laws, leg­ends, al­le­gories, myths, po­ems, and chron­i­cles which, af­ter all, re­flect the win­nowed moral wis­dom of many cen­turies, at least up to the time and event of their be­ing as­sem­bled as a “sa­cred book.”

88:2.10To be­come fe­tishes, words had to be con­sid­ered in­spired, and the in­vo­ca­tion of sup­posed di­vinely in­spired writ­ings led di­rectly to the es­tab­lish­ment of the au­thor­ity of the church, while the evo­lu­tion of civil forms led to the fruition of the au­thor­ity of the state.

• nature › deleterious agency of religion

91:5.6Prayer is the tech­nique whereby, sooner or later, ev­ery re­li­gion be­comes in­sti­tu­tion­al­ized. And in time prayer be­comes as­so­ci­ated with nu­mer­ous sec­ondary agen­cies, some help­ful, oth­ers de­cid­edly dele­te­ri­ous, such as priests, holy books, wor­ship rit­u­als, and cer­e­mo­ni­als.

• finding plausible theories to justify outworn customs

92:2.3When mod­ern man won­ders at the pre­sen­ta­tion of so much in the scrip­tures of dif­fer­ent re­li­gions that may be re­garded as ob­scene, he should pause to con­sider that pass­ing gen­er­a­tions have feared to elim­i­nate what their an­ces­tors deemed to be holy and sa­cred. A great deal that one gen­er­a­tion might look upon as ob­scene, pre­ced­ing gen­er­a­tions have con­sid­ered a part of their ac­cepted mores, even as ap­proved re­li­gious rit­u­als. A con­sid­er­able amount of re­li­gious con­tro­versy has been oc­ca­sioned by the never-end­ing at­tempts to rec­on­cile olden but rep­re­hen­si­ble prac­tices with newly ad­vanced rea­son, to find plau­si­ble the­o­ries in jus­ti­fi­ca­tion of creedal per­pet­u­a­tion of an­cient and out­worn cus­toms.

• nature › not written as infallible guidebook

97:7.3These He­brew priests and scribes had a sin­gle idea in their minds, and that was the re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of the Jew­ish na­tion, the glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of He­brew tra­di­tions, and the ex­al­ta­tion of their racial his­tory. If there is re­sent­ment of the fact that these priests have fas­tened their er­ro­neous ideas upon such a large part of the Oc­ci­den­tal world, it should be re­mem­bered that they did not in­ten­tion­ally do this; they did not claim to be writ­ing by in­spi­ra­tion; they made no pro­fes­sion to be writ­ing a sa­cred book. They were merely prepar­ing a text­book de­signed to bol­ster up the dwin­dling cour­age of their fel­lows in cap­tiv­ity. They were def­i­nitely aim­ing at im­prov­ing the na­tional spirit and morale of their com­pa­tri­ots. It re­mained for later-day men to as­sem­ble these and other writ­ings into a guide book of sup­pos­edly in­fal­li­ble teach­ings.

• blunder to miraculously interpret certain epochs of history

97:8.5All mod­ern re­li­gions have se­ri­ously blun­dered in the at­tempt to put a mirac­u­lous in­ter­pre­ta­tion on cer­tain epochs of hu­man his­tory. While it is true that God has many times thrust a Fa­ther’s hand of prov­i­den­tial in­ter­ven­tion into the stream of hu­man af­fairs, it is a mis­take to re­gard the­o­logic dog­mas and re­li­gious su­per­sti­tion as a super­nat­u­ral sed­i­men­ta­tion ap­pear­ing by mirac­u­lous ac­tion in this stream of hu­man his­tory. The fact that the “Most Highs rule in the king­doms of men” does not con­vert sec­u­lar his­tory into so-called sa­cred his­tory.

• almost completely absent in Greece

98:2.7The evo­lu­tion of re­li­gious phi­los­o­phy among the Hel­lenic and He­brew peo­ples af­fords a con­trastive il­lus­tra­tion of the func­tion of the church as an in­sti­tu­tion in the shap­ing of cul­tural prog­ress. In Pales­tine, hu­man thought was so priest-con­trolled and scrip­ture-di­rected that phi­los­o­phy and aes­thet­ics were en­tirely sub­merged in re­li­gion and moral­ity. In Greece, the al­most com­plete ab­sence of priests and “sa­cred scrip­tures” left the hu­man mind free and un­fet­tered, re­sult­ing in a startling de­vel­op­ment in depth of thought. But re­li­gion as a per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence failed to keep pace with the in­tel­lec­tual prob­ings into the na­ture and re­al­ity of the cos­mos.

• Paul little dreamed his letters would be regarded as word of God

98:7.96. The per­sonal view­point of Paul of Tar­sus. And it should be re­corded that Mith­ra­ism was the dom­i­nant re­li­gion of Tar­sus dur­ing his ado­les­cence. Paul lit­tle dreamed that his well-in­ten­tioned let­ters to his con­verts would some­day be re­garded by still later Chris­tians as the “word of God.” Such well-mean­ing teach­ers must not be held ac­count­able for the use made of their writ­ings by later-day suc­ces­sors.

• nature › in agreement on relationship of God with man

130:3.6Al­though these trans­la­tions were made at Alexan­dria, Ga­nid did not fi­nally ar­range these se­lec­tions and add his own per­sonal con­clu­sions un­til near the end of their so­journ in Rome. He was much sur­prised to dis­cover that the best of the au­thors of the world’s sa­cred lit­er­a­ture all more or less clearly rec­og­nized the ex­is­tence of an eter­nal God and were much in agree­ment with re­gard to his char­ac­ter and his re­la­tion­ship with mor­tal man.

• Scriptures invoked to support contending views of Messiah

136:1.1The Jews en­ter­tained many ideas about the ex­pected de­liv­erer, and each of these dif­fer­ent schools of Mes­sianic teach­ing was able to point to state­ments in the He­brew scrip­tures as proof of their con­tentions. In a gen­eral way, the Jews re­garded their na­tional his­tory as be­gin­ning with Abra­ham and cul­mi­nat­ing in the Mes­siah and the new age of the king­dom of God. In ear­lier times they had en­vis­aged this de­liv­erer as “the ser­vant of the Lord,” then as “the Son of Man,” while lat­terly some even went so far as to re­fer to the Mes­siah as the “Son of God.” But no mat­ter whether he was called the “seed of Abra­ham” or “the son of David,” all were agreed that he was to be the Mes­siah, the “anointed one.” Thus did the con­cept evolve from the “ser­vant of the Lord” to the “son of David,” “Son of Man,” and “Son of God.”

• Paul little dreamed his letters would be regarded as word of God

149:2.2The Apos­tle Paul, in his ef­forts to bring the teach­ings of Je­sus to the fa­vor­able no­tice of cer­tain groups in his day, wrote many let­ters of in­struc­tion and ad­mo­ni­tion. Other teach­ers of Je­sus’ gospel did like­wise, but none of them re­al­ized that some of these writ­ings would sub­se­quently be brought to­gether by those who would set them forth as the em­bod­i­ment of the teach­ings of Je­sus. And so, while so-called Chris­tian­ity does con­tain more of the Mas­ter’s gospel than any other re­li­gion, it does also con­tain much that Je­sus did not teach. Aside from the in­cor­po­ra­tion of many teach­ings from the Per­sian mys­ter­ies and much of the Greek phi­los­o­phy into early Chris­tian­ity, two great mis­takes were made:

• believers should reject authority of traditions regarded as word of God

155:6.2You have come out from among those of your fel­lows who choose to re­main sat­is­fied with a re­li­gion of mind, who crave se­cu­rity and pre­fer con­for­mity. You have elected to ex­change your feel­ings of au­thor­i­ta­tive cer­tainty for the as­sur­ances of the spirit of ad­ven­tur­ous and pro­gres­sive faith. You have dared to protest against the gru­el­ing bond­age of in­sti­tu­tional re­li­gion and to re­ject the au­thor­ity of the tra­di­tions of rec­ord which are now re­garded as the word of God. Our Fa­ther did in­deed speak through Moses, Eli­jah, Isa­iah, Amos, and Hosea, but he did not cease to min­is­ter words of truth to the world when these proph­ets of old made an end of their ut­ter­ances. My Fa­ther is no re­specter of races or gen­er­a­tions in that the word of truth is vouch­safed one age and with­held from an­other. Com­mit not the folly of call­ing that di­vine which is wholly hu­man, and fail not to dis­cern the words of truth which come not through the tra­di­tional or­a­cles of sup­posed in­spi­ra­tion.

• give up practice of always quoting Scriptures

155:6.7I ad­mon­ish you to give up the prac­tice of al­ways quot­ing the proph­ets of old and prais­ing the heroes of Is­rael, and in­stead as­pire to be­come liv­ing proph­ets of the Most High and spir­i­tual heroes of the com­ing king­dom. To honor the God-know­ing lead­ers of the past may in­deed be worth while, but why, in so do­ing, should you sac­ri­fice the su­preme ex­pe­ri­ence of hu­man ex­is­tence: find­ing God for your­selves and know­ing him in your own souls?

• find word of God not only on pages of s.b.

155:6.12You must cease to seek for the word of God only on the pages of the olden rec­ords of the­o­logic au­thor­ity. Those who are born of the spirit of God shall hence­forth dis­cern the word of God re­gard­less of whence it ap­pears to take ori­gin. Di­vine truth must not be dis­counted be­cause the chan­nel of its be­stowal is ap­par­ently hu­man. Many of your breth­ren have minds which ac­cept the the­ory of God while they spir­i­tu­ally fail to re­al­ize the pres­ence of God. And that is just the rea­son why I have so of­ten taught you that the king­dom of heaven can best be re­al­ized by ac­quir­ing the spir­i­tual at­ti­tude of a sin­cere child. It is not the men­tal im­ma­tu­rity of the child that I com­mend to you but rather the spir­i­tual sim­plic­ity of such an easy-be­liev­ing and fully-trust­ing lit­tle one. It is not so im­por­tant that you should know about the fact of God as that you should in­creas­ingly grow in the abil­ity to feel the pres­ence of God.

159:4.1And then went Je­sus over to Abila, where Na­than­iel and his as­so­ciates la­bored. Na­than­iel was much both­ered by some of Je­sus’ pro­nounce­ments which seemed to de­tract from the au­thor­ity of the rec­og­nized He­brew scrip­tures. Ac­cord­ingly, on this night, af­ter the usual pe­riod of ques­tions and an­swers, Na­than­iel took Je­sus away from the oth­ers and asked: “Mas­ter, could you trust me to know the truth about the Scrip­tures? I ob­serve that you teach us only a por­tion of the sa­cred writ­ings—the best as I view it—and I in­fer that you re­ject the teach­ings of the rab­bis to the ef­fect that the words of the law are the very words of God, hav­ing been with God in heaven even be­fore the times of Abra­ham and Moses. What is the truth about the Scrip­tures?” When Je­sus heard the ques­tion of his be­wil­dered apos­tle, he an­swered:

159:4.2“Na­than­iel, you have rightly judged; I do not re­gard the Scrip­tures as do the rab­bis. I will talk with you about this mat­ter on con­di­tion that you do not re­late these things to your breth­ren, who are not all pre­pared to re­ceive this teach­ing. The words of the law of Moses and the teach­ings of the Scrip­tures were not in ex­is­tence be­fore Abra­ham. Only in re­cent times have the Scrip­tures been gath­ered to­gether as we now have them. While they con­tain the best of the higher thoughts and long­ings of the Jew­ish peo­ple, they also con­tain much that is far from be­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the char­ac­ter and teach­ings of the Fa­ther in heaven; where­fore must I choose from among the bet­ter teach­ings those truths which are to be gleaned for the gospel of the king­dom.

• nature › faulty, altogether human in origin

159:4.3“These writ­ings are the work of men, some of them holy men, oth­ers not so holy. The teach­ings of these books rep­re­sent the views and ex­tent of en­light­en­ment of the times in which they had their ori­gin. As a rev­e­la­tion of truth, the last are more de­pend­able than the first. The Scrip­tures are faulty and al­to­gether hu­man in ori­gin, but mis­take not, they do con­sti­tute the best col­lec­tion of re­li­gious wis­dom and spir­i­tual truth to be found in all the world at this time.

159:4.4“Many of these books were not writ­ten by the per­sons whose names they bear, but that in no way de­tracts from the value of the truths which they con­tain. If the story of Jonah should not be a fact, even if Jonah had never lived, still would the pro­found truth of this nar­ra­tive, the love of God for Nin­eveh and the so-called hea­then, be none the less pre­cious in the eyes of all those who love their fel­low men. The Scrip­tures are sa­cred be­cause they pre­sent the thoughts and acts of men who were search­ing for God, and who in these writ­ings left on rec­ord their high­est con­cepts of righ­teous­ness, truth, and ho­li­ness. The Scrip­tures con­tain much that is true, very much, but in the light of your pres­ent teach­ing, you know that these writ­ings also con­tain much that is mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Fa­ther in heaven, the lov­ing God I have come to re­veal to all the worlds.

159:4.5“Na­than­iel, never per­mit your­self for one mo­ment to be­lieve the Scrip­ture rec­ords which tell you that the God of love di­rected your fore­fa­thers to go forth in bat­tle to slay all their en­e­mies—men, women, and chil­dren. Such rec­ords are the words of men, not very holy men, and they are not the word of God. The Scrip­tures al­ways have, and al­ways will, re­flect the in­tel­lec­tual, moral, and spir­i­tual sta­tus of those who cre­ate them. Have you not noted that the con­cepts of Yah­weh grow in beauty and glory as the proph­ets make their rec­ords from Samuel to Isa­iah? And you should re­mem­ber that the Scrip­tures are in­tended for re­li­gious in­struc­tion and spir­i­tual guid­ance. They are not the works of ei­ther his­to­ri­ans or philoso­phers.

• erroneous doctrine of perfection of scriptures

159:4.6“The thing most de­plorable is not merely this er­ro­neous idea of the ab­so­lute per­fec­tion of the Scrip­ture rec­ord and the in­fal­li­bil­ity of its teach­ings, but rather the con­fus­ing mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tion of these sa­cred writ­ings by the tra­di­tion-en­slaved scribes and Phar­isees at Je­ru­sa­lem. And now will they em­ploy both the doc­trine of the in­spi­ra­tion of the Scrip­tures and their mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tions thereof in their de­ter­mined ef­fort to with­stand these newer teach­ings of the gospel of the king­dom. Na­than­iel, never for­get, the Fa­ther does not limit the rev­e­la­tion of truth to any one gen­er­a­tion or to any one peo­ple. Many earnest seek­ers af­ter the truth have been, and will con­tinue to be, con­fused and dis­heart­ened by these doc­trines of the per­fec­tion of the Scrip­tures.

159:4.7“The au­thor­ity of truth is the very spirit that in­dwells its liv­ing man­i­fes­ta­tions, and not the dead words of the less il­lu­mi­nated and sup­pos­edly in­spired men of an­other gen­er­a­tion. And even if these holy men of old lived in­spired and spirit-filled lives, that does not mean that their words were sim­i­larly spir­i­tu­ally in­spired. To­day we make no rec­ord of the teach­ings of this gospel of the king­dom lest, when I have gone, you speed­ily be­come di­vided up into sundry groups of truth con­tenders as a re­sult of the di­ver­sity of your in­ter­pre­ta­tion of my teach­ings. For this gen­er­a­tion it is best that we live these truths while we shun the mak­ing of rec­ords.

159:4.8“Mark you well my words, Na­than­iel, noth­ing which hu­man na­ture has touched can be re­garded as in­fal­li­ble. Through the mind of man di­vine truth may in­deed shine forth, but al­ways of rel­a­tive pu­rity and par­tial di­vin­ity. The crea­ture may crave in­fal­li­bil­ity, but only the Cre­ators pos­sess it.

• nature › not sealed books of mystery

159:4.9“But the great­est er­ror of the teach­ing about the Scrip­tures is the doc­trine of their be­ing sealed books of mys­tery and wis­dom which only the wise minds of the na­tion dare to in­ter­pret. The rev­e­la­tions of di­vine truth are not sealed ex­cept by hu­man ig­no­rance, big­otry, and nar­row-minded in­tol­er­ance. The light of the Scrip­tures is only dimmed by prej­u­dice and dark­ened by su­per­sti­tion. A false fear of sa­cred­ness has pre­vented re­li­gion from be­ing safe­guarded by com­mon sense. The fear of the au­thor­ity of the sa­cred writ­ings of the past ef­fec­tively pre­vents the hon­est souls of to­day from ac­cept­ing the new light of the gospel, the light which these very God-know­ing men of an­other gen­er­a­tion so in­tensely longed to see.

• intellectually dishonest teachers of

159:4.10“But the sad­dest fea­ture of all is the fact that some of the teach­ers of the sanc­tity of this tra­di­tion­al­ism know this very truth. They more or less fully un­der­stand these lim­i­ta­tions of Scrip­ture, but they are moral cow­ards, in­tel­lec­tu­ally dis­hon­est. They know the truth re­gard­ing the sa­cred writ­ings, but they pre­fer to with­hold such dis­turb­ing facts from the peo­ple. And thus do they per­vert and dis­tort the Scrip­tures, mak­ing them the guide to slav­ish de­tails of the daily life and an au­thor­ity in things non­spir­i­tual in­stead of ap­peal­ing to the sa­cred writ­ings as the re­pos­i­tory of the moral wis­dom, re­li­gious in­spi­ra­tion, and the spir­i­tual teach­ing of the God-know­ing men of other gen­er­a­tions.”

159:4.11Na­than­iel was en­light­ened, and shocked, by the Mas­ter’s pro­nounce­ment. He long pon­dered this talk in the depths of his soul, but he told no man con­cern­ing this con­fer­ence un­til af­ter Je­sus’ as­cen­sion; and even then he feared to im­part the full story of the Mas­ter’s in­struc­tion.

• Jesus appropriated the cream of the Scriptures, repudiated the lesser

159:5.1At Phil­a­del­phia, where James was work­ing, Je­sus taught the dis­ci­ples about the pos­i­tive na­ture of the gospel of the king­dom. When, in the course of his re­marks, he in­ti­mated that some parts of the Scrip­ture were more truth-con­tain­ing than oth­ers and ad­mon­ished his hear­ers to feed their souls upon the best of the spir­i­tual food, James in­ter­rupted the Mas­ter, ask­ing: “Would you be good enough, Mas­ter, to sug­gest to us how we may choose the bet­ter pas­sages from the Scrip­tures for our per­sonal ed­i­fi­ca­tion?” And Je­sus replied: “Yes, James, when you read the Scrip­tures look for those eter­nally true and di­vinely beau­ti­ful teach­ings, such as:

159:5.2“Cre­ate in me a clean heart, O Lord.

159:5.3“The Lord is my shep­herd; I shall not want.

159:5.4“You should love your neigh­bor as your­self.

159:5.5“For I, the Lord your God, will hold your right hand, say­ing, fear not; I will help you.

159:5.6“Nei­ther shall the na­tions learn war any more.”

159:5.7And this is il­lus­tra­tive of the way Je­sus, day by day, ap­pro­pri­ated the cream of the He­brew scrip­tures for the in­struc­tion of his fol­low­ers and for in­clu­sion in the teach­ings of the new gospel of the king­dom. Other re­li­gions had sug­gested the thought of the near­ness of God to man, but Je­sus made the care of God for man like the so­lic­i­tude of a lov­ing fa­ther for the wel­fare of his de­pen­dent chil­dren and then made this teach­ing the cor­ner­stone of his re­li­gion. And thus did the doc­trine of the fa­ther­hood of God make im­per­a­tive the prac­tice of the broth­er­hood of man. The wor­ship of God and the ser­vice of man be­came the sum and sub­stance of his re­li­gion. Je­sus took the best of the Jew­ish re­li­gion and trans­lated it to a wor­thy set­ting in the new teach­ings of the gospel of the king­dom.

159:5.8Je­sus put the spirit of pos­i­tive ac­tion into the pas­sive doc­trines of the Jew­ish re­li­gion. In the place of neg­a­tive com­pli­ance with cer­e­mo­nial re­quire­ments, Je­sus en­joined the pos­i­tive do­ing of that which his new re­li­gion re­quired of those who ac­cepted it. Je­sus’ re­li­gion con­sisted not merely in be­liev­ing, but in ac­tu­ally do­ing, those things which the gospel re­quired. He did not teach that the essence of his re­li­gion con­sisted in so­cial ser­vice, but rather that so­cial ser­vice was one of the cer­tain ef­fects of the pos­ses­sion of the spirit of true re­li­gion.

159:5.9Je­sus did not hes­i­tate to ap­pro­pri­ate the bet­ter half of a Scrip­ture while he re­pu­di­ated the lesser por­tion. His great ex­hor­ta­tion, “Love your neigh­bor as your­self,” he took from the Scrip­ture which reads: “You shall not take vengeance against the chil­dren of your peo­ple, but you shall love your neigh­bor as your­self.” Je­sus ap­pro­pri­ated the pos­i­tive por­tion of this Scrip­ture while re­ject­ing the neg­a­tive part. He even op­posed neg­a­tive or purely pas­sive non­re­sis­tance. Said he: “When an en­emy smites you on one cheek, do not stand there dumb and pas­sive but in pos­i­tive at­ti­tude turn the other; that is, do the best thing pos­si­ble ac­tively to lead your brother in er­ror away from the evil paths into the bet­ter ways of righ­teous liv­ing.” Je­sus re­quired his fol­low­ers to re­act pos­i­tively and ag­gres­sively to ev­ery life sit­u­a­tion. The turn­ing of the other cheek, or what­ever act that may typ­ify, de­mands ini­tia­tive, ne­ces­si­tates vig­or­ous, ac­tive, and coura­geous ex­pres­sion of the be­liever’s per­son­al­ity.

• Scriptures invoked to support contending views of Messiah

172:3.4Hav­ing de­cided upon mak­ing a pub­lic en­trance into Je­ru­sa­lem, the Mas­ter was con­fronted with the ne­ces­sity of choos­ing a proper method of ex­e­cut­ing such a re­solve. Je­sus thought over all of the many more or less con­tra­dic­tory so-called Mes­sianic prophe­cies, but there seemed to be only one which was at all ap­pro­pri­ate for him to fol­low. Most of these pro­phetic ut­ter­ances de­picted a king, the son and suc­ces­sor of David, a bold and ag­gres­sive tem­po­ral de­liv­erer of all Is­rael from the yoke of for­eign dom­i­na­tion. But there was one Scrip­ture that had some­times been as­so­ci­ated with the Mes­siah by those who held more to the spir­i­tual con­cept of his mis­sion, which Je­sus thought might con­sis­tently be taken as a guide for his pro­jected en­try into Je­ru­sa­lem. This Scrip­ture was found in Zechariah, and it said: “Re­joice greatly, O daugh­ter of Zion; shout, O daugh­ter of Je­ru­sa­lem. Be­hold, your king comes to you. He is just and he brings sal­va­tion. He comes as the lowly one, rid­ing upon an ass, upon a colt, the foal of an ass.”