sincerity

• ascenders’ s. is sublime by reaching Havona

26:4.13When, through and by the min­istry of all the helper hosts of the uni­ver­sal scheme of sur­vival, you are fi­nally de­posited on the re­ceiv­ing world of Ha­vona, you ar­rive with only one sort of per­fec­tion—per­fec­tion of pur­pose. Your pur­pose has been thor­oughly proved; your faith has been tested. You are known to be dis­ap­point­ment proof. Not even the fail­ure to dis­cern the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther can shake the faith or se­ri­ously dis­turb the trust of an as­cen­dant mor­tal who has passed through the ex­pe­ri­ence that all must tra­verse in or­der to at­tain the per­fect spheres of Ha­vona. By the time you reach Ha­vona, your sin­cer­ity has be­come sub­lime. Per­fec­tion of pur­pose and di­vin­ity of de­sire, with stead­fast­ness of faith, have se­cured your en­trance to the set­tled abodes of eter­nity; your de­liv­er­ance from the un­cer­tain­ties of time is full and com­plete; and now must you come face to face with the prob­lems of Ha­vona and the im­men­si­ties of Par­a­dise, to meet which you have so long been in train­ing in the ex­pe­ri­en­tial epochs of time on the world schools of space.

• key of the kingdom

39:4.14The keys of the king­dom of heaven are: sin­cer­ity, more sin­cer­ity, and more sin­cer­ity. All men have these keys. Men use them—ad­vance in spirit sta­tus—by de­ci­sions, by more de­ci­sions, and by more de­ci­sions. The high­est moral choice is the choice of the high­est pos­si­ble value, and al­ways—in any sphere, in all of them—this is to choose to do the will of God. If man thus chooses, he is great, though he be the hum­blest cit­i­zen of Je­ru­sem or even the least of mor­tals on Uran­tia.

• shadow of hair’s turning, premeditated for untrue purpose, is falsehood

48:6.33Law is life it­self and not the rules of its con­duct. Evil is a trans­gres­sion of law, not a vi­o­la­tion of the rules of con­duct per­tain­ing to life, which is the law. False­hood is not a mat­ter of nar­ra­tion tech­nique but some­thing pre­med­i­tated as a per­ver­sion of truth. The cre­ation of new pic­tures out of old facts, the re­state­ment of pa­ren­tal life in the lives of off­spring—these are the artis­tic tri­umphs of truth. The shadow of a hair’s turn­ing, pre­med­i­tated for an un­true pur­pose, the slight­est twist­ing or per­ver­sion of that which is prin­ci­ple—these con­sti­tute false­ness. But the fe­tish of fac­tu­al­ized truth, fos­silized truth, the iron band of so-called un­chang­ing truth, holds one blindly in a closed cir­cle of cold fact. One can be tech­ni­cally right as to fact and ev­er­last­ingly wrong in the truth.

• Eve’s project of modifying the divine plan was sincere

75:4.6Even though this project of mod­i­fy­ing the di­vine plan had been con­ceived and ex­e­cuted with en­tire sin­cer­ity and with only the high­est mo­tives con­cern­ing the wel­fare of the world, it con­sti­tuted evil be­cause it rep­re­sented the wrong way to achieve righ­teous ends, be­cause it de­parted from the right way, the di­vine plan.

• sometimes causes pain

100:7.2The un­fail­ing kind­ness of Je­sus touched the hearts of men, but his stal­wart strength of char­ac­ter amazed his fol­low­ers. He was truly sin­cere; there was noth­ing of the hyp­ocrite in him. He was free from af­fec­ta­tion; he was al­ways so re­fresh­ingly gen­uine. He never stooped to pre­tense, and he never re­sorted to sham­ming. He lived the truth, even as he taught it. He was the truth. He was con­strained to pro­claim sav­ing truth to his gen­er­a­tion, even though such sin­cer­ity some­times caused pain. He was un­ques­tion­ingly loyal to all truth.

• of prayer is assurance of its being heard

145:2.6“Have you not read these promises? Do you not be­lieve the Scrip­tures? Do you not un­der­stand that the prophet’s words are ful­filled in what you be­hold this very day? And did not Jeremiah ex­hort you to make re­li­gion an af­fair of the heart, to re­late your­selves to God as in­di­vid­u­als? Did not the prophet tell you that the God of heaven would search your in­di­vid­ual hearts? And were you not warned that the nat­u­ral hu­man heart is de­ceit­ful above all things and of­ten­times des­per­ately wicked?

• key of the kingdom

170:2.211. Faith, sin­cer­ity. To come as a lit­tle child, to re­ceive the be­stowal of son­ship as a gift; to sub­mit to the do­ing of the Fa­ther’s will with­out ques­tion­ing and in the full con­fi­dence and gen­uine trust­ful­ness of the Fa­ther’s wis­dom; to come into the king­dom free from prej­u­dice and pre­con­cep­tion; to be open-minded and teach­able like an un­spoiled child.

• even in material-mindedness, Philip was sincere

181:2.20And then Je­sus went over to Philip, who, stand­ing up, heard this mes­sage from his Mas­ter: “Philip, you have asked me many fool­ish ques­tions, but I have done my ut­most to an­swer ev­ery one, and now would I an­swer the last of such ques­tion­ings which have arisen in your most hon­est but un­spir­i­tual mind. All the time I have been com­ing around to­ward you, have you been say­ing to your­self, ‘What shall I ever do if the Mas­ter goes away and leaves us alone in the world?’ O, you of lit­tle faith! And yet you have al­most as much as many of your breth­ren. You have been a good stew­ard, Philip. You failed us only a few times, and one of those fail­ures we uti­lized to man­i­fest the Fa­ther’s glory. Your of­fice of stew­ard­ship is about over. You must soon more fully do the work you were called to do—the preach­ing of this gospel of the king­dom. Philip, you have al­ways wanted to be shown, and very soon shall you see great things. Far bet­ter that you should have seen all this by faith, but since you were sin­cere even in your ma­te­rial sight­ed­ness, you will live to see my words ful­filled. And then, when you are blessed with spir­i­tual vi­sion, go forth to your work, ded­i­cat­ing your life to the cause of lead­ing man­kind to search for God and to seek eter­nal re­al­i­ties with the eye of spir­i­tual faith and not with the eyes of the ma­te­rial mind. Re­mem­ber, Philip, you have a great mis­sion on earth, for the world is filled with those who look at life just as you have tended to. You have a great work to do, and when it is fin­ished in faith, you shall come to me in my king­dom, and I will take great plea­sure in show­ing you that which eye has not seen, ear heard, nor the mor­tal mind con­ceived. In the mean­time, be­come as a lit­tle child in the king­dom of the spirit and per­mit me, as the spirit of the new teacher, to lead you for­ward in the spir­i­tual king­dom. And in this way will I be able to do much for you which I was not able to ac­com­plish when I so­journed with you as a mor­tal of the realm. And al­ways re­mem­ber, Philip, he who has seen me has seen the Fa­ther.”

• most serviceable when wedded to discretion

181:2.21Then went the Mas­ter over to Na­than­iel. As Na­than­iel stood up, Je­sus bade him be seated and, sit­ting down by his side, said: “Na­than­iel, you have learned to live above prej­u­dice and to prac­tice in­creased tol­er­ance since you be­came my apos­tle. But there is much more for you to learn. You have been a bless­ing to your fel­lows in that they have al­ways been ad­mon­ished by your con­sis­tent sin­cer­ity. When I have gone, it may be that your frank­ness will in­ter­fere with your get­ting along well with your breth­ren, both old and new. You should learn that the ex­pres­sion of even a good thought must be mod­u­lated in ac­cor­dance with the in­tel­lec­tual sta­tus and spir­i­tual de­vel­op­ment of the hearer. Sin­cer­ity is most ser­vice­able in the work of the king­dom when it is wed­ded to dis­cre­tion.