unbelievers

102:7.4True, many ap­par­ently re­li­gious traits can grow out of non­re­li­gious roots. Man can, in­tel­lec­tu­ally, deny God and yet be morally good, loyal, fil­ial, hon­est, and even ide­al­is­tic. Man may graft many purely hu­man­is­tic branches onto his ba­sic spir­i­tual na­ture and thus ap­par­ently prove his con­tentions in be­half of a god­less re­li­gion, but such an ex­pe­ri­ence is de­void of sur­vival val­ues, God-know­ing­ness and God-as­cen­sion. In such a mor­tal ex­pe­ri­ence only so­cial fruits are forth­com­ing, not spir­i­tual. The graft de­ter­mines the na­ture of the fruit, not­with­stand­ing that the liv­ing sus­te­nance is drawn from the roots of orig­i­nal di­vine en­dow­ment of both mind and spirit.

102:6.5Con­vic­tions about God may be ar­rived at through wise rea­son­ing, but the in­di­vid­ual be­comes God-know­ing only by faith, through per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence. In much that per­tains to life, prob­a­bil­ity must be reck­oned with, but when con­tact­ing with cos­mic re­al­ity, cer­tainty may be ex­pe­ri­enced when such mean­ings and val­ues are ap­proached by liv­ing faith. The God-know­ing soul dares to say, “I know,” even when this knowl­edge of God is ques­tioned by the un­be­liever who de­nies such cer­ti­tude be­cause it is not wholly sup­ported by in­tel­lec­tual logic. To ev­ery such doubter the be­liever only replies, “How do you know that I do not know?”

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.

102:7.7If sci­ence, phi­los­o­phy, or so­ci­ol­ogy dares to be­come dog­matic in con­tend­ing with the proph­ets of true re­li­gion, then should God-know­ing men re­ply to such un­war­ranted dog­ma­tism with that more farsee­ing dog­ma­tism of the cer­tainty of per­sonal spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence, “I know what I have ex­pe­ri­enced be­cause I am a son of I AM.” If the per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence of a faither is to be chal­lenged by dogma, then this faith-born son of the ex­pe­ri­en­ci­ble Fa­ther may re­ply with that un­chal­lenge­able dogma, the state­ment of his ac­tual son­ship with the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther.

102:7.8Only an un­qual­i­fied re­al­ity, an ab­so­lute, could dare con­sis­tently to be dog­matic. Those who as­sume to be dog­matic must, if con­sis­tent, sooner or later be driven into the arms of the Ab­so­lute of en­ergy, the Uni­ver­sal of truth, and the In­fi­nite of love.

102:7.9If the non­re­li­gious ap­proaches to cos­mic re­al­ity pre­sume to chal­lenge the cer­tainty of faith on the grounds of its un­proved sta­tus, then the spirit ex­pe­ri­encer can like­wise re­sort to the dog­matic chal­lenge of the facts of sci­ence and the be­liefs of phi­los­o­phy on the grounds that they are like­wise un­proved; they are like­wise ex­pe­ri­ences in the con­scious­ness of the sci­en­tist or the philoso­pher.

103:8.5The cer­tainty of the God-know­ing re­li­gion­ist should not be dis­turbed by the un­cer­tainty of the doubt­ing ma­te­ri­al­ist; rather should the un­cer­tainty of the un­be­liever be might­ily chal­lenged by the pro­found faith and un­shak­able cer­tainty of the ex­pe­ri­en­tial be­liever.

100:6.1Evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gions and rev­e­la­tory re­li­gions may dif­fer markedly in method, but in mo­tive there is great sim­i­lar­ity. Re­li­gion is not a spe­cific func­tion of life; rather is it a mode of liv­ing. True re­li­gion is a whole­hearted de­vo­tion to some re­al­ity which the re­li­gion­ist deems to be of su­preme value to him­self and for all man­kind. And the out­stand­ing char­ac­ter­is­tics of all re­li­gions are: un­ques­tion­ing loy­alty and whole­hearted de­vo­tion to su­preme val­ues. This re­li­gious de­vo­tion to su­preme val­ues is shown in the re­la­tion of the sup­pos­edly ir­re­li­gious mother to her child and in the fer­vent loy­alty of non­re­li­gion­ists to an es­poused cause.

181:1.7Je­sus gives peace to his fel­low do­ers of the will of God but not on the or­der of the joys and sat­is­fac­tions of this ma­te­rial world. Un­be­liev­ing ma­te­ri­al­ists and fa­tal­ists can hope to en­joy only two kinds of peace and soul com­fort: Ei­ther they must be sto­ics, with stead­fast res­o­lu­tion de­ter­mined to face the in­ev­i­ta­ble and to en­dure the worst; or they must be op­ti­mists, ever in­dulging that hope which springs eter­nal in the hu­man breast, vainly long­ing for a peace which never re­ally comes.

181:2.15Je­sus then stepped over to James Zeb­e­dee, who stood in si­lence as the Mas­ter ad­dressed him, say­ing: “James, when you and your younger brother once came to me seek­ing prefer­ment in the hon­ors of the king­dom, and I told you such hon­ors were for the Fa­ther to be­stow, I asked if you were able to drink my cup, and both of you an­swered that you were. Even if you were not then able, and if you are not now able, you will soon be pre­pared for such a ser­vice by the ex­pe­ri­ence you are about to pass through. By such be­hav­ior you an­gered your breth­ren at that time. If they have not al­ready fully for­given you, they will when they see you drink my cup. Whether your min­istry be long or short, pos­sess your soul in pa­tience. When the new teacher comes, let him teach you the poise of com­pas­sion and that sym­pa­thetic tol­er­ance which is born of sub­lime con­fi­dence in me and of per­fect sub­mis­sion to the Fa­ther’s will. Ded­i­cate your life to the dem­on­stra­tion of that com­bined hu­man af­fec­tion and di­vine dig­nity of the God-know­ing and Son-be­liev­ing dis­ci­ple. And all who thus live will re­veal the gospel even in the man­ner of their death. You and your brother John will go dif­fer­ent ways, and one of you may sit down with me in the eter­nal king­dom long be­fore the other. It would help you much if you would learn that true wis­dom em­braces dis­cre­tion as well as cour­age. You should learn sagac­ity to go along with your ag­gres­sive­ness. There will come those su­preme mo­ments wherein my dis­ci­ples will not hes­i­tate to lay down their lives for this gospel, but in all or­di­nary cir­cum­stances it would be far bet­ter to pla­cate the wrath of un­be­liev­ers that you might live and con­tinue to preach the glad tid­ings. As far as lies in your power, live long on the earth that your life of many years may be fruit­ful in souls won for the heav­enly king­dom.”