The title of this chapter is not called the problem of
religion but simply the problem of those people and organizations who attempt
to teach religion, who claim to represent the spiritual life, to direct the
spiritual approach of the human soul to God and to lay down the rules for the
spiritual life. In writing on this theme we are treading on dangerous ground.
There is no justifiable quarrel with the religious spirit;
it exists and is essential to a full and true life on earth. We can recognize
the timelessness of faith and the witness of the Spirit, down countless ages,
to the fact of God. Christ lives and guides the people of the world and He does
this not from any vague or distant centre called the "right hand of God"
(a symbolic phrase), but from close at hand and near to humanity whom He
eternally loves. When He said, "Lo, I am with you all the days, even unto
the end of the world", He meant exactly what He said. The approach of the
human Spirit to its Source, to that spiritual Centre where divinity rules and
to those Who guide and direct that approach, will inevitably go on; the way
stands eternally open to pilgrims and all such pilgrims, all souls, find their
way eventually into the Father's Home.
The fact of God, the fact of Christ, the fact of men's
spiritual approach to divinity, the fact of the deathlessness of the Spirit,
the fact of spiritual opportunity and the fact of man's relation to God and to
his fellowmen—upon these we can take our stand. We should emphasize also the
evolutionary presentation of truth and its constant adaptation to the need of
humanity at any given period in history.
Christianity is an
expression—in essence, if not yet factually—of the love of God, immanent in
His created universe. Churchianity has, however, laid itself open to attack and
the mass of thinking people know this; unfortunately, these thinking people are
a small minority.
For the sake of clarity and in order that the outline of the
facts and of the potentialities may emerge clearly, we will divide this subject
into the following sections, beginning with the most unpleasant and
controversial and ending on a note of hope, of purpose and of vision.
I. The Failure of the Churches. Would you, in all
truthfulness and in the light of world events, say that the churches had
succeeded?
II. The Opportunity of the Churches. Do they recognize it?
III. The Essential Truths which Humanity needs and
intuitively accepts. What are they?
IV. The Regeneration of the Churches. Is it possible?
V. The New World Religion.
Today the immediate need of mankind is emerging with
clarity, and the steps which the churches propose taking to meet that need are
also becoming clear. It seems essential, therefore, that we face the situation
exactly as it is and that we isolate those truths which are essential to man's
progress and enlightenment and eliminate factors which are controversial and
unimportant; it is necessary also that we define the way of salvation which the
churches should follow; if the churches are working and the churchmen are
thinking in a Christlike way, then the salvation of humanity is assured. It is
above all else essential that a vision is presented which will be a vision for
all men everywhere and not simply a beautiful hope of a sectarian group or a
fanatical self-satisfied organization. It is essential that we return to Christ
and to His message and to the way of life exemplified by Him.
Churchmen need to remember that the human spirit is greater
than the churches and greater than their teaching. In the long run, that human
spirit will defeat them and proceed triumphantly into the kingdom of God,
leaving them far behind unless they enter as an humble part of the mass of men.
Pompous prelates and executive ecclesiastics have no part in that kingdom.
Christ does not need prelates and executives. He needs humble teachers of the
truth able to exemplify the spiritual life. Nothing under heaven can arrest the
progress of the human soul on its long pilgrimage from darkness to light, from
the unreal to the real, from death to immortality and from ignorance to wisdom.
If the great organized religious groups of churches in every land and composing
all faiths do not offer spiritual guidance and help, humanity will find another
way. Nothing can keep the spirit of man from God.
I. THE FAILURE OF THE CHURCHES
Let us remember: Christ has not failed. It is the human
element which has failed and which has thwarted His intentions, and prostituted
the truth which He presented. Theology, dogma, doctrine, materialism, politics
and money have created a vast dark cloud between the churches and God; they
have shut out the true vision of God's love, and it is to this vision of a
loving reality and to a vital recognition of its implications that we must
return.
Is there any chance that a renewal of the faith as it was in
Christ will return? Are there enough men of vision in the churches to save the
day—a vision of meeting the need of man and not a vision of the growth and
aggrandizement of the churches? Such men do exist in every religious
organization, but they are deplorably few. Even if united (which seems as yet
sadly impossible because of doctrinal differences), they present a somewhat
futile group versus the organized power, the materialistic splendour, the vested
interests and the fanatical determination of the reactionary ecclesiastics of
all faiths. It is usually the struggling minority (in this case the
spiritually-minded few) who guard the true vision and finally bring it into
being; they are the ones who walk the torrid, unhappy streets with agonizing
humanity and who, therefore, recognize in an acute sense the need for the
regeneration of the churches.
Our religious platforms, our pulpits, and our religious
periodicals and magazines are full of appeals for men to turn again to God and
to find in religion a way out of the present chaotic conditions. Yet, humanity
has never before been so spiritually inclined or so consciously and definitely
oriented to the spiritual values and to the need for spiritual revaluations and
realizations. The appeals going out should be made to the church leaders and to
the ecclesiastics of all faiths and to church workers everywhere; it is they
who should return to the simplicity of the faith as it is in Christ. It is they
who need regeneration. Men are everywhere demanding light. Who is to give it to
them?
There are two major factors which are responsible for the
failure of the churches:
1.
Narrow theological interpretations of the
Scriptures.
2.
Material and political ambitions.
In every land down the ages men have sought to foist their
personal, religious interpretations of truth, of the Scriptures and of God upon
the mass of men. They have taken the Bibles of the world and have attempted to
explain them, passing the ideas they find through the filter of their own minds
and brains and in the process inevitably stepping down the meaning. Not content
with this, their followers have forced these man-evolved interpretations upon
the unthinking and the ignorant. Every religion—Buddhism, Hinduism in its many
aspects, Mohammedanism and Christianity—has produced a flock of outstanding
minds who have sought (usually quite sincerely) to understand what God is
supposed to have said, who have formulated doctrines and dogmas on this basis
of what they thought God meant and their words and ideas have, therefore,
become religious law and the irrefutable truths of countless millions. In the
last analysis, what have you? The ideas of some human mind—interpreted in terms
of his period, tradition and background—about what God said in some Scripture
which has been subjected during the centuries to the difficulties and the
mistakes incident to constant translation—a translation often based on oral
teaching.
The doctrine of the verbal inspiration of the Scriptures of
the world (deemed particularly applicable to the Christian Bible) is today
completely exploded and with it the infallibility of interpretation; all the
world Scriptures are now seen to be based on poor translations and no part of
them—after thousands of years of translation—is as it originally was, if it
ever existed as an original manuscript and was not in reality some man's
recollection of what was said. At the same time, it must be remembered that the
general trend and the basic teaching, as well as the significance of the
symbols, is usually correct, though again, symbolism itself must be subjected
to modern translation and not to the misinterpretation of ignorance. The point
is that dogmas and doctrines, theology and dogmatic affirmations, do not necessarily
indicate the truth as it exists in the mind of God, with Whose mind the
majority of dogmatic interpreters claim familiarity. Theology is simply what
men think is in the mind of God.
The more ancient the Scripture, the greater, necessarily,
the distortion. The doctrine of a vengeful God, the doctrine of retribution in
some mythical hell, the teaching that God only loves those who interpret Him in
terms of some particular school of theological thought, the symbolism of the
blood sacrifice, the appropriation of the Cross as a Christian symbol, the
teaching about the Virgin Birth and the picture of an angry Deity only appeased
by death are the unhappy results of man's own thinking, of his own lower
nature, of his sectarian isolationism (fostered by the Jewish Old Testament,
but not generally found in the Oriental faiths) and of his sense of fear,
inherited from the animal side of his nature—all these are fostered and
inculcated by theology but not by Christ, or the Buddha or Shri Krishna.
The little minds of men at their past and present stages of
evolution cannot today and never have comprehended the mind and the purposes of
the One in Whom we live and move and have our being; they have interpreted God
in terms of themselves; therefore when men unthinkingly accept a dogma, they
are only accepting the point of view of some other fallible human being, and
are not accepting a divine truth at all. It is this truth that theological
seminaries must begin to teach, training their men to think for themselves and
to remember that the key to truth lies in the unifying power of Comparative
Religion. Only those principles and truths which are universally recognized and
which find their place in every religion are truly necessary to salvation. The
secondary and controversial line of presented truths is usually unnecessary or
significant only in so far as it buttresses the primary and essential truth.
It is this distorted presentation of truth which has led
humanity to the formulation of a body of doctrines about which Christ
apparently knew nothing. Christ cared only that men should recognize that God
is love, that all men are the children of the one Father and, therefore,
brothers; that man's spirit is eternal and that there is no death; He longed
that the Christ within every man (the innate Christ consciousness which makes
us one with each other and with Christ) should flower forth in all its glory;
He taught that service was the keynote of the spiritual life and that the will
of God would be revealed. These are not the points about which the mass of
commentators have written. They have discussed ad nauseam how far Christ was
divine and how far He was human, the nature of the Virgin Birth, the function
of St. Paul as a teacher of Christian truth, the nature of hell, salvation
through blood, and the authenticity and historicity of the Bible.
Today men's minds are recognizing the dawn of freedom; they
are realizing that every man should be free to worship God in his own way. This
will not mean (in the coming new age) that every man will pick a theological
school to which he will choose to adhere. His own God-illumined mind will
search for truth and he will interpret it for himself. The day of theology is
over and that of a living truth is with us. This the orthodox churches refuse
to recognize. Truth is essentially non-controversial; where controversy
emerges, the concept is usually secondary in importance and consists largely of
men's ideas about truth.
Men have gone far today in the rejection of dogmas and
doctrine and this is good and right and encouraging. It signifies progress,
but, as yet, the churches fail to see in this the workings of divinity. Freedom
of thought, the questioning of presented truths, a refusal to accept the
teachings of the churches in terms of the past theology, and a rejection of
imposed ecclesiastical authority are characteristic of creative spiritual
thinking at this time; this is regarded by orthodox churchmen as indicative of
dangerous tendencies and as a turning away from God and, consequently, of a
loss of the sense of divinity. It indicates exactly the reverse.
Perhaps as serious, because of its effect upon untold
thousands of the more ignorant public, are the materialistic and political
ambitions of the churches. In the Eastern faiths this is not so prominently the
case; in the Western world this tendency is fast bringing on the degeneration
of the churches. In the Oriental religions a disastrous negativity has
prevailed; the truths given out have not sufficed to better the daily life of the
believer or to anchor the truths creatively upon the physical plane. The effect
of the Eastern doctrines is largely subjective and negative as to daily
affairs. The negativity of the theological interpretations of the Buddhist and
Hindu Scriptures have kept the people in a quiescent condition from which they
are slowly beginning to emerge. The Mohammedan faith is, like the Christian, a
positive presentation of truth though very materialistic; both these faiths
have been militant and political in their activities.
The great Western faith, Christianity, has been definitely
objective in its presentation of truth; this was needed. It has been militant,
fanatical, grossly materialistic and ambitious. It has combined political
objectives with pomp and ceremony, with great stone structures, with power and
an imposed authority of a most cramping nature.
The early Christian Church (which was relatively pure in its
presentation of truth and in its living processes) eventually split into three
main divisions— the Roman Catholic Church which today seeks to make capital out
of the claim that it was the Mother Church, the Byzantine or Greek Orthodox
Church and the Protestant Churches. All of them split away on the question of
doctrine and all of them were originally sincere and clean and relatively pure
and good. All have steadily deteriorated since the day of their inception and
today the following sad and serious situation can be found:
1. The Roman Catholic
Church is distinguished by three things which are all contrary to the
spirit of Christ:
a.
An intensely materialistic attitude. The Church
of Rome stands for great stone structures—cathedrals, churches, institutions,
convents, monasteries. In order to build them, the policy down the centuries
has been to drain the money out of the pockets of rich and poor alike. The
Roman Catholic Church is a strictly capitalistic church. The money gathered
into its coffers supports a powerful ecclesiastical hierarchy and provides for
its many institutions and schools.
b.
A far-reaching and far-sighted political program
in which temporal power is the goal and not the welfare of the little people.
The present program of the Catholic Church has definite political implications;
their attitude to Communism has in it the seeds of another world war. The
political activities of the Catholic Church have not built for peace, no matter
under what guise they are presented.
c.
. A planned policy whereby the mass of the
people are kept in intellectual ignorance and, through this ignorance, are
naturally to be found among the reactionary and conservative forces which are
so powerfully at work resisting the new age with its [Page 131] new
civilization and more enlightened culture. Blind faith and complete confidence
in the priest and in the Vatican are regarded as spiritual duties.
The Roman Catholic Church stands entrenched and unified
against any new and evolutionary presentation of truth to the people; its roots
are in the past but it is not growing into the light; its vast financial
resources enable it to menace the future enlightenment of mankind under the
cloak of paternalism and a colourful outer appearance which hides a
crystallization and an intellectual stupidity which must inevitably spell its
eventual doom, unless the faint stirrings of new life following the advent of
Pope John XXIII can be nourished and developed.
2. The Greek Orthodox
Church reached such a high stage of corruption, graft, greed and sexual
evil that, temporarily and under the Russian revolution, it was abolished. This
was a wise, needed and right action. The emphasis of this church was entirely
material but it never wielded (nor will it wield) such power as the Roman
Catholic Church did in the past. The refusal of the revolutionary party in
Russia to recognize this corrupt church was wise and salutary; it did no harm,
for the sense of God can never be driven from the human heart. If all church
organizations disappeared from off the earth, the sense of God and the
recognition and the knowledge of Christ would emerge in strength and with a
fresh and new conviction. The church in Russia has again received official
recognition and faces a new opportunity. It does not yet constitute a factor in
world affairs but there is hope that eventually it may emerge as a regenerating
and spiritual force. The challenge of its environment is great and it cannot be
reactionary as can—and are—the churches in other parts of the world.
3. The Protestant
Churches. The church, covered by the generic name of
"protestant", is distinguished by its multiplicity of divisions; it
is broad, narrow, liberal, radical and ever protesting. It comprises within its
borders many churches, large and small. These churches are also distinguished
by material objectives. They are relatively free from any such political bias
as conditions the Roman Catholic Church, but it is a quarrelling, fanatical and
intolerant body of believers. The spirit of differentiation is rampant; there
is no unity or cohesion among them, but usually a constant spirit of rejection,
a virulent partisanship and the growth of hundreds of protestant cults, a
constant presentation of a narrow theology which teaches nothing new but
produces fresh quarrelling around some doctrines or some question of church
organization or procedure. The Protestant Churches have set a precedent of
acrimonious controversy from which the older churches are relatively free,
owing to their hierarchical method of government and their centralized
authoritarian control. Again, how ever, the first efforts to achieve some form
of unity and cooperation have recently emerged and may continue to grow.
The question arises whether Christ would be at home in the
churches if He walked again among men. The rituals and the ceremonies, the pomp
and the vestments, the candles and the gold and silver, the graded order of
popes, cardinals, archbishops, canons and ordinary rectors, pastors and clergy
would seemingly have small interest to the simple Son of God Who—when on
earth—had nowhere to lay His head.
There are deeply spiritual men whose lot is cast within the
cramping walls of ecclesiasticism; they are many in the aggregate, and within
all churches and faiths. Their lot is a difficult one; they are aware of
conditions and they struggle and strive to present sound Christian and
religious ideas to a searching, suffering world. They are true sons of God;
their feet are set in most unpleasant places; they are aware of the "dry
rot" which has undermined the clerical structure and of the bigotry,
selfishness, greed and narrow-mindedness with which they are surrounded.
They know well that no man has ever been saved by theology
but only by the living Christ and through the awakened consciousness of the
Christ within each human heart; they interiorly repudiate the materialism in
their environment and see little hope for humanity in the churches; they know
well that the spiritual realities have been forgotten in the material
development of the churches; they love their fellowmen and would like to divert
the money spent in the upkeep of church structures and overhead to the creation
of that Temple of God "not made with hands, eternal in the heavens".
They serve that spiritual Hierarchy which stands—unseen and serene—behind all
human affairs and feel no inner allegiance to any outer ecclesiastical hierarchy.
The guidance of the human being into conscious relation to Christ and that
spiritual Hierarchy is to them the factor of major importance and not the
increase of church attendance and the authority of little men. They believe in
the Kingdom of God of which Christ is the outstanding Executive but have no
confidence in the temporal power claimed and wielded by Popes and Archbishops.
Such men are found in every great religious organization,
both in the East and in the West and in all spiritual groups, dedicated
ostensibly to spiritual purpose. They are simple, saintly men, asking nothing
for the separated self, representing God in truth and in life, and having no
real part in the church wherein they work; the church suffers sadly through the
contrast which they represent and seldom permits them to rise to place [Page
134] and power; their temporal power is nil but their spiritual example brings
illumination and strength to their people. They are the hope of humanity for
they are in touch with Christ and are an integral part of the Kingdom of God;
they represent Deity in a manner which the great ecclesiastics and the
so-called Princes of the Church seldom do.
II. THE OPPORTUNITY OF THE CHURCHES
Something of great moment has happened in the world. The
spirit of destruction has stampeded through the earth, leaving the world of the
past and the civilization which controlled our modern life in ruins. Cities and
homes have been destroyed; kingdoms and rulers have disappeared in the
aftermath of war; ideologies and cherished beliefs have failed to meet the need
of people and have broken down under the test of the times; starvation and
insecurity are rampant everywhere; families and social groups have been
disrupted; death has taken its toll of every nation and millions have died as a
result of the inhuman processes of war. Broadly speaking, everyone has known
terror, fear and hopelessness as they face the future; everyone is questioning
what that future has in store and there is no surety anywhere. The voice of
humanity is demanding light, peace and security.
Please Read the rest at: http://edgeba.webs.com/theproblemofthechurches.htm
[PROBLEMS OF HUMANITY, 1947, pp. 122-166]
No comments:
Post a Comment